Land Art and New York City

The relationship between the landscape, the map and the practice of drawing were explored at length in the 1960s and 1970s in the work of the earthworks artists.  This image shows Walter De Maria's Mile Long Drawing, with him in the frame for scale.

These ideas have been revisited in contemporary contexts by several groups - The Center for Land Use Interpretation and the Land Arts of the American West department at Texas Tech University, among others.  I've included both links below.  Both Robert Smithson and Gordon Matta-Clark - members of the original generation of earthworks/conceptual artists from that time - also worked in New York City, providing an interesting collision of separate landscapes.  The Dia Art Foundation, now based in both New York and Beacon, NY, underwrote many of the original projects realized in the American west (and is only a short train ride from the city.)

The Center for Land Use Interpretation

Land Arts of the American West

Dia Art Foundation