Art in America - March 2016_

42 MARCH 2016 ENVIRONMENTAL ART

museums, which these artists felt “neutralized” art-making, they

sought something bigger, more dramatic and more immediate.^1

But their work, which came to define site-specificity, was never

really public art. It has always been remote and difficult to see, with

the exception of such relocated pieces as Heizer’s 2012Levitated

Mass(a boulder positioned threateningly above a troughlike

concrete walkway at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art).

In general, Land art—in works like James Turrell’sRodenCrater

(1974-ongoing)—is not just placedinthe landscape, it isofthe

landscape. Smithson, for one, did not want to create embellish-

ment. He sought to “recycle” land that had been abandoned or

negatively altered, and to transform it into art.^2

Operating outside of the gallery system that these artists chal-

lenged, Roosegaarde has adopted many of their goals and meth-

odologies—such as the use of industrial materials, the emphasis on

process, the collaboration with construction companies and large-

scale industries, and the direct allusion to nature. But Roosegaarde

has transcended Smithson’s caveat that “utility and art don’t mix”^3

and has demonstrated that good art, like good design, can be

extraordinarily beautiful while also addressing real-world problems.

“I’m looking for a balance between poetry and pragmatism,” he

says, “which I thinkshouldbe the role of the designer/artist.”^4

IN A TIME WHEN we bemoan the impact of humans on the

natural world, Roosegaarde’s interventions literally illuminate both

the rural and the urban landscape. Many of them exemplify sustain-

able design, seeking not only to reduce the amount of energy used

but also to generate their own energy. He imagines how, like jellyfish,

they might light themselves—thus “doing more, instead of less.”^5

Early in the development of such ideas, Roosegaarde and his

studio designedSustainable Dance Floor(2008). The dancers’ move-

ments, activating embedded sensors, lit up a multicolor platform in

the once-popular Club Watt in Rotterdam. In Nuenen, Netherlands,

where van Gogh lived for a time,Van Gogh-Roosegaarde Bicycle Path

accumulates solar energy during the day to energize photovoltaic

stones lodged in concrete, which then pattern the pathway with

glowing swirls reminiscent ofStarry Night.This very popular eve-

ning bike route opened in November 2014, pre-launching last year’s

commemoration of Van Gogh’s death 125 years ago.

Roosegaarde’sSmart Highwaywas named Best Future

Concept at the Dutch Design Awards in 2012. Working with

the Heijmans infrastructure development company in the

Dutch province of Noord-Brabant on the Belgian border,

Roosegaarde—inspired in part by Yves Klein, who made his

own paint^6 —created a photoluminescent mixture that lights

up 150 miles of highway lane lines after dark. The paint is

charged by sunlight during the day and by headlights at night

(not unlike the glow-in-the-dark stars in children’s bedrooms).

The lines radiate green—the color that is easiest to see after

sundown—and remain visible for eight hours. Their glow is so

bright it could eliminate the need for streetlights.

Roosegaarde’s multipart “Smog Free Project”—perhaps

his most complex and utopian undertaking to date—opened

in Rotterdam on Sept. 4, 2015. A white, 23-foot-high, solar-

powered vacuum device, resembling an elegantly slatted vertical

beehive with panels that open from the top, sucks in pollutants

public spaces—rural and urban—including parks, countryside,

walkways, plazas, airports, train stations and highways. At Amster-

dam’s main railroad terminal, hisRainbow Station(2014-15), using

liquid crystal lenses developed in collaboration with astronomers

at the University of Leiden, separates light into a spectrum and

beams it across the tracks, where it takes the shape of the roughly

150-foot-wide station roof. Throughout 2015, the “rainbow”

appeared nightly at sundown, at an undisclosed moment, to mark

both UNESCO’s International Year of Light and the 125th

anniversary of the Amsterdam Central Station.

In conversation, Roosegaarde cites many influences for his

work: Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan, Leonardo da Vinci,

Rem Koolhaas and Salomon van Ruysdael. Clearly an environ-

mental artist, Roosegaarde is also profoundly interested in the

Land art movement. He is particularly familiar with the earthwork

Broken Circle and Spiral Hill, which Robert Smithson sited in a

working sand quarry in Emmen, Netherlands, in 1971.

In the 1970s, Smithson, Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer

and others strove to create a new purity of form. Needing to escape

what Smithson called the “cultural confinement” of galleries and

To p,
Dune, 2007,
fibers, steel,
microphones,
sensors, speakers
and mixed
mediums, installed
in Maastunnel,
Rotterdam.

Bottom,
Smog Free
Tower, 2015,
23 feet tall,
Rotterdam.