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Art and Human Interaction with Nature

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Land art, an important branch of Earth art, is one of the predilection fields of Stacy Levy and Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist, whereas Levy is a sculptor working on ecological natural patterns and processes. They are two artists whose bodies of work are full of arrangement and placement works as well as natural involvement. Perfectly illustrating those characteristics, the art installation Riverine (Ikura) and the photograph 1981_023, respectively realized by Stacy Levy and Andy Goldsworthy, present some comparable elements. Indeed, they both reflect a juxtaposition between humans and nature by representing a clear external modification of a natural environment by humans; however, some divergences can be pointed out as well. The main one is the fact that Goldsworthy focused more on humans’ control on nature whereas Stacy Levy emphasized the nature’s dominance. Riverine (Ikura) is a short term art installation in nature realized on a floodplain by the artist Stacy Levy. This piece of art is comprised of 600 18-foot-tall bamboo stems and pink and red small plastic balls. The bamboo stems are brown and planted in the ground. Mounted on their top are one, two or three pink plastic balls, giving an illusion of tall grasses with ball-shaped pink blooms. As the wind blows and the birds fly, the “flowers” follow the choreography, juxtaposing land and water. However, an installation in nature is supposed to blend into its environment, especially when the artist is Stacy Levy, whose prior works are mostly green and respectful toward nature. Therefore, Riverine contradicts that with the use of plastic balls indicating humans’ presence in nature. Goldsworthy’1981_023 however, is a piece of art that was completed and recorded on December 22, 1980 by the artist Andy Goldsworthy. It’s a photograph picturing someone hitting water with a stick and creating a rainbow. More precisely, the photograph shows the water drops resulting from the splash, following the rainbow’s path. Approximately 8 feet away, on the riverbank, is a man. He is standing, wearing a brown jacket, a blue jean and black boots and holding the stick over his left shoulder toward his back. He is turned left and is looking at the rainbow he just created by hitting the water’s surface. However, the first downside of this piece of art would be its medium. Indeed, a photograp

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