Form. "Land Art." Use of Space.

Photograph by Annaick Guitteny. Find more of her work here: http://www.ag-photography.co.uk/winter . A series of images from this work at a private garden in the UK are featured in "Gardens Illustrated. Issue 294, December 2020 p. 38-47."

Three things to say:

1. I take interest in "Land Art" - which we might place plant form/sculpture into the genera - as oftentimes in designing the use of land, in a landscape design, in a backyard, there is space: unneeded: outside the land manager and user's utility. Certain traditions of design make this turf grass - openness. In other ways of thinking, turf grass and lawn is wasteful. No matter our choices, the making of the land is art no matter our decisions.

2. The "Gardens Illustrated" feature refers to this work above as "Caruncho-esque" referring to Spanish landscape designer Fernando Caruncho. I enjoy studying Caruncho's work but it also frustrates me as I see many of his gardens (not all) as wasteful and unsustainable. His landscapes are monumental - there is no better word to describe them - and are of a completely different universe ideologically and economically. I imagine some of his private gardens have higher annual maintenance than all the municipal gardens of WNY and Buffalo combined.

3. At the same time, Caruncho's gardening work, unlike any other gardening work I am aware of, falls into the domain of "high art." His works are purely sculptural, at the far end of the modern gardening ideology that sees plants as mere and secular materials. He would sooner talk about Piero della Francesca or Diego Velazquez than any contemporary Landscape Architect. His creative medium and  process is in dialogue with art history, not so much gardening - although, I think it may be fair to say, he is in dialogue with garden history as much as anyone - only also,  is more drawn to "high art' than cottage forms of garden thought. 

Page from "Mirrors of Paradise: The Gardens of Fernando Caruncho." Cooper, Guy and Taylor, Gordon. The Monacelli Press, NY, 2000. p63. I selected this image as I imagine what Gardens Illustrated refers to as "Caruncho-esque." But this photograph is not representative of Caruncho's conversation with high art. In addition to this book, there is also "Reflections of Paradise: The Gardens of Fernando Caruncho" from Rizzoli Press which came out in 2020