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Ethics, Place & Environment: A Journal

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Introduction to ‘Environmental and

Land Art’: A Special Issue of Ethics,
Place and Environment
a
Emily Brady
a
Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh , Edinburgh, UK
Published online: 26 Oct 2007.

To cite this article: Emily Brady (2007) Introduction to ‘Environmental and Land Art’: A Special
Issue of Ethics, Place and Environment , Ethics, Place & Environment: A Journal of Philosophy &
Geography, 10:3, 257-261, DOI: 10.1080/13668790701573737

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 Ethics, Place and Environment
Vol. 10, No. 3, October 2007, 257–261

Introduction to ‘Environmental and Land

Art’: A Special Issue of Ethics, Place and
Environment
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EMILY BRADY
Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Artists, art critics, and art theorists have discussed environmental art, land art, earth
art, and ecological art at least since the 1960s. In the last decade, driven by growing
environmental concerns, the emerging significance of ecological art, and new trends
in the artworld, the importance of this genre has been marked by major exhibitions,
retrospectives, and several new books (e.g., Beardsley, 1998; Kastner & Wallis, 1998;
Andrews, 1999; Boettger, 2002; Spaid, 2002; Tufnell, 2006). In comparison,
discussion by philosophers has been patchy. There have been several articles over
the years, especially as the area of environmental aesthetics has slowly grown (e.g.,
Crawford, 1983; Humphrey, 1985; Carlson, 1986; Ross, 1993; Heyd, 2002; Saito,
2002), a book on Smithson by Gary Shapiro (1997), and two special issues of
journals with some philosophical articles (Ethics and the Environment, 2003 and IO:
Journal of Applied Aesthetics, 1998). The articles in this special issue contribute
toward filling the philosophical gap by debating a range of problems and issues
related to artworks that are site-determined, often situated in natural environments,
and, in many cases, composed largely of non-human natural processes and materials.
What, more precisely, is the subject matter of these articles? How might the
category of ‘environmental art’ and ‘land art’ be defined? Given the great diversity of
artworks associated with these terms, some quite similar to each other and others
quite different, it might be advisable to adopt a ‘family resemblance’ approach along
Wittgensteinian lines rather than to seek a definition in terms of necessary and
sufficient conditions. One starting point, then, is to consider just what artworks and
practices are usually associated with these terms. Within ‘earth art’ and ‘land art’,
Malcolm Andrews includes: minimal and ephemeral interventions in a site
(e.g., works by Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy, Michael Singer); large-scale
sculptural earthworks on site (e.g., Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson); ‘unmediated
installation in an art gallery of materials gathered from a landscape site’ (e.g., Walter
De Maria and early Smithson); ‘landscaped reclamation or planned naturalization of
industrial wasteland’ (Smithson); and ‘acts of conservation of natural land that

Correspondence Address: Emily Brady, Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Drummond St,
Edinburgh EH8 9XP, UK. Email: emily.brady@ed.ac.uk

1366-879X Print/1469-6703 Online/07/030257–5 ß 2007 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13668790701573737
 258 E. Brady

involve decisions about what traditional usages of the land are retained’ (e.g., Alan
Sonfist, Agnes Denes) (Andrews, 1999, p. 205). There are also works that are
considered to be more explicitly ecological, including particular cases of an ‘eco-
vention’, which Spaid describes as ‘an artist-initiated project that employs an
inventive strategy to physically transform local ecology’ (Spaid, 2002, p. 1). The
artists and works included here overlap with categories above and include more
recent artists and collaborative projects as well: Lynne Hull’s trans-species art,
AMD&ART’s community-driven projects, and Brandon Ballengée’s species
reclamation art.
Environmental and land art emerged in the early 1960s, and its genealogy can be
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traced back to a number of artistic movements and artforms from the twentieth
century, including: minimalism; postminimalism; public art; conceptual art; process
art; interventions; happenings; the ‘Arte Povera’ movement; and installation art.
There are also roots in gardening, landscape design, and other human modifications
of the environment. Robert Smithson pointed to the affinity between his earthworks
and the earthworks of Central Park in New York (designed by Olmstead and Vaux),
and much earlier, to the earthworks of Picturesque gardens in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries and ancient artistic and ritualistic earthworks such as land
drawings, megaliths, and mounds (Andrews, 1999). Although it is difficult to
stipulate the true beginnings of the genre of environmental and land art, some point
to an important convergence in 1968, marked by the first solo shows of Richard
Long and Giuseppe Penone in Europe and the exhibition Earthworks at New York’s
Dwan Gallery.
With the exception of contributions by Thomas Heyd and Allison Hagerman, the
papers here were first presented at the session ‘Considering Environmental and Land
Art’ held at the American Society of Aesthetics Annual Meeting in Milwaukee,
October 2006. There are papers by Lintott, Brady, Brook, Maskit and Heyd, and all but
one are followed by commentaries, respectively, by Fisher, Simus, Toub, and
Hagerman. Several authors in this issue point to the difficulty in discussing these
artworks due to their great variety, and worry that lumping them together may in fact
be misleading. Lintott gets around this problem by adopting Spaid’s use of the general
category of ‘land art’, with earthworks, ecological art, and environmental art forming
subcategories (Spaid, 2002, p. 10). Fisher refines Carlson’s definition of environmental
artworks as: ‘in or on the land in such a way that a part of nature constitutes a part of the
relevant work . . . not only is the site of an environmental work an environmental site,
but the site itself is an aspect of the work’ (Carlson, 2000, p. 150), and adds that the ‘site
should be more or less natural and not an artifactual or urban site’. This is a narrower
definition than Spaid’s because, on her account, many land works will be situated in an
urban setting. Another philosopher, Stephanie Ross, has drawn on the writings of
various artists and critics to formulate the following categories: ‘(1) masculine gestures
in the environment: Heizer, Smithson, De Maria, Turrell; (2) ephemeral gestures in the
environment: Singer, Long; (3) environmental performance art: Boyle, Fulton,
Hutchinson, Christo; (4) architectural installations: Holt, Aycock, Miss; (5) didactic
art: the Harrisons; (6) proto-gardens: Sonfist, Irwin, Finlay; (7) sculpture gardens and
parks’ (Ross, 1993, p. 170; see also Rosenthal, 1983).
While understanding the range and diversity of these artworks is important, the
problems and ideas explored in this issue are connected mainly to ethical and
 Introduction 259

aesthetic reflections on environmental and land art. Since at least the early 1970s,
moral and aesthetic objections have been raised against some forms of
environmental and land art by artists, art critics, art theorists, and, more recently,
philosophers (see, for example, Gussow, 1972; Auping, 1983; Crawford, 1983;
Humphrey, 1985; Carlson, 1986; Tufnell, 2006). In the first two essays in this issue,
Lintott and Fisher consider, mainly, the problem of moral evaluation. Drawing on
Leo Tolstoy’s theory of art, Lintott reformulates his moral concerns in the context of
land art and asks whether or not land art is artistically ‘worth it’. Given ethical
objections that land art infringes on nature and has ecological costs in its production,
how can these artforms be justified? Lintott concludes that we need to decide on
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a case-by-case basis, according to the process of production and other aspects.

In a Tolstoyan fashion, she argues that land art potentially unites ‘human beings
in the inclusive and progressive mindset of environmentalism’. Fisher unpacks the
question ‘Is it worth it?’ by showing how environmental artworks may be claimed to
have broad moral content, e.g., based on the ways they alter or manipulate nature
and in so far as nature has a moral claim on us. This provides some basis for
determining whether the artwork has negative or positive moral value and the
relationship between this value and artistic value in the work.
Brady’s essay focuses on a particular objection raised on aesthetic grounds, the
claim that some forms of environmental and land art constitute an ‘aesthetic affront
to nature’. She defends some difficult cases such as Smithson’s earthworks, and
shows why these and other forms of environmental art may express positive
relationships between humans and nature and show a kind of ‘aesthetic regard’ for
nature. Although Simus agrees that such relationships potentially induce concern
for nature through art, he emphasizes the need to qualify this claim ethically and
ecologically, and that we need to have a better understanding of how to balance
aesthetic regard with the ecological costs of these works.
While many earthworks artists of the 1960s and early 1970s were, arguably, more
interested in taking art into the land rather than in the growing environmentalism
of their time, social and political engagement motivated a number of other artists.
In Bog Action (1971), Joseph Beuys waded into a marsh until only the top of his hat
was showing, seeking to bring attention to the destruction of wetlands in the
Netherlands (Beardsley, 1998). In a contemporary context—and one which in some
ways echoes Beuys’s interest in socially engaged art—Brook explores a range of
unauthorised environmental interventions, some clearly artistic or by known artists,
others situated in more everyday, local contexts. She argues that the characteristic of
being ‘unauthorised’ becomes aesthetically integral to these interventions through
qualities such as whimsy, edginess, and imaginativeness. The quality of edginess
in unauthorised interventions is comparable, Toub argues, to many forms of
avant-garde art that valued unauthorised forms of expression. In the everyday
context, such interventions may provide people with a spontaneous form of
expression that intervenes and transforms their environment in creative ways.
Earthworks and eco-artists as diverse as Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheimer,
Robert Morris, Hermann Prigann, Patricia Johanson, Newton and Helen Mayer
Harrison, and Agnes Denes have created artworks intended to restore or regenerate
the environment on a large and small scale or to artistically transform land
previously used by industry. In an attempt to move beyond environmental aesthetics
 260 E. Brady

focused on natural environments, Maskit theorizes a postindustrial aesthetic that

enables the appreciation of what are often taken to be unscenic and aesthetically
unappreciable landscapes. Artistic engagement through artistic representation,
intervention, and renovation enables a richer appreciation of postindustrial sites
and reveals a new aesthetic category of the ‘interesting’. One ethical worry has been
the manner in which art engages with postindustrial sites. Heyd reflects on his
experience of three different ways landscapes mined in the recent past have been
treated: erasing the effects of mining by restoring the landscape with something new;
leaving the landscape as it is and thus as a reminder of past work and past lives; and
artistic projects that reclaim the land. Using the case of Robert Morris’s Untitled:
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Johnson Pit #30 (1979), Heyd argues that this reclamation work enables us to reflect
on the ‘denatured character of the place’ and succeeds in transforming the site while
also preserving or revealing its history. This form of art suggests an aesthetic
experience of the ‘uncanny’ for Hagerman, an experience that is ‘at once intimate
and alienating’ and forces an interrogation of the place and our relationship to it. In
agreement with Simus and Heyd, she praises projects that work with the land and
reveal environmental harm without perpetuating that harm.
The discussions in these articles by no means exhaust the philosophical problems
thrown up by these distinctive artworks. For one thing, the debates focus mainly on
environmental and land art, so less explicit attention is given to eco-art or ‘eco-
ventions’ as such. Second, the ontological complexity of artforms in this category
invites further exploration in terms of distinctions, the possibility of definition, as
well as demanding a closer look at the role of nature, environment, and place in art
practice. We might also ask what kinds of environmental knowledge these artworks
render, and how they contribute to new understandings of personal and ecological
identity. I hope that this special issue generates further discussion and new directions
of reflection on art practices which have an important and active role to play in
stimulating environmental concern, while being of significant aesthetic interest.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors of Ethics, Place and Environment: A Journal of
Philosophy and Geography for inviting, supporting, and assisting with this special
issue. I am especially grateful to Sheila Lintott for co-organizing the conference
session ‘Considering Environmental and Land Art’, and for her advice during the
planning and editing of the issue. Finally, I thank the authors here for their excellent
and thought-provoking essays.

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