Artists Working in the Landscape

“Land Art” / “Earthworks”

Michael Heizer (US, b. Berkeley 1944) Double Negative 1969-70, 24 thousand ton displacement, 2 trenches together are 1,500 feet long, 50 feet deep, and 30 feet

wide Virgin River Mesa, Nevada

"Un-sculpture“: "There is nothing there, yet it is still a sculpture.“ - Michael Heizer

Heizer, Double Negative, aerial view (right)

Michael Heizer, City, begun 1970 - ongoing (photograph 1999), Nevada desert, two miles from the nearest paved road, funded by Dia and Lannon Foundation

It is interesting to build a sculpture that attempts to create an atmosphere of awe.

- Heizer

Teotihuacán, Mexico, between 150 and 450 CECompare Heizer’s City (below). Artist’s father was an archaeologist.

Heizer came up with the idea for City in 1970when he was in the Yucatan studying the serpent motif in the ball court at Chichen Itza. He was 24.

Chichen Itzá ballcourt and (right) Temple of Kukulkan (700-1200 AD), Yucatan, Mexico

http://youtu.be/Se4QlVExLnk

Michael Heizer, preliminary sketch for Levitated Mass, 2011, LACMA. Installation, March, 2012: http://lacma.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/levitated-mass-what-next/

Smithson, A Nonsite: Franklin, New Jersey, summer, 1968wood, limestone, aerial photographs, 16 1/2" x 82" x 110“

(right top and bottom) Chalk and Mirror Displacement, 1969, 6 mirrors / chalk from quarry in Oxted, England, each 10"x 5" (overall 10‘)

Robert Smithson (US, 1938-1973) Spiral Jetty, 1970, Great Salt Lake, black rocks, salt crystals, Dia foundation collection

Stonehenge, England, over 5000 years old

Robert Smithson (left) and Donald Judd (right) at site of Spiral Jetty, 1970Minimalism – Post-Minimalism

Nancy Holt (US b. 1938, environmental artist) Sun Tunnels, exterior and interior view (Sunset on the Summer Solstice), 1973-76, Great Basin Desert, Utah;

Compare (right): Center for Land Use Interpretation Viewing Area, Nevada, 2006 (commission, Whitney Biennial) http://clui.org/section/new-center-0

Robert Smithson, Floating Island to Travel Around Manhattan Island (1970/2005) 30-x-90-foot barge landscaped with earth, rocks, and native trees and shrubs, towed by a tugboat around the island of Manhattan, produced by Minetta Brook in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art during Smithson’s 2005 retrospective.

(right) Smithson, Study for Floating Island, 1970. pencil on paper. 19″ x 24″

Lee Bontecou

Lee Bontecou•  which consists of a web-like arrangement of strips of canvas attached to a welded

steel frame around a central oval void. One such work was included in the influential Art of Assemblage exhibition held at MOMA, New York, in 1961.

Lee Bontecou

Walter de Maria (US, b. 1935) The Broken Kilometer, 1979, located at 393 West Broadway in New York City. 500 polished solid brass rods, each measuring two meters

(6.5 feet) in length and five centimeters (two inches) in diameter. The 500 rods are placed in five parallel rows of 100 rods each. The sculpture weighs 18 3/4 tons

(right) companion piece: De Maria's 1977 Vertical Earth Kilometer at Kassel, Germany, a permanently installed earth sculpture, a brass rod of the same diameter, total weight and

total length has been inserted 1,000 meters into the ground.

Walter de Maria, The New York Earth Room, 1977-present, 141 Wooster Street, NYC, interior earth sculpture, 250 cubic yards of earth, 3,600 square feet of floor space, 22 inch depth of material,

Total weight of sculpture: 280,000 lbs

Walter de Maria, The Lightning Field, 1974-77, near Quemado, New Mexico, 400 stainless steel poles, average height 20' 7 ½" Overall dimensions: 5,280 x 3,300'

Mario Merz (Italian, 1925-2003) (right) Guggenheim NYC retrospective, 1989, centerpiece: Unreal City, Nineteen Hundred Eighty-Nine, 1989; glass, mirror, metal pipes, twigs, rubber, clay, and clamps, 197 x 504 x 392 in. overall. Arte Povera

Merz, Giap Igloo, 1968Metal tubes, wire mesh,neon tubes, dirt, 9’10” diameter

James Turrell, Roden Crater, near Flagstaff, Arizona, in progress since 1980; (right) Roden Crater section plan

Turrell, Roden Crater, East Portal Entryway, 2000

"I wanted to use the very fine qualities of light. First of all, moonlight. There's a space where you can see your shadow from the light of Venus alone—things like this. I also wanted to gather starlight that was from outside the planetary system, which would be from the sun or reflected off of the moon or a planet...you've got this older light that's away from the light even of our galaxy. So that is light that would be at least three and a half billion years old. So you're gathering light that's older than our solar system."

— James Turrell

James Turrell, Dhatu, 2010

Andy Goldsworthy (Scottish, b.1956) Stone River, stone wall, Stanford University, 2004

Andy Goldsworthy’s global Cairns

Roof of NYC Metropolitan MA - temporaryLa Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art - permanent

Cairn with clay wall, London - temporary

Andy Goldsworthy, Woven bamboo, windy..., Before the Mirror, 1987, photograph

Goldsworthy’s photographs of art made on his walks in nature of stones, berries, leaves

http://youtu.be/YkHRZQU6bjI Excerpt from a highly recommended film on Goldsworthy’s art: Rivers and Tides, DVD

000134 available in the Sac State library. You can get extra credit for watching it.

Christo Javacheff, (Bulgarian-American, b.1935), (top left) Package on Wheelbarrow, 1963, Paris, New RealistChristo & Jeanne Claude (French, b. 1935): (top right) Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971–95; (bottom left) The Pont Neuf Wrapped, 1975–85; (bottom right) Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980–83.

Christo Javacheff, self-portrait around the time of his escape from Soviet Bulgaria to Vienna then Paris in January of 1957

In all of his interviews the artist insists that his art is a “scream for freedom.”

Christo Javashev, Man Posing, academic study, pencil on paper, 1953-1956, collection Academy of Fine Art Gallery in Sofia; (right top) Christo Javashev, Rural Worker, watercolor, 1956 at the Academy of Fine Art

Soviet Realism, Andrei Milnikov’s Peaceful Fields, won a Stalin prize in 1951

Wrapped Coast, Little Bay, Australia, 1968-69

Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Coast, Little Bay, Australia, 1968-69

Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Valley Curtain, Rifle, Colorado, 1970-72 9 tons of orange nylon

Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties1972-76, September 1976

Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Miami, Florida, 1980-83, May 1983

7,500 gates

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Umbrellas, Japan-U.S.A., 1974-1991

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Umbrellas, Japan – U.S.A., 1984-91

Christo & Jeanne-Claude, The Gates, 7,500 gates, 23 miles of pedestrian walkways in Central Park, NYC, a 20-year project. http://youtu.be/z057rxwJXPo