LAND ART IN THE U.S.A.
A new study of land art in America, featuring all of the
well-known land artists from the 'golden age' of land art - the
1960s - to the present day.
Fully illustrated, with a bibliography.
EXTRACT FROM THE CHAPTER ON ROBERT SMITHSON
Robert Smithson is the key land artist, the premier artist in
the world of land art. And he's been a big favourite with art
critics since the early Seventies. Smithson was the chief
mouthpiece of American earth/ site aesthetics, and is probably the
most important artist among all land artists.
For Robert Smithson, Carl Andre, Walter de Maria, Michael
Heizer, Dennis Oppenheim and Tony Smith were 'the more compelling
artists today, concerned with 'Place' or 'Site''. Smithson was
impressed by Tony Smith's vision of the mysterious aspects of a
dark unfinished road and called Smith 'the agent of endlessness'.
Smith's aesthetic became part of Smithson's view of art as a
complete 'site', not simply an aesthetic of sculptural objects.
Smithson was not inspired by ancient religious sculpture, by burial
mounds, for example, so much as by decayed industrial sites. He
visited some in the mid-1960s that were 'in some way disrupted or
pulverized'. He said he was looking for a 'denaturalization rather
than built up scenic beauty'.
Robert Smithson said he was concerned, like many land (and
contemporary artists with the thing in itself, not its image, its
effect, its critical significance: 'I am for an art that takes into
account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to
day apart from representation'. Smithson's theory of the 'non-site'
was based on 'absence, a very ponderous, weighty absence'. Smithson
proposed a theory of a dialectic between absence and presence, in
which the 'non-site' and 'site' are both interacting. In the
'non-site' work, presence and absence are there simultaneously.
'The land or ground from the Site is placed in the art (Non-Site)
rather than the art is placed on the ground. The Non-Site is a
container within another container - the room'.
William Malpas has written books on Richard Long and land art,
as well as three books on Andy Goldsworthy, including the
forthcoming Andy Goldsworthy In America. Malpas's books on Richard
Long and Andy Goldsworthy are the only full-length studies of these
artists available.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!