Flash Points: Art + the Environment Wrap-Up
Pierre Huyghe, "Streamside Day," production still, 2003, Film and video transfers, 26 minutes, color, sound. Photo by Aaron S. Davidson. © Pierre Huyghe, courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New York.
The natural world is a marvel, a playground, an intrinsic adventure, a multi-layered curiosity, an embodiment of fear and absolute wonderment. It is an artists’ gym where one can exercise by wrapping his or her brain around concerns that affect us now and the efforts that sustain the pulsing planet that we inhabit. For the past few months, our blog discussion platform, Flash Points, has hosted a conversation on Art and the Environment. Together with our readers, we looked at how art reacts to the environment, and if it can be used as a way to contextualize and understand environmental concerns.
Flash Points Editor Rachel Craft kicked off the discussion:
From sustainability and alternative energy solutions, to green-collared jobs and maintaining a low carbon footprint, environmental concerns and how our world is addressing them is an ever-present issue. As artist Mark Dion stated [in the Art:21 Ecology episode], “We have a test ahead of us in terms of our relationship to the natural world. If we pass the test we get to keep the planet, but I don’t really see us doing a very good job of that right now.”
- Corinna Kirsch offered her insights on the importance of public art and sustainability in respect to the Twin Cities, Minnesota (Minneapolis / St. Paul), a forefront of what Grant Kesler of October Magazine might call an example of contemporary co-authorship. What could be more contemporary than a network of institutions and individuals collaboratively utilizing a public space in the name of art?
- What about becoming an activist? Stacy Ward Kelly speaks about the importance of using art as a tool to advocate for the preservation, restoration, and improvement of the natural environment.
- Julia Walker points out that many of the changes that need to occur in order for real sustainable architecture to thrive must take place in policy-making at the municipal, state, and federal levels.
- Nova Benway talks about art in relationship to sincerity and looks at sculptor David Olsen, whose work focuses on Newtown Creek in Brooklyn.
- Anna Kryczka quotes John Dewey and the understanding of art as an experience that is embodied in the Chinati Foundation: “every successive part flows freely without unfilled blanks into what ensues.” A moment of coherence—where art, architecture, landscape, and activity all enliven one another—is the art of the Chinati Foundation.
- Catherine Wagley looks at what happens when nature takes over. Much of the talk about climate change and green living focuses on common missions and shared responsibility to nature. So how much of this conversation is really about preserving ourselves?
- Catherine also attended “What’s at Stake? New Topographics and the Man-Altered Landscape,” a LACMA symposium focused on restaging the 1975 exhibition with regard to curatorial practice, urbanism, environmentalism, and architecture.
- Inhale. Exhale. Whew. Nicole Caruth explores the power of positive thinking in relationship to climate change.
- Kevin Buist sees the link between the work of Robert Smithson and Eames Demetrios in how they both marry natural sites with epic mythologies.
Among the many related posts of the last few months, there were numerous interviews that focused on art and the environment in different ways, including:
- Flash Points Editor Rachel Craft interviewed David R. Collens, Director and Curator of Storm King Art Center, about the institution’s focus on the relationship between art and nature. How does the interaction between art and nature inform the core of Storm King’s programming?
- Andrea Zittel is building a floating island in Indiana. Richard McCoy interviews her about this project.
- The wonder years are here to stay. Find some slug eggs, make the light bulb light up, get the microscope to focus, harvest a tomato, nurture a seed…it’s wonderful! Joe Fusaro interviews Abbe Futterman, former graduate of the Pratt Institute and now a science teacher at the Earth School, about the importance of drawing and scientific illustration as a unique way of exploring the world.
- Nicole Sansone conducts a “blogalogue” with EcoArtTech, a collaborative platform for digital environmental art (also here), as well as talks with ETeam.
- Matthias Merkel Hess interviews Catherine Page Harris, a professor of the new Art and Ecology program at the University of New Mexico.
Honing in on another facet of the conversation, artists speak about their artistic processes, projects and recent exhibitions:
- Roni Horn discusses the paradoxical identity and dependency of water, paired with scenes of Icelandic landscapes in this video exclusive.
- Alexis Avlamis: “I use the highly fluid state of encaustic to document and elaborate constant movement and changes reminiscent of weather, rock and cloud patterns, veins, markings, organs, rivers, cast shadows, biomorphic figures, and creatures…”
- Eirik Johnson returned to the Northwest to make work that addressed the complicated relationship between the region’s landscape, industries that rely upon natural resources, and the communities they support.
- Ariana Page Russell uses her skin condition as a tool and her body as a canvas in self-exploration.
- Noah Fischer writes about his site-specific installation, Electric Forest: Made in Troy.
- Katie Holten features her current project, Tree Museum, a public artwork in the Bronx, New York.
Is there anything that you would like to add to this discussion? Who are the artists in your community and what institution(s) do you see utilizing art as a tool to understand our environment?
What’s Cookin at the Art21 Blog: A Weekly Index
"Flock of Seagulls." Source: Getty Images
- It’s a cage that went in search of a bird…Sreshta Rit Premnath explores the ocean as a territory that lies outside the realm of governmentality.
- Nicole rounds them up! From exhibitions and public talks, to limited-edition prints and digital calendars, this week you can find Art21 artists involved in various activities in New York, Washington D.C., Dublin, and Johannesburg.
- FLASHPOINTS: Kevin Buist talks about the Mythic Environments created by Robert Smithson and Eames Demetrios… What is Ecoartivism? Stacy Ward Kelly has been inspired by many artists who have a calling to protect and care for the physical world we inhabit…How does art respond to the natural world?
- VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Paul McCarthy | Piccadilly Circus
- A year ago Joe Fusaro explored the theme of power with his students. He does the same again this year but in a different way. In this week’s Teaching with Contemporary Art column, Joe emphasizes the importance of taking feedback from students seriously.
- What is the story of how Art21 began? Your answer is here, directly from Susan Sollins, Founder and Executive Director.
- Maria Steinina talks about historic photographic in the art market … and her unquenchable thirst for the artists’ book.
- International Design Conservation: A Discussion with Tim Bechthold
Mythic Environments: Robert Smithson and Eames Demetrios
Robert Smithson, "Spiral Jetty," 1970
When I first saw that this site’s new Flash Points topic was Art and the Environment, I immediately thought of two artists: Robert Smithson and Eames Demetrios. They are not contemporaries. Smithson, a seminal land art pioneer, died tragically in the height of his career in 1973. Demetrios, a currently active artist and filmmaker, is the namesake of his designer grandparents, Charles and Ray Eames. Demetrios is creating an elaborate global installation called Kcymaerxthaere, a manifestation of what he calls “3-dimensional story telling.” These two artists provide compelling arguments for the value of natural resources precisely because neither deals with the topic directly. Rather, both engage in a form of artistic practice that stretches back to prehistory. By creating monuments to complex mythologies and situating them in both a physical and historical context, the apparent value of these sites is renewed.
Robert Smithson is most famous as an early proponent of the land art movement. His most famous work, Spiral Jetty (1970), is a 1,500 foot curled protrusion into a remote part of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. It’s made of truckloads of basalt rock, salt, and earth. It’s easy to mistake Smithson as simply a precursor to someone like Andy Goldsworthy. While Goldsworthy’s earthworks draw attention to the beauty of the site with delicate and sensible interventions, Smithson’s approach was not nearly so tidy. Smithson was fascinated by entropy, the unstoppable loss of energy, and increase of chaos, within natural systems. Far from a zen-like harmony with nature, Smithson’s interactions with the natural world hinted at an apocalyptic tension. For an example of a very un-Goldsworthy Smithson work, check out Glue Pour (Vancouver, 1969).
In the case of Spiral Jetty, Smithson’s intervention in the landscape manages to inspire compassion for the natural world despite his sometimes brutal approach. Smithson selected the site for its pinkish red water. In an essay about the work, he explains, “Chemically speaking, our blood is analogous to the primordial seas. Following the spiral steps we return to our origins, back to some pulpy protoplasm, a floating eye adrift in an antediluvian ocean.”
Smithson was intent on situating Spiral Jetty not only at a specific site in Utah, but also within the epic sweep of geologic time. In a film he made to document the piece, he intercuts a map of the Jurassic Period, about which he said, “I needed a map that would show the prehistoric world as coextensive with the world I existed in.” This is where I find a clear connection to the recent work of Eames Demetrios. As I mentioned earlier, Demetrios is six years in to a global series of site-specific installations known as Kcymaerxthaere. Kcymaerxthaere consists of a series of sculptural installations and faux historical bronze plaques, each one telling a portion of a story about a fantasy world that parallels our own. It’s a bit like trying to read a Tolkien novel spread out across 63 sites in ten countries, in locations as diverse as the Australian outback and the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Scotland.
