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Figure 5. Plant mandalas. Seven-Branch Tree Association, 2017, 2020.
Photos: Emese Iványi, Seven-Branch Tree Association
— hence fuel — were used. The spiral disappears or reappears, depending on the
water level of the lake, and is constantly being eroded. Michael Heizer had three
large elongated gaps dug in the clay foot of the desert in Nevada for his Displaced/
Replaced Mass (1969) ". He had them lined with concrete and had three huge granite
boulders blown off the Sierra Mountains three kilometers away to place them in
the holes. By his intention, his work — the polar opposite of landscape art — focussed
on the depths instead of the surface of the earth, and hence on the past, on history.
Such works are criticized for the enormous effort and especially for the enormous
amount of money they require, which turns them into capitalist art — a goal that
runs counter to the original aim of land art to liberate art from commercialism.
Not to mention the great environmental damage they cause (Gälosi 2021).
Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy were also active in the same period, but
with entirely different tools and on a very different scale. Long’s most famous
work, Line Made by Walking (1967) is one of the pioneering works of performative
environmental art. Long simply walked in a field up and down until he left a
visible footpath which he photographed, before allowing it to disappear." His aim
was to show the need for a simple harmony between nature on the one hand and
humans and human society on the other. Andy Goldsworthy also works in nature
with natural materials, collaborating with nature and using traditional techniques
(woodwork and basket weaving)."
7 https://equatorjournal.com/post/637047632258301952/michael-heizer-displacedreplaced¬
mass-n-1.
15 Similar critiques are often leveled at contemporary actionist eco-artists. Olafur Eliasson transports
huge ice blocks from the North Sea for the venues of his project Ice Watch (2014 Copenhagen,
2015 Paris, 2018 London), where they melt. Adrienne Gälosi remarked, with no small amount
of sarcasm: ,The magnitude of the ecological footprint of the ice transportation, which presumably
required an enormous apparatus, is in all probability negligible, isn’t it, compared to the impact
of the work on people’s minds” (Galosi 2021).
4 hteps://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/long-a-line-made-by-walking-ar00142. hetp://www.
richardlong.org/
5 https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/andy-goldsworthy-book-ephemeral-works