{"id":591082,"date":"2026-04-18T04:41:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T04:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/591082\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T04:41:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T04:41:11","slug":"8-defining-works-of-american-land-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/591082\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Defining Works of American Land Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

How to
Be Cultured<\/a> Menu Art <\/p>\n

\u00a9 Holt\/Smithson Foundation and Dia Art Foundation\/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, courtesy of Holt\/Smithson Foundation. Photo: Nancy Holt<\/p>\n

Corinne, Utah<\/p>\n

\u2018Spiral Jetty\u2019 (1970) by Robert Smithson<\/p>\n

\u201cSpiral Jetty\u201d is what Kevin Beasley<\/a>, 40, a New York-based artist who\u2019s heavily influenced by land art, calls \u201cthe poster child\u201d for the movement. Located on the northeast shore of Utah\u2019s Great Salt Lake, the work is a coil made from roughly 6,000 tons of earth and basalt rock that stretches 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide. Its creator, Robert Smithson<\/a>, who died in a plane crash in 1973, was one of a handful of American artists who began creating large-scale outdoor works, mainly in the Southwest, in the 1960s and \u201970s. For Beasley, \u201cSpiral Jetty\u201d epitomizes the unpredictability of land art. A couple of years after its debut, it was submerged in the lake, and it largely remained so until 2002, when, as the lake receded because of drought, the sculpture re-emerged. Since then, it has become, essentially, a beached artwork. Land art thrives in \u201cthe impossibility of control,\u201d Beasley says. \u201cIt\u2019s like seeing an animal in the wild.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Estate of Walter De Maria, courtesy of Dia Art Foundation, New York. Photo: John Cliett<\/p>\n

Quemado, N.M.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Lightning Field\u2019 (1977) by Walter De Maria<\/p>\n

Sometimes, light is an even more important element for land art than dirt, says Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, who\u2019s worked with many of the artists associated with the movement. For \u201cThe Lightning Field,\u201d Walter De Maria<\/a> arranged 400 stainless steel poles in a one-mile-by-one-kilometer grid on a remote expanse in New Mexico. Only six people \u2014 who must stay overnight at a cabin adjacent to the property \u2014 are allowed to visit at any time. While the poles are designed to attract lightning, it\u2019s rare for it to actually strike them. \u201cThe more ordinary, extraordinary events are sunrise and sunset,\u201d Govan says. \u201cIt\u2019s like God flipped a switch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Michael Heizer, courtesy of Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Ben Blackwell<\/p>\n

Garden Valley, Nev.<\/p>\n

\u2018City\u2019 (1970-2022) by Michael Heizer<\/p>\n

By the time \u201cCity\u201d opened in 2022, it had been under construction for 50 years and achieved near-mythological status. Critics likened aspects of Michael Heizer\u2019s<\/a> nearly mile-and-a-half-long, half-mile-wide complex of concrete and dirt mounds, plazas and geometric constructions to Teotihuac\u00e1n and Luxor. (Heizer\u2019s father, Robert, was an archaeologist who worked in Mexico and Egypt.) While many artists are concerned with scale, \u201cMichael Heizer taught me that it\u2019s about distance and size,\u201d Govan says. There\u2019s nothing metaphorical about walking a mile and a half in the harsh desert sun.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, L.L.C., licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York\/Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery<\/p>\n

Various locations, including Oaxaca, Mexico, and Iowa City<\/p>\n

\u2018Silueta Series\u2019 (1973-80) by Ana Mendieta<\/p>\n

If many land artists worked big, the Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta<\/a> proved the power of working at the scale of the human body. For her \u201cSilueta Series,\u201d created across the Americas and Europe, she lay down in nature and left behind imprints, mounds or outlines of her form on the land. Rather than transforming the landscape with dump trucks and construction crews, Mendieta made \u201cSiluetas\u201d \u201cabout connecting with the earth in a foundational way,\u201d Beasley says. \u201cA lot of land art doesn\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Courtesy of the Estate of Beverly Buchanan and Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York<\/p>\n

Brunswick, Ga.<\/p>\n

\u2018Marsh Ruins\u2019 (1981) by Beverly Buchanan<\/p>\n

Near the Georgia coast, Beverly Buchanan<\/a> created a sculpture that most people walk by without noticing. \u201cMarsh Ruins\u201d consists of three concrete mounds covered with tabby, a mixture of oyster shells, sand and water. She placed the work near Igbo Landing, where, in 1803, an estimated 75 people died by suicide rather than submit to enslavement. \u201cIt\u2019s emotionally and spiritually extremely charged, but it\u2019s a monument that refuses to announce itself,\u201d says the French sculptor Marguerite Humeau<\/a>, 39, who makes art in and about nature. The project, she adds, invites questions that aren\u2019t always explored in conventional land art, such as \u201cWho is given a voice through monuments and who isn\u2019t?\u201d<\/p>\n

Noah Purifoy, \u201cEverything and the Kitchen Sink,\u201d 1996 \u00a9 2026 Noah Purifoy Foundation<\/p>\n

Joshua Tree, Calif.<\/p>\n

Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Museum of Assemblage Art (1989-2004)<\/p>\n

Artists are often drawn to land art because their visions can\u2019t be contained by \u201cthe antiseptic, climate-controlled, never-changing white box of the gallery,\u201d says Govan. The artist Noah Purifoy<\/a> made his name in the mid-1960s with sculptures he created from materials burned in the Watts Rebellion. As he got older, \u201che couldn\u2019t make the scale of work he wanted in the studio or museum,\u201d Govan says. Priced out of Los Angeles, he found a creative home in the Mojave Desert, where he spent his final 15 years building an open-air museum filled with fun-house sculptures made of repurposed materials like toilet seats, chain-link fencing and tires.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Walker Art Center Archives, Minneapolis<\/p>\n

St. Paul, Minn.<\/p>\n

\u2018Revival Field\u2019 (1991-93) by Mel Chin<\/p>\n

\u201cRevival Field\u201d showed how land art could help heal the planet. In 1991, the artist Mel Chin<\/a> teamed up with Rufus Chaney, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to build an experiment-cum-artwork at a Superfund site in St. Paul, Minn., where they created a garden of plants with high tolerance to heavy metals, along with a few that could absorb those metals from the soil in a process known as hyperaccumulation. It worked. \u201cRevival Field,\u201d says Beasley, \u201cgets to the core of what art can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Various locations in the American Southwest<\/p>\n

\u2018Field Recordings\u2019 (1999) by Raven Chacon<\/p>\n

By the onset of the 21st century, a growing backlash to the land art movement, much of which had been made by white artists on Indigenous lands, led some to challenge its monumentality by creating work that doesn\u2019t change the landscape at all. In 1999, the Din\u00e9 artist Raven Chacon<\/a> visited quiet, remote sites across the American Southwest, recorded the sounds there and later amplified them. \u201cThere is often this idea that in the desert, there is nothing,\u201d Humeau says. Chacon\u2019s recordings \u2014 which sound like fuzzy audio feedback with the occasional clang or chirping bird \u2014 remind us that \u201cactually, there\u2019s so much,\u201d even though \u201cit might not be [apparent] at first.\u201d<\/p>\n

These interviews have been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n

More in Art <\/p>\n

Essential Museum Works<\/p>\n

On loan from His Majesty the King, Royal Collection Trust\/\u00a9 2023 His Majesty King Charles III<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Is It Surreal?<\/p>\n

Roberto Montenegro, \u201cThe Double\u201d (1938). Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Masks<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Innovations in Painting<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Postwar Art<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Conceptual Art Explained<\/p>\n

Robert Barry\u2019s \u201cInert Gas Series: Helium\u201d (1969). Courtesy of Robert Barry and Galerie Greta Meert<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Essential Pottery<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Painting Movements<\/p>\n

Collection of the National Palace Museum<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Intangible Art<\/p>\n

Pierre Huyghe, \u201cUntilled (Liegender Frauenakt)\u201d (2012). \u00a9 2026 Pierre Huyghe\/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, courtesy of Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo: AGO<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

What Is Performance Art?<\/p>\n

Marina Abramovi\u0107 performing \u201cThe Artist Is Present\u201d at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010. Digital image \u00a9 The Museum of Modern Art\/Licensed by SCALA\/Art Resource, N.Y.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Notorious Controversies<\/p>\n

Robert Mapplethorpe, \u201cJoe, NYC, 1978\u201d \u00a9 Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, used with permission<\/p>\n

<\/a> See the rest of the issue<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How to Be Cultured Menu Art \u00a9 Holt\/Smithson Foundation and Dia Art Foundation\/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[147243,258011,1029,228,226,227,68905,258098,105431,258099,204064,258103,229,88,80611,258100,258101,12970,258102,166372,258010,27354,258106,258105,9682,411,13708,258104,257926,244091],"class_list":{"0":"post-591082","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-agriculture-and-farming","9":"tag-ana-1948-85","10":"tag-art","11":"tag-arts","12":"tag-arts-and-design","13":"tag-artsanddesign","14":"tag-beasley","15":"tag-beverly-1940-2015","16":"tag-buchanan","17":"tag-chacon","18":"tag-chin","19":"tag-de-maria","20":"tag-design","21":"tag-entertainment","22":"tag-govan","23":"tag-heizer","24":"tag-humeau","25":"tag-kevin","26":"tag-marguerite","27":"tag-mel","28":"tag-mendieta","29":"tag-michael","30":"tag-noah-1917-2004","31":"tag-purifoy","32":"tag-raven","33":"tag-robert","34":"tag-sculpture","35":"tag-smithson","36":"tag-tculture2026","37":"tag-walter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}