Archaic in the art of place: land art

Kulemin Artemii Eduardovich ORCID: 0009-0003-8325-2819 Postgraduate student, Department of Sociology and Philosophy, Smolensk State University 214000, Russia, Smolensk region, Smolensk, Przhevalskogo str., 4 artjomkuljomin@gmail.com

Introduction

Land art is a trend of contemporary art that originated in the 1960s in the United States, spread to European countries in the 1970s and exists to this day. It is difficult to characterize it as a single and specific artistic movement, since it encompasses artists who may directly contradict each other in their concepts and their embodiments. As art critic D. Kastner writes, "land art is an imperfect concept denoting a sliding, interconnected conceptual kinship" ^{[1, p. 12]}. There are a number of basic criteria (each of which is optional) that allow us to identify similar reference points of the direction: land art - art that works with the space of nature, made directly in the landscape, or using natural, unprocessed materials such as stones, branches, leaves, soil, etc.; art that is defined by it reacts in a certain way to natural features and the accompanying seasonal and daily rhythms of the environment; art that is closely related conceptually or formally to a place, soil, territory, land, and the surrounding landscape ^{[1, pp. 11-13; 2, pp. 6-7, 3, p. 10]}.

Land art covers a wide range of artistic forms: it can include large-scale monumental installations incorporated into the landscape, or small short-lived sculptures created from natural materials; architectural installations or performative acts; forms built at the intersection with landscape design, garden art and landscape architecture. The idea of land art corresponds to the time of its appearance: It is a modernist alternative method of artistic production that has challenged established ideas about an artistic object and created opportunities to circumvent the classical system of gallery commercial art.

In addition to these features, land art projects are often consonant with archaic art in their artistic language. This connection is intuitively read by the viewer, it is emphasized by many land art researchers: for example, the philosopher J. Tibergien, pointing to the genealogical connection between land art and megalithic monuments, notes that the origin of land art, if desired, can be traced back to distant epochs of human history ^{[4, p. 31]}. The continuity is also indicated by the artists themselves in their statements, interviews and texts, and also confirm the connection by their participation in some thematic exhibitions dedicated to the direct links of modern art with archaeology and ancient art. Some land art projects directly cite the visual language of monuments of archaic art; other artists refer to the heritage of traditional art more allegorically, using individual manifestations of the visual language of archaic. The purpose of this article is to identify the prerequisites and goals of the appeal of land art artists to the visual language of the archaic and, based on the analysis of art projects, to reveal some of the mechanisms of this language. The relevance of the article is due both to the need for a more detailed cultural understanding of land art as one of the modern artistic trends, whose domestic research is not so numerous, and the expediency of a larger-scale analysis of the actualization of the archaic discourse in modern art and the modern world as a whole.

            Although many scientific works on land art mention its associative similarity with archaic art samples and their continuity, I have not found a direct study of land art in the context of archaic discourse. D. Karstner ^[1], R. Krauss ^[5], W. Malpas ^[2], B. Tuffnell ^[3], J. Tibergien ^[4] were engaged in general research of land art as one of the directions of modern art. Land art in the context of the development of landscape design was considered by U. Wilacher ^[6]. L. Lippard was engaged in the study of the connection of prehistoric art with modern art ^[7].

Archaic in this study, according to V. Khachaturian ^[8], is understood to be a sociocultural system characteristic of the period from 40-35 thousand BC (the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic) to 12-10 thousand BC (the beginning of the Neolithic revolution), the distinctive characteristics of which are the emphasized biosociocultural nature of life and the corresponding natural and social syncretism, magico-mythological the generic complex, the dominance of collectivist patterns in generic groups; this system is based on the "withdrawal" of resources from nature and is practically devoid of the transformative aspect of economic activity.

The research material was made up of art projects by leading representatives of American and British land art: installations by R. Long in the form of circles laid out of stones (such as "Six Stone Circles", 1981; "Sculpture in Connemara", 1969; "Circle in the Sahara", 1988); "Spiral Dam" by R. Smithson, 1970; sculptures by E. Goldsworthy.

Prerequisites for the use of archaic images in land art

The intense increase in interest in archaic cultures and their artistic heritage observed in the twentieth century in the Western art community is largely due to the active anthropological studies of primitive and primitive cultures by such scientists as L. Levi-Bruhl, K. Levi-Strauss, M. Eliade and others ^[9-11]. In particular, K. Levi-Strauss opposed labeling primitive cultures as inferior or outdated, arguing for the need to study and understand them in the context of their cultural and historical specificity. He believed that primitive cultures have their own logic and structure, which can be understood and analyzed on a par with cultures of a higher level of development ^[10]. An important idea of Levi-Strauss was to emphasize the structural similarity of human mental operations in primitive and civilized societies. Such a "point of intersection" of modern and ancient man, among other things, made it possible to actualize archaic art monuments for the modern viewer, conceptualize them, and therefore use their individual artistic forms in modern art.

The 1960s were a period of transformation of attitudes towards nature in the public consciousness of Western society. Economic growth, technological progress, urbanization and mass consumption, an increase in environmental pollution, the spread of scientific discoveries about the destructive effects of man on nature were factors in the emergence of a certain crisis of man's utilitarian attitude to the environment. There was a request to find and install alternative ways of their interaction, including through art as a unique tool of non–verbal communication. Discussing the prerequisites for the emergence of land art, the German researcher of landscape architecture U. In his book "Between Landscape Architecture and Land Art", Weilacher also points to the crisis of interaction with the landscape through art that existed at that time: "neither the constant, non-reflexive repetition of the classical vocabulary of the French Baroque or the English landscape garden, nor the retreat to purely functional means of expressing landscape design can be accepted as a modern form of dialogue between man and nature" ^{[6, pp. 9-10]}. In this regard, land art has become one of the attempts to develop a new language of interaction with the landscape, a way to return nature as a space of sensory perception, in which new relationships between man and the environment become possible, prompting us to think of the natural world not as an object or threat, but as part of human experience. Weilacher notes that the new language was necessary not only for a broader public discussion about the changed concept of nature, but also to increase personal sensitivity to nature as such; it allowed solving the urgent problem of working with the sensory perception of nature in the field of art.

Archaic as a way of representing the idea of human unity with nature

Many archaic researchers (see, for example, L. Levi-Brull ^{[9, p. 264]}, E. Kassirer ^{[12, p. 536]}) point to the special "inclusion" of ancient man in nature, the pronounced dichotomy "man–nature" absent for him, and the characteristic natural and social syncretism. In the archaic system, the natural programs that formed its basis were mediated by culture (transferred to the rank of cultural), without completely losing their natural component. Cultural programs, in turn, were aimed at the "inclusion" of the individual and society in the natural universe. Archaic art clearly conveyed this feature of the ancient man's worldview. Thus, for a modern artist, a set of artistic forms of archaic art could be one of the possible tools for constructing a new universal language of interaction with nature through the actualization of the image of a person included in nature.

Land art artists often emphasized the ability of certain forms of ancient art to have a certain intense emotional impact, creating a similar feeling of "inclusion" in nature. The increased interest of land art artists in ancient megalithic stone structures is representative in this regard: many projects directly refer to such monuments. Examples are installations by the British land art classic R. Long in the form of circles and other signs laid out of stones in various locations: "Six Stone Circles", 1981; "Sculpture in Connemara", 1969; "Circle in the Sahara", 1988 and others.

Fig. 1. R. Long. "Six Stone Circles", 1981. Source: http://www.richardlong.org/Sculptures/2011sculptures/sixstone.html

Fig. 2. R. Long. "Sculpture in Connemara", 1969. Source: http://www.richardlong.org/Sculptures/2011sculptures/connemara.html

In this regard, art historian L. Lippard notes that ancient megalithic structures are symbolic intermediaries between nature and culture. Prehistoric stones and mounds are difficult to separate, both visually and intellectually, from nature itself. Rather, they transform into an immediate part of the landscape. Unlike a towering modern building, the stone incorporated into the landscape does not so much dominate the environment as sensually coexist with it; it confirms the human need to relate itself to natural forces and phenomena. Lippard writes: "Even if we, as individuals, are cut off from any communal belief system or collective work system, something seems to come back to us through these places, which we see, perhaps, as an image of lost symbols, perceived but not understood in our own socio-religious context"^{[7, p. 12]}. The works of land art artists executed in a similar way offer a direct experience of perceiving the environment.

The symbolic language of the Archaic

Long's stone circles also reflect the trend of land art artists turning to iconic systems of ancient art. Using the circle sign in the composition, Long denies a direct connection with the ritual and mythological aspects of the sign characteristic of the archaic, pointing only to their similarity in terms of the visual, emotional universality of the image and designating as his goal the evocation of certain mythological associations: "Megalithic monuments were social, religious art. I create my works as an individual," he writes. "I think that circles have belonged to all people at all times to one degree or another: they are universal and timeless, like the image of a human hand. For me, it's part of their emotional strength."^[13]

Fig. 3. R. Smithson. "Spiral Dam", 2016. Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/profzucker/28340511376

A similar example is the "Spiral Dam" by R. Smithson – created on the northern shore of the Great Salt Lake in Utah in the USA, a massive sculpture about 450 meters long, which is a spiral extending into the lake, composed of basalt stones collected in the vicinity of mud and salt crystals. The shape of the spiral creates an intuitively readable mythological context of the work: She referred both to specific monuments (spiral prehistoric mounds found mainly in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys) and to myths about the Great Salt Lake (it was believed that the lake arose from a whirlpool fed by a direct underground connection with the Pacific Ocean). Pointing to this, art historian Krauss, R. when analyzing the "Spiral Dam" designates several associative mythological interpretations: represents the appearance of the first settlers on the shores of the lake, compares the spiral with a corridor to the ocean, of which the lake was once a part, reveals in these works the idea of a "passage" or "transition" somewhere else the space of history or myth ^{[5, pp. 281-282]}. However, even here the use of mythological and sacred imagery by artists is found outside the direct context of a particular myth and religion; rather, it is to indicate the context of working with the past or with mythology as such.

The immediacy of the archaic and the monumentality of ancient art

For British land art artists, there is a characteristic feature that actualizes such an aspect of the archaic as the minimal presence of a transformative aspect in economic activity mentioned earlier. By creating works inscribed in nature, British artists nevertheless sought to minimize their impact on the natural environment. They practically did not use tools or equipment for their work and often created them from materials found right on the spot. Thus, they emphasized the inclusion of man into nature through a special immediacy of contact with it and the rejection of a utilitarian attitude. This view is typical, in particular, for Long. This logic is also clearly seen in the works of E. Goldsworthy, who always created his small sculptures made in the form of basic archetypal shapes (balls, lines, circles, arches) from natural materials found directly on the spot. Such works had minimal impact on the environment, often remained in their natural fragile state, gradually decomposing or collapsing, and resembled direct interaction with the nature of primitive man, the results of which were the first household items, tools or art samples ^{[14, p. 4-5]}. 

Fig. 4. E. Goldsworthy. "Hazel Branches", 1980. Source: https://archive.org/details/handtoearthandyg0000gold/page/20/mode/2up

Fig. 5. E. Goldsworthy. "Carving on frozen snow", 1987. Source: https://archive.org/details/handtoearthandyg0000gold/page/70/mode/2up

Representatives of land art in the USA, on the contrary, were characterized by emphasized monumentality and work with large-scale structures that were closer to architectural projects. They assumed a special involvement in the spacious landscape, for the realization of which it was necessary to invest money, own land and purchase large construction equipment (vivid examples are the works of M. Heizer, one of which – the architectural and sculptural ensemble "City", inspired by Mesoamerican and ancient Egyptian temple complexes - is considered the largest work of modern art). In this approach, there is rather a continuity following the archaic, already more complexly structured sacred monuments of ancient art.

Conclusion

The analysis allows us to draw a number of important conclusions for understanding the relationship between archaic and land art.

Firstly, the prerequisites for the demand for archaic artistic forms in land art were the general actualization of the archaic discourse in culture and the need to develop a new artistic language of interaction between man and nature.

Secondly, both in primitive megalithic structures and in land art projects resembling them, archaic forms are a special tool for constructing an artistic space, allowing to expand the viewer's emotional interaction with nature.

Thirdly, land art artists use characteristic archaic archetypal signs and symbols in order to create an intuitively readable image of a mythological space with an accentuated lack of context of direct reference to real archaic beliefs and sacred practices. At the same time, the method of direct interaction with nature when creating works of art by British land art authors is consonant with the minimal presence of a transformative aspect in economic activity in the archaic.