Patricia Johanson

Patricia Johanson (born September 8, 1940, New York City) is an American artist.

Johanson is known for her large-scale art projects that create aesthetic and practical habitats for humans and wildlife.

She designs her functional art projects, created with and in the natural landscape, to solve infrastructure and environmental problems, but also to reconnect city-dwellers with nature and with the history of a place.

As a high school student, she excelled at music, but at Bennington College (1958–1962) she was a painting major.

Through her contacts at Bennington, Johanson became part of the 1960s New-York art-world.

Her Bennington instructor, Tony Smith (sculptor), was a close friend and her art-history professor, Eugene Goossen, a mentor and later her husband.

At this time she met fellow-artists Kenneth Noland, David Smith (sculptor), Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline, Philip Guston and Joseph Cornell.

She also came to know art-critic Clement Greenberg and visionary architect Frederick John Kiesler.

Johanson's paintings and sculptures of the 1960s have been classified as Minimalism and they were included in some of the earliest shows of Minimal Art: “8 Young Artists” (1964), “Distillation” (1966) and “Cool Art” (1968).

Her Minimalist paintings used simple lines to explore the optical effects of color.

These were shown at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York in the 1960s and her 28 ft oil painting, "William Clark," was included in the 1968 Museum of Modern Art contemporary art survey, “The Art of the Real.” Another 28-foot-long canvas, “Minor Keith,” was exhibited at the Minimal Art retrospective at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in 2004 and acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023.

The drawings, accompanied by essays and explanatory notes, were a departure from traditional garden designs and also a rejection of the formalist orientation of the 1960s art world.

Instead of art-for-art's sake, her garden designs embodied meaningfulness and functionality.

Johanson's move from making objects to working with the natural world—at first in drawings and later in actual commissions—has parallels (as well as differences) with the emergence of Earthworks by artists in her circle of friends, such as Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt.

The similarity is working large-scale with the land itself.

A difference is that many of Johanson's designs were meant to serve practical functions, such as flood control, habitat for local wildlife, and green roofs that absorb rainwater.

Johanson also designed for urban, rather than remote locations.

Another difference is that most of her designs are dominated by a simple, large image of a plant or animal.

The House and Garden designs mark a reorientation in Johanson's career.

Johanson earned a Master's in art history at Hunter College, New York in 1964.

There she studied with Tony Smith, Eugene Goossen and Ad Reinhardt and met fellow art students Robert Morris, Carl Andre and Robert Barry.

Johanson began making large-scale, Minimal sculpture in 1966 with William Rush, consisting of 200 ft of painted steel tee-beams laid flat in a clearing.

In 1968 she increased her scale to 1600 ft with Stephen Long (inspired by the 19th century topographical and railway engineer), where 2 ft, painted plywood segments were installed along an abandoned railroad track in Buskirk, New York.

This was followed by other large-scale Minimalist sculptures sited outdoors.

Johanson's Minimalist sculptures introduced the idea of artworks that cannot be experienced all at once, still an important value in her work.

These project designs date from 1969, making her a pioneer in the field of ecological-art (or eco-art.) Johanson's work has also been classified as Land Art, Environmental Art, Site-specific Art and Garden Art.

Her early paintings and sculptures are part of Minimalism.

Johanson's enthusiasm for nature and for art began in childhood.

She grew up in New York City, where she spent countless hours in Frederick Law Olmsted parks.

Her mother, a former model, introduced her to the arts.

In 1969, House & Garden (magazine) invited Johanson to design a garden.

While this was never built, the commission prompted an outpouring of visionary ideas—150 small sketches—which she has continued to draw upon over the years.

Cyrus Field (1970–71), while still a large Minimalist sculpture, marks a transition.

Using marble, cement, and redwood slabs in their natural state, she created a maze of lines that lead visitors through a forest to reveal the changing, natural landscape.

With this piece, she began thinking of line as a compositional device to incorporate, rather than displace, nature.

She also invented a way to mediate between human scale and the vastness of nature.

She gave up painting and sculpture and now focused on designs that are simultaneously art and landscape To prepare herself for translating project designs into large-scale sculptural landscapes, she began studying civil engineering and architecture at City College School of Architecture, New York, in 1971, receiving her B. Arch.

Her husband, art critic and historian Eugene Goossen, died in 1997.

At this time, she worked as a researcher for New York publisher Benjamin Blom on a compendium of 18th and 19th century American artists.

The project led to an opportunity to catalogue the work of Georgia O'Keeffe, who became an important mentor.