14 massive works of art created out of mesmerizing landscapes
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People have been creating artwork inspired by landscapes for thousands of years.
In the 1960s, sculptor Robert Smithson coined the term "Land Art" to describe the movement, when artists explored different ways to create art within nature.
Land Art is defined as a work of art "created with and embodied by a physical landscape." They're often large-scale installations built directly into the earth, changing over time with the elements.
For centuries, artists have blurred the line between nature and creation.
In the 1960s and 1970s, this became a popular movement in the art world, as pioneering artists increasingly incorporated landscapes and natural materials into their work.
The "Land Art" movement occurred primarily in the US, and artists were particularly attracted to the American West — often creating works within the vast and sublime landscapes of Colorado's Great Basin, Utah's Salt Lake, and Nevada's deserts.
These photos exhibit some of the most mesmerizing examples of how artists have been inspired by landscapes.
Robert Smithson's "The Spiral Jetty" coils within the earth and transforms with the elements.
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Robert Smithson's "The Spiral Jetty" is considered the most famous Land Art installation in the US. The piece was created in 1970 and is located at the Rozel Point Peninsula on the northeast shore of Utah's Great Salt Lake.
To make this piece, Smithson used over six thousand tons of rocks from the area to form a spiral coil that runs 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide off of the lake's shore.
Because the work is built directly on the water, it's often subject to changes in the tide. Sometimes the piece is completely submerged underwater, and other times it's left completely exposed to be covered in salt crystals.
Nancy Holt's "Sun Tunnels" frames the sun on the horizon, creating a lens for viewers to observe light.
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Nancy Holt's "Sun Tunnels" are located in the Great Basin Desert of Utah. The piece is composed of four large concrete cylinders, arranged in a pattern so they each align with the sunrise and sunset on summer and winter solstices.
Additionally, each cylinder contains smaller holes that represent the stars of the constellations Draco, Perseus, Columba, and Capricorn. By doing this, Holt created a sculptural installation where light and shadow patterns are always changing with the natural world.
Walter de Maria's "The Lightning Field" connects the land to the sky by attracting lightning to strike.
The Lightning Field is a 1977 landmark work by Walter de Maria, situated in a remote desert in New Mexico. The piece is composed of 400 stainless steel poles equally distanced from each other and positioned throughout a horizontal plane.
As the name would suggest, the idea behind this is for the poles to be struck by lightning, creating a magnificent arrangement of light. The full experience of this piece isn't dependent on just lightning, though, as the poles themselves shift in appearance depending on the time of day.
Visitors are encouraged to walk through the field as well as to observe, and throughout part of the year, arrangements can be made to stay overnight with Dia Art Foundation.
Ugo Rondinone's "Seven Magic Mountains" explores colorful creation within a vast desert landscape.
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Ugo Rondinone's colorful installation "Seven Magic Mountains" is located about 10 miles south of Las Vegas.
The piece is comprised of seven vibrantly colored boulder mounds, each standing about 30 feet tall, and meant to explore human expression in the Mojave desert.
This artwork was originally commissioned in 2016 by the Nevada Museum of Art and Art Production Fund to remain on view for two years, but it was so successful that by the end of 2018, the artist agreed to keep the work up until at least 2021.
Michael Heizer's "Double Negative" created art out of the absence of earth.
Michael Heizer's "Double Negative" remains one of the most renowned examples of land art in the US. The piece consists of two long trenches within the earth, measuring 30 feet wide and 50 feet deep cut into the Nevada Desert.
To make this piece, Heizer displaced 240,000 tons of desert sandstone. These slices face each other across a desert plateau, drawing attention to the "negative" space between them.
When describing this piece, Heizer was quoted saying "There is nothing there, yet it is still a sculpture," according to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Michael Heizer's "City" transformed the desert into a sculptural metropolis.
In 1970, artist Michael Heizer began constructing "City" in the Nevada desert, a project inspired by Native American mound-building and Central and South American rituals.
Fifty years later, the work is nearly complete — it's expected to be finished by May 2020 — and has proven Heizer as an artist with the ability to work with on pieces with incredible scope and perspective.
The piece encompasses over a mile of land and has been created in five different phases, though Heizer has given little information on this prolific work. The artist is a bit of recluse, and some accounts even note him saying that anyone attempting to visit the site could be arrested or shot.
Agnes Denes' "Wheatfield" brought a rural landscape to New York City.
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In 1982, conceptual artist Agnes Denes set out to create one of the most significant Land Art works in New York City's history: A two-acre wheatfield planted on a landfill near the Twin Towers.
Though the work no longer exists (its location is now the site of Battery City Park), Denes' piece remains an important commentary on climate change, world hunger, and the relationship between man and nature.
"Placing it at the foot of the World Trade Center, a block from Wall Street, facing the Statue of Liberty, also had symbolic import ... It represented food, energy, commerce, world trade, economics. It referred to mismanagement, waste, world hunger and ecological concerns," Denes wrote in a catalog of her show.
Jim Denevan's "Sand Drawings" explores the fleeting nature of the shoreline.
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California artist Jim Denevan has been using sand to create different Land Art pieces for decades.
The artist typically creates these works using a minimal tool such as a rake or stick, and though he often creates elaborate designs, his work tends to disappear quickly, washing away with the tide. Sometimes they wash up before he can even finish the piece.
Caroline Wright's "Manicure" uses the Earth to reflect man-made interiors.
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This checkerboard ground is a site-specific land installation located in London's National Trust Ham House Garden.
The piece was created by artist Caroline Wright in 2009 as a performance art landscaping project, and throughout the process of creating the work, volunteers were able to use only scissors or basic sheers to cut the grass into checkered shapes.
The checkerboard was meant to pay tribute to the house's checkered entrance hallway as a way to celebrate the site's history.
James Turrell's "The Celestial Vault" encourages viewers to see the sky in a different light.
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The Celestial Vault was built in 1996 by James Turrell and is located in The Hague, a city on the northern coast of the Netherlands.
This massive Land Art piece is shaped to resemble a crater filled with lush green grass and with a large stone bench in the middle. The idea is to have visitors lie on either side of the bench with their heads sloping downward. When they look up, they see the curved edge of the crater in relation to the sky.
This allows the sky to appear like a dome, creating an optical illusion that is meant to introduce the sky to viewers in a completely new way.
James Turrell's "The Roden Crater" captures light through an extinct volcano.
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Another land work by James Turrell, the Roden Crater is located in the Painted Desert of Northern Arizona and constructed from an extinct volcano.
In the 1970s, Turrell worked to transform this piece of land into a massive celestial observatory that contains tunnels and spaces which open toward the sky to capture light during the daytime, and stars and planets at night.
Turrell created this piece with the intention that viewers will contemplate light and time as it relates to nature.
Richard Serra's "East West/West East," brings a new perspective to the Qatari desert.
Richard Serra is well-known for his massive site-specific sculptural pieces, which are often formed around a particular architectural, urban, or landscape setting.
His work is shown around the world in both museums and public spaces, but the artist himself prefers the latter. In 2014, Serra unveiled a new land-specific installation in Qatar's Brouq Nature Reserve titled "East-West/West-East."
This piece is composed of four steel plates, standing 45 feet tall, and aligned to engulf a large portion of space in the Qatari desert. Serra chose to place these plates within the desert to give viewers a point of reference and sense the magnitude of the surrounding landscape.
"What that piece does is give you a point of reference in relationship to a line, and your upstanding relationship to a vertical plane and infinity, and a perspectival relationship to a context – and pulls that context together," he told the Independent.
Korczak Ziolkowski's "Crazy Horse Memorial" pays tribute to a Native American warrior.
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In 1948, sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski designed a land art tribute to the Native American warrior Crazy Horse, to be located within a granite mountain of South Dakota.
Ziolkowski initially estimated this project would take 30 years to complete. But 72 years later, the sculpture is still under progress. The finished product will depict a long-haired warrior sitting atop a horse, pointing southeast, toward a plot of land where many Native Americans are buried.
The completed piece will stand 563 feet high and 641 feet long.
Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada's "Wish" brought life to Northern Ireland.
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In 2013, the Cuban-American artist Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada created an 11-acre piece of land art in Belfast, Northern Ireland titled "Wish."
The piece was the UK and Ireland's largest land art portrait, and it depicted the face of an unknown six-year-old girl. The work was so massive it used 2,000 tons of sand, 2,000 tons of soil, and nearly 30,000 wooden pegs to complete.
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