A form of art practised since about 1967 by a group of American artists (including Walter de Maria, Carl Andre, and Robert Smithson) in remote parts of the world such as the Sahara, the Mojave desert, or the dried-up Lake Mirage in California. Protesting against what they perceived as the utilitarianism of much contemporary art, they used the land itself as their raw material, digging trenches in it, drawing lines by spreading lime on the earth, or making mounds of rocks.