Art coming out of art galleries is nothing new.
Land art is an art movement that originated in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which is expressed as an inseparable connection between the landscape of the earth and the work of art itself, and it is also an art form created in the natural world, and the materials are mostly taken directly from the natural environment. Using land, valleys, rivers and seas, and public buildings as canvases, we create stunning works that bring people closer to nature and let the world pay attention to and return to nature.
Desert Breath
Founded in 1995, desert breath is a 100,000-square-meter land art project located on the border of the Sahara Desert and the Red Sea, and has been confusing to tourists and those who use Google Maps at home since it first appeared in March 1997.
This device is characterized by two connected spirals. One spiral has a vertical cone and the other has a cone-like pit, forming 178 cones that bulge and sink down, which together form an outwardly expanding spiral. These cones show two connected logarithmic spirals. Sand blows around the desert and gradually fills the cone-shaped pits, changing the art piece.
At the center of the spiral is a circular pool of water with a diameter of 30 meters, but the latest google maps photos show that the lake has dried up. In fact, the whole structure is gradually fading with the passage of time. Designers hope that "desert breathing" can be a tool for recording the passage of time.
The artist chose this place close to the city of El-Gona because it is the intersection of the boundless ocean and the boundless desert, and the design and construction of such a 1 million-square-foot work of art is to celebrate the desert not only as a state of mind, but also as a landscape of thought.
Spiral breakwater
In 1970, Robert Smithson, an American artist who liked spiral patterns very much, used a bulldozer to build a 500-meter breakwater extending from the coast to the center of the lake on the large salt lake in Utah, USA, using a bulldozer to build a large amount of sand, soil, crystalline salt and other natural materials.
The entire spiral is about 1500 feet (about 450 meters) long, extending to the depths of the salt lake, and the center of the spiral is 46 meters offshore, covering an area of nearly ten acres, which can be called a "behemoth". In 1972, the work was submerged due to rising levels, and it was not until 2002, due to drought and the sharp decline in water, that the work resurfaced.
Smithson was a person who particularly liked spirals, and the reason why he chose to create a large spiral in this place of Salt Lake stemmed from an ancient legend of the ancestors of Salt Lake City - the salt lake is connected to the Pacific Ocean through an undercurrent, which constantly sucks in the flowing water, forming a powerful swirl of water on the surface of the water. Smithsonian extended this legend, making this masterpiece of land art mysterious, while also expressing his urgent vision of returning to the wilderness of nature and finding a harmonious relationship between man and the earth.
Since 1970, the "spiral breakwater" has attracted tens of millions of people to explore it, and is also one of the top 10 most classic land art works officially recognized.
Arte Sella project
In 1986, artist Emanuele Montibeller founded the Arte Sella Project in the Sella Valley beneath the Alps, simply to re-establish an understanding relationship between man and nature.
They use the mountains and forests as a stage, and each invites artists and creators from all over the world to work from nature, including dead trees, falling leaves, and even sunlight, air, and winds that travel through the mountains.
Patrick Dougherty《You are free》
The artist is not the absolute protagonist of the artwork, but accepts nature to complete his work. "Nature must be protected as a dome of work." "These works of art come from landscapes and then return to nature." ——Arte Sella
Francois Lelong《The sun》
Participating artists include Nils Udo, Arne Kunz, Kengo Kuma, John Glade, Michelangelo Pistoletto and a large number of other well-known artists.
Art is a way of expressing the world. It is one of the fundamental questions raised by man, a connection to the measure of beauty, which belongs both to the entire history of mankind and to the personal history of civilization of the artist. - Vittorio Fagan
Cédric Le Borgne, The Invisible Woman
Sky Museum
Its material is derived from an oak tree that was broken by a storm, the artist uses "architecture" as a form of expression, the name of the museum comes from the human understanding of rare things, and it highlights the fragility of nature.
Golden Soul
Animo d'oro's creation is the same as the "Sky Museum" – it comes from a spruce tree that was broken in a storm.
The difference is that the creators gilded parts of the tree to care for the sun and breeze sprinkled in the forest, and the combination of these natural elements has achieved nature itself.
Reservoir
John Grade's newest installation, The Reservoir, sits in a clearing in the forest, which consists of five thousand transparent water droplets.
Each droplet of water is delicately attached to a translucent web supported by a trunk, like a chandelier that sparkles between pine trees, making it crystal clear and the wind blowing through the silver bells. Pine trees, land, wind and light, they exist vividly in the work.
Inside Out
Inside the building, people are protected from wind and rain, and outside the building, there are windows that lead to nature.
The connection between architecture and nature has a long history, and although modernist aesthetics and profit-oriented economic and social logic have allowed nature to be developed uncontrollably, the current harsh environmental conditions have rebalanced the current urbanization and nature.
Architecture is one of the representatives that represents the connection between nature and modernity. Dentro Fuori, an architectural project from Michele De Lucchi, deals with environmental issues through an "adaptive" approach.
Its presence interacts with the natural environment, where natural elements such as light, vegetation, water, heat and wind are at the heart of this project.
Symbiosis
Simbiosi is a 5-meter-tall sculpture, and Edoardo Tresoldi's work is placed on the mountainside.
Over time, the sculpture itself is bound to become part of the landscape, blending in with nature. It is precisely because it is deeply rooted in the earth that it also connects the regional and spiritual dimensions in a sense.
Vegetable Cathedral
Barcelona-based architect Giuliano Mauri wanted to replace street lamps with glowing trees and build a church.
Cattedrale Vegetale is an organic building, this huge work has 3 naves, 12 meters high, covers an area of 1220 square meters, has 420 columns, 500 brackets, the frame of the church is woven from 3000 branches.
The seedlings are planted in the columns, which can play a supporting role at an early age, and 20 years later, when the goose-eared trees become adults, the columns will be corroded, leaving only rows of trees as a souvenir of this work of art.
Land art by the Cristos
When it comes to land art, we have to mention the Cristo couple, who have continuously redefined the scale of installation and land art in their 57-year career, creating a series of works that break through the existing categories and show infinite possibilities. They create from common, inexpensive materials such as cloth, strips, plastic bags, and raise funds by selling sketches and architectural models to make unrealistic ideas a reality.
"Oil Barrel Wall - Iron Curtain"
The Iron Curtain was the first work of land art created by the Cristos. In the early years, the Most Common Material the Cristos bought when conceiving art projects was paint, and the depleted oil drums became the inspiration for their Creation of the Iron Curtain.
Eastern Europe at the time was in the midst of a Cold War period of European division, they were opposed to the division of Europe, resistance to the Berlin Wall, and the daily function of the oil barrel alluded to the West's dependence on oil, so they created the "Oil Barrel Wall - Iron Curtain" as a work of art, hoping to open up a broader reference to political, economic and environmental issues.
On the night of June 27, 1962, the Christoes began assembling their first large-scale outdoor project. In a narrow alley in the Latin Quarter of Paris, they piled up an obstacle with 89 flat oil drums, stretching from one end of the street to the other, blocking the passageway for vehicles and pedestrians for eight hours.
The act caused a stir, and the two artists were nearly arrested for not having permission from the police. But the Iron Curtain captured the imagination of Paris, and the work became a powerful political manifesto in the later period, and also began the Christo and his wife's journey of "land art".
"Encircling the Island"
Siege of the Island was inspired by the French Impressionist painter Monet's water lilies from 1980 to 1983. The work uses more than 600,000 square meters of pink cloth to cover 11 islands in Florida, and when viewed from above, it is like 11 water lilies floating on the blue sea, becoming a spectacle. Less than two weeks after its completion, it attracted tens of thousands of tourists, and 120 people took an inflatable boat to see the work, becoming an indelible landmark in Florida's cultural history.
After the work was dismantled, the environment of the archipelago was not affected, and even became better than in the past, because the art team, for this work, removed the garbage floating around the island before the assembly began.
Wrapping the New Bridge
The new bridge across the Seine and across the western tip of Sitty is the oldest bridge in Paris and one of the most historic monuments in Paris. The Cristos wanted to transform it from a building, from the artist's creative inspiration, into a work of art, so they proposed a plan to wrap the entire bridge in plastic sheets, creating a strange and unreal modern scene in the oldest part of Paris.
After nearly 10 years of composition, the project was finally completed in 1985 and became a sensation, and the Christoes were among the most famous artists in the world.
Wrapped in the Coast
The most iconic of the Works of the Cristos is the use of fabric to wrap the building. In 1969, the Cristos set foot on the coast and wrapped the 1,609-meter coast near Sydney, Australia, with 92,900 square meters of anti-corrosion cloth and 56 kilometers of rope. At that time, the cliffs of the entire coast were covered with silver-white fabric. The hard, rugged cliffs are gently covered by soft fabrics, and the edges and corners seem to disappear, which is very spectacular.
Canyon Curtain
The 1970-1972 Canyon Curtain is another masterpiece of the Christo couple, who hang 3.6 tons of orange nylon cloth between two U-shaped canyons 1200 feet apart in the Colorado Raffle Canyon, with a huge orange curtain stretched across the mountain canyon, which is quite magnificent.
The $400,000 work had to be taken down urgently after 28 hours of nylon cloth hanging because of the impending storm.
Rhapsody of the Umbrella
The 12-mile-long, 75-square-mile project, which stretches from the valleys of Los Angeles to the Sato River Valley in Tokyo, involved more than 2,000 people and cost $26 million. A total of 3,100 giant umbrellas have been erected, each of which is 5 meters high and weighs more than 200 kilograms, and its scale has exceeded the record of any single work in the history of human art in physical space.
California, USA, is dry and empty, with dry grass and dry rock, so the choice of bright yellow umbrella echoes the environment; Ibaraki, Japan, is wet and gentle, and the paddy fields are longitudinal, so blue is chosen. Using the 17-hour time difference between the eastern and western hemispheres, Christo had the umbrellas open on October 9, 1991, at the same hour when the sun rose. He himself flew in a plane to attend the umbrella opening ceremony between the two places.
Wrapping the Capitol
In June 1995, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, the 46-meter-high, 183-meter-long and 122-meter-wide Reichstag was wrapped in 100,000 square meters of silver-white acrylic fabric and 15,000 meters of dark blue rope, becoming a earth sculpture with a silver glow throughout.
The work lasted 14 days and attracted more than 5 million visitors, shocking the world. To this day, thousands of galleries across Europe are still selling schemes and sketches of the work. The world reputation of the artistic couple has thus reached its peak.
These highly disruptive projects made the couple the most daring and creative land artist of the second half of the 20th century.
Central Park Project, February 2005
"For me, everything is an adventure!" This is a true portrayal of Christo's artistic career.
Land art from the East
Echigo's wife in Niigata Prefecture, Japan, has a land art festival
Echigo-Tsumari refers to the areas of Tokamachi City and Tsunan-cho in southern Niigata Prefecture, Japan, with a total land area of 760 square kilometers, which is more extensive than Tokyo's 23 wards, and is about a 2-hour drive from Tokyo, making it a rare snowy area in Japan. The people here have continued the traditional way of farming, and "Koshimitsu rice" and "Hachiyama" sake are famous specialties here.
With the transformation of social production methods, more and more rural people have left the land, the population is sparse, and the aging phenomenon is serious (the total population of Echigo wives is about 65,000 people, of which about 37% are over 65 years old).
Mr. Tomiro Kitagawa (born in 1946 in Niigata), known as the "Father of the Terra Art Festival", began to study the Echigo-Tsumari region in depth in 1996 and launched the "Echigo Tsumari Land Art Festival" in 2000 (Mr. Kitagawa also initiated the Setouchi International Arts Festival in 2010).
Held every three years under the theme of "Man Belongs to Nature", the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale in Japan features hundreds of artists from around the world who come into the community to recreate and create hundreds of pieces of art scattered in villages, fields, empty houses, and abandoned schools, using mountain villages and forests as stages to work with elderly people in rural areas and young volunteers from all over the world to create hundreds of pieces of art scattered in villages, fields, empty houses, and abandoned schools.
Artwork "Inverted City"
Public art intervenes in urban public space and creates a comfortable living environment with the regional landscape, which can provide network resources and investment environment conditions for the development of urban economy. Public art intervenes in the urban space in the form of urban furniture, presents the urban functional facilities in an artistic way, creates a personalized urban functional facilities, wins honor for the town, and enhances the public's sense of self-confirmation. Through public art activities or works, it is conducive to preserving common cultural memories for towns and cities and forming regional cultural identities.
Russian artists Llya and Emilia Kabakov in "Rice Terraces"
Artists let art coexist in the field, not only bringing beauty and development, but even played a substantial role. Abandoned houses, forgotten schools, and terraced fields were transformed into new spaces, fueling the economic development of Echigo's wife and alleviating the government's economic pressure. Art is giving back to this land with more indescribable surprises than itself.
The work "Dream House" in which the abandoned house was transformed into a homestay
Yayoi Kusama,"Hana Blossom Wife"
Public art does not belong only to modern cities, but also to nature and local culture. International art festivals not only parachute international teams and works to another country, but also develop deeply according to local conditions. Although the vast majority of contemporary artists live in cities, they can also return to nature and the countryside to create art, and through art, more public can return to nature and understand the countryside.
Anthony Gormley, Angel of the North
After the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, the industrial cities of Newcastle and Gateshead, with coal mines and shipbuilding as the lifeblood, changed policies due to the Conservative Party' rise to power, the decline of heavy industry gradually declined, the population moved out, a fire also burned Gateshead to the core, the government urgently needed to revitalize this ancient industrial city, so that city residents can rekindle their hopes for life. Inspired by the historical background, Anthony Gormley used steel cast in conjunction with the local declining coal mining industry as raw materials, and used the shape of an angel as a metaphor for hope to create a super-large sculpture "Angel of the North".
Xu Bing,"The Story Behind"
Human beings belong to nature, and in the form of artistic display, placing people in the atmosphere of art and nature has become the pursuit of contemporary artists. At the same time, the use of nature as an important element, the formation of a structure of symbiosis between the environment and nature, and the art of the land have a similar essence. The work contains some ecological ideas and follows the principles of ecology.
Selgas Cano 《Futuristic Housing》
The artist combines the core aesthetic ideas of land art with the artistic transformation of the local area, and uses the combination of art and nature to transform the local area and revitalize it.
Ma Yansong, "The Tunnel of Light"
The "Tunnel of Light" is 750 meters long and consists of the entrance to the "Tianhe River" - the tunnel - the observation deck. The tunnel runs through the rock wall of the gorge composed of hexagonal stones in The Qingjin Gorge, and the "Mirror Pond" at the end of the tunnel reflects the scenery of the four seasons outside the tunnel, reflecting the scenery of the four seasons outside the tunnel, showing the aesthetic meaning of "although it is made by man, it is like opening from heaven".
At the end of the tunnel, the mirror pool is the climax of the project. The water of the Qingjin Gorge is introduced to form a mirror surface, and the semicircular opening reflects into a poetic picture formed by a complete circle. The frosted stainless steel plates laid on the walls of the cave reflect the light from the landscape sky outside into the tunnel interior, blurring the boundaries between the inside and outside, and blurring the sparkling water surface to blur the realistic sky and clouds.
Today, the Echigo Wife Art Festival has become the world's largest international outdoor art festival and is known as "the world's most beautiful sample of rural revival". On the 760 square kilometers of land covered with art, countless works are silent, they are the creation of art, the crystallization of culture, and the witness of the revitalization of Japan's countryside.
Chengdu Tianfu Land Art Festival
The first Tianfu Land Art Festival in Chengdu opened in Qionglai City. The art season will last for one month, with the theme of "Tianfu Land, Symbiosis of Wind and Materials", through land art installations and a series of theme activities, the lifestyle and cultural characteristics of Chengdu people will be organically integrated with the Forest Pan of Western Sichuan and Tianfu Dadi, fully demonstrating the unique charm of Tianfu culture.
After nearly 60 years of development, Western land art has entered a new level, what kind of posture china's land art presents to the world, to prove that we are a unique art form in the world, and the formation of chinese characteristics of land art is the focus of contemporary art architects to consider.
The intervention of art in the countryside is not to intervene in the development of the countryside from the subjective perspective of art. They are not a relationship of salvation and salvation, but rather encounter each other and accomplish each other. The vigorous vitality and great potential that China, as the second largest economy in the world today, will be a great energy, which may be the direction that formally pursues the direction of Chinese land art.
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