Earth Art Lecture
Overview: This lecture is intended for use by JCCC Art History faculty. It can be used as
a supplement in ARTH 182 (Renaissance – Modern) and ARTH 184 (Twentieth Century
Art). This lecture is a brief summary of art that addresses nature or incorporates nature
and the environment into its subject matter. Instructors should feel free to expand
upon the topics introduced here by referring to the accompanying supplemental
material. The lecture is approximately 30 minutes, which will give you plenty of time to
go over the attached related assignments, have a class discussion, etc. Please note:
bulleted titles below refer to images in the companion powerpoint presentation.
Bringing the beauty of the natural world indoors has been a practice of the artworld
since ancient times.

Pompeii fresco
While there certainly was some interest in the natural world by early European artists,
it’s not until the 19th century that artists begin to truly focus entirely on nature itself and
the expression of what some critics have labeled the Sublime.

Friedrich Monk by the Sea, 1809 (Berlin)
Caspar David Friedrich, one of the German painters inspired by French Romanticism,
attempted to capture the Divine through his landscapes.
Friedrich felt that one’s relationship to nature is one of the most significant expressions
of a culture -- in many respects equal in importance to the relationship to the sacred.
The great achievements of 19th c. American landscape painters spring from this
philosophical ground as well – such as the Hudson River School.
Frederich Church “Twilight in the Wildnerness” 1859

Thomas Cole, “The Oxbow” 1836
1
In the late 19th and early 20th c., Landscape was also a valued subject, as can be seen in
the work by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, such as Paul Cezanne’s painterly
depiction of his local landscape in southern France.

Cezanne Mt. St. Victoire (1900)
Land Art
In the 1960s artists began to not only capture representations of nature on canvas or in
the dark room, but to actually manipulate nature itself.

Robert Smithson “Spiral Jetty” Great Salt Lake, Utah 1500 ft. long
(earth, black rock, salt crystals, & red algae) 1969-70
Their art became not simply of the landscape but in it as well.
These artists became known as Earth artists or, as they are more recently called, Land
Artists.
One of the most famous land artists was Robert Smithson. You might be familiar with
his famous work the Spiral Jetty.
The Spiral Jetty is located at the Great Salt Lake, Utah, and is 1500 ft. long.
It is made of natural earth, black rock, salt crystals, & red algae.
The Land artists’ involvement with landscape is intimately bound to their sites.
-- and their physical presence in the landscape itself distinguishes their work from other
more portable sculpture.


Venus de Milo, 150 BCE Louvre
Michael Heizer “Displaced / Replaced Mass” 1969 Silver springs, Nevada
This reengagement with landscape in the 1960’s led to major manipulations of the
natural world, such as Michael Heizer’s work, “Displaced / Replaced Mass of 1969.

Photo of Heizer
Michael Heizer had a certain mission for his sculpture – he said recently about his earlier
earth art, “Art had to be radical. It had to become American.”
2
He felt his work had to express the character of a vast expanse, but more importantly it
had to shake its dependence on European models.
His method of doing this was to rebel from all conventions of recent 3-dimensional art
in favor of environmental projects.

Christo “Valley Curtain” Rifle, Colorado, 1970-72
While many of these works of land art could be made in any number of similar locations,
they are intended to provide an experience of a certain place – they are fully engaged
elements of their particular environments.
This is Christo’s Valley Curtain of 1970-72 in Rifle Colorado.
(Christo is from Bulgaria, moved to Paris in the 50s, then NYC in 1964).
As I mentioned a moment ago, one of the greatest impacts on the artworld that these
artists have had is the blurring of distinctions between sculpture and other forms of
artistic activity.
At certain times environmental art has the formally distinct character of conventional
sculpture, and at other times it has the feeling of a performance piece.

Installation of Christo’s Valley Curtain (with people below)
Hundreds of people work on Christo’s (and his partner Jean-Claude’s) enormous
environmental installations.
In fact, he has even said that one of his primary purposes of the work, was its social
impact – bringing together people of diverse backgrounds to work on his projects.

Running Fence, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 1972-76, Sonoma & Marin, Calif.
(24.5 miles long, 18 ft. high)
In this work Running Fence, we see almost 25 miles of undulating nylon tracing the
contours of the rolling hills of Northern California before plunging into the sea.
In addition to the sheer beauty of the work, Christo has said his greater aim was in
forging a community of diverse groups of workers on the project, such as lawyers,
artists, ranchers and college students who helped install the work.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Sidewalks at Loose Park, Kansas City, 1977-78
3
And, before we move on, just a reminder that Christo did an environmental installation
here in Kansas City, when he wrapped the sidewalks at Loose Park.
So, by the late 1970s and early eighties the basic concept of nature was being
dramatically rethought.
And what was once assumed to be vast and inexhaustible had come to seem fragile and
imperiled.

Walter de Maria, New York Earth Room, 1977
(250 cu. yds of earth, covering 3,600 sq.ft. of gallery floor, 2’ deep.)
Walter de Maria created a controversial work housed in a neat and tidy New York City
gallery space.
This work, titled simply “New York Earth Room,” was made of the very thing of which
landscapes are composed and shaped, but obviously removed from their normal
context.
In this work nature is eerily passive, simply submitting to the formal arrangement of the
floor and walls of the gallery.
-- It almost has the forlorn air of a caged wild animal.
A lecture on contemporary notions of landscape art be complete without mention of
our own local land artist Stan Herd.
Probably his most famous work was the Sunflower Still Life, a variation on a Vincent Van
Gogh painting that was featured on the CBS evening news.

Herd at Work on Sunflowers
The work is made of a field of real sunflowers.
Like we saw in Christo’s work, the power of Herd's work also stems from the fact that it
draws on people from diverse disciplines to create a tool for change.

Stan Herd “Medicine Wheel” 1992 Haskell Indian Nations Univ.
(“Honoring” Columbus’ Quincentennial of discovering America)
Herd also recognizes the innate beauty of the rural landscape. He said in 1999,
4
"All over the world farmers draw with the plow, harrow, and harvesting
combine, and paint with the colors of their crops... some of these (fields) rival
the mystery of prehistoric ground drawings; others conjure up the tumultuous
abstractions of modern canvases."
Conclusion
Before adjuorn, I’d like to briefly comment on the great impact environmental art has
had on society.
The influences are many including the significant improvement of public places and the
impact of sculpture on the contemporary practice of landscape architecture.
There are many recent collaborations between artists and architects in the appearance
of artist-designed parks, for example.

Elyn Zimmerman “Marabar” 1984 (granite)
Washington, DC National Geographic Headquarters
The line is being blurred between public space and work of art.
As a result, the average person can have a significant “art encounter” (acs) almost
unknowingly during his/her lunch break, walking the dog, taking a child to the park, etc.
 Such as this work on the JCCC campus, Fountain, by Jesus Bautista Moroles.
In this way, artists are able to have a greater impact on society at large and initiate a
type of dialogue between them and their viewers.
Of course another significant impact of Earth Art is the fact that the work draws our
attention to the sheer beauty of the natural world, something unfortunately we tend to
forget in our hurried lives.
 Yellow Elm Leaves Laid over a Rock, Low Water, by Andy Goldsworthy, which
dates to 1991 (Scotland).
Earth Artist Andy Goldsworthy takes simple natural elements such as leaves and rocks
and manipulates them to create beautiful, head-turning “works of art”, forcing the
passerby to notice the landscape.
 Andy Goldsworthy, Hole in Leaves
5
Others address the plight of the environment in a more politically-charged manner,
calling on the viewer to take a stand against global warming, pollution, suburban sprawl,
etc.
Has anyone heard the term “sustainability”? Sustainability refers to using our natural
resources in such ways that they are not depleted or damaged, so that future
generations can enjoy the same quality of life that we do. What are some resources
that we could not live without or that our society depends upon on a daily basis? I want
you to consider the sustainability of those resources as you approach your homework
assignment.
The artists that we’ve discussed today can broadly be assigned to the movement known
as Land Art, but they are so varied in their technique and intent that placing them neatly
in a textbook can be challenging.
Regardless of their varied media, technique, or intent, however, Land Artists draw our
attention to the natural world commenting specifically on humankind’s impact on the
environment.
(For further information on Land art, please see the accompanying bibliography,
including the article “Earth” written by Prof. Allison Smith for JCCC’s diversity
publication Voices on this topic.)
6
7