What is land art?

Land art, also known as earth art or environmental art, is an art movement that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It involves creating large-scale works directly in the landscape, often using natural materials like soil, rocks, plants, and water. The works are typically site-specific, meaning they are designed to interact with and respond to the environment where they are placed.

Andy Goldsworthy

Land art often challenges traditional notions of art by moving away from galleries and museums and embracing the natural world as the canvas. Some famous examples include Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) and Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels (1973). These pieces are designed to interact with the surrounding environment, changing over time due to weather, erosion, or growth, thus connecting art with the cycles of nature.

1. Material Connection

Land artists often use natural elements like earth, rocks, water, or vegetation, working with what is already present in a landscape. This makes the art literally of the land, rather than just on it. The materials themselves carry the memory, history, and essence of a place - which is a direct form of embodiment.

2. Process and Presence

Creating land art often requires the artist to physically engage with the land - digging, arranging, walking, observing. This embodied practice fosters an intimate relationship between the human body and the natural world. The art becomes a trace of this dialogue.

3. Temporal Nature

Many land art pieces are impermanent. They erode, decay, or transform with the seasons, weather, and time. This reflects the rhythms of nature — cycles of birth, change, and death — which is a deeply embodied understanding of living systems.

Walter Mason

4. Spiritual Embodiment

For some land artists the act of creation becomes a gesture of reintegration - a way to embody nature’s intelligence, complexity, and presence through form.

5. Individual / Collective

Artists like Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, and Michael Heizer created monumental works, often alone. More recently, many artists and collectives have turned to co-creation and community engagement, making land art interactive, inclusive, and relational.