MONUMENTI DI PAESAGGIO

Abstract

Land Art is one of the art avant-gardes that had its most prominent development in the United States (1967/8). Land artists share many elements in common, but mainly they are identified by their use of natural materials and their site-specific installations which take shape in remote locations, far from urban centers. It is a revolution that means to take art out of its industrial interpretation as a commodity object, in order to propose a revaluation of the spiritual essence of artistic practices, rejecting the system of traditional galleries. Photographic documentation has played a fundamental role for Land Art works. The camera has carried out the task of witnessing the existence of those temporary works by recording objects and events that did not arise for a specific audience, but were to be understood as "temporary monuments" (Robert Smithson) suitable for interpreting the complex weaving of those vast deserted areas. Through the photographic image the precarious integration between art and nature took form. My contribution will analyze the key role of photography with relation to some significant installations of Land Art, in order to highlight its substantial role as an art form that produced monuments out of the American landscape, recovering the etymological origin of the word landscape itself: "landschap", a word born with the Dutch landscape painters (1598).

Keywords

• photography
• land art
• landscape