Alan Sonfist

Alan Sonfist
Time Landscape of New York
Born	(1946-03-26) March 26, 1946 (age 79) Bronx, New York City
Known for	Sustainable Art
Movement	Environmental Art, Land Art

Alan Sonfist (born March 26, 1946[1]) is a New York City based American artist best known as a "pioneer"[2] and a "trailblazer"[2] of the Land or Earth Art movement.[3]

He first gained prominence for his "Time Landscape" found on the corner of West Houston Street and LaGuardia Place in New York City's Greenwich Village.[4][5] Proposed in 1965, "Time Landscape" the environmental sculpture took over ten years of careful planning with New York City. It was eventually landmarked by the city. It has often been cited as the first urban forest of its kind. More recently, Sonfist has continued to create artworks within the natural landscape, inaugurating a one-acre (4,000 m2) landscape project titled "The Lost Falcon of Westphalia" on Prince Richard's estate outside Cologne, Germany in 2005.[6]

In Nature: The End of Art, environmentalist Jonathan Carpenter writes that "To review the public sculptures of Alan Sonfist since the 1960s is to witness the reemergence of the socially aware artist. His sculptures reassert the historical role of the artist as an active initiator of ideas within society. Each of his artworks fundamentally redefine what sculpture is, who the artist is, and how art should function for its public."[2]

Sonfist was raised in the South Bronx. His work derives from an early childhood anxiety towards deforestation. As the Financial Times writes: "One of the pioneers of environmental art, Sonfist's passion for nature was triggered by his childhood nearby a hemlock forest, which has now died. 'I watched it disappear as people tried to improve upon it,' he tells me sadly. A gentle soul in a pinstriped suit and straw trilby, he believes nature is safest 'when left to be like it is'."[7]

Attending Ohio State University, he studied with Gestalt psychologist Hoyt Sherman. His research there concerned the language of visual culture and its relationship with human psychology. He later attended Hunter College, where he received a master's degree in Art. Later, he went on to pursue a Research Fellowship in visual studies at MIT, Cambridge, MA.[8]

Beginning with his first major commissioned work, "Time Landscapes" in Greenwich Village, NYC, Sonfist received critical acclaim for his innovative use of urban spaces to design havens of nature and green art. His early work in the 1960s and 1970s helped pioneer the burgeoning movement of site-specific sculpture. After his breakthrough Time Landscape of New York, Sonfist gradually built a reputation as a father of the environmental art movement, presenting a new and unique harmony between ecology and artistry. In 1971, Joshua Taylor, Director of the American Museum of Art, wrote of "Autobiography of Alan Sonfist", a one-person exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution, "... some--like Alan Sonfist ... have reacted to a cosmic consciousness by returning to specific nature in its smallest detail. For art in America, the landscape has meant freedom and expansion, or, when useful, discipline and concentration. But once the artist took possession of his environment, the natural bounty of America was never far from the surface of his art."[9]

His 1971 work, Leaves Met the Paper in Time complemented Time Landscape in its themes. The piece consists of sheets of dyed paper paired with real leaves of the same shade. While the paper retained its color, the leaves lost theirs over time, which Eleanor Heartney explains as "suggesting the apparent triumph of technology over nature while memorializing the original state of the now shriveled leaves."[10]′

His first major publication was on his lecture series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969. Sonfist edited "Art in the Land: A Critical Anthology of Environmental Art," [11] which was republished in Europe and Asia due to its reception by critics and artists alike. He has been included in multiple major international exhibition catalogs such as the Dokumenta, the Venice Biennale, and the Paris Biennale. Recently, Dr. Robert Rosenblum wrote an introduction to Sonfist's "Nature: The End of Art" which was distributed by Thames and Hudson, and published by Gil Ori.[2]

Throughout his career, Sonfist has given several keynote speeches for public and private events and organizations such as Pennsylvania State University, the Southern Sculpture Conference, and the American Landscape Association in Miami. He has been a featured speaker in numerous symposiums at major institutions and conferences including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Midwest College Association, the U.N. Ecological Conference in São Paulo, Brazil, and the Berlin Ecology Conference. Sonfist has been a featured lecturer at numerous major institutions including the Whitney Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago.[citation needed]

In 1987 he was invited to Italy to carry out his land art project at the Gori Collection,