December 11, 2008

42 Magnificent Works of Modern Earth and Land Art.
posted by homunculus 15 years ago
  • I like the type that is really just a kind of 'intervention' - you know, building a structure or pattern out of the materials present and leaving it there to be slowly taken back by nature. That and the more simple land art structures within a landscape. Anything too 'designed' starts to become landscape gardening, after a certain point.
  • I'm with you, kit. I don't mind the interventions or even elaborations, but I hatehatehate impositions. Some idiot makes a 'fence' 25 miles long that ends in the sea for no reason. Or sticks hundreds of plastic umbrellas up to pollute the landscape. That's just trying to impose yourself on the land once again. Some of this was beautiful. Sand art to me is the ultimate in creating but leaving no trace.
  • I'm trying a formal weed garden. In the backyard we've raised up a tremendous topknot of briers, held together by a covert steel cable. As these docile but thorny branches shoot up in plumes, my hope is to eventually braid them to arch away into an even more rank thicket beyond.
  • I would think that the 'imposition' types are far more about our interaction with the landscape than about the landscape itself. Certainly, that's what I got out of the Gates, and I can easily see how that would also be true of C&J-C's other stuff -- the fence, the umbrellas... Also: What? No Spiral Jetty?
  • The Gardens of Heligan are great. That's about the greatest thing I've ever seen, actually. The twisted trees are pretty awesome, too.