Land art

Draft

Edutech Wiki - Materials: fern on top of moss (almost vertical)

Introduction

Land art (or Earth art) refers to an art movement in which landscape and art is linked, i.e. art work is not just placed in nature, but draws from nature. According to Wikipedia (retrieved 14:16, 21 September 2009 (UTC)), “Land art, Earthworks, or Earth art is an art movement which emerged in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked. Sculptures are not placed in the landscape; rather the landscape is the very means of their creation. The works frequently exist in the open, located well away from civilization, left to change and erode under natural conditions. Many of the first works, created in the deserts of Nevada, New Mexico, Utah or Arizona were ephemeral in nature and now only exist as video recordings or photographic documents.”

Snake - Materials: fern and beech leaves

Today, land art seems to refer to a whole family of productions and is tied to other artistic movements. Land art can refer to several interpretations that may be combined:

• Materials used are mostly things found in the nature, like wood, flowers or stones. Use of other materials (e.g. nails) should be minimized.
• Land art is in situ art, e.g. a land artist does not collect things to process these in some other place.
• Land art is often ephemaral, i.e. art work will quickly decay and only live through the pictures taken. However, if appropriate, one might build an artistic wall, e.g. to keep the sheep in.

A related movement is environmental art. According to Wikipedia, “the term Environmental Art is used in two different senses. [(1)]The term can be used generally to refer to art dealing with ecological issues and/or the natural, such as the formal, the political, the historical, or the social context. [(2)] It is possible to trace the growth of environmental art as a 'movement', beginning in the late 1960s or the 1970s. In its early phases it was most associated with sculpture — especially Site-specific art, Land art and Arte povera — having arisen out of mounting criticism of traditional sculptural forms and practices which were increasingly seen as outmoded and potentially out of harmony with the natural environment. The category now encompasses many media. Recently Sustainable art has emerged as an alternative term to environmental or green art, in recognition of the challenges that sustainability brings for contemporary art as a whole.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_art Wikipedia, retrieved 14:16, 21 September 2009 (UTC)).

Most dedicated land artists such as Andy Goldsworthy pay attention to cause no harm to nature. Site-specific art such as Christo's should not be considered land art.

Land art can also refer to garden construction (i.e. mazes and other "sculptures" made with plants). However, we believe that only quite "natural" gardens, i.e. not the french-style formal garders, could be considered as "land art". Finally, there is also talk about "land art" in virtual environments, e.g. Land Art in Second Life.

Landart in education

Of course landart can be a cool subject for an art class. A more challenging idea is to combine artistic productions with learning other subjects. After a quick search on the web, we found a few examples.

Environmentalism

A nice example was the Central European Land Art Contest (Flickr page), organized by 350.org Global Climate Movement and Messzelato Association, a land art and climate protection contes for children between the age of 11-18 within non-formal youth groups or school classes in the region of Central and Eastern Europe.

Another example funded by the EU Comenius project can be seen in this PDF portfolio that demonstrates art made by children in a "land art day" about Identity, Feelings, Friendship, Reality, Conflict and Love.

An other interesting example is a borderline land/ecology art project from Saudi Arabia, the Land Art Generator Initiative, that aims to design and construct Land Art / Environmental Art installations in the United Arab Emirates that have the added benefit of large scale clean energy generation.

Botany

Identify plants that are being used.

Geology

Identify rocks that are being used and the geological history of the site.

Image processing and color theory

Since land art is most often ephemeral, it becomes art through the camera. Most images need to processed in one way or another. Some pictures may be modified in a way that could be called "augmented land art".

Links

Overviews

• Land art (Wikipedia)

Land art consortiums / initiatives

• Artist in Nature International Network (AiNIN)
• Earth Artists.org
• Landart NM See e.g. the http://www.landartnm.org/LANDARTguide_web3.pdf Land/Art New Mexico] guide (PDF).

Examples

• Wikipedia's Land Art category points to several entries that describe artist's work and various initiatives.
• Soekershof, An example of garden construction in the "land art" tradition.
• Land Art in Second Life – A historical perspective and an introduction to virtual artist Comet Morigi. Probably one of the most interesting things in second life...