Earthwork / Land Art
アースワーク／ランドアート / late 1960s–1970s / Style / Postwar American Art
Shapes the landscape itself with earth, stone, branches, terrain and machinery, folding place, time, erosion and documentation into the work.
At a glance
Visual cues
- Intervention in terrain
- Earth and stone
- Vast scale
- Erosion and time
Best used for
- Large sites where the character of a place must be shown without erecting a building
- Outdoor permanent works that assume weather and erosion will change their shape
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Dictionary entry
- Type
- Keep lettering off the site and let photographs and drawings explain
- Composition
- Survey levels and sightlines, then compose the work as a route walked
- Material
- Soil, stone and water from the site, with haulage and machinery planned in
- Caution
- Ask about land ownership, environmental cost, Indigenous places and the power held by the documenting medium. Chasing size without reading geology and drainage leaves work that reads as excavation and fails over time.
- Further study
- Robert Smithson / Ana Mendieta / Richard Long / Nancy Holt
Related entries
- Conceptual Art (コンセプチュアル・アート)Same Postwar American Art lineage.Compare Earthwork / Land Art and Conceptual Art
- Arte Povera (アルテ・ポーヴェラ)Shared effects: Rebellion / Calm.Compare Earthwork / Land Art and Arte Povera
More from Postwar American Art
Continue through styles in the same Postwar American Art family, prioritised by shared effects.
- Abstract Expressionism (抽象表現主義)Shared effects: Exhilaration / Rebellion / Calm.
- Funk Art (ファンク・アート)Shared effects: Rebellion / Exhilaration.
- Action Painting (アクション・ペインティング)Shared effects: Exhilaration / Rebellion.
Browse all Postwar American Art entries
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- https://indexstyle.org/styles/earthwork
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