Earth Art

Much of this material comes from the Roden Crater site, devoted to the project by James Turrell, below. This site is full of commentary about other Earth Artists, and I recommend a visit to supplement the bare images linked under the artists themselves, below. This is the section that discusses other land artists

Robert Morris

We saw some of his work when looking at the Minimalists. This is the artist who cancelled his show at the Whitney in 1970 to protest the bombing of Cambodia.

Box with Sound of its own making, 1961, walnut and recorded tapes

Two installations from 1964 and 1966

Black Felt Piece, Fountain, 1969 (on back wall)

Observatory, 1971 and Observatory, 1971, Oostelijk Flevoland, Holland

Grand Rapids Project, 1973-4, MI

James Turrell

This artist works primarily with light - has done since 1960s and still does. He has said My work is as much about your seeing as it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing. Today, he is best known for his Roden Crater project, 1972 ff (linked below) but to present this solely in terms of Earth Art is to miss its connection with perception and interpretation. As Robert Hughes said, his art happens behind your eyes, not in front of them (American Visions, 573). You have to go into the Roden Crater and lie down to get the perception effects Turrell is creating. That will put you much more genuinely "inside" his work than anything the Abstract Expressionists achieved.

Piece on Turrell by the BBC

Afrum Proto, 1966,

quartz-halogen projection, Mendota Hotel Studio, Calif (temp exhib)

Catso, Red, 1967

(his first optical cube, from student days), perm exhib, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, 500 Sampsonia Way, 2nd floor

Wedgework (undated, 1960s?),

temp exhib, Crawford Gallery, Cork, Ireland

Roden Crater Project, 1972 ff, Painted Desert, northern Arizona

Roden Crater Home Page (excellent site)

several works, inc Wedgework IV, 1974

(red 3-D intersecting light effects)

City of Arhirit, 1976

(no link, but the name makes a spiritual connection which was probably considered valid at the time, although the movement has since been discredited. It was a series of rooms whose colour was created by the viewer and deepened and changed on passing through the rooms. Must have been amazing.)

Amba, 1982,

temp exhib, Center on Contemp Art, Seattle, Washington (oblique view of windows or panels)

Danae, 1983

(room w violet panel that is opening into a violet-light-filled room), perm exhib, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, 500 Sampsonia Way, 2nd floor - remember Danae was locked in a tower by her father so that she could not marry and have children, but Zeus found her there and impregnated her by disguising himself as a shower of gold. The resultant son killed Danae's father, which is why he had locked her up in the first place.)

Squat, 1989-90

(as Catso & Afrum, cube in corner, this time squatting on the floor), no location cited.

Heavy Water, 1991 and

details of how the colour changes,

Confort Moderne, Poitiers, France

Milk Run and Grade A, 1996,

2 light installations, Stroom, Holland (more developed Wedgework)

Kielder Skyspace, 1998,

Scotland (transferred from aborted Pennines proposal of 1996)

Live Oak, Quaker Meeting House, Houston, 2001

When Turrell accepted this project, he revived his own Quaker spirituality. The meeting house has a skylight & separates vault from wall w strip lights - no pic.

Walter de Maria

Like Turrell (above), de Maria works with more than the earth. In his most famous work, he harnesses the energy of lightning.

Dirt Room, 1968 & 1977, Dia Center

Las Vegas Piece, 1969, 3 miles long, Tula Desert, Nevada

The Lightning Field, New Mexico 1977

alternative views of The Lightning Field (scroll down for them)

Accounts vary about the frequency of the lightning strikes, but all agree that the field emerges most clearly in the raking light of morning and evening, and that it vanishes during certain weather conditions. You can arrange to spend the night there in a hut, so this is another work you experience from within.

Robert Smithson

Although best known for his Spiral Jetty, 1970 (linked below), Smithson also produced a lot of work that harnessed the energy of gravity and the fragmenting light of the sun reflected in mirrors or water. These are found together in his many "slideworks", and you can see that he deliberately relinquishes a significant amount of control over the work. The same could be said about the Spiral Jetty. As with Turrell, it is misleading to focus exclusively on the earth component of his work.

Steel Bins and Canel Coal, 1968,

Detroit Inst for the Arts (apparently not site-specific, but note L shaped bins echo & develop parquet floor pattern)

Yucatan Mirror Displacement, slidework, 1968

Hypothetical Continent (Map of Broken Glass, Atlantis), slidework, 1969

Ithaca Mirror Trail, slidework, 1969, Ithaca

Asphalt Rundown, slidework, 1969

Photo Marker, slidework, 1969

Mirror Displacement, Grassy Slope, slidework, 1969

Untitled (mica spread), slidework, 1970

Texas Overflow (Sulfur Version), 1970,

pencil and crayon on paper

Spiral Jetty, 1970, Great Salt Lake, Utah (submerged)

The above link has three views and discussion;

This is a nice close-up

Beforeworking on Spiral Jetty, Smithson was preoccupied with entropy, what he called evolution in reverse. This site was pink with industrial pollution, foul with chemicals and littered with old machinery. According to Robert Hughes, it had been swallowed by the lake within two years. Again note the relinquishing of personal control over the work.

Sunken Island, slidework, 1971

Broken Circle, and Spiral Hill, 1971, Emmen, Holland

Two separate works in the above link, geographically close to each other.

Amarillo Ramp, 1973, TX

Michael Heizer

Like Turrell and Smithson, apparently, Heizer was fascinated by mysterious sites w inscrutable ancient technology, such as Stone Henge (England), New Grange (Ireland), the Great Kiva (Mexico).

Roden Crater Site - page with commentary on images linked directly below

Isolated Mass/Circumflex, 1968; no 9 of the Nine Nevada Depressions,

excavation 120 x 12 x 10', Massacre Dry Lake, Nevada (deteriorated)

Displaced-Replaced Mass, 1969 (detail),

Silver Springs, Nevada (dismantled)

Double Negative, 1969-70,

1500 x 50 x 30', nr Overton, Nevada, Mus Contemp Art, LA

Complex One/City, 1972-6,

110 x 140 x 23 ˝', south central Nevada

Nancy Holt

Robert Smithson's widow and an artist in her own right, who seems to have found her stride only after his death. Holt too is more than an earth artist, harnessing the energy and light of the sun for her works.

Sun Tunnels, 1973-6, and

aerial view, and

*fantastic shot, 1973-6, Lucin, Utah (we owe all these to the Roden Crater site)

Land Reclamation Art

Restoring and Comemmorating Blighted Landscapes

A presentation by Hillary Anne Frost-Kumpf, featuring several of the artists we've examined above. In these projects from the 1970s, 80s and 90s, the artists were commissioned to work on particular sites that had been severely abused and stressed. The word "reclamation" is perhaps questionable for these projects. They are not about ecology but art, and the fact that they have been commissioned by local governments testifies to how public attitudes to inscrutable art are changing.