Lucy Minter on Andy Goldworsthy

Andy Goldsworthy was born in Cheshire, England in 1956 and grew up in Yorkshire; he also spent a good deal of his time in Scotland. Besides England and Scotland, his work has been created at the North Pole, in Japan, the Australian Outback, and in the U.S. He is responsible for a huge body of work, most of which has long since fallen to pieces, dried, been crushed to dust or melted away.
Goldsworthy’s work is classified as ‘Post Modern’ based on the physical nature of his processes and outcomes and the values he upholds through his artworks.
We can see evidence of Post Modern techniques in his art practice: his use of formal structural qualities, the materials he uses, the places he works at, the documentation of his work, his ritualistic methods and his attention to aesthetics. Furthermore his practice is very Post Modern in its subjectivity and reflects on his individual, spiritual beliefs and philosophical association with nature.
In terms of approaching Goldsworthy’s work through the conceptual frame we can speculate as to why it is that traditional audiences have been more receptive of his art in contrast to the work of other contemporary instillation artists. Certainly it is not for lack of personal values expressed in Goldsworthy’s art, his attempts to describe the beauty of nature are not without their political motivation, the environmental movement heavily influencing his endeavours to provoke his audience into viewing the environment differently.
Through the Post Modern frame his art can be seen as a challenge to mainstream landscape practices and in contrast to the art of traditional landscape artists. Similarly Goldsworthy’s art is distinctive in that it is not a commodity and cannot be bought, sold or exhibited in galleries or museums
Through examining this art in terms of the artist’s practice and analysing it in the Conceptual and Post Modern frames we gain a more thorough understanding of the practices and effects and the ideals which fit together to create this uniquely Goldsworthy style of Post Modern art.


The formal structural qualities of Goldsworthy’s art make it aesthetically pleasing and deceptively simple. This simplicity essentially lays in the raw materials he uses, materials like rock and ice, wind and light, berries petals and water. Goldsworthy has expressed a dedication to environmental preservation and as a result does not use synthetic materials at all; in fact if he uses a leaf from another area he will take it with him when he leaves. “I want to an intimate, physical involvement with the earth. I must touch …I take nothing out with me in the way of tools, glue or rope, preferring to explore the natural bonds and tensions that exist within the earth…each work is a discovery” he says. But in the area he declares: “I use everything that I can, everything!” for instance bracken slivers, snowberry twigs, grass stalks, pine needles and thorns replace sticky tape and nails in the role of keeping things together.
“When I’m working with materials,” he says “it’s not just the leaf or the stone it’s the processes that are behind them that are important. That’s what I’m trying to understand, not a single isolated object but nature as a whole.” So it is that materials are of huge importance and stand for a lot more than their aesthetic qualities. For instance the leaf represents for him “part of a wider approach to the land- leaf and tree, light and space, are all part of the leaf” but in his search for understanding of the materials and nature there is still a consideration for the environment “To understand leaves I need to work the dry brittle windblows, the cold, the frost fallen and the fresh green growing. I am careful about what I take, a few leaves from each tree.”

The sense of innocence that these materials, free from interference, lend the art is made possible through the intricate techniques used when assembling them.
Often the final artwork is so tight in its design that it is hard to discern what the creation process has involved. We are given an indication of the method more often than not in the title of the photo which might be something like “fox glove leaves split down the vein, laid around a hole” which seems relatively simple but by no means pays proper tribute to the work involved or the sensitivity needed to create work of such complexity. “The most profound thing I can say about a sculpture is how it’s made,” Goldsworthy says. He has learnt to work with nature on his art, to take advantage of sun and freezing temperatures to melt and fuse ice and the seasons that yield certain colours.
He started off doing his designs in sand and dirt but soon came to realise that imposing was not what he wanted to be doing and has spent the rest of his carrier studiously avoiding anything that appears human-made. He now explores organic shapes through the use of natural forces and his own hands: ice scooping, sewing leaves together with fibre etc… everything is done naturally so as would be expected his techniques have developed and gained a supreme sophistication over time.
In the beginning he not only did the sculptures but also took photos of them himself however as his works became larger and more commercial he hired a professional team to document his process.

The sites that have hosted Goldsworthy’s work are dotted all over England and Scotland and far abroad but he says “I would not like to think that my work could only take place in the spectacular remote landscape…I enjoy working in a common place with common materials and through the process of making come to realise how rich and extraordinary these places are.”

The nature of Goldsworthy’s work means that is mostly impossible to display in a gallery or museum setting and similarly its transience makes it impractical to sell it as a commodity. So it is that in order to make the work widely accessible to an audience it must all be documented and for the purpose of making it financially viable it must be published in books that can then be purchased. These books, which include: Time, Passage, Stone, Hand to Earth and Wall are primarily photo albums of his work but also consist of commentary on his processes and ideas. In addition to the books much of his life work has been documented in his diary that includes the philosophic backgrounds to his works and observations on various practices on different jobs.

The camera moreover gives Goldsworthy the power to direct the way in which an audience sees the art seeing which is important, as appreciation of aesthetic qualities is a major part of these works. The presentation of the works in the form of a photo on a flat plain also means that often they appear like abstract art in their symmetry and use of bold shapes. Because the camera allows a moment in time to be captured there is careful attention paid to light and colour in particular, the time of day is very important in the selection process. Another visual manoeuvre is the rearranging of nature that causes a healthy disorientation and allows the components to at first be seen in terms of colour and then for what they are. Goldsworthy’s famous ‘hole’ series is an example of this fascination with colour; he was enthralled by the energy created by the contrast of the dark hole with the material/s that surrounded it. The use of the hole brought up the aesthetic complication of how to create a circular shape that was round enough to be visually satisfying but not so perfect in its roundness that it came across as artificial.

He wants everything to be as real and genuine as possible: “When I began working outside, I had to establish instincts and feelings for nature…I needed a physical link before a personal approach and relationship could be formed. I splashed in water, covered myself in mud went barefoot and woke with the dawn.” He said. Often, such ritualistic processes established Goldsworthy’s connection to the land. He attempts not to infringe on ancient traditions of nature art but his understanding of the temporary character of the environment, his reverence for all things natural and his ritualistic processes could be likened to Tibetan and Indigenous art making customs.
Often Goldsworthy has claimed that his work is about the investigation of nature and many of his simplistic shapes are symbolic of this study and his understanding of the interconnectedness of living things. His spirals he says are like interstellar gasses, eddies in the air and water or tornados and whirlpools. His triangles resemble the pattern left by a duck swimming through water and his serpentine twists are like the movement of a crow through the sky. He was also involved others in his ritual processes “I made a leaf box…and it became a kind of ritual to bring this box out from behind the holly bush (I keep it in the holly bush) and everybody touches it and passes it around. A soon as they touch it they understand”

Through his art we see his reverence for the beauty of nature and his spiritual connection to it as discussed above, his powerful sense of place and connection to place and his superior knowledge of the ephemeral, metamorphosing and cyclic quality of nature “You approach the most beautiful point, the point of greatest tension, as you move towards daybreak: the sunlight which will bring the work to life will also gradually cause it to fall apart.” We must also appreciate, on a more superficial level, the influence of the environmental movement on his philosophic stance causing him to challenge people through his artistic practice to see the value of nature before it was too late.



In the Conceptual frame we see how traditional audiences responded more positively to Goldsworthy than to many other contemporary instillation artists. This is because Goldsworthy’s art varies somewhat from that of his fellow contemporary instillation artists. To begin with his themes (the beauty of nature, environmental preservation etc), are contemporary but also ancient and universal. As apposed to depicting a set of Post Modern values his artwork covered a much larger area of art and did not reject the aesthetic qualities. His art is not challenging conceptually or visually, it is not controversial in the way that its post modern counterparts are, it presents only the ‘good’ side of life (there is no naked bodies, blood or violence) and it conforms to the traditional idea of the artist as a genius and the art as fine art which takes hours of practice and work. The art is approachable to a traditional audience because of its size, its simplicity, its eminence and the fact that it is aesthetically really pleasing.

Nevertheless it does not, by any small measure lack substance. Behind it lies a strong moral stance especially on the issue of the environment. The environmental movement was a force to be reckoning in the 1960s and throughout the 1970s; people began rigorously questioning the irreversible damage being done to nature in the name of development. Environmental activism grew next to strong resistance to war, racism gender inequality and other injustices and was promoted by Post-Marxist theories that encouraged individuals to question the right of governments and other huge bodies to make decisions that effected society and the earth as a whole. Since the late 1970s, Goldsworthy has been making site-specific work in nature that looks at the beauty and fragility of the natural world. His art demonstrates an understanding of the ephemeral character environment and is quietly beautiful reflecting the landscape in which it is set. An audience viewing this work cannot help but resign themselves to the delicate exquisiteness of the environment and are provoked to look at it afresh.



We ask of Goldsworthy’s what role of the Post Modern frame plays in it. Immediately it does not seem to actively challenge any mainstream ideas especially of that time when it was comparatively free for all as far as art was concerned. However if we look closer we see the exposed ironies, inconsistencies, hidden assumptions and power relations in the art.

Firstly we can classify Goldsworthy’s work as truly ‘landscape’ because it uses the elements of the land and sets itself in the land and are therefore able approach it as an appropriation of the landscape genre and a challenge to the landscape traditions. We can now compare his work with the ‘landscape masters’ like Turner, whose romantic renditions of various typical English settings were, and are still, very popular. Turner was a landscape artists praised as a genius for depictions of seaside scenes or boats on horizons, similarly Goldsworthy is a landscape artist praised as a genius for his landscape work. All the same there are a couple of fundamental differences: namely the fact that Turner’s art is a representation or an allusion to the original scene and Goldsworthy’s is a presentation of it. It’s a matter of image versus object.

The second difference is that Goldsworthy’s art is not a commodity and is not meant to be exhibited as a precious art object in the sense that it can be hung in a gallery or museum. It is impermanent and works as a result of its context, in its natural setting. Because it cannot be sold as a commodity it is therefore not fine art in its traditional form. Many Post Modern artists tried to create art that was unsaleable so as to avoid having the true value of their art overridden by the commercial value. This effects his art making practice greatly because it means that the process no longer involves worrying about what the buyer wants or in this case even having to get it to the buyer
Now the focus can be completely on the beauty which arrises from the transience of his work, on what Goldsworthy himself wants to create and the meaning he wants his works to carry.

In conclusion this case study on the physical nature of the processes and outcomes and values of Andy Goldsworthy, a ‘Post Modern’ artist, gives us a small insight into what it is to be an artist of such magnitude in the Post Modern movement and through examining his art in terms of the artist’s practice and analysing it in the Conceptual and Post Modern frames we gain a more thorough understanding of what makes his work in particular so unique yet widely loved.
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