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LAND ART – A DIALOGUE WITH SPACE

Three installations introduced into the landscape of the Valley of the Vistula River and one situated on the Polish-Ukrainian border open the first edition of the Lublin Land Art Festival. Each installation presents a different form of land art but they all take up a dialogue with the elements, interact with nature and highlight the features of the surrounding environment. Man’s creative activity in the realm of nature has had a long and vivid history – from primitive drawings carved in rock, the hanging gardens of Babylon, French Baroque and English garden designs, expressive paintings by William Turner or John Constable, to land art. They all stress the value of nature by means of depicting, imitating and interpreting its various aspects. Land art is an art movement that emerged in the 1960s as a reaction to the artificiality of modern life. It focuses on the direct, inextricable link between man and nature. The works of land artists clearly indicate that man is not a mere figure in the landscape but an active creator who wants to shape the environment and leave a lasting mark of his presence.

Land art is a unique approach to natural space as well as an area of artistic activity that constantly expands and develops. Contemporary land artists discover new paths for creative actions, refer to the works of the land art precursors from the 1960s, include modern contexts and at the same time emphasise the archaic laws and the eternal rhythm of nature. Land art includes a variety of artistic creation: minimalist art forms where human involvement is hardly noticeable, installations built from natural materials such as wood, rocks or plants, and complex structures where nature acts as a complement, a background and a place of exhibition. Such actions are a form of interference with the landscape or transformation of its components and often use natural processes such as erosion and weather condition.

Contestation in the 1960s

The land art movement began in 1968 at the Dwan Gallery in New York where the exhibition called Earthworks (named after a s-f short story by Brian Aldis) was held. The artists created large-scale outdoor landscape projects and exhibited photos, posters and objects referring to those grand designs. The exhibition voiced a protest against commercialisation of art and a strong criticism of conventional galleries and museums functioning within rigid institutional frameworks. It showed energy, passion and creativity which could not be confined within walls of a building. In the 1960s land art was regarded as a non-commercial artistic protest and a way of seeking new forms of artistic expression. The disturbing excess of material things and advanced technology of mass-production brought about the need to protect the natural world against the increasing human interference. Land artists became protectors of nature – they did not want to alter it but highlight its own natural features and potential. The superiority of the object of art ceased– what mattered was a direct contact with the world, the perception of constancy and changeability, interaction with the earth, sunlight, rain, wind, thunders. Land art stemmed from the conceptual need for reduction and symbolic forms that trigger the imagination. That is why land artist often use primary figures and basic forms which symbiotically link with the landscape in its most natural way. Circles, lines and points resemble primeval symbols or ancient runes, and ooze with the same simplicity and dignity as the landscape where they are located. The circle is one of the most powerful symbols of human interaction with nature. In primitive cultures people built stone circles to form a concentrated force field, a centre of life energy and to express their unity with the earth, the sun and the moon. Land art displays many features of minimalism. Artists add, shape and relocate natural materials in order to create large sculptures which reflect the ethos of minimalism with the emphasis placed on materiality, elementary geometry and localisation in a specific place.

Land art projects significantly vary in terms of scope, setting, techniques and materials used. They can be built from natural materials or man-made products such as concrete, plastics and textiles, ephemeral or permanently embedded into the landscape and exposed to weather conditions, temperature and erosion. The works of land artists introduce new elements into the world of nature without the intention of taming it. Some projects are small-scale and blend in with the environment, others boast such an impressive size that can be seen as a whole only from an aerial view.

Symbols in vast expanses

The most spectacular works of land art were created in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the western and central part of the USA – in Utah, New Mexico and Nevada. Gigantic designs stretched over empty vast areas of land emphasising the unusual topography of the landscape. Robert Smithson created his famous Spiral Jetty on the north-east part of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. This monumental action revealed demiurgic intentions of the artist who, building his giant sculpture on ‘extended’ land, wished to step into the shoes of a divine creator of the landscape. Michael Heizer’s work Double Negative essentially consists of what has been displaced as the artist removed huge quantities of rock to create two long trenches in a desert in Nevada. James Turrel in Roden Crater transformed an extinct volcanic crater into a naked-eye observatory. Nancy Holt located her massive installation Sun tunnels in a desert in Utah. On the plain in New Mexico Walter De Maria created The Lightning Field – an installation made of 400 steel poles arranged in a rectangular grid which actively interacts with nature and weather conditions. All of these artworks made use of the assets of the American landscape – scorched deserts, mountainous wasteland, or a shoreline of a lake. As Cecilia Alemani wrote in the textBack to the Land (Art) („Mousse Magazine” No.15, 2008), these artists and ‘other eccentrics (…) withdrew to the borderlands of civilization to find a new solitude in the vast American Southwest’.

An interesting example of contemporary American land art is a collaborative project by Jacinda Russell and Nancy Doutheyentitled3 Weeks, 6 Earthworks, 1 Portable Studio, and ALL That Lies in Between. The artists spent the summer of 2009 travelling in the American West and visiting famous land art works created in the past. The realisation of their project was inextricably connected with the journey to these remote sites. The perception of this art, just like its creation, involves time, travelling over long distances and a long process.

Meditative stroll

Land art in Europe appears to be less spectacular, rather small-scale, more ephemeral and reconciled with the landscape. It is a result of an artistic evolution and often refers to historical and cultural spheres existing in the open space. One of the prominent land artist in Europe is Richard Long, who in his interaction with nature focuses on the most basic elements present in human nature and the environment such as walking, covering long distances, geometric figures: lines, circles and points. Long’s works are very economical in their form. They depict traces left by man in nature and constituent elements of the natural world such as rocks, mud, or stones. He uses these natural materials to form concentric and linear land sculptures. Long’s approach shows that land art is often associated with a particular philosophy of life which respects the environment and the laws of nature but simultaneously leaves marks of a temporary human presence.

Land art has come full circle. The original desire to leave the confines of art galleries, break out of institutional restrictions and seek new forms of artistic expression has resulted in land artworks documented by means of photos, drawings and video films, which in turn are presented in galleries and museums. It thus seems that land art, despite being closest to nature is farthest from man and is often present only in a mediated way. This gives it certain qualities of a myth – detachment from a natural context and circulation in the form of photos, sketches and videos. Changing the form of existence alters the character of a land artwork. The iconic Spiral Jetty when seen in an aerial view photograph transforms into a graphic symbol, an ornament which resembles a pastoral staff placed on the surface of the lake rather than a gigantic construction made of soil, rocks and algae. The sites where land artworks exist in their natural environment have gained the status of a special place and become destinations of pilgrimages.

Tales from the border and the Valley of the Vistula

Land art has evolved over successive decades and nowadays it is no longer a contestation of hermetic space of art galleries or an ecological political manifesto, but a close and tangible element of a local ecosystem. Land art projects express deep love and respect for nature. They do not try to compete with nature or exists as sterile counterpoints but softly blend in with the landscape and highlight its original features.

The areas where the artworks of the first Lublin Land Art Festival are located – the borderland between Poland and Ukraine and the areas surrounding Kazimierz Dolny, feature a unique landscape and land relief. The additional value is the historical context of the event. Three artists from neighbouring countries: Jarosław Koziara from Poland, Myroslav Vayda from Ukraine and Artur Klinau from Belarus, created site-specific installations which initiated an artistic dialogue with space and nature. Land art united three countries: Poland, Belarus and Ukraine in a dialogue with nature where political borders are irrelevant. This frontier is symbolically broken by the fish in Free flow – situated across the border, each heading for a different country – which open the artificially restricted space. The four installations indicate a specific local, Slavic kind of land art which uses natural materials, integrates with the surrounding environment and emphasises its qualities and properties.

The Lublin Land Art Festival shows that land art today functions as an integral part of the idea of sustainable ecopolis. The projects by the three artists are not ephemeral decorations but a lasting mark deliberately introduced into the natural landscape. Land art today reflects the need for a closer contact with nature, respecting ecological values and redefining the public space as a place where art and nature coexists in harmony. It is also an attempt to bring man closer to his natural environment. The diverse landscape of the banks of the Vistula where the artists left a subtle trace of their presence now seems to be more complete. The artistic interferences have not tamed the wild landscape but underlined the natural features of the place using the sunlight, rain, different times of the day. An important factor of creation and functioning of land art is the process involving the artist, time, changeable weather and viewers. Art presented in the open space is not cut off by frames so it can be perceived in relation with its surroundings. A graphic design in the green expanse, interaction with the sunlight, limestone and straw sculptures – these actions connected with the earth and the elementary tissue of nature make art both more and less conspicuous. They point to a direct contact with what is constant and permanent, changeable and ephemeral, and show the never-ending circulation of the natural world and man’s relentless attempts to keep up a dialogue with nature.