In fact, nearly every seminal piece of Land Art was created in the desert southwest, often in close proximity to a military base. Smithson’s Spiral Jetty is near Hill Air Force base in Utah, James Turrell’s Roden Crater is near Camp Navajo in Arizona, and Walter de Maria’s “Lightning Fields” is only two hours drive from Trinity Test Site in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945. Land Art developed amidst the militarized, nuclear west.
Eric Lopresti, Land Art and the Nuclear Landscape, JUNE 21, 2016 IMG MGMT
Photo by: Los Alamos National Laboratory