A found object, or found art, is art created from undisguised, but often modified, items or products that are not normally considered materials from which art is made, often because they already have a non-art function. Pablo Picasso first publicly utilized the idea when he pasted a printed image of chair caning onto his painting titled Still Life with Chair Caning (1912). Marcel Duchamp is thought to have perfected the concept several years later when he made a series of ready-mades, consisting of completely unaltered everyday objects selected by Duchamp and designated as art. The most famous example is Fountain (1917), a standard urinal purchased from a hardware store and displayed on a pedestal, resting on its back. In its strictest sense the term "ready-made" is applied exclusively to works produced by Marcel Duchamp, who borrowed the term from the clothing industry while living in New York, and especially to works dating from 1913 to 1921.
Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork. Site-specific art is produced both by commercial artists, and independently, and can include some instances of work such as sculpture, stencil graffiti, rock balancing, and other art forms. Installations can be in urban areas, remote natural settings, or underwater.
Sir Richard Julian Long, is an English sculptor and one of the best-known British land artists.
Ringing rocks, also known as sonorous rocks or lithophonic rocks, are rocks that resonate like a bell when struck. Examples include the Musical Stones of Skiddaw in the English Lake District; the stones in Ringing Rocks Park, in Upper Black Eddy, Bucks County, Pennsylvania; the Ringing Rocks of Kiandra, New South Wales; and the Bell Rock Range of Western Australia. Ringing rocks are used in idiophonic musical instruments called lithophones.
Petroforms, also known as boulder outlines or boulder mosaics, are human-made shapes and patterns made by lining up large rocks on the open ground, often on quite level areas. Petroforms in North America were originally made by various Native American and First Nation tribes, who used various terms to describe them. Petroforms can also include a rock cairn or inukshuk, an upright monolith slab, a medicine wheel, a fire pit, a desert kite, sculpted boulders, or simply rocks lined up or stacked for various reasons. Old World petroforms include the Carnac stones and many other megalithic monuments.
The Logan Rock near the village of Treen in Cornwall, England, UK, is an example of a logan or rocking stone. Although it weighs some 80 tons, it was dislodged in 1824 by a group of British seamen, intent on showing what the Navy could do. However following complaints from local residents for whom the rock had become a tourist attraction and source of income, the seamen were forced to restore it. Today the Logan Rock still rocks, but with much less ease than it did in the past. The South West Coast Path, which follows the coast of south-west England from Somerset to Dorset passes by on the cliffs to the north.
Rock balancing is a form of recreation or artistic expression in which rocks are piled in balanced stacks, often in a precarious manner.
Rocking stones are large stones that are so finely balanced that the application of just a small force causes them to rock. Typically, rocking stones are residual corestones formed initially by spheroidal weathering and have later been exposed by erosion or glacial erratics left by retreating glaciers. Natural rocking stones are found throughout the world. A few rocking stones might be man-made megaliths.
Arches National Park is a national park in eastern Utah, United States. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, 4 mi (6 km) north of Moab, Utah. The park contains more than 2,000 natural sandstone arches, including the well-known Delicate Arch, which constitute the highest density of natural arches in the world. It also contains a variety of other unique geological resources and formations. The national park lies above an underground evaporite layer or salt bed, which is the main cause of the formation of the arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins, and eroded monoliths in the area.
A balancing rock, also called a balanced rock or precarious boulder, is a naturally occurring geological formation featuring a large rock or boulder, sometimes of substantial size, resting on other rocks, bedrock, or on glacial till. Some formations known by this name only appear to be balancing, but are in fact firmly connected to a base rock by a pedestal or stem.
Boaz Vaadia was an Israeli–American artist and sculptor who worked primarily in stone and subsequently by casting in bronze. Based in New York City since 1975, his studio was located in Brooklyn. The power of natural materials and the relation of human beings to that power determine the content of Vaadia's sculpture. Vaadia said of his work, "I work with nature as an equal partner. The strongest thing I address is that primal connection of man to earth. It's in the materials I use, the environments I make, and the way I work."
Bay View Series is a public artwork by American artist Peter Flanary (artist) located on the Bay View Public Library grounds, which is on the south side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. Flanary's 1993 Bay View Series consists of three granite rocks and one chunk of taconite iron ore. All have text on them, and the iron ore piece has a hole in the middle. The largest piece measures approximately 68 x 77 x 28 in.
Jason deCaires Taylor is a British sculptor and creator of the world's first underwater sculpture park – the Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park – and underwater museum – Cancún Underwater Museum (MUSA). He is best known for installing site-specific underwater sculptures that develop naturally into artificial coral reefs, which local communities and marine life depend on. Taylor integrates his skills as a sculptor, marine conservationist, underwater photographer and scuba diving instructor into each of his projects. By using a fusion of Land Art traditions and subtly integrating aspects of street art, Taylor produces dynamic sculptural works that are installed on the ocean floor to encourage marine life, to promote ocean conservation and to highlight the current climate crisis.
The Molinere Bay Underwater Sculpture Park is a collection of ecological underwater contemporary art located in the Caribbean sea off the west coast of Grenada, West Indies and was created by British sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor. In May 2006 the world's first underwater sculpture park was open for public viewing. Taylor's aim was to engage local people with the underwater environment that surrounds them using his works which are derived from life casts of the local community. He installed concrete figures onto the ocean floor, mostly consisting of a range of human forms, from solitary individuals to a ring of children holding hands, facing into the oceanic currents.
Phu Phra Bat is a historical park in Ban Phue District, Udon Thani Province, Thailand. The park's distinguishing feature is its unusual rock formations around which religious shrines have been constructed. Some formations also feature prehistoric rock paintings.
The Great God Pan is a bronze sculpture by American sculptor George Grey Barnard. Since 1907, it has been a fixture of the Columbia University campus in Manhattan, New York City.
Rock on Top of Another Rock is a sculpture by the artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss which was exhibited outside the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens in 2013. It consists of one large rock balanced on top of another large rock. An earlier incarnation of the work was a similar sculpture on the plateau of Valdresflya which was one of the artworks installed on each of Norway's eighteen scenic highways.
Adrian Gray is a British artist who creates stone balancing sculptures. His career started in 2002.
Soaring Stones, also known as Rouse Rocks, Soaring Rocks, and Stones on Sticks, is a 1990 granite-and-steel sculpture by John T. Young. It was first installed in the Transit Mall of Portland, Oregon, and was later sited as Soaring Stones #4 at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. The sculpture was commissioned for $100,000 to replace a fountain that was removed during construction of Pioneer Place.
A Donkey, 3 Rocks, and a Bird., also known as Donkey, Bird and Rocks and Donkey, Three Rocks, and a Bird, is an outdoor 1992 sculpture by Brad Rude, installed at Catlin Gabel School in West Haven-Sylvan, a census-designated place in Washington County and the Portland metropolitan area, in the U.S. state of Oregon.
