Earth art, also referred to as Land art or Earthworks, is an American movement that uses the natural landscape to create site-specific structures, art forms, sculptures. The movement was an extension of Conceptualism and Minimalism, the beginnings of the environmental movement and the trade of American art in the late 1960s influenced the artists, leading them to create works that were, to an extent, unusual from the art market. In addition to the simplicity of Minimalist objects, the artists were drawn to the humble everyday materials the participatory "social sculptures" that emphasised performance and creativity in any environment.
The favoured materials for Earthworks were those that could be extracted directly from nature, such as stones, …show more content…
For many environmental artists making the work becomes part of a process of reinterpreting its surroundings, elements and processes in the natural world. In this movement away from the sophisticated spaces of museums and galleries a new and highly specific relationship to place is being asserted in which concepts become materialized through the transformation of materials usually found in place. In the tradition of landscape. To really see the landscape one must go through the window, feel the land and bodily experience the place. Environmental art is neither sculpture nor architecture but nonetheless retains aspects of both. The materials used have a mass and volume. Along vertical or horizontal planes they weigh on the ground and may be inserted within it. On canvas the artist can choose the point of view or perspective on the landscape, the light, the colours and textures and these become fixed. In earth art control of all these parameters is lost. The work is constantly changing and so does its perception. This encourages self-reflection on our relationship with, and experience of, the work. The intimate knowledge of raw materials and processes which underpin Goldsworthy's work cannot be derived from scientific abstractions but occur through understanding of only …show more content…
The setting of the work in a space without studio walls physically and conceptually limiting creative possibilities, provides a new background and a new set of references. The object is no longer self-sufficient and self-referential. While traditional sculpture is something to be looked at, many earthworks can be walked in, the viewer is inside rather than outside the work, in and of the place that has its own history and character. The primary means of documenting the existence of much environmental art is the photograph, sometimes in combination with plans, drawings and sketches. This is usually both a way of remembering the art work and an integral part of the project. De Maria's Lightning Field reaches its artistic culmination when lightning strikes one of the rods and the photograph is the only means of witness to the event. What one chooses to document for posterity in environmental art is what Smithson calls the non-site. He draws the following distinctions and suggests the site and the non-site exist as a dialectic. The former expands experience, the latter