Land Is Not the Setting: The Lightning Field and Environments, 1960-1980

"Land is not the setting: the lightning field and environments, 1960-1980" examines land art and ecological thought in the 1960s and 1970s through a sustained and unconventional investigation of Walter De Maria's single work The Lightning Field of 1977. A large, site-specific sculpture consisting of four hundred sharpened steel poles arranged in a regular grid, The Lightning Field is a remarkably variable object and site which present a range of experiences from reflective metal palpably shifting in form and orientation with the angle of the sun to a dramatic stage for electrical fireworks. The focus of this study extends the manifold nature of The Lightning Field to examine how this single work enfolds not only various modes of experience, but, more importantly, the most significant strands of De Maria's artistic practice beginning around 1960 alongside competing conceptualizations of the environment throughout the 1960s and 1970s. During this period, the idea of an environment was rapidly on the move. Artists and critics employed the term to suggest gallery installations, ecosystems, multimedia projections, and natural sanctuaries. In short, the concepts "environment" and "ecology" experienced two decades of rich investigation in social and intellectual registers, and the emergence of land art provides one unique access to their larger turns within the period.