SOILSOILSOILSOIL2199-398XCopernicus GmbHGöttingen, Germany10.5194/soil-1-543-2015Case studies of soil in artFellerC.christian.feller@ird.frLandaE. R.TolandA.WessolekG.Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), 28 rue Dr Blanchard, 30700 Uzès, FranceDepartment of Environmental Science and Technology, University of
Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USADepartment of Soil Protection, Institute for Ecology, Technische
Universität Berlin, Ernst Reuter Platz 1, 10587 Berlin, GermanyC. Feller (christian.feller@ird.fr)13August20151254355914August20149February20159June201516July2015This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/This article is available from https://soil.copernicus.org/articles/1/543/2015/soil-1-543-2015.htmlThe full text article is available as a PDF file from https://soil.copernicus.org/articles/1/543/2015/soil-1-543-2015.pdf
The material and symbolic appropriations of soil in artworks are numerous
and diverse, spanning many centuries and artistic traditions, from
prehistoric painting and ceramics to early Renaissance works in Western
literature, poetry, paintings, and sculpture, to recent developments in
film, architecture, and contemporary art. Case studies focused on painting,
installation, and film are presented with the view of encouraging further
exploration of art about, in, and with soil as a contribution to raising
soil awareness.
Introduction
Soil is a word whose meaning varies according to context. The patriotic
understanding of soil (as in the “soil of France”) and the agricultural
understanding of soil have very little in common. Even in the environmental
and geological sciences, there are often vast differences between the soil
of the geologist, the archaeologist, the geotechnical engineer, and the soil
scientist, or pedologist. In the history of soil science, numerous
definitions have been formulated, but all tend to have one or more of the
following criteria in common: the presence of, or ability to sustain, life;
the state and position of the soil as unconsolidated porous matter occupying
the topmost layer of the earth, from the surface to the parent rock below;
and the ability to demonstrate a record of physical and chemical change
(genesis) due to myriad environmental factors over time (Certini and
Ugolini, 2013).
Until now, no other planet has been identified with such a substrate
fulfilling these criteria. The Earth's soil is unique in our universe, and
yet represents a presence in daily life so common that it is taken for
granted. For the non-scientific public at large, soil is mainly the surface
on which we walk, or an obscure part of the larger landscape. Because of its
life-giving sustenance for all humans and other living beings, soils are far
too important to be studied by soil scientists alone. But we live in a world
where disciplinary boundaries define our work. Within the realm of science,
boundary crossings – or what Julie Thompson Klein (1990, p. 65) refers to as
“border disciplinarity” – are typically of the nearest-neighbor type:
i.e., biology + chemistry = biochemistry, or geology and physics =
geophysics. Extensions of soil science outside the agricultural or earth
sciences, to the arts and humanities, are far less frequent. The last
decades show, however, that the activities of the soil science community and
its traditional partners have been insufficient in protecting our soils and
landscapes. Soil degradation due to poor agricultural practice and lack of
regulation and soil loss due to sealing and urban sprawl continue to occur
at an alarming rate.
To encourage more holistic approaches to soil protection, our soil science
community must open the doors to develop new perspectives by investigating
and initiating transdisciplinary projects. Art, history, anthropology,
sociology, psychology, economics, and religious studies represent just a few
fields for expanding the scope of soil protection and raising soil
awareness. In this contribution we aim to show how artists help reveal the
interconnectivity of soil, life, and culture, and in so doing offer a
different lens for appreciating the soil.
The range of art forms and genres dealing with soil is wide and diverse,
spanning many centuries and artistic traditions, from prehistoric painting
and ceramics to early Renaissance works in Western paintings and sculpture,
to recent developments in film, architecture, and contemporary art (Landa and
Feller, 2010; Toland and Wessolek, 2010, 2014). With the emergence of
environmental awareness and activism during the second part of 20th
century, especially since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992,
individual artists all around the world began to include soil (and not
simply the landscape in general) as a subject of artistic inquiry.
Environmental art, ecological art, and Land Art are some of the more well-known genres that took up issues of land use, soil ecology, and agricultural
change in the latter half of the 20th century.
Following Wessolek's (2002) personal vision “to encourage a new art style,
named Soil Art”, we have assembled a set of case studies that we feel expose the
possibilities of this vision. For our purposes of case selection, we will
define soil art as “artistic work about, in, or with soil or soil
protection issues, that is produced by artists in a multitude of genres and
media, to be understood, among other things, as artwork that may contribute
to wider environmental and soil protection and awareness-raising
discourses” (adapted from Toland and Wessolek, 2010). This definition does
not presume the recognition of a new art genre but rather narrows our field
of inquiry and opens the door for future discussion.
Since the scope of artistic activity with and about soil is so large and
diverse, it will be impossible to give examples of all artistic forms and
genres in a single article. Rather than attempt a comprehensive overview, we
will offer selected examples, from Renaissance paintings to contemporary
installation works, to feature films, which reflect our observations as soil
scientists with focused interests in art:
Sect. 2 (painting) by C. Feller, with additions by A. Toland
and G. Wessolek;
Sect. 3 (installation) by A. Toland and G. Wessolek;
Sect. 4 (film) by E. R. Landa.
PaintingRoots, resurrection, and rural life – examples from the Renaissance
Examples of soil in paintings are numerous and date to antiquity. On the one
hand, there is soil as the medium itself; soils have been used as a material for art
as pigments (since the prehistoric wall paintings in caves) (Ugolini, 2010),
and more recently in contemporary paintings to give special effects to the
subject (Van Breemen, 2010). On the other hand, soil has been represented in
paintings and mosaics in the form of lines or surfaces as an element of the
landscape. In some cases, it was a schematic representation, as if the
artist appeared to have consciously failed to observe the soil (Feller et
al., 2010), as in Venus Standing in a Landscape (see
http://www.louvre.fr/oeuvre-notices/venus-debout-dans-un-paysage).
But in other cases, the depiction of the soil (as a surface or a soil
profile in the paintings) is remarkable, even when the focus is on another
subject. Feller et al. (2010) distinguish three motifs of soil profile
representation in paintings from the Renaissance:
Visualization of the soil profile for the resurrection of the dead
In The Last Judgment by Rogier Van der Weyden (1432) (Fig. 1), the resurrection of the
dead required the artist to show the soil profile. The complete painting
exhibits numerous soil profiles. Details of the emergence of men and women
from soil profiles (lower part of the painting) are so true to reality that
they might have been painted by a pedologist.
Visualization of the soil profile for displaying plant roots
In several Renaissance paintings, the representation of a ditch or a soil
cut in a painting served very often as an opportunity to picture roots. In
St. John the Baptist by Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516), the figure of St. John leans towards a
sharp vertical exposure of soil that includes a strange large root:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John_
the_Baptist_in_
the_Wilderness).
A large root also appears in The Tempest, painted by Giorgione (1477/78–1510)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest_(Giorgione)).
These works are just two examples of paintings in which large, forked roots
were made evident. The representation of roots was not due to chance, but
was chosen for its symbolic value. The root presented in detail in the
foreground of the St. John the Baptist painted by Bosch is most likely the mandragora root, as
suggested by Marjnissen and Ruyffelaere (1987). The mandragora root is
thick, hairy and forked, and in a humanoid form. The roots of the
Mandragora genus (mandrake) were extensively used by alchemists and in magic rituals
based on their psychotropic properties (see Feller et al., 2010, p. 12,
Fig. 1.6).
To view images of mandragora, (1) go to
http://mandragore.bnf.fr/jsp/rechercheExperte.jsp; (2) click on
“Département des Manuscrits (occidentaux)”; (3) at “Cote”, enter
“français 12322”; (4) click on “Les images numérisées”; (5) at
“Folio” box, enter “180v”; (6) hit “Chercher”, then click on the individual
images to view.
The mandrake was also a religious symbol for Christians, for whom it was
linked to Genesis and aspects of Christ's life (for further details, see
Feller et al., 2010).
Visualization of the soil profile to depict rural life and agricultural practices
In the 14th and 15th centuries artists also turned their gaze
towards the soil in their depiction of agricultural practices. In the
Très Riches Heures,
The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry,
or Très Riches Heures, is the most famous example of French Gothic manuscript
illumination. It is a book of hours: a collection of prayers to be said at
the canonical hours. It was created between ca. 1412 and 1416 for the Duke
of Berry by the Limbourg brothers. The “calendar” images are vivid
representations of peasants performing agricultural work.
for
example, we see representations of specific agricultural tasks and toils.
Here, the soil is depicted with a clear concern of realism and technical
specificity, including the tilling of the soil. Herein is an early artistic
and technical representation of what agronomists and pedologists describe as
an agricultural profile. In addition to this example, Peter Brueghel the
Elder (1525/30–1569) might also be cited for The Fall of Icarus (Fig. 2). Icarus is the
tiny figure at the bottom in the right-hand corner, with only his legs
visible as he descends into the sea, while in forefront of the canvas,
attention is centered on the good Flemish ploughman tilling furrows. That
was the triumph of daily working life over Utopia (“falling from the
sky”). Besides the ploughman serving as a reference for agriculture,
Brueghel the Elder did not fail to symbolize other of the world's riches –
animal husbandry in the form of the sheepherder leaning on his staff, and
the wealth of the sea shown in the form of a busy fisherman. It should be
also noticed that forked roots are included in the agricultural profile –
perhaps meant to be mandrake.
Abstraction, experience, and inspiration – examples from the 20th
century
Our next two examples stem from two very different and opposed artistic
traditions of the 20th century: European abstract painting and American
regionalism, which favored realistic representation over abstraction.
Grant Wood (USA)
Art critics such as John Arthur (2000) and Lauren Della Monica (2013) have
described realism in landscape painting as an ongoing tradition in American
art, suggesting that our understandings and relationships with the land are
embedded in the American cultural experience, as depicted by 19th
century painters such as Frederic Church and Winslow Homer, and later by,
for example, Georgia O'Keefe and Alex Katz. One of the most well-known
proponents of American landscape painting was Grant DeVolson Wood
(1891–1942). He is best known for his paintings depicting the rural
American Midwest, particularly the painting American Gothic, an iconic image of the
20th century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Wood).
Arbor Day (1932) is well known to soil scientists around the world (see
http://www.wikiart.org/en/grant-wood/arbor-day-1932).
Arbor Day (from the Latin arbor, meaning tree) is a holiday in which individuals and
groups are encouraged to plant and care for trees. Years before the creation
of the first World Soil Day on 5 December 2012, the first Arbor Day,
held in the state of Nebraska on 10 April 1872, could also be seen as a
day to celebrate the soil. While the founder of Arbor Day, J. Sterling
Morton, went on to become the Secretary of Agriculture of the United States
(1893–1897), the connection between this American traditional and its
agricultural context is evident in Grant Wood's painting, as the
schematization of soil horizons is equally as prominent as the planting of
the tree. This contrast between the title and the obvious attention to the
soilscape below the main subject (the tree planting) is interesting to
consider. It reminds one of the Brueghel painting The Fall of Icarus, discussed above, where
the main subject was not Icarus, who is quite invisible, but rather a
Flemish ploughman tilling the soil. In both examples, the soil and its
horizons provide for a richer visual narrative that links cultural tradition
and working practices to the soil below.
Jean Dubuffet (France)
While painters of genres past used their medium to document specific land
formations and land use practices (Van Breemen, 2010; Zika, 2001; Feller et
al., 2010), painters of the European Abstract tradition used soil materials
more abstractly to explore the physical qualities of a given place rather
than to realistically represent it. This turn towards abstract painting must
be understood as a backlash against established norms of visual expression
dominant in the 19th century salons. With regard to the soil, the
Texturology series of works by the French modernist painter Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)
is perhaps the most famous example of what art historian Grant Kester (2011) has described as the “turn towards abstraction”. At the height of
action painting and abstract expressionism most notably characterized by
artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Dubuffet began using
a plastering technique called the “Tyrolean” method in the early 1950s to
create large-format paintings celebrating the complexity of the soil (Alley,
1981).
Dubuffet discovered he could do splendid paintings using the soil from his
garden (Fig. 3). About his series Topographies or Texturologies or Materiologies, he wrote (15 April 1958) to his
friend Henri Matisse (Dubuffet, Catalogue Gianadda, 1993, p. 104):
J'entends par là une nouvelle série de `tableaux
d'assemblages' représentant des morceaux de sols.
(I mean by that a new series of paintings representing an assemblage of pieces of soils.)
While other painters before 1970 used soil as a material or represented soil
as a background feature, it was rare for soil to be central and presented in
and of itself, as with the work of Jean Dubuffet. Between 1950 and 1960,
Dubuffet's paintings even carried “pedological” titles, such as the following:
Terre mon biscuit (Earth, my biscuit). April 1953.
Terre orange aux trois hommes (Orange earth with three men). May 1953.
Histologie du sol (Histology of soil). October 1957.
Série Texturologie (Texturology series). 1957–1958.
Mécanique du sol Texturologie (Mechanics of soil texturology). December 1958.
Topographie honneur au sol (Topography in honor of soil). December 1958.
Terre mère (Mother Earth). December 1959–May 1960.
In addition to works by Joseph Beuys, Hans Haacke, and Herman Prigann,
Anselm Kiefer (1945–) is one of the most prominent German artists of
21st century to directly use and depict the soil as an artistic
expression of political critique. Until recent years, Kiefer lived for part
of the year in Barjac in the south of France (Gard) in a vast domain of
“garrigue” (a type of low, soft-leaved scrubland in the Mediterranean
woodlands) that he transformed into a huge work of art: a concrete
architectural landscape with buildings and towers in ruins, a cathedral of
soil and concrete, and a network of tunnels that evokes the landscape in the
scale of giant earthworm galleries giving access to small houses as art
chapels showing very large paintings or other art works. These cultivated
landscapes have been created with mixed materials including soil, but also
with reinforced concrete, as in the 2004 giant art work Von den Verlorenen gerührt, die der Glaube nicht trug, erwachen die Trommeln im Fluss at the Art Gallery
of New South Wales (Sydney,
Australia) (http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/new-contemporary-galleries/featured-artists-and-works/anselm-kiefer).
It seems that this artist has developed a special relationship with soil: in
architecture, with digging the soil in the manner of an earthworm; in
painting, with the representation of soil landscape. Some of these paintings
(as in many others by Kiefer in various museum and private collections
around the world) show cultivated fields which could have caught on fire
– a vision of devastation. It looks dry and bare, but some of these
paintings exhibit a glimmer of hope as Aperiatur Terra et Germinet Salvatorem (Let the earth be opened and send
forth a savior) (2005–2006). The painting was done with oil, acrylic,
emulsion, shellac, and clay on canvas with colored flowers gathered at the
bottom evocating the new birth of life (Fig. 4).
Teaching the soil – a place for painting in the soil science
curricula
One of the main objectives of teaching soil science is to convey the concept
of a three-dimensional, organized natural body – the pedosphere. Soil is
organized into different layers named “horizons”, and the whole of the
horizons is the “soil profile” (Fig. 5), with a thickness from some
centimeters to more than 10 m.
Soil profiles and associated vegetation represented as
paintings in Walter Kubiena's textbook (1953) Bestimmungsbuch und Systematik der Böden Europas
(The Soils of Europe)
It means that soil is not only “earth” but a “natural body” dependent
upon different factors, such as climate, topography, geology, biology
(including human activities), and time. Hence, earth as a material (and
Earth as a planet) must not be equated with soil as an organized natural
body. This vision of the soil is attributed to the Russian scientist
Vasillii Dokuchaev, who suggested in his 1883 thesis The Russian Chernozem that the soil be
considered the fourth natural kingdom of nature, equivalent to the
mineral, animal, and vegetable kingdoms.
Every soil scientist knows how students are astonished and fascinated when
they discover the soil profile (Hartemink et al., 2014). A new world appears
for them with this organization of multi-colored horizons – a world filled
with living creatures. For some, the first time seeing a soil profile can be
an emotional experience. As Hartemink (2014) noted at the 20th World
Congress of Soil Science, “The soil profile speaks to us. …The
soil profile tells us stories”. Nowadays, in modern soil textbooks, soil
profiles are shown and described with photographs. But the early scientific
depictions of soil in paintings dated from the beginning of the 20th
century, either as splendid illustrations in textbooks on soil or prepared
for educational exhibitions in lecture halls, generally as canvases
representing different types of soil (Fig. 6).
Unknown artist. Paintings of soil profiles used by A. Demolon and
colleagues for their lectures in Paris (in the 1940s).
Left: “Vertisol” from the Centre region (Clermont-Ferrand, France); right:
“Luvisol” from the Île-de-France region (Versailles, France) (private
collection).
The two oil canvases (60×100 cm) shown in Fig. 6 represent soil profiles.
These canvases were published as illustrations in the soil science textbook
of Demolon (1952, p. 86) and were anonymously displayed in the 1940s for a
soil science course. In an art exhibition on “the Earth” (2005, Uzès,
France), C. Feller presented these paintings, without any technical
explanation. The visitors generally found these canvases splendid, and asked
if they were painted by an artist.
Soil scientists who have written about historical farming practices, land
use, and soil geomorphologic processes have often referenced paintings such
as those discussed in this chapter, as well as others by Jacob and Salomon
van Ruysdael, Paul Gauguin, Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Brueghel the Elder, and
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, in their communications (Feller et al., 2010;
Hartemink, 2009; Jenny, 1968). They use artistic examples to make the story
of the soil profile come alive.
Other soil scientists – for example Gerd Wessolek and Alexandra Toland
(Technische Universität Berlin), Ken van Rees (University of
Saskatchewan), and Jay Stratton Noller (Oregon State University), and Folkert
Van Oort and Bénédicte and Louis-Marie Bresson (INRA, France) – go
beyond showing famous case studies of paintings to include artistic
techniques and artistic collaborations in their teaching practices. A
transdisciplinary confluence of soil science and art is achieved by
including soil science students in artistic activities, and inviting artists
to participate in soil science research and teaching endeavors.
Paintings by soil scientists are a way of presenting soil scientific
concepts in a visual way. Figure 7 explores formal aesthetic features (color,
texture, structure, composition of horizons) to describe soil properties.
Such aesthetic features are often used in field descriptions for soil
mapping but are not referred to as such. Capturing the profile in a painting
is an exercise in aesthetic observation and documentation that allows the
field scientist or student to capture subtle details not possible in
tabular, written form.
G. Wessolek. Soil Aesthetics Criteria. 2007. (Courtesy of the
artist.)
Painting techniques are also often used in soil awareness-raising
activities, such as the “Painting with the colours of the earth” program with Irena Racek in Austria (Szlezak,
2009), the soil painting program at the Museu de Ciências da Terra
Alexis Dorofeef (Earth Science Museum) in Brazil (Muggler, 2013), or the
soil painting exercises with Marcela Moraga at the Global Soil Week in 2015.
Beginning with Wessolek's international “art and soil” calendar in 2004,
the calendar has become a popular format for displaying soils from an
aesthetic perspective. Since that time, several soil science societies have
developed similar calendars as an effort to raise soil awareness. These
examples aim to encourage a direct physical, personal, and aesthetic
experience with materials otherwise rarely seen.
Installation
Installation art provides artists with unlimited media and tools with which
to explore the soil as social, ecological, and political subject. This is
not to say that more traditional forms such as painting and sculpture are
not sufficient to capture the complexity of the soil, but that installation
introduces dimensions of time, space, and sensory experience beyond
traditional fields of vision. “By inviting the viewer literally to enter
into the work of art, and by appealing not only to the sense of sight but
also, on occasion, to those of hearing and smell, such works demand the
spectator's active engagement” (Grove Art Online, 2009). Rosenthal (2003)
categorized installation art into two main groups – filled-space
installation, and site-specific installation, to which many examples of land
art and public outdoor interventions with soil belong. We will focus on the
“filled-space” type of installation art here, and differentiate between
two directions: (i) installation as an immersive spatial experience that relies
heavily on architectural design, and (ii) installation as
Gesamtkunstwerk,
The term Gesamtkunstwerk was first introduced by the
philosopher Karl Friedrich Eusebius Trahndorff in an essay from 1827 and
later popularized by Richard Wagner to describe the use of multiple art
forms in his operas. Although the term has been hotly debated by art history
scholars regarding works from the Modernist period to the neo-avant-garde
movements of the 1960s, it may be used to interpret installation art as a
work of art consisting of many related parts.
or an assemblage of
multiple forms that symbolically, materially, or thematically relate to one
another concerning the values and functions of soil in society.
Immersive experience Walter de Maria (USA) and Urs Fischer (Switzerland)
To begin with the first type of installation, installation as immersive
experience, we can think about the soil in terms of its unique spatial
qualities. On the one hand, soil is solid ground – a dense, stable,
immobile field upon which to walk, stand, and build. On the other hand, soil
is a porous zone in perpetual flux – a complex labyrinth of moist pore
spaces and crevices churning with microscopic life. Regarding the first
vision of the soil, we can cite two well-known examples from New York City:
Walter de Maria's New York Earth Room (1977, Fig. 8) and Urs Fischer's You (2007, Fig. 9). For
the New York Earth Room, the pioneering land artist, Walter de Maria, filled an entire
Manhattan loft with soil from a Pennsylvania farm, only to be viewed (and
smelled) through a small doorway blocked off by a Plexiglas window. The
installation of earth materials completely occupies the viewers' experience,
bringing the physical, visual awe of land art into a familiar, indoor,
architectural space.
By filling a loft space in Manhattan with earth, De Maria makes a
theatrical use of space. It is the space itself, which is being shown,
transformed by both the quantity and nature of the material. …A
sense of exclusion is experienced by the viewer, as the space occupied by
the work cannot be entered (Kastner and Wallis, 1998).
Thirty years later and only ten blocks away, Swiss artist Urs Fischer
“installed” a formal antithesis of de Maria's Earth Room by excavating rather than
depositing about the same amount of earth from the depths of Gavin Brown's
gallery floor and inviting the viewer to actually enter into the work of art
at his or her own risk.
Here too, the viewer is overwhelmed by the earth materials that challenge
the architecture of the exhibition space. The solid ground necessary for any
architectural venture gives way to a new and somewhat ungrounding spatial
experience. In Earth Room and You, typical conceptions of earth materials, such as
ploughed fields or excavated pits for construction work, are brought indoors
to disrupt the viewers' normal relationship to the materials and the space
they occupy, calling for deeper contemplation of and confrontation with
both.
Philip Beesley (Canada)
Another example of immersive installation soil art explores the more porous,
labyrinthine qualities of the soil as a spatial entity without actually moving
a grain. An ongoing research project by architects Philip Beesley, Rachel
Armstrong, Hayley Isaacs, Eric Bury, and Jonathan Tyrell, Hylozoic Soil (Fig. 10) is an
interactive environment of tiny sensors, “groves of frond-like `breathing'
pores, tongues and thickets of twitching whiskers” and other mechanized
components that make up what Beesley envisions as a prototypical model of
“immersive architecture and synthetic ecology” (Beesley and Armstrong,
2011). With far more potential than the massive, inert, singly functioning
building material it is commonly considered, the soil is seen as a
responsive framework for myriad encounters and a physical template for
social and biological evolution. Where de Maria and Fischer challenge the
viewer's experience of architecture by installing soil within the familiar
framework of walls and floors in Earth Room and You, Beesley and his partners challenge
the very idea of architecture by redefining that framework of walls and
floors as a system of reactive pore spaces that imitate the soil.
Walter de Maria. New York Earth Room. 1977. Long-term installation at 141
Wooster Street, New York City. Photo: John Cliett. Courtesy of Dia Art
Foundation, New York.
Hylozoism refers to the Greek philosophy that life may be found in all matter.
Hylozoic Soil is a multisensory kinetic installation that uses the sculptural metaphor
of fertile soil to bring architecture – usually inert – to life. It
simultaneously references the microbial aesthetics of mycorrhizal
plant–root–fungi interdependence and the metaphysics of Graham
Cairns-Smith's controversial clay-life hypothesis.
In his
controversial book, Seven Clues to the Origin of Life, Cairns-Smith (1985) proposed that clays were a proto-organic vehicle or template for
biological replication.
Like the hyper-reactivity of clay particles, the
delicately responsive structures of Hylozoic Soil are predetermined to evolve and change
based on human (or other biological) presence. A meshed network of movement
sensors, air filters, and flasks filled with ferrofluids sends feedback
signals of light and rippling movement triggered by the smallest presence of
otherness within the system (Beesley and Armstrong, 2011). It is this
juxtapositioning of life as container and as contained that creates tension
in Beesley's work.
As an installation, or architectural prototype, Hylozoic Soil succeeds in momentarily
transporting human experience to the scale of a springtail, reminiscent of
multimedia exhibits that magnify the soil microcosm in natural history
museums and soil educational exhibitions.
See, for example, soil
pore-space-scale models at the Dig It! The Secrets of the Soil exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's
National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC; the Unter Welten exhibit at the
Museum am Schölerberg in Osnabrück, Germany; and the Unter Unseren Füßen exhibit of the
Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Görlitz, Germany.
But Beesley
and his partners have created more than an installation to contemplate the
complexity of the soil. They use the concept of the living soil to challenge
accepted notions of architecture by focusing on the fantastic universe of
soil pore systems – the spaces in between – rather than the predictable
boundaries of cubes and spheres that separate life (via traditional
architectural structures) from the wilderness beyond. Beesley remarks:
In opposition to design principles of the past century that favored
optimal equations where maximum volume might be enclosed by the minimum
possible surface, the structures in Hylozoic Ground prefer diffuse, deeply
reticulated skins (Beesley and Armstrong, 2011).
If we think about the immense surface area of a soil, with pore spaces
matching aggregates, and sand, silt and clay fractions evenly distributed to
allow for optimized flow of water, air, nutrients, and biota, we approach a
new vision of architecture where no space is empty and no structure is
stationary. A handful of loam becomes the ultimate installation and
architectural template for life itself.
GesamtkunstwerkClaire Pentecost (USA)
As a term that gained currency in the 1960s to describe a “construction or
assemblage conceived for a specific interior, often for a temporary period,
and distinguished from more conventional sculpture as a discrete object by
its physical domination of the entire space” (Grove Art Online, 2009),
installation art has become a household name in the contemporary art world.
By its nature, installation art can reference and appropriate all other
visual art forms, cherry-picking different styles, media, and techniques to
condense meaning into three-dimensional spatial experience. Some artists and
critics have referred to installation art as a development of the concept of
Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art, as it appropriates a spectrum of different artistic
disciplines brought together into one work (de Oliveira et al., 1993).
This reading of installation art as a total work of art consisting of many
related parts is exemplified by a further example, Claire Pentecost's
acclaimed contribution to dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel, the Soil-Erg (Fig. 11).
In the rotunda of the historic Ottoneum, a theater turned hospital turned
gallery turned natural history museum, Claire Pentecost assembled a series
of drawings, sculptures, worm compost, and appropriated museum pieces that
all revolved around a central theme – the soil as post-capitalist currency
and common resource that anyone can create by learning how to compost. As
part of this well-researched Gesamtkunstwerk, Pentecost participated in
a three-month residency program at the University of Kassel's Faculty of
Organic Agricultural Sciences, offered workshops at dOCUMENTA 13 on
composting, soil health, and capitalist alternatives to land grabbing, and
developed a series of pillar-like vertical planters in and around the city
together with designer and philanthropist Ben Friton of the CanYa Love
Foundation. The installation at the Ottoneum served as the visual
centerpiece of Soil-Erg, visited by thousands of people over the course of the
summer.
Lining the walls of the Ottoneum are oversized soil coins, too big and
crumbly to fit in anyone's pockets, and 43 drawings in earth-based
pigments that reference the graphic style of banknotes. The series of
soil-erg bills features images of historic figures of sustainable
agriculture such as Rachel Carson, Wangari Maathai, and Vandana Shiva, as
well as influential ecological artists and writers such as Joseph Beuys and
Henry David Thoreau, and a cast of non-human soil workers from snails and
bees to fungal mycelium and bacteriophagic nematodes. The installation proposes a new system of value based on living soil. At the center of the
room compost made from local food waste is symbolically pressed and stacked into the shape of gold bars, representing units of a new currency – the soil-erg.
Mounted on another wall of the Ottoneum, like the ghost of an affluent
fossil fuel past, is the Richelsdorfer Mountain Cabinet from 1783, a scale
model of Hesse's geologic strata once used for teaching the fundamentals of
extraction. Next to the historical cabinet appropriated from the natural
history museum's collection, a new cabinet squirms with worm compost
produced in part by the food scraps of visiting dOCUMENTA guests, offset by
a list of current “land-grabbing” deals between sovereign countries in
Africa, Asia, and South America and multinational agribusiness
concerns.
Pentecost cites the following websites for her list of
land-grabbing info presented in the Soil-Erg installation:
http://farmlandgrab.org/ and http://oaklandinstitute.org
If we go back to the sheer gravity of Walter de Maria's Earth Room, we recognize not
only a playful approach to redefining architectural space but also an
underlying intention to free art from the commodification and value control
of the market economy – a reoccurring debate of installation art. A pile
of earth cannot be as easily auctioned as a landscape painting or ceramic
bowl. Claire Pentecost extends such ideas about the de-commodification of
art to the soil, using sculpture, drawing, writing, lecturing, collaborative
engineering, public participation, urban gardening, and composting as a
Gesamtkunstwerk to not only explore but also demand new systems of value
for the soil.
Made of soil and work, the soil-erg both is and is not an abstraction.
Symbolically, it refers to a field of value, but that value is of a special
nature: soil must be produced and maintained in a context. It is completely
impractical to circulate it. It is heavy, and, because of the loose
structure required of good soil, it falls apart. …The physical
nature of soil the soil-erg both evokes and denies the possibility of
coinage. If currency as we know it is the ultimate deterritorialization, the
soil-erg's value is inherently territorialized (Pentecost, 2012).
While human societies have long benefited from the goods and services of the
soil, including food production and medicines; materials for pigments,
ceramics, and building constructions; and materials for religious and
spiritual activities, the notion of valuing and protecting the soil on
account of its goods and services is a more recent phenomenon of the
mid-20th century. With the emergence of emissions trading and
environmental economic accounts in the early 1990s, natural functions have
become increasingly instrumentalized and institutionalized under the rubric
of ecosystems services (Gómez-Baggethun et al., 2010), which is effectively an economic
approach to understanding and valuing natural functions as “goods”. The
role of the soil is not only to provide foods and fibers; its optimal
management also considers regulation of climate, mitigation of pollution,
maintenance of biodiversity, etc. But this system of goods and services must
also be considered in the framework of ethical, spiritual, and aesthetic
dimensions. By choosing a unit of energy for the title of her installation
(erg is short for the Greek word for work, ergon, and represents the equivalent
of 10-7 joules), Pentecost places an abstract value on the soil that
challenges the restrictive vision of soil as provider of goods and services
that can be monetarily quantified for dominant market economies.
Film
In the visual arts, soil is sometimes “in your face” – it is the
foreground, the medium, the center of attention, as in the works of the
above-mentioned artists. In contrast and not unexpectedly, this is rarely
the case in Hollywood films. Nevertheless, location scouts and directors
clearly recognize that soils can form a visually striking element that adds
mood and texture to the viewing experience. Some filmmakers have recognized
the human connection to the soil and have used it in their storytelling. A
few screenwriters and filmmakers have gone even further and moved from the
typical view of soils as a static backdrop on which the action is played out
to a view of soils as a dynamic ecosystem feature.
Woman in the Dunes (1964) and Dune (1984), two films previously discussed in detail in Landa
(2010), focus on not only the dynamism of the moving sands but also on the
subsurface water of the dune as a key ecosystem feature. Soil is central to
the story of planet Arrakis in Dune, the David Lynch film based upon the 1965
novel by Frank Herbert. Indeed the “planetary ecologist” who is the hero
of the Dune saga was based upon an Oregon soil scientist (Landa, 2010). A 2013
documentary Jodorowsky's Dune, on the unsuccessful mid-1970s attempt of surrealist director
Alejandro Jodorowsky to adapt and film Herbert's novel, is reviving
interest in both the Lynch film and in Herbert as a potent force in the
environmental movement.
The natural history of the prairie and the abundance derived from the soil
is exquisitely depicted in Days of Heaven, the 1978 film by acclaimed director Terrence
Malick. Characterized by rich images and sparse dialog,
For soil
scientists, an endearing and perhaps unscripted line (33:10 to 33:26) in
Days of Heaven has a 12-year-old girl, played by Linda Manz, musing in voice-over about
her future, as she studies a clod of soil and lowers her ear to the earth:
“I could be a mud doctor…checking out the earth…underneath.”
this circa 1915 tale of life on the wheat farms of Texas
(actually filmed in Alberta and Montana) includes a brief but memorable
time-lapse photography sequence by cinematographer Ken
Middleham.
For an in-depth look at the time-lapse photography of
Ken Middleham (1927–2001), see Filming the Invisible: The Story of Ken Middleham, Cinematographer at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDElLm1hfSQ and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azIXfxqFVQo. Middleham was the natural
history cinematographer on The Secret Life of Plants (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGl4btrsiHk),
and the soundtrack to accompany his images there was composed and performed
by Stevie Wonder.
The footage (originally shot for the 1979
documentary The Secret Life of Plants; Weber, 2007) is accompanied by a soundtrack composed and
conducted by Ennio Morricone. Images of unfurling seedlings and probing
roots have a special magic for scientists and non-scientists alike – see,
for example, the 10 January 2014 cover of Science magazine showing a lateral root
emerging from the main root of a young Arabidopsis thaliana plant
(http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6167.cover-expansion).
Indeed, moving images of elongating roots seem to beg for music, a fact not
unnoticed by Auburn University plant physiologist Elizabeth (“Betty”) L.
Klepper and her US Department of Agriculture/Agricultural Research Service
colleague Morris G. Huck. Their 16 mm film, Time-lapse photography of root growth, depicting research at the
Auburn rhizotron (Fig. 12) where cotton roots in soil were observed through
glass panels while the plant tops were exposed to field conditions (Taylor
1969; Huck et al., 1970), premiered at the 11th International Botanical
Congress in Seattle in the summer of 1969.
The film opens with a classical musical soundtrack that appears to be a
re-write of Luigi Boccherini's “Celebrated Minuet”
The
Boccherini minuet has been used in the soundtrack of a considerable number
of feature films (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0090530/), including the Coen
brothers' The Ladykillers (2004).
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epJahNtJzss).
Klepper wrote the film's narration that was later recorded by a staff member
from Auburn University Television. He recommended several possible
accompanying music selections to the research team. Klepper and Huck
selected one that had a dramatic upturn in the music at a point in the
edited, final version of the film where a root growing down a pane of glass
has disappeared behind the soil and suddenly reappears (e-mail, E. L. Klepper to
E. R. Landa; 21 April 2014). The film was given new life in 1999 with its
re-release on DVD by the American Society of Agronomy/Crop Science Society
of America/Soil Science Society of America, and has been a popular
instructional video (Kirkham, 2011).
Time-lapse photography setup used by Klepper and Huck
at the Auburn rhizotron to examine root behavior behind glass panels
(courtesy of Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station). The camera support
could be moved to allow photography of any part of the visible root system.
The 1/2 in. square grid-wire mesh embedded in the glass panes
provided a measuring scale and would reduce shattering if the glass broke (from
Taylor, 1969).
The works of Klepper/Huck in the scientific sphere, and of Middleham in the
commercial film world, are early examples of the convergence of film with
the soil and plant sciences. More recently, soil scientist/geo-archaeologist
Paul Adderley (University of Stirling, Scotland) and composer Michael Young
(University of London) have collaborated on Exposure: Understanding Living in Extreme Environments
(http://www.ground-breaking.net/exposure.html),
an installation that integrates sight and sound across scales ranging from
the microscopic to the landscape scale and that depicts both the
physicality of soil and its role as a cultural archive of past civilizations
(an experimental 12 min video from the installation is available at
http://soundsrite.uws.edu.au/soundsRiteContent/volume4/YoungInfo.html).
Modern rhizotron facilities, sampling devices adapted from engineering and
medicine (including borescopes and laparoscopic samplers), and advanced,
three-dimensional tomographic imaging techniques offer new opportunities for
creative explorations at the interface of science and art, with the
potential of attracting new collaborators and audiences to soil science.
Ken Middleham's talents in micro-scale motion picture photography were also
put to use in the 1974 science fiction film Phase IV, where ants become a threat to
human civilization. Middleham provided the insect photography – which has
appropriately been described as “creating a sort of animal acting
verisimilitude that has gone unmatched on film before or since” (Gilchrist,
2012). But from a viewer's perspective of the entire film – aptly
described as “an ecological parable set within the science fiction genre”
(Bass and Kirkham, 2011, p. 257) – soil is primarily featured not in the
microphotography of ant activity but on the macro-scale, in towering
geometric obelisks made of soil. Rising from the desert floor, they are
ominous; the massive and alien occurrence of soil in these ant observation
towers and in the form of massive solar reflectors, combined with the
storyline and soundtrack, is a highly effective conveyor of threat to the
viewer. Having observed much smaller, cylindrical,
indurated-soil ant nests in Oregon (Landa, 1977), this image had particular
resonance with me – the unfamiliar soil feature in that case provoking
curiosity.
The director of Phase IV, Saul Bass (1920–1996), was a noted graphic designer whose
corporate logos (e.g., the United Airlines “flying U” and blue/red/orange
stripes) are known to all, and whose design of motion picture title
sequences and advertising posters made him a sought-after talent in
Hollywood – the directors with whom Bass worked included Otto Preminger,
Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese (who wrote the
foreword to the Bass and Kirkham book). There is a strong linear character
in many of the Bass graphics, and this signature style is reflected in the
imagining and construction of the soil pillars for the only feature film
that he directed.
Bass conceptualized and designed all of the earthen manifestations of the
ant civilization in the film – the tunnels, towers, reflectors, and the
final chamber (e-mail from J. Bass, 6 May 2014). The film critic of
London's Sunday Times picked up on the linkage of design, imagery, and mood,
calling Phase IV “a film of design, of unsentimental forces set against one another
in lines, curves, angles, shining surfaces. Beautiful, but always
threatening, mysterious, forbidding.” (Bass and Kirkham, 2011, p. 258).
Although the story is set in Arizona, the outdoor filming was done in the
Rift Valley of Kenya, and Bass had to be careful not to get a giraffe in the
shot (e-mail from J. Bass, 6 May 2014).
Bass' surreal epilogue to the film (cut by Paramount Pictures and not on the
presently available DVD) was screened for the first time in Los Angeles in
2012 (Gilchrist, 2012). Available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beLpsWaUDNk, it is a stunning summation
that is a must-see to get the unambiguous storyline and to appreciate Bass'
artistic vision in its full realization. Marketed by Paramount Pictures as a B-horror
movie, Phase IV had only a small footprint in the US, but was a hit in France (Bass
and Kirkham, 2011). Hopefully Saul Bass' pioneering work will receive
greater attention when scholars and movie buffs gather to discuss
environmental films, and future audiences will get to see the uncut version
of Phase IV.
As soil scientists, our view of soil in films is admittedly atypical. A case
in point is the 2011 film from director Lech Majewski, The Mill and the Cross. A truly unique film
inspired by a still image – Pieter Bruegel's 1564 painting The Procession to Calvary depicting
Christ carrying the cross to the crucifixion in a reimagined 16th
century Flemish setting – it has a scene in which a woman is buried alive.
The grave has box-like, vertical walls. But even more visually powerful than
the geometry are the color contrasts and the strong horizon boundaries in
the soil exposed on the pit walls:
a very dark surface which grades to a somewhat lighter brown,
then a very sharp demarcation to a thick white layer.
Captivated by the image, my first thoughts were
Was that the natural color in the soil pit? If yes, was the filming location specifically chosen for this look?
Alternatively, were some profile color effects enhanced through computer-generated imagery or other methods?
I had a series of e-mail exchanges with director Lech Majewski on these
questions (e-mails, L. Majewski to E. R. Landa: 31 December 2012; 26 February 2014).
The scene was shot near Katowice, Poland, on an old slag-deposit field. The
choice of the pit site was just chance – the look of the soil had nothing
to do with the selection of the filming location; rather, the slope was
chosen to give a good view of the monks in the same shot. The lesson for me
was clear – not all depictions of soil, even if eye-catching for a soil
scientist, are conscious acts of filmmaking. But one can dream…
Conclusions
Art is one way of communicating the complex visual, cultural, and symbolic
dimensions embodied in the soil. We have presented a set of case studies
taken from three formal artistic traditions: painting, installation, and
film. While some examples are more incidental depictions of the soil, others
are focused on environmental, social, and political questions surrounding
soil and land use. Although the examples stem from our personal interests in
the given genres, we come to the following conclusions:
Artworks focused on soils and landscapes provide a different way of appreciating
the soil and could therefore be valuable for soil conservation and soil awareness raising efforts.
Professional soil science societies should encourage interdisciplinary collaboration in areas
such as soil and art, soil and culture, soil and religion, and soil and history.
At the same time, the soil science community can offer the art world a new analytical lens to
examine soil and environmental protection issues.
Artists expand the realm of soil science research with visual, cultural, and symbolic forms of
inquiry, offering new ways of visualizing, interpreting, and interacting with soil.
In contrast to soil scientific work, artistic work is designed to touch our
emotions and provoke discussions on environmental, social, and political
change. Both science and art are necessary for raising soil awareness. Only
when the soil science community is more broadly based will soil protection
become more relevant for the public at large and for decision makers.
Acknowledgements
For Sect. 4, thanks to Jennifer Bass, Stephen Henry (University of Maryland;
Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library), Pat Kirkham (Bard Graduate Center;
Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture), Betty Klepper (USDA-ARS,
retired), Lech Majewski, and Donald Manildi (University of Maryland;
International Piano Archives) for their generous responses to
queries.Edited by: C. C. Muggler
References
Alley, R.: Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other
than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby
Parke-Bernet, London, 1981.Arthur, J.: Green Woods and Crystal Waters: The American Landscape
Tradition, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, 2000.Bass, J. and Kirkham, P.: Saul Bass: A life in film & design,
Laurence King Publishing, London, 2011.Beesley, P. and Armstrong, R.: Soil and Protoplasm, The Hylozoic Ground
Project, Architectural Design, 81, 78–89, 2011.Cairns-Smith, A. G.: Seven Clues to the Origin of Life, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1985.Catalogue Gianadda: Dubuffet, Exposition 4 mars – 10 juin 1993, Fondation
Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, Suisse, 238 p., 1993.Certini, G. and Ugolini, F. C.: An updated, expanded, universal definition
of soil, Geoderma, 192, 378–379, 2013.Della Monica, L.: Painted Landscapes: Contemporary Views,
Schiffer Publishing, Ltd, Atglen,
PA, 2013.Demolon, A.: Principes d'Agronomie, Tome 1. Dynamique du Sol, 5th
Edn., Dunod, Paris, 520 pp., 1952.De Oliveira, N., Oxley, N., and Petry, M.: On Installation, Art & Design
Profile, 30, 7–11, 1993.Dokuchaev, V. V.: The Russian Chernozem, in: Selected Works of V. V. Dokuchaev,
Vol. 1, 14–419. Moscow, 1948, Israel Program for Scientific Translations
Ltd. (for USDA-NSF), edited by: Monson, S., Jerusalem, 1967 (Translated from Russian
into English by N. Kander), 1883.Feller, C., Chapuis-Lardy, L., and Ugolini, F.: The representation of soil in
the Western Art: from Genesis to Pedogenesis, in: Soil and Culture, edited by:
Landa, E. R. and Feller, C., Springer, Dordrecht,
Heidelberg, London, New York, Netherlands, Chapter 1, 3–22, 488 pp. + Color Plates, 2010.Gilchrist, T.: Saul Bass' long-lost original ending for “Phase IV” unearthed
in Los Angeles, available at:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/saul-bass-phase-iv-original-ending-cinefamily-paramount-341449
(last access: 25 January 2015), 2012.Gómez-Baggethun, E., de Groot, R., Lomas, P., and Montes, C.: The
history of ecosystem services in economic theory and practice: From early
notions to markets and payment schemes, Ecological Economics, 69, 1209–1218, 2010.Grove Art Online: Grove Art Online, available at: http://www.oxfordartonline.com/public/book/oao_gao (last access: 9 September 2012), 2009.Hartemink, A. E.: The depiction of soil profiles since the late
1700s,
Catena, 79, 113–127, 2009.
Hartemink, A.: On the relation between soils and climate, oral communication (12 June 2014) at the 20th World Congress of Soil Science, Jeju,
Korea, 2014.Hartemink, A. E., Balks, M. R., Chen, Z. S., Drohan, P., Field, D.,
Krasilniko, P., Lowe, D. J., Rabenhorst, M., van Rees, K., Schad, P.,
Schipper, L. A., Sonneveld, M., and Walter, C.: The joy of teaching soil
science, Geoderma, 217–218, 1–9, 2014.Huck, M. G., Klepper, B., and Taylor, H. M.: Diurnal variations in root
diameter, Plant Physiol., 45, 529–530, 1970.
Jenny, H.: The image of soil in landscape art, old and new, in: Study Week on Organic Matter and Soil Fertility, edited by Pontificiae Academiae
Scientarium Scripta, Varia 32, North Holland Publ. Co and Wiley Interscience Division, Amsterdam, New York, 947–979, 1968.Kastner, J. and Wallis, B.: Land and Environmental Art, NY, Phaidon, 1998.
Kester, G. H.: The One and the Many – Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2011.Kirkham, M. B.: Elevated carbon dioxide: Impacts on soil and plant water
relations, Boca Raton, CRC Press, Florida, 2011.Kubiena, W. L.: Bestimmungsbuch und Systematik der Boden Europas, Ferdinand
Enke Verlag, Stuttgart, 392 pp., 1953.Landa, E. R.: An unusual ant nest morphology for the ant Formica fusca Linne in western
Oregon, Pan-Pacific Entomologist, 53, 250–252, 1977.Landa, E. R.: In a supporting role: Soil and the cinema, in: Soil and Culture,
edited by: Landa, E. R. and Feller, C., Dordrecht, Springer, 83–105, 2010.Landa, E. R. and Feller, C. (Eds): Soil and Culture, Springer, Dordrecht,
Heidelberg, London, New York, Netherlands, 488 pp. + Color Plates, 2010.Marijnissen, R. H. and Ruyffelaere, P.: Jérome Bosch, Tout l'œuvre
peint et dessiné, Fonds Mercator, Albin Michel, Paris, Anvers, 513 pp.,
1987.Muggler, C. C.: Soil paints as a tool to increase soil awareness among
different publics, Geophys. Res. Abstr., EGU2013-13986, EGU General Assembly 2013, Vienna, Austria, 2013.Pentecost, C.: Notes from the Underground. dOCUMENTA13: 100 Notes, 100
Thoughts, 61, Hatje Cantz, 2012.Rosenthal, M.: Understanding Installation Art – From Duchamp to
Holzer, Prestel, Munich, Berlin, London, New York, 2003.Szlezak, E.: Soilart – Painting with the Colours of the Earth, Project
description from the Amt der NÖ Landesregierung, Abteilung
Landentwicklung, available at: http://www.soilart.eu/1-0-Home.htm (last access: 20 December 2011), 2009.Taylor, H. M.: The rhizotron at Auburn – A plant root observatory
system,
Auburn University, Agricultural Experiment Station Circular, 171, 1969.Thompson Klein, J.: Interdisciplinarity: history, theory, and
practice,
Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI, 1990.
Toland, A. and Wessolek G.: Merging horizons – soil science and soil
art, Chapter 4, 45–66, in: Soil and
Culture, edited by: Landa, E. R. and Feller, C., Springer, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London, New York, Netherlands,
Chapter 4, 45–66, 488 pp. + Color Plates, 2010.Toland, A. and Wessolek, G.: Picturing soil: aesthetic approaches to raising
soil awareness in contemporary art, in: The Soil Underfoot. Infinite Possibilities for a
Finite Resource, edited by: Churchman, G. J. and Landa, E. R., CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, Boca Raton, USA, Chapter 7,
83–102, 421 pp. + Color Plates, 2014.Ugolini, F.: Soil colors, pigments and clays in paintings, in: Soil and
Culture, edited by: Landa, E. R. and Feller, C.,
Springer, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London, New York, Netherlands, Chapter 5, pp.
67–82, 488 pp. +
Color Plates, 2010.Van Breemen, N.: Transcendental aspects of soil in contemporary visual
arts,
in: Soil and
Culture, edited by: Landa, E. R. and Feller, C., Springer,
Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London, New York, Netherlands, Chapter 3, 37–46, 488 pp. + Color
Plates, 2010.Weber, B.: Commentary track (1:01:38–1:02:05) by Billy Weber,
Criterion Collection (2007) Days of Heaven, DVD, 2007.Wessolek, G.: Art and Soil, Newsletter of the Committee on the History,
Philosophy, and Sociology of Soil Science International Union of Soil
Science and Council on the History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Soil
Science, Soil Sci. Soc. Am., 2, 14–16, 2002.Zika, A.: ParTerre – Studien und Materialien zur Kulturgeschichte des
gestalteten Bodens. PhD Dissertation, Fachbereich 5 der Bergischen
Universität, Wuppertal, 2001.