Land artists often practice a kind of landscape scarification. Take Michael Heizer’s deep gouges in the Nevada desert and James Turrell’s preternaturally manicured craters. Or consider the abandoned construction site aesthetic of Holt’s Sun Tunnels or Christo and Jean-Claude’s Wrapped Coast. These are less site specific installations than sculptures which happen to be site in a desert or along a coastline. At best the landscape is a pretty backdrop, and at worst it is ignored or disre...
