Lecture Five - 4th March - Land Art, Earth Art, Environmental Art

Our fifth lecture was on Land art, which is an art movement that started in the late 1960s, ealry 1970s in the United States. Land art is believed to be a protest against "the perceived artificiality, plastic aesthetics and ruthless commercialization of art at the end of the 1960s in America." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_art)

One form of land art I was surprised could be classed as land art is Lancelot "Capability" Brown's landscaping of large grounds. The grounds looked like a natural garden, but he had a sympathetic metod of designing the gardens.

Crop circles were another area of land art we looked at. Crop circles came about in 1678, when people protested against land owners and created their own crop circles. They're created from the flattening of crops, such as wheat and barley. Many explanations of crop circles have included man-made hoaxers, where some explenations include formation from UFOs. We were shown some images of crop cricles created by Next Nature. Some of the crop cirlces are so intericate and detailed, and some look 3D. What I have learnt from the lecture and hadn't realised before, is that people can only appreciate the pieces of art from the air, looking down at the design. Because of this, and the size of designs and location, most peoples land art can only be appreciated through photographs.

Nazca Lines can also be seen as a type of land art. Nazca lines "are a series of geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert, a high arid plateau that stretches more than 80 km (50 miles) between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana in Peru." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_lines) They are shallow designs created from the removal of the red pebbles surrounding the landscape. Most are simple lines, over seventy are natural or human figures, then there are some of animals which can be seen as symbols of fertility. They have been preserved so well for many years due to the stable climate of the plateau. I liked the idea of people creating the lines from walking up and down in a straight line to create the designs, as if done with a ruler.

I found it interesting finding out about the different types of land art, as all I'd known of land art before this lecture were crop circles. I can see that the crop circles could act as inspiration for my textile work, especially with the use of patterns. From looking at Nazca Lines, I can see how they can be a source of inspiration for my stitch work.