Land Art

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Land Art is created by combining art and nature in a complex way. Land art is also known as Earth Art or Earthworks. This art is designed directly in the physical landscapes with the help of natural substances and organic media like leaves, stones, soil, rocks, water, logs, etc. Mechanical earth moving equipment is also used by few artists. Artists show their reaction against industrialization and urbanization through the land art. Before the origin of modern land art, it has been already created by artists for last centuries. But this land art movement became popular somewhere between 1960 and 1970 in America and soon adopted by the artists all over the world. The main part of this art is reforming and redesigning of the landscape. As it is created by moving things around, adding some available materials and imported substances to the landscape so it becomes impossible to move it from one place to another. It is only developed to make some beautiful change in the environment for sometime as in the end it just degenerates. Some land artworks are very short-lived; just stay for a few hours or days, while others just designed in open and left uncovered so that they can be deformed by erosion or wind over time.

The artists of this art movement were against the marketing of the artworks as done at museums and galleries for other artworks. That’s why; they developed huge immovable artworks in the open areas away from cities. The land art is the extended part of conceptual art. It is encouraged by many art movements of that time such as minimalism, cubism etc.

The best example of early land art is the bronze model of Contoured Playground created by Isamu Noguchi (American-Japanese designer) in New York in 1941. He never agreed ...

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...d landscape materials in the galleries. Some of the large land art works can only be accurately enjoyed from some height by a plane or so. According to opponents, an art work should be open for every class of society. As viewing a large land art piece from the air is beyond the reach of poor person. But photographs are the best option to represent the huge and unreachable land artworks.

Andy Goldsworthy, James Turrell, Mel Chin and Robert Smithson are some of the well-known land artists of today.

Works Cited

http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=151

http://www.talktalk.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0061379.html

http://www.daringdesigns.com/earthworks.htm

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/land_art.aspx

http://www.landart.com.au/aboutus/

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-land-art.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_art

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