Environment Art: Painting the Town Green!
Green is the new color of controversy. Love it hate it, you cannot ignore it. Green is all about being pro-environment, as well as the money and greed that stands in the way of all things pro-environment and green is also the new trend in the art scene.
Well, it’s not really that new because “greening” of art actually started in the 1960s, when artists began to feel that the new and modern art of the time was not in harmony with nature. Of course, in the last few decades, art has been the least important thing out of sync with nature. Industrial development, corporate culture, increasing population and demand for technology – all of them have made everything in our life as anti-green as possible. So what else but art can step up and try to bring a little bit of green back in our lives?
Image source: recycledart.com
Being green in art is not just about the color, though. Green art is actually supposed to be eco-friendly in various ways. Art made out of bio-degradable, non-toxic or recycled materials; an artistically landscaped garden on a previous barren plot of land; art that draws attention to the environmental crisis, art that promotes local handy crafts and traditional crafts – these are just some of the ways art can be green.
Moreover, green art is not only spreading in the art world, it is also catching people’s fancy. It’s hanging from office walls, behind display cases or sitting somewhere in a park. Sometimes, green art is launched on a bigger scale, like the Environmental Art Festival on the Persian Gulf held in 2007 and there after every year, where artists converge to draw in the sand, sculpt with stones and sand and weeds, all to showcase the need for protecting the Persian gulf coast from companies displacing, selling off sand and earth, commercial shipping destroying the purity of the water etc.
Then you have solo artists who are trying to bring environmental awareness on a different level, like Ned Kahn. His art is all about defining the aspects of nature that are otherwise “invisible”. He builds outdoor art pieces that sway to the wind, indoor pieces encased in glasses showcasing tornadoes, fog, steam, fire, sand erosion etc. He has blended science and art together to green his art.
But not all green artists are aware of the environmental issues they are trying to project. One of the most celebrated artists of the early environmental art movement was Robert Smithson (1938–1973). His Spiral Jetty, a 1500-foot long, 15-foot wide counterclockwise coil jutting from the shore of the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point in Utah, is made of mud, salt crystals, basalt rocks, earth, and water. Today, environmentalists feel that the artist had actually damaged the lake’s natural environment by using a bulldozer to move large chunks of the earth and rocks while building this piece.
There are of course critics of the green art movement. Most feel it’s meaningless and more of a fad then of any real consequence. After all, what good can a few good looking statues do for our climate? But most “green” artists who are using eco-friendly material for their art feel strongly that it can amount to a change in the world. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. For instance Gary Braasch is well-known for his documentation of the effect of global warming and his pictures have made a number of people aware of the dire situation.
Spiral Jetty, as seen from Rozel Point (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
Moreover, art is not confined to still forms. Feature films are also greening over, with documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth directed by Davis Guggenheim, about the effects of global warming or Burning the Future: Coal in America by David Novak, which exposes the effects of coal mining on environment in America.
One has to remember though that art is for arts sake and one cannot really yank its chain for being a fad or a trend. But art catches our eyes and mind. So if it’s being a little green, maybe it will do us some good and change our mind set!
By Maria Belgado
Additional resources:
Art with Power to Spark Environmental Action
“Re-Visions: Art Made from Reclaimed Materials” exhibition in Tuscon
Up from the trash heap
Eco-Friendly Art More Than a Trend?
Reduce, Reuse, Respond
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Tags: Environmental Art Festival Persian Gulf, environmental artists, Gary Braasch, Green art, Ned Kahn, Robert Smithson
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