Edith Meusnier is a french artist born in 1950. Her work consist in assembling plastic tapes, packaging materials and metal. It’s a different way to present these materials and make an union with nature. She has made an exposition called « Paysage d’Artifice » where she braids these elements.
She likes to introduce some colors to make a constrast between the natural and the artificial. It can be calified as an aerial work because of the light weight of the structure she introduces to the environment .
Gilles BruniandMarc Babarit are french artists who collaborated together. They make Land art Artworks using trees. Sometimes they joined several trees to make a circle of trees, or they are transforming trees positions.
Gilles Bruni and Marc Babarit, « The Greenhouse and the Shed », Dead Picea abies cones, boughs and branches, Avellana branches, wire, stones, horticultural protective netting, Picea abies plantation, 2002.
Nils Udo is a German artist, born in 1937. He studied Graphic Art in Nuremburg and came closer to nature through his research, this gaining his place in the Land Art movement. In 1960, he left Germany for Paris to continue his work.
His work references the ideas of a direct link between ancient Man and contemporary Art. The idea of a return to the origins of humanity and the person can be seen in the circular forms that make us think of the embryo and the cocoon, such as in his work called ‘Le Nid’.
A link here to view an extract from a film by Antonio Ferrera in 2010.
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (born in 1935) is a Bulgarian artist, his wife, artist and collaborator was Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935-2009). They have made Land Art projects, including their wrapping works. Their aim is simply to create works of art and create new ways of seeing familiar landscapes, to have a different perspective on them, to enhance them.
In 1984 Jacques Chirac ended to accept their project so the couple had the permission to wrap the Pont-Neuf in Paris. For the wrapping of the oldest bridge in Paris, they used 40,000 m2 sand-colored polyamide.
It’s very interesting to see the connection between two crafts, the bridge and the « packaging » realised by Christo and his wife. Other examples include the Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin and a work where the pair wrapped trees in switzerland.
Richard Long is an English sculptor, photographer and painter, one of the best known British land artists. He has won the Turner Prize four times, not to mention his refusal of the prize in 1984. He won the award in 1989 for his work White Water Line.
Using archetypal shapes (mostly circles, lines, crosses and spirals) is a hallmark of the artist’s body of work. There is in Long’s artworks a connotation with ancient monuments. His work is not just a connection of simple geometric structures with organic elements, but a breaking of cultural and generational boundaries:
‘I think circles have belonged in some way or other to all people at all times. They are universal and timeless, like the image of a human hand. For me, that is part of their emotional power, although there is nothing symbolic or mystical in my work.’ – Richard Long.
Andy Goldsworthy (born 26 July 1956) is a british sculptor, photographer and environmentalist producing site-specific sculpture and Land art situated in natural and urban settings. He lives and works in Scotland. The materials used in Andy Goldsworthy’s art often include brightly-coloured flowers, leaves, mud, pinecones, snow, stone, twigs and thorns. He has been quoted as saying, « I think it’s incredibly brave to be working with flowers and leaves and petals. But I have to: I can’t edit the materials I work with. »
Photography plays a crucial role in his art due to its often ephemeral and transient nature. According to Goldsworthy, « Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its heights, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image. »
You can see here an extract of a movie called « River and Tides – Working with Time » (traduit « Le Fleuve et la marée – Travailler avec le temps » en français) about Andy Godsworthy, produced by Thomas Riedelsheimer.
The Land Art 