Land Art

Land Art ( so common in German ) is a late 1960s in the United States resulting in 1968 at an exhibition in the gallery of Virginia Dwan in New York for the first time as " Earthworks " designated art movement of the visual arts. The common especially in Germany called " Land Art " was coined in 1969 by the German filmmaker and television gallery Gerry Schum in his first television exhibition Land Art ( broadcast on 15 April 1969 at SFB).

The Land Art was - together with the minimalism - the most radical artistic concepts that time and is still present - in architecture and landscape architecture - an important source of inspiration. Even the artist refused, however, the end of the 60s any classification Strongly and often worked in parallel in several different art styles.

Characteristics and development

Land Art is the transformation of geographical in architectural space, or in a work of art. Here, land art does not focus on a particular scale or method, but works with spaces in the smallest scale to whole tracts of land and with found natural materials or massive intervention with heavy construction equipment and concrete.

In contrast to the minimalism that was striving for objectivity and was found mainly in the context of galleries and museums, marked the Country Type a romantic but also an explicitly socially critical component. The possession bourgeoisie, which looked at the works of fine art only as objects of speculation, they wanted to provide no new consumer product. In the remote desert regions of North America One therefore created gigantic earthworks that could be displayed in no museum, no gallery, so neither transportable, commercially were permanent. Initially, the artist not even allowed a picture or video recordings of their ephemeral works. If someone wanted to see the art, then you had to embark on an inner and outer journey and experience the sculpture directly in the landscape outdoors in all weathers with all their senses. The works of art were not asked how objects in the landscape, the landscape use not just as an attractive background, but were themselves to the landscape.

At the same time also created projects to build large-scale installations in a durable form; these often take decades. James Turrell built since 1974 in Arizona at his Roden Crater, Charles Ross built in New Mexico since 1971, his star Axis. Nancy Holt has created in Utah Sun Tunnels. All three projects involve landscape, artificial structures and the sun in the work.

Particularly impressive is the radical approach documented in the book " Double Negative " by Michael Heizer, one of the young pioneers of this art trend of 1969: With bulldozers and dynamite two 9 meters wide and 15 meters deep, exact linear incisions with a total length of were more than 450 meters in the erosion edge of the desert plateau driven Mormon Mesa in Las Vegas. 240,000 tons of rock had to be moved to create a huge space, a tangible "negative" sculpture that is not as usual look from the outside, but which one should celebrate and learn as a meditative space with no pre-determined location.

With the intentions of the later burgeoning environmental movement, the Land Art artists had not the slightest thing in mind. "It's about art, not landscape. " Emphasized Michael Heizer and expressly opposed so that all attempts to interpret the Land Art as an ecological landscape art. Only the European Nature Art that originated at the beginning of the seventies with the increasing environmental consciousness, oriented strongly to ecological issues. Many artistic interventions that are known today very largely regarded as " land art ", are fundamentally different from the initial estimates of the American avant-garde art of the 60s and are more appropriate than " Nature Art " or to refer to " Environmental Art ". Unlike the Land Art, for example, is the corporate and art critical component no longer the center of attention, and it is the majority of natural artist less about provocative, radical gestures in the landscape as a rather sensitive, often decorative ratios from transient objects in nature.

Today, the term " Land Art " in a very generalizing manner and often used in advertising for strategic reasons to any type of natural art, or art in the landscape, although from art-theoretical point of view no conceptual relationship to the original Land Art of the 1960s (see above) is given. The nature ( deserts, fields, or water surfaces ) was originally used as a medium of artistic design and not as a decorative image background. The documentation was often due to the large extent of the works of art and the effects desired by air shots, but is not, as commonly misunderstood, inevitable part of the work, on the contrary, to the beginning, the land art allowed artists have no photographic or filmic documentation to support the marketing prevent. There was also quite small land art works of art, for example "Match Drop" by Michael Heizer. The dimensions were not always decisive, but the landscape and respect the minimalist concept applied were of concern.

What is relevant in today's Nature Art and the influence of nature on the artworks. Often changing weather and growth of the materials used, the work of art. The result is dynamic and processual. Therefore, the documentation, especially the photographic important because the fewest viewer can follow this partially lengthy developments.