Art Term

Land art

Land art or earth art is art that is made directly in the landscape, sculpting the land itself into earthworks or making structures in the landscape using natural materials such as rocks or twigs

Richard Long CBE
Sahara Circle (1988)
Tate

© Richard Long

Land art was part of the wider conceptual art movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The most famous land art work is Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty of 1970, an earthwork built out into the Great Salt Lake in the USA. Though some artists such as Smithson used mechanical earth-moving equipment to make their artworks, other artists made minimal and temporary interventions in the landscape such as Richard Long who simply walked up and down until he had made a mark in the earth.

Land art, which is also known as earth art, was usually documented in artworks using photographs and maps which the artist could exhibit in a gallery. Land artists also made land art in the gallery by bringing in material from the landscape and using it to create installations.

As well as Richard Long and Robert Smithson, key land artists include Nancy Holt, Walter de Maria, Michael Heizer and Dennis Oppenheim.

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Related terms and concepts

  • Environmental art

    Environmental art is art that addresses social and political issues relating to the natural and urban environment

  • Conceptual art

    Conceptual art is art for which the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art object. It emerged as an art movement in the 1960s and the term usually refers to art made from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.

  • Psychogeography

    Psychogeography describes the effect of a geographical location on the emotions and behaviour of individuals

  • Landscape

    Landscape is one of the principal types or genres of subject in Western art

Explore this term

Left Right
  • Lost Art: Robert Smithson’s Partially Buried Woodshed, as seen in 1982

    Lost Art: Robert Smithson

    Jennifer Mundy

    The Gallery of Lost Art is an immersive, online exhibition that tells the fascinating stories of artworks that have disappeared. Each week a new story of loss is added, and the evidence presented for examination

  • Robert Smithson Ikonos satellite image of Spiral Jetty 14 September 2002

    A fearless embrace of our common existential situation as frail, short-sighted creatures lost in space in a temporarily lucky planet

    Kenneth Baker

    Robert Smithson’s vast earthwork Spiral Jetty 1970 became an instant icon of land art, partly thanks to iconic photography by Gianfranco Gorgoni, and recently resurfaced after being submerged under the Great Salt Lake. Smithson’s visual inspiration for this project was typically diverse – ranging from the molecular structure of salt to Constantin Brancusi’s abstract portrait of James Joyce, and a ‘Spiral Jetty Weekend’ invite allows Kenneth Baker to make a visit.

  • Robert Smithson at Pentre Ifan dolmen, Wales 1969

    Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson in England, 1969

    Nancy Holt and Simon Grant1

    Robert Smithson, best known for his Land Art piece Spiral Jetty, and Nancy Holt, best known for her work Sun Tunnels, were both fascinated by man’s imprint on the natural landscape. They often travelled together and documented their work – and themselves – in photographs. In 1969 they took an important journey through England and Wales visiting sites that resonated with their practice, ranging from ancient ruins and landscaped gardens to wild natural places. For the first time, Holt reflects on the trip and its influence on their art

  • Richard Long outside St Martin's School of Art, London, at the start of 'Cycling Sculpture, 1- 3' December 1967

    Five, six, pick up sticks

    Robert Macfarlane

  • Andy Goldsworthy

    Andy Goldsworthy: 'We share a connection with stone'

    The land artist explores our relationship with nature

  • Katja Strunz Installation view detail ta pedia tou peria 2005

    Standing with one's back to Utopia

    Charlotte Klonk

    Charlotte Klonk visits Katja Strunz in her Berlin studio and hears how the early influence of Robert Smithson and his interest in entropy has fed into her sculptures and drawings.

  • Cai Guo-Qiang The Century with Mushroom Clouds: Project for the Twentieth Century (Manhattan) 1996

    Atomic Tourism and False Memories: Cai Guo-Qiang’s The Century with Mushroom Clouds

    Ben Tufnell

    Examining Cai Guo-Qiang’s photographic series The Century with Mushroom Clouds, Ben Tufnell explores the work’s connections to American land art and its use of touristic tropes as strategies for evoking histories in landscapes.

  • Jem Southam River Exe 2010

    To the Ends of the Earth: Art and Environment

    Nicholas Alfrey , Stephen Daniels and Joy Sleeman

    Introducing the group of articles devoted to the theme of ‘Art & Environment’ in Tate Papers no.17, this essay reflects on changing perceptions of the term ‘environment’ in relation to artistic practices and describes the context for a series of case studies of sites, spaces and processes that extend from the immediate locality to the most remote boundaries of knowledge and experience.

Selected artists in the collection

Selected artworks in the collection

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Land art at Tate

  • Richard Long Tate Britain exhibition banner

    Tate Britain
    Exhibition

    Richard Long: Heaven and Earth

    3 Jun – 6 Sep 2009

    Richard Long: Heaven and Earth ate Tate Britain 3 June – 6 September 2009

  • Tate Britain
    Exhibition

    Hamish Fulton: Walking journey

    23 Mar – 4 Jun 2002

    Hamish Fulton: Walking journey: photographic works about the experience of walking. Past Tate Britain exhibition

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