Artistic approaches to nature and the landscape – a statement by Matthias Harnisch
There are two basically different approaches of artists to the landscape.
The first group – simplifying we might call it the American or heroic one – wants to change the
landscape visibly and permanently through active intervention. Artists as Michael Heizer, whom the
New York Times 2005 dubbed “art’s last lonely cowboy” (1), alter chosen parts of the landscape in
years of labour, exhausting thereby huge amounts of financial and material resources. With the
help of big construction machinery millions of cubic metres of soil are excavated, shifted, mounted
up, and tunnelled. The lonely artist buys a big piece of land far out of the way in
order to subject the landscape to his artistic will. In herculean fight he tries to to leave perceptible long-, (if not ever-)lasting signs against his own fugacity.
This kind of artistic approach to nature and the landscape seems to be fed from archaic sources:
the fight against one’s own transitoriness, smallness, vulnerability, against death by building up
monuments that outlast the times. It includes a wish for godlikeness, too, the urge to equal the
Creator, who decides on life and death, who destroys and creates new things out of destruction.
In Heizer’s own words: “It is interesting to build a sculpture that attempts to create an atmosphere of
awe. Small works are said to do this but it is not my experience. Immense, architecturally sized
sculpture creates both the object and the atmosphere. Awe is a state of mind equivalent to religious
experience…”. (2)
The landscape is nothing but the rough material and the backdrop for the artist’s work. That it
might have a value of its own is not taken account of. Or, as Michael Govan, the former director
of the Dia Art Foundation puts it: “…he [Michael Heizer] began a series of trips to his home states
of Nevada and California to experiment on the expansive raw canvas of the American desert
landscape.“ (www.diacenter.org/exhibitions/introduction/83, emphasis added by MH).
In this attitude nature and the landscape are merely the hardware for human adaption and
shaping. Thoughts as the ones put into word in the first article of the German Federal Law for
Nature Conservation (3) are totally strange to such an approach.
The second group – which I would call the European or ephemeralistic one – is solidly different. Artists as Hamish Fulton or Richard Long perambulate the landscape on quiet paths and document their walks just by photography, in texts or drawings. They don’t interfere with the landscape at all or
only to a small degree, using found rough materials (stones, wood, parts of plants…) to build up
sculptures with their own hands, marks by the wayside. The traces they actually leave in the
landscape are transient, wiped out quickly by wind and weather , nothing to compare to the
monumental artefacts of the heroics. Andy Goldsworthy prolongs this ephemeral character to the
extreme, some of his works put together from highly fragile natural material (fruits, seeds, caulis,snow, ice…) fall apart just seconds after their finishing and taking a documentary picture.
The here chosen approach is marked by respectfulness and esteem, close looking and perception
and a sensitivity for diversity – which finds expression for instance in Goldsworthy’s nearly
breathtaking use of manifold natural materials. Here the landscape is not seen as a “raw canvas” to be worked on but as a complex structure which calls for a considerate and respectful approach.
But of course these two opposite ways of dealing with nature and the landscape are not limited to
artists, only. The example can easily be enlarged to other groups working in and with the
landscape (landscape architects, architects, city and traffic planners and so on). The two extremes
named could even be seen as the two poles between which the relationship of mankind to nature
extends.
In the light of the dramatic changes of our natural environment – the climatic change and the
serious loss of biological diversity since the 1970ties (4) , a more cautious, gentle and respectful way of treating nature and the landscape seems crucial to me. For this the above simplifying called the European approach might be an example. “Take only photographs – leave only footprints” (one of the opening phrases on Hamish Fulton’s homepage).
Matthias Harnisch, landscape architect & artist
24.07.2011
www.matthiasharnisch.de
(1) „Art’s Last, Lonely Cowboy“ by Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times, 06.02.2005
(2) Michael Heizer, Interview with Julia Brown, in: Brown, J. (1984) (ed.): Michael Heizer: Sculpture in Reverse, Los Angeles, p. 33.
(3) § 1 The aims of nature conservation an landscape planning
(1) On the basis of their own value and as foundation for the life and health of human beings as well as in
responsibility for future generations nature and the landscape are to be protected in a way that
1. the biological diversity,
2. the capacity and efficiency of the ecosystems including their ability for regeneration and the sustainable
usability of natural goods,
3. the diversity, character and beauty of nature and the landscape as well as their value for recreation
are secured in perpetuity (…).“ (Bundesnaturschutzgesetz vom 29. Juli 2009 (BGBl. I S. 2542, Translation:MH)
(4) According to the recently published Living Planet Report 2010 of the WWF (World Wildlife Foundation) the biological diversity of the earth decreased about 30 % from 1970 till today.
bdla landart 