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• Students will explore a range of artists who incorporate elements from the landscape or integrate the landscape into their work. • Students will create their own proposals and works of art that integrate both elements of the landscape into the process as well as integrates the work of art itself into the landscape. • Students will explore the history of “Land Art,” “Earth Art,” and “Earthworks.”
• Roden Crater— James Turrell interview & clip • Staircase— Bruce Nauman interview & clip • Setting a Good Corner —Bruce Nauman interview & clip • Wave Field—Maya Lin art work • Grand Rapids Project —Maya Lin interview & clip • Thinking in Clay —Gabriel Orozco interview & clip • Revival Field— Mel Chin interview & clip Additional Web Sites • http://www.robertsmithson.com/earthworks/spiral_jetty.htm Spiral Jetty, Robert Smithson • http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/heizer/ Michael Heizer, North, East, South,West • http://www.lightningfield.org/ Lightning Field, Walter De Maria • http://www.earthroom.org/http://www.earthroom.org/ The New York Earth Room, Walter De Maria • http://www.uwlax.edu/faculty/braziel/mendieta.html Ana Mendieta • http://www.culture.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/ The Cave of Lascaux, France • lhttp://www.britannia.com/history/h7.html Stonehenge, England • http://www.nps.gov/chcu/home.htm Chaco Canyon National Historic Site • http://wonderclub.com/WorldWonders/MayanHistory.html Maya Temples of Tikal • http://www.tidepool.com/~codyspot/newpage3.htm Maya Temples of Chitzén Itzá • http://www.mts.net/~lsisco/PAGE4.HTM Aztec temples • http://www.cabrillo.cc.ca.us/~crsmith/hopewell.html Ohio Hopewell Native American Burial Mounds Classroom Materials • Cameras: disposable, Polaroid, or digital • Basic materials for sketching • Current newspapers and magazines with good photo illustrations
• How is the site of a museum or gallery similar to or different from natural landscapes? • What are different ways that artists have used the landscape throughout history to contemporary times? • What are examples of different relationships between art and the landscape- for example: art that investigates and records the environment as it exists, art that responds to and is influenced by its setting or environment, or art that imposes itself onto the landscape? What are the similarities and differences between them? • What are other issues that become important in creating art in the landscape—preservation, documentation, accessibility? • What is the history of Land Art, Earth Art, and Earthworks and what are the differences and similarities between them?
A Timeline from the Beginning After introducing the general concepts of art in and from the landscape, have students research how artists throughout history have approached the landscape to create art—from the Caves of Lascaux and Stonehenge to the present. Have your students create a visual timeline of their findings of different ways humans have intervened in the landscape. How have the art and artists’ processes changed or evolved over time? How have they remained consistent? Then have students research the terms ‘Earth Art,’ ‘Earthworks,’ and ‘Land Art’ and research artists such as Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, Walter de Maria, and Ana Mendieta. Why and how did these artists choose to work outside the gallery and museum system to create their work? How is their work similar to or different from art you see inside museums or galleries? How have contemporary practices changed or remained the same from the early interventions students found in pre-history and early history? (Time: Two to three 45 minute sessions) James Turrell and Roden Crater For over 30 years, James Turrell has been working on transforming the dormant volcano Roden Crater into a site for viewing solar and lunar cosmological phenomena. Physically altering the shape of the crater as well as building architectural elements that frame particular vantage points, Turrell sculpts the elements of light and space. Compare and contrast Turrell’s approach to and philosophies on light architecture, the sun and celestial events with Mayan and Aztec philosophies at sites such as Chitzén Itzá. Have students research the monuments of other cultures that mark or pay tribute to astrological events. Have students compare the effects of different kinds of light (e.g. candlelight, skylights, oil lamps, fluorescent lights, etc.) on a particular space and write about the differences. Then ask them to make a preliminary drawing for a work of art in which they capture or utilize light as a basic element of their composition. (Time: Two 45 minute sessions) Maya Lin's Wave Field & Grand Rapids Ice Skating Rink Just as Turrell uses light as the inspiration for the architectural and sculptural spaces he creates, Maya Lin has been continually inspired by the dynamics of water. Her public commission Wave Field was created after becoming interested in the principles of aerodynamics and fluid mechanics. Her grass waves mimic the shape and rhythm of a particular variety of ocean wave while also referencing the Hopewell Indian burial mounds throughout Ohio, where Lin grew up. In her Grand Rapids project Lin referenced the three stages of water (liquid, solid and gas) as the central elements of the work where an ice skating rink transforms into a pond in warm weather. Even the design of the work references the movement of water with sculptural elements suggesting the ripples in a pool of water. Lin has also included the night sky as the lights that illuminate the rink project up through the ice. Ask students to create a companion work of art for their light-based project that uses the element of water. Ask students to consider how they might incorporate the different stages or attributes of water in their design. (Time: One to two 45 minute sessions) Mel Chin and Revival Field In Revival Field, Mel Chin altered the ecology of a hazardous waste landfill by planting jimsonweed and other ecologically transformative plants. Ask the students to discuss how this work might or might not be considered art? Can art be ecological? Can ecology be art? Because of its scale, placement and materials, some of Chin’s work such as Revival Field might be difficult to preserve. Is this an important consideration in creating art? Should it be? If an artwork is ephemeral and not permanent, how can it continue to exist as art? After viewing Chin’s video segment and reading the transcript describing Revival Field, have students describe his perspective on the role the landscape plays in his artwork. Think of other artworks that incorporate strong natural elements or intervene with nature or public spaces such as Sally Mann’s photographs of the south or Richard Serra’s large-scale, site-specific installations. How do these works engage the landscape? Compare their work and processes with Chin’s approach for Revival Field. (Time: One 45 minute session) Bruce Nauman's Setting a Good Corner & Staircase Living in the American West, Bruce Nauman’s work has increasingly focused on his interactions with the landscape. His video piece, Setting a Good Corner documents Nauman’s own process of installing a fence post on his ranch. Nauman explains that the fence itself is not the artwork, but as a record of the event and of the process of working with the land, the video is. This unconventional perspective on the relationship between art and landscape refers more to the significance of the everyday and revisiting the ways that mundane activities and interactions can be framed to illuminate new insight or meaning. His work Staircase reverses the expectations of a staircase in that the staircase responds to the side of the hill, rather than imposing a rigid and regularized set of equally distant steps for the human body. Nauman is interested in the performative experience of walking down the steps, how it feels when one step is bigger than another. Have students devise a project where the work of art consists of either the record of an everyday activity in the landscape (in writing, video, photography) or where there is a fit between the body and the earth—where the meaning of the work is realized in the interaction between the two, it is experienced in a body. Gabriel Orozco’s Photographs The artist Gabriel Orozco takes photographs that capture moments as he sees them in daily walks. An artist without a studio, Orozco says: “I find that sometimes the studio is an isolated place, like a bubble—a bubble in which the artist is by himself, thinking about himself. What happens when you don’t have a studio is that you have to be confronted with reality all the time. You have to be on the street, you have to walk around.” Often Orozco’s photographs record experiences with the everyday, with the landscape as he moves within it. How is this interaction with landscape different from or similar to Chin’s, or Nauman's? Ask students to consider what landscape means to them and how they would define the term. Is a landscape always rural, uninhabited, expansive? Can a landscape be a crowded sidewalk or a busy intersection? Ask students to use a daily walk to explore their familiarity with their immediate surroundings. Have students document their walk using a camera, a collection of objects or artifacts they find along the way, a journal or a sketchbook. Before students get started ask them to consider another statement by Orozco: “For me photography is like a shoebox. You put things in a box when you want to keep them, to think about them. Photography is more than a window for me; photography is more like a space that tries to capture situations—it’s notational. I use the camera like drawing.” After they have collected their documentation, ask students to create a collage or assemblage that narrates the experiences and visual elements of their walk. (Time: Two to three 45 minute sessions) Recording, Integrating, or Imposing? Have students create three different works of art that involve three different processes of interacting with the landscape: 1) art that carefully investigates and records the environment as it exists; 2) an artwork that responds to or is influenced by a particular environment; 3) an artwork that imposes itself upon the landscape. Ask students to consider how the process of conceptualization, planning, realization, and documentation is different for each work of art? (Time: Three 45 minute sessions)
• Have students viewed and discussed the work of a range of artists who incorporate elements from the landscape or integrate the landscape into their work? • Have students created their own proposals and works of art that integrate both elements of the landscape into the process as well as integrate the work of art itself into the landscape? • Have students articulated an understanding of the history of “Land Art,” “Earth Art,” and “Earthworks?” Find out how this lesson plan correlates to your state's education standards! On PBS TeacherSource do a search for "Art in the 21st Century" and click on the Standards Match icon.
This lesson can be extended to form a unit with additional lessons such as: Landscape and Place Ode to a View Public Façades, Private Interiors Did you use this lesson or generate your own activities based on ideas inspired by the lesson? Submit student art work, new lesson plans, and your comments to Art:21 and have them posted on the site. Help the Online Lesson Library grow!
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