LAND ART IN THE U.S.A.
A 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.
This book explores all of the major American land, environmental
and earthwork artists of the past 40 years, as well as European
land artists working in North America. The book includes chapters
on James Turrell and his vast volcano site Michael Heizer's
Mid-West earthworks Robert Smithson and his giant spiral, entropic
earthworks Robert Morris's environments and observatories Walter de
Maria's Romantic Lightning Field and Earth Room Dennis Oppenheim's
concentric snow circles Alice Aycock's mysterious underground mazes
Mary Miss's sunken pools and pavilions Nancy Holt and her
observation sculptures and the enigmatic floor sculptures of Carl
Andre. And Europeans such as: Hans Haacke's Conceptual art Richard
Long and his art of walking Andy Goldsworthy's natural,
spontaneous, eco-friendly sculptures and Christo's wrapped
buildings and islands.
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.
Fully illustrated, with a newly revised text for this edition.
Bibliography and notes. ISBN 9781861714060. 328 pages.
www.crmoon.com
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