Abstract

Environmental art has developed tangentially to the growth of the influence of Oriental philosophical ideas on American society. These two paths met and cross fertilized a new and vital art form. ;This study explains a change in attitude towards form, by artists interested in transforming space into an experience. The dissertation analyzes the development of environmental art and the affect that Eastern philosophical ideas have had on this contemporary art form. Artists and writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Ernest Fenollosa, A. W. Dow, Mark Tobey, Ad Reinhardt, Herbert Bayer, Herbert Ferber, John Cage, Isamu Noguchi, Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, Carl Andre and Richard Serra are an important part of this study. They set the stage for the Environmental artists of 1966-1985 who are the main focus of this dissertation. These contemporary artists, Walter DeMaria, Patricia Johanson, Richard Long, David Nash, Michael Singer and James Turrell, searched for a new modus vivendi, and were drawn to Zen and other popularized or Westernized versions of Eastern cultural traditions. They are six of the artists during this period who melded Eastern philosophy into a format relevant to the artist in contemporary Anglo-American society. When these Eastern cultures were transplanted into Western art, traditions of the Western culture were retained; there is a limit to the transplant that occurs. But studying, reading, looking, even misunderstandings or misperceptions, brought these artists to a juncture where cross-cultural transplantation occurred and fresh cultural values erupted. These artists sought to make the different traditions of the world their own. They digested so completely what they have seen, heard or read and translated it so creatively that it is sometimes difficult to trace specific sources of influence on their work. However, the artists' exposure to this preponderance of the Far East is undeniable although not always specifically identifiable. The critical question examined in this study is whether those initially foreign ideas have become decisive in the artists' work and form a cohesive unit