Earthworks

            The Earthworks represent a crucially important development in sculpture that rivals the importance of both found object and performative sculpture. Each brings much to offer to the world of sculpture, but often the Earthworks are overshadowed by other sculptures that are easier to exhibit or record. The result is that such large scale works like those of Robert Smithson has been left out of the main focus of discussion around sculpture, largely because of the difficulty in experiencing such sites and constructs that defy the traditional museum space.

            Earthworks challenge what sculpture can be both in sheer scale and basic form. By creating such large-scale works, the sculptors open a conversation about what it means to create sculpture and space. The experience of an Earthwork usually revolves not around looking at an object, but existing in or on forms and spaces made by altering the earth. They become vaguely architectural, too large to be conventional museum experiences, challenging our ideas of what it means to experience art.

            The art world and everyday life can be looked at from a different perspective through the Earthworks by making us consider details we would otherwise neglect. When considering massive, carved into the landscape work, a vast variety of topics ranging from archeology to the built environment. We look at earthworks as we would monuments from past civilizations or chance geological features that appear intentional. By studying and experiencing such artwork we become interested in how it relates to the everyday, how something so massive and seemingly out of the ordinary is in fact much like the environments encountered regularly.

            Possibly the most important discussion raised by Earthworks is the broad idea of human impact on the world, both physical alterations and effects of other activities, like pollution and abandoned sites. It is made blatantly obvious that humans enact change on their surroundings, and that we will and have gone to extreme measures to carve out spaces we inhabit and use. Connections can be drawn to open pit quarries and mines, roadways that cut along or even bore through the landscape, and cities that alter geology to an almost unrecognizable form. They create an undeniable sense of alteration, almost that humanity shouldn’t pursue such drastic measures, but simultaneously suggests that such massive alterations will be the only lasting record, as the individual becomes dwarfed by such spaces.

            Overall these sculptures offer a shift in perspective that has defined them in the history of sculpture. While it did not bring about a permanent shift in the way sculpture is created, they represent an important body of work committed to the creation of spaces for reflection and contemplation. Unlike a large majority of sculpture, the viewer inhabits and experiences the art as part of it, not as an alienated observer meant to exist in a sterile environment.

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