Earthworkers
by Nele Bergmans // January 2023
When reflecting on the art that deeply touches me, or that I’m drawn to, I recognise a group of artists that work with natural materials. More specifically, they use nature itself. Their work is not necessarily about the landscape, but it is quite often related to it. The works that attract me the most are the ones that are just a tiny gesture, a re-arrangement of things, that relate to a very primal experience of bigger forces operating in the natural world. In their small gestures, I often experience the largeness of life.
I will draw a parallel to the works of four artists in this essay. It’s a bit unfortunate that they are all white, male and from Europe. But, we have to start somewhere, and not acknowledging valuable references on the basis of their gender and background is sexist and discriminative in all directions.
Fig 01. Richard Long, England 1968, photograph
Richard Long and the human interaction with landscape
When reading about the work of Richard Long, I came across the term ‘Earthworkers’ 1. It’s a term for artists working in the late 1960’s in the ‘Land Art’ movement. This largely American movement stems from conceptualism and minimalism and is sometimes also referred to as ‘Earth Art’. 2 I previously only knew the term Land Art and associated it with large scale installations in the landscape, often abstract and conceptual. The term ‘Earth Art’ relates the movement much more to nature, mother earth, and allows for more human connection. Since I use stone quite often, I was curious if there is also a movement in art called ‘stone art’. But on googling, it basically takes you to restauration pages. I’m not so interested in the large scale conceptual works, but in the smaller, more intimate, more ephemeral works.
Fig 02. Richard Long, A line of sticks in Somerset, 1968, photograph
Often, with good artists, their first works already contain in very condensed version all the elements they will explore in their future practise. In Richard Long’s case, this is certainly true. The early works England 1968 (Fig 01) and Sticks in Somerset (Fig 02) are very revealing. He works with landscapes he truly knows (the meadow full of daisies, a field of grass on a forest edge) and is able to pick out one element in this landscape that is intrinsically linked to this specific place, which he then reveals by twisting their arrangement just a tiny bit, through very normal gestures (walking, picking up, throwing), arranging them in the most basic shapes (a circle, a line).
Personally, I’m quite drawn to these very simple geometric shapes. I find them very effective in their universality and distinctness. As Charles Harrison writes: “The evident and uncomplicated geometrically of the form asserts its origin in human activity and thus prepares the spectator for consideration of the ‘interaction’ between artist andenvironment.”3 He also says Long works with the feeling of the place “as being the stimulus toa search for the materials which would most effectively embody that sensation of the place in an appropriate configuration”. In a written statement by Long,he refers to his work as ‘A portrait of the artist touching the earth.’ 4
Fig 03. Richard Long, Hoggar circle, 1988, photograph
Fig 04. Richard Long, Connemara sculpture, 1971, photograph
Fig 05. Richard Long, Throwing snow into a circle, Switserland, 1994
Fig 06. Richard Long, High plains circle, 1974, Canada photograph
I must admit, on first discovering his work, I was very much drawn to the formal aspects of the work. The photograph of the work in nature. I didn’t really get the whole concept of walking and wrote the following in my notebook:
“What do I think of his ‘conceptual’ link to time and space? For me, I’m very much drawn to the formal qualities of the work. The extra explanation, although I can see it gives the work validation or ‘depth’, is an additional quality and may for some people really make the work. But for me, if the spiral he walks with muddy boots in a gallery is the exact same length of one of his real walks, I don’t care. I also wonder, since the walks are so important, why is Long only engaging with a materiality found on his walks? I miss the feelings of cold air in winter, the blinding of the sun when low to the horizon, the exhaustion, the feeling one gets when one opens their eyes in a tent in the middle of the night. Somehow for me, if the walks are the main principle artwork itself, or source of inspiration, I miss the physical experience of the walk, and the work is very much focussed on the formal experience of nature and the earth. I also think most of his texts are quite unimaginative and not to so poetic, which I find strange when one spends so much time pondering the nature. But I really love the work.”
After spending more time with the work and reading what others have said about it, I giggle when re-reading my first thoughts. I now see that his walks are actually the feeder of his work. Without the walk through the landscape, without taking the time to learn about the landscape, being in it, Long’s senses could’ve never picked up on the intrinsic characteristics of that place, and he would have never created this sculpture. The Connemara sculpture (fig 6) would not have the same effect on us if it was in the high plains of Canada (fig 4). It is because he truly engages with the landscape, looks for previous marks of human beings, that he is able to make his works. The formal sculpture does not exist without the walk, because the walk has generated the context, the intellectual content and the form itself of the work.
Nature is sublime: early landscape photography
As mentioned above, at first I was more attracted to the visual form of Longs’ work, captured in these beautiful black and white photographs. Thank you very much algorithms, as I have been fed with lots of blacks and white photographs of landscapes in the past years. One characteristic that they all have in common is that often, nature is conveyed as the sublime.
One particular movement that is interesting is the early photography of colonisers ‘surveying’ the wide landscapes of the West05. Catching these majestic scenes for the first time, in these photographs you feel the sense of awe, of discovery, of the greatness of nature and the smallness of humans. But pictures like the ones of William H Jackson now lack an awareness of the ephemeral and fragile qualities that are also present in these wide scenes. Nature is conquerable for the mighty human being (fig 07, 08).
Fig 07. William H Jackson, Upper basin, SodaSprings, Gardner’s river, Yellowstone 1871
Fig 08. WilliamH Jackson, The Royal Gorge, Grand Canyon of the Arkansas, Colorado
Fig 09. Ansel Adams, Moon and half dome, YosemiteNational Park, 1960
In a second wave, around 1960 (around Long’s time) the tone has shifted. These black and white pictures, quite often daunting, very dramatic, give you a sense of the sublime06. In these photographs, there is no trace of a human interaction. As John Szarkowski writes beautifully about the work of Ansel Adams (Fig 09): ‘his photographs stir our memory of what it was like to be alone in an untouched world’.07
These pictures instil in us a sense of beauty, scale, the power of nature. Richard Long also experiences these forces when he goes on walks through landscapes. But he is interested in more. He is interested in the human interactions with these landscape, and in time. Instead of one single photograph of a moment, he wants his art to be part of a long line of human actions in this particular landscape08. By making his walks, spending time in the landscape,or moving stones in them, he adds to the layers of time and place.
Andy Goldsworthy and an ‘English’ approach to nature
Fig 10. AndyGoldsworthy, Bow fell, Cumbria, May 1977
Fig 11. AndyGoldsworthy, Scafell Pike, Cumbria, May 1977
I find the human interaction with nature more interesting than just capturing it’s beauty and sublimity. Charles Harrison remarks: “There is a particularly English kind of nostalgia which we associate with such journeys and the resulting travelogues. It is a mood which can be identified with aspects of certain traditions, most of them insular and most of them literary at best involving a rare blend of original imagination and acute educated observation.”09 This sensation is also very present in the early works of Andy Goldsworthy. Born 10 years after Long, but also English, they share this English, pastoral10 sensibility.
Fig 12. Andy Goldsworthy, Hazel sticks thrown, Banks, Cumbria, 1980
Fig 13. Andy Goldsworthy, Leaf throws, Blairgowry, Tayside, 1989
Fig 14. Andy Goldsworthy, Slate throws, Blencathramountain, cumbria, 1988
Fig 15. Andy Goldsworthy, Snow and mud layers, 1987
The throwing series (fig 12-14) is an interesting example. So simple, sprung from ‘original imagination’, but making us reflect on the basic forces active in this world. By doing so the works are prone to be read as conceptual, becoming intellectual, a misreading Long has fought many times.11
Another work that I find very strong is 1987’s Snow and mud layers (fig 15). Maybe this ‘Englishness’ lies in the poeticising of murky, grey, everyday evidences.
Tony Cragg and ‘thinking’ drawings
Fig 16. Tony Cragg, Stone curve,1972
Fig 17. Tony Cragg, Stone circle,1972
From what seems a similar starting point to Long and Goldsworthy, Tony Cragg’s work is about other things. Having been a scientist before becoming an artist, he is concerned with materials at a molecular level and is intrigued by how the world is made. He wants to challenge opposites and is concerned with the man-made-natural division of materials in our world12. His work becomes quite intellectual, and he loses me where when he leaves nature and starts working with plastics.
His drawings, however, are relevant for me. These are not presentation drawings, but ‘thinking’ drawings: fast drawings where ideas are explored, where technical aspects are thought through. The early ones often in very straightforward media like pencil, and very recognisable when you’ve seen the completed sculpture (fig 18, 20). But in 1988 Cragg also started exploring two dimensional works in its own right: “Cragg’s work in printmaking and drawing has emerged as an autonomous means of expression, an independent disciple which the artist regards as inexhaustible. In conversations with him, it is always clear that this work is not a stand-in for sculptures and that one cannot use the drawings to explain the sculptures. Rather, the artist used the medium as an instrument for visual thinking. “13
Fig 18. Tony Cragg, pencil on paper, 1988
Fig 19. Tony Cragg, pencil on paper, 1996
Fig 20. Tony Cragg, Eroded landscape, 1991
Rein Dufait, a new legacy?
Rein Dufait (born 1990) is a young Belgian artist. He dives into many of the themes the artists above have explored. As he is based in Ostend, by the Belgian seaside, his works often have a relation to sand.
What Andy Goldsworthy did with by throwing things in the air, Rein does here with sand and plastic. It’s a revealing of something, I would say gravity and material properties in this case. These sculptures below14 (Fig 21, 22, 23) are like tiny experiments, where ‘sand tapestry’ is the most purified. Just a single square of see-through plastic on sand. The material is almost nothing on it’s own, and does nothing formally of structurally to the sand. But it does make you see the sand suddenly. The tiny square is a sand tapestry, and the sand around it isn’t. The gesture is similar to Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels15 but the relationship between the two materials used is more poetic.
Fig 21. Rein Dufait, Utopian sand, 2015
Fig 22. Rein Dufait, sandcolumn, 2015
Fig 23. Rein Dufait, Sand tapestry, 2015
Fig 24. ReinDufait, Malkolos, 2016
In 2016 Rein Dufait makes ‘Malkolos’ (Fig 24). A very simple idea: making a kind of endless column, where its shape is defined by the material used (one could say an homage to Brancusi’s ‘Infinite column’16). The material that is supposed to be the mould, is absorbed by the material of the sculpture, and by this becomes as much part of the sculpture as everything else. I like the honesty of this sculpture: the bulging out of the cardboard boxes because they cannot hold the weight nor stand the wetness of the concrete, the expressiveness and messiness of the thick ropes trying to hold everything together, creating the composition and aesthetic. Not a single thing is extra here, there is no afterthought. The material is the sculpture.
"The work is present as a 'cultural form' in the midst of other man-made shapes and the continuously evolving natural environment. Cement (earth, soil) and water (sea, rain) form the mortar. Oxygen(air) engenders an interplay. Even ossified, this ‘form’ remains a natural product. The rain introduces organisms, the wind sows moss, leaves turn to humus. Even after the artist is no longer involved, this sculpture continues to grow.”16
Joris D’hooghe said about Reins work that he makes ‘beelden’,17a word which translates from Dutch into ‘visual’ or ‘image’. It’s interesting that in Dutch ‘stand-beeld’, literally translates to standing-image, which would mean sculpture in English. As I’m exploring the relationship between the sculpture and the image of the sculpture in my practise, this etymological explanation gives comfort. One doesn’t have to treat them as two opposites or two different practises, but can embrace them as intrinsically belonging together.
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