Art has always been connected to the natural world in some way. But around the late 1960s, a generation of artists decided they’d rather make works framed by the great outdoors than by the walls of a gallery, museum, or studio. The land functioned simultaneously as a source of inspiration, a material, and a vast exhibition space.
More than half a century later, curators and scholars are still coming to terms with land art’s expansive range. Earth works could be intimate and ephemeral, not only monumental feats of engineering. They were made for cities as well as the remote reaches of the American West. And despite a serious gender bias in the art history books, land art’s creators were both men and women.
Recent years have seen a flurry of exhibitions and research seeking to redress the historic imbalance. “Groundswell: Women of Land Art,” last year’s survey show at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, highlighted the indispensable role of women artists such as Nancy Holt, Agnes Denes, and Mary Miss in the movement.
Below, we take a closer look at seven essential names to know and where their notable works can be found across America. [...]
Beverly Buchanan’s unclassifiable works dealt with memory and place, ranging across sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, and performance. A native Southerner, Buchanan was working as a health educator in New York and New Jersey when she began making abstract paintings and sculptures. Her return to the South in 1977 signaled a turn toward works in the landscape.
She fabricated three rock-like mounds in a marsh near Igbo Landing, where in 1803 a group of West Africans rebelled against their captors on a ship. Intended to look organic, the rocks are in fact made of concrete and coated with tabby, a local material made from oyster shells, sand, and water, which was used to build homes and memorials by Black communities in their newfound continent, pre and post liberation.
- Karen Chernick