Land Art: Natural expressions

In 1968, the American artist Robert Smithson published an essay called The Sedimentation of the Mind. In it, he claimed that we think geologically, our memories accruing like chalk, then eroding away. This seems an odd spark for revolution, but that's what it turned out to be. American artists equated the Vietnam War with capitalism and capitalism with the art market. What was needed was a new kind of work, one that couldn't be sold in galleries: an art that was made of, well, volcanoes, say, or lightning. And so Land Art was born.

Land Art's mythology rests on the fact that Land Artists don't like people. Michael Heizer, one of its fiercest exponents, has been making a vast earthwork called City somewhere in the Nevada desert for 35 years now. Heizer won't say where City is. The idea of art big enough to be visible from the stratosphere, but so perversely remote as to be invisible from Earth, has filled me with a burning need to see it. And so I find myself driving west on Highway 60 to Quemado, New Mexico, in a Hertz 4WD bigger than my flat.

To call Quemado remote is to speak only the truth. Not remote enough for Walter De Maria, though, who built his Lightning Field on an abandoned ranch an unstated number of miles out of town in an unspecified direction. You are driven there by a leathery cowboy called, delightfully, Robert Weather. Robert has a handshake like a wrench, a laconic laugh and helped to build The Lightning Field back in 1977.

Part of The Lightning Field's point is that it takes a long time to get to and you have to spend a night there when you do. As De Maria pointed out, most people give Michelangelo's David 10 minutes. The Lightning Field gets 24 hours, and it deserves it.

The statistics alone are astonishing: 400 stainless steel rods, each 20ft high, standing on a patch of desert a mile long by a half-mile wide. The rods' 220ft spacings are correct to within 1/25th of an inch: if you lowered a vast pane of glass on to them, all their points would touch it exactly. The Lightning Field's log cabin holds six: the four of us here today settle on its stoop to watch the sun go down. The rods glow, turn black, become transparent, move about; the wind whispers through them, jackrabbits scuttle. There's no lightning, but then there rarely is and anyway De Maria says it isn't really part of the work. The Lightning Field is a wonder of potential.

Faintly stunned the next morning - coyotes wake you at 5.30 - I head for Overton, Nevada, and Heizer's Double Negative. Overton is 700 miles away. I stop at the Daily Pie Café in Pie Town for the best piece of, well, pie I've ever eaten, then at the wonderful La Posada in Winslow, Arizona. La Posada's rooms are named after stars who stayed at the once-grand railway hotel. I get Jackie Gleason: maybe it's the pie. Nearby, James Turrell is making the world's biggest Land Artwork in an extinct volcano called the Roden Crater; but it isn't visitable yet, so I drive on to Nevada and the Mormon Mesa.

Ever driven up a mesa? My advice is (1) don't, unless you have to; and (2) then only in a 4WD car with a good milometer. The track up is so scary that I begin to take against Heizer - what's wrong with galleries, anyway? - and the top isn't much better. Instructions for finding Double Negative say things like "continue 0.41 miles along gravel outcrop to third mesquite bush on left". I begin to despair when, suddenly, I see a man-made nick in the mesa's edge and, facing it, another.

What is Double Negative? Among other things, it's the world's biggest play on words: a split trench, 50ft deep and 1,500ft long whose making in 1969-70 required the removal of 250,000 tons of rock. All this to muse on a question that has taxed sculptors since Phidias: can you make art by subtracting rather than by adding? You stand on the mesa's edge and marvel at Heizer's sheer bloody-mindedness, but at something else as well. In its short 37 years of life, the work has begun to crumble. Heizer's trench isn't doubly negative, but trebly.

Did he know his work would self-destruct? Robert Smithson certainly didn't mean his masterpiece to disappear, but it went anyway, as did Smithson: killed in a plane crash in 1973. Spiral Jetty's sinking into the Great Salt Lake, compounded by its re-emergence 25 years later, has made it the ultimate Land Art myth. When Smithson built the 1,500ft squiggle of boulders in 1970, the lake was unusually low. By the time he died, Spiral Jetty had gone. Recent droughts have made it visible again, although the lake is slowly filling up and the jetty is sinking once more.

This lends a certain urgency to seeing it, and I steer grimly over ruts and boulders. Eventually I give up and continue on foot. Which, maybe, is how you should approach Spiral Jetty. Smithson clearly meant visiting it to be a kind of pilgrimage, and North Utah feels like one of the less cheery bits of the Old Testament. I walk and walk and then there it is: no longer black basalt as Smithson left it but crusted in glistening salt, the water at the spiral's centre red with algae bloom. I clamber down to the shore and out along the jetty. And for the first time in 20 years, I long for a cigarette.

Land art in the US

1. The Lightning Field

Despite its name, Walter De Maria's New Mexican masterpiece is more about the values of classical sculpture than it is about messing around with thunderbolts. Don't expect lightning on demand. Visitors have to spend the night in a log cabin, like the one in 'Little House on the Prairie'. A visit costs from $150 to $250 (£83-£138), depending on the time of year, and you need to book well in advance.

CONTACT: 001 505 898 3336; lightningfield.org

2. Double Negative

Carved into the edge of a mesa outside Overton, Nevada, Michael Heizer's split trench looks like the work of some lost civilisation. As it should - like 'The Lightning Field', it asks ancient questions about what sculpture is and how we see voids and solids. ("There's nothing there, yet it's still a sculpture," says Heizer.) You'll need a 4x4 vehicle to visit, preferably with a compass, odometer, walking boots and lots of bottled water.

CONTACT: 001 212 989 5566; diaart.org; http://double negative.tarasen.net

3. Spiral Jetty earthwork

The connoisseur's earthwork - which is a 1,500ft squiggle of boulders by Robert Smithson from the depths of the Great Salt Lake. The Utah tourist office provides tips on how to find the jetty, which is on a private ranch near Golden Spike National Historic Site, a two-hour drive from Salt Lake City. Again, you'll need a 4x4 vehicle. The 'Jetty' is sinking fast, so you'll have to hurry.

CONTACT: 001 212 989 5566; diaart.org; spiraljetty.org; utah.com

4. Roden Crater project

Light artist James Turrell has been working on this project in Arizona since 1976 but he is apparently still nowhere near the end. As a result, you can't visit the crater, but if you're between Land Artworks you can always pass by and gawp. When complete, the 'Roden Crater' will focus various kinds of celestial light into viewing niches on its rim.

CONTACT: 001 212 989 5566; diaart.org

5. Chinati Foundation

In 1979, minimalist artist Donald Judd set up his own foundation outside the half-horse Texas town of Marfa where James Dean shot 'Giant'. Built on an ex-US army artillery camp, the foundation includes works such as Judd's '15 untitled works in concrete' scattered over a patch of cactus-strewn desert, and other works by Dan Flavin in former army cabins.

CONTACT: 001 432 729 4362; chinati.org

6. City, Garden Valley

If you're willing to risk a hide full of buckshot, then the location of Michael Heizer's epic earthwork 'City' has recently been revealed on the net. It's at 38°01'48" N, 115°26'10" W - which, in plain English puts it in Garden Valley, Nevada, around 150 miles from Las Vegas. No one knows much about 'City', other than that it's even bigger than 'Roden Crater' and has taken even longer to build.

CONTACT: Nevada Tourism, 0870 523 8832; travelnevada.co.uk

7. Concrete Sun Tunnels

Robert Smithson's widow Nancy Holt made this Land Artwork in 1974, the year after her husband's fatal plane crash while overseeing one of his earthworks. Built on 40 acres of scrubland near the abandoned railway town of Lucin, Utah, the four concrete 'Sun Tunnels' come into their own at the solstices on 21 June and 21 December. Then, the sun is framed exactly at their centre, though Holt's work is well worth a visit at any time of the year.

CONTACT: Utah Tourism, 08456 020 574; utah.travel

8. Star Axis observatory

Like Turrell's volcano, Charles Ross's 'Star Axis' plays on the music of the spheres. When completed, its Hour Chamber and Solar Pyramid will form what Ross calls "a vast, naked-eye observatory". Unlike the 'Roden Crater', this observatory can be viewed in its unfinished state. (Ross has been working on it since 1971.) It's on Chupinas Mesa near Santa Fe, New Mexico, and visits cost $50 (£27).

CONTACT: 001 505 473 6500; staraxis.org

9. Amarillo Ramp

The piece Robert Smithson was working on when he was killed, this gently rising curved stone berm is, as its name suggests, near Amarillo, Texas. The artist's widow, Nancy Holt, and his friend, the sculptor Richard Serra completed the work in 1974. Originally surrounded by water, it is now high and dry - in direct contrast to Smithson's sinking 'Spiral Jetty'.

CONTACT: 001 806 372 5555; robertsmithson.com

10.Mount Rushmore

No, not Land Art in the modern, conceptual sense of the term, but this South Dakota mountain - carved with the faces of four US presidents - is nonetheless undeniably magnificent. Made by the Mormon sculptor Gutzon Borglum in the 1930s, it has that same sense of American epic as all the works mentioned previously - and you don't risk your life by visiting it.

CONTACT: 001 605 574 3165; nps.gov/moru

THE COMPACT GUIDE

HOW TO GET THERE:

Charles Darwent travelled as a guest of Lastminute.com, Arizona Tourism, Nevada Tourism, Utah Tourism, New Mexico Tourism Department and Hertz. Lastminute.com (0870-443 9902) offers flights flying into Albuquerque and out of Salt Lake City from £445. Doubles at La Posada Hotel (001 928 289 4366; laposada.org) start at $89 (£50), room only. Hertz (08708 44 88 44; hertz.com) offers seven days' 4x4 hire from £216.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Arizona Office of Tourism (020-8741 7256; arizona guide.com); Nevada Tourism (0870-523 8832; travel nevada.co.uk); Utah Tourism (08456 020 574; utah .travel). New Mexico Tourism Department (001 505 476 0544; newmexico.org).

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