The Earth Sublime

The terms environmental, earth and land art still powerfully conjure Michael Heizer’s Double Negative, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels and other emblematic site-specific works from the ’60s and ’70s. Since then, the genre has radically evolved in its means and mission, encompassing myriad approaches that integrate esthetically based practices with new technology and scientific fieldwork. The new land art, often expressed in temporal processes rather than monumentally scaled physical interventions, seeks to engender a renewed awareness of the world we inhabit and how we transform it, for better or worse. Since the ’90s, “earth art” has encompassed microscopic realms and underground and underwater terrains, an… Read More