PHILOSOPHY OF THE ART OF LAND ART

Abstract

Land art is an artistic activity, the object of which is a real fragment of the natural environment, which is interpreted by the artist not so much as the location of the work, but as the context in which his idea is concentrated. The landscape is understood as a reflection not only of ecology, but also of philosophy, sociology, history, anthropology, mythology, symbolism, and cultural history. Philosophical reflections on time and space, the importance of contexts, the understanding of fluidity, the temporality of any human intervention in nature were the original sources of many land art concepts. The purpose of the article is an attempt to determine how the philosophical practices that nourished the creativity of land art artists influenced the essence of this artistic direction. Using the method of analysis of literary sources and examples of land art, the connection that can be seen between the considerations of R. Smithson, an American artist, one of the first and leading practitioners and theorists of land art, whose texts became programmatic for many successors, and Martin Heidegger, one of the more famous philosophers of the 20th century, who considered the essence of art in the concepts of existence and truth. Smithson turned to phenomenological practices from the 1960s until the end of his life. Acquaintance with the artist’s philosophical thoughts along the lines of phenomenology of perception, a unique attitude to work with the land and forms of art representation, as well as an attempt to determine the importance of contexts for art – provides an opportunity to understand his works in a new way. Land art as an art is, first of all, work with an idea, a symbol. Philosophical background gives a special elitist taste to such works, it seems that their authors know something beyond the average vision of the world. And this approach, in our opinion, sharply separates land art from design practices, on which it undoubtedly has a great influence.