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David Hockney, the iPad and the joy of landscapes at the Royal Academy

21 January 2012, 7:03 am

David Hockney is undoubtedly one of the most important of contemporary artists; all the more so because, like that other contemporary great, Gerhardt Richter, he hasn’t been seduced into the ever increasingly ridiculous nonsense that goes under the rubric of contemporary ‘conceptual art’.  His latest exhibit at the Royal Academy in London is focused on one of the most traditional of subjects – the landscape.

Since its origins in Rome in the 17th century, landscape painting has both reflected and influenced Man’s relationship with the land. Since the romantic period, not much has changed in landscape painting. The landscape is romanticized and presented as a fetish object to be held in awe – a perspective that later paralleled the rise of the conversion of natural landscape to consumer product through the creation of national parks. Turner was possibly the only landscape painter to provide a different perspective – the landscape as atmosphere rather than object.

The romantic view of the landscape as fetish object continues to be carried through in contemporary nature photography of the type that populates the National Geographic magazine and other similar outlets. John Stezaker’s work comments on this view of nature.

In these days of concern with our environment and the preservation of natural spaces, a fair amount of contemporary art portrays Man as the invader and destroyer of a nature that would remain as this romantically beautiful object if only we would leave it alone.

It is in this context – and the context of landscape painting nowadays being largely seen as a spent art form – that Hockney’s work needs to be judged. And it emerges victorious.

After four centuries of landscape painting, one would have thought that there remains little to say. Yet Hockney manages to give us a totally different feel for the landscape in these images. Here the landscape is presented as a joyful motif. The bright colours (a kind of return to Fauvism – though not quite), the almost naif approach to some of the work, the general atmosphere that is created – all of these generate a sensation of fun and joy. Hockney draws no difference between so-called unspoilt landscape – or wilderness – and agricultural countryside. Both are to be celebrated. Hockney moves away from the trend to excluding any form of human influence from landscape representation – a trend that continues to perpetuate the fiction of a wilderness to be preserved untouched.

In these works the landscape is no longer that remote object to be fetishized and held in awe. Unlike so much of contemporary environmental art, guilt at being human and living our lives is no longer the emotion we are expected to feel when looking at the Hockney landscape. With these images we feel uplifted with sheer delight, enjoyment and a sense of fun – all Hockney trademarks represented with particular exuberance in this body of work. All of this creates a different and more positive human relationship with the landscape – one built on joie de vivre and which may lend itself better to building interest and support for addressing environmental questions.

One final point about this body of work. Some of the ‘paintings’ (including the two shown here) were created on an iPad – rapidly becoming one of Hockney’s favourite tools. In doing so, Hockney combines modern technology with his celebration of nature and the landscape – again a refreshing change from the dichotomous battle between nature and modern progress that is all too often set up by the environmental community.

Slide show of images of the exhibit

One review of the exhibit.

But, of course, not everyone likes this work.

 

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Ai Weiwei – Human Rights Dissident – Environmentalist?

7 January 2012, 12:31 pm

Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has mounted 1200 bicycles in a magnificent floor to ceiling installation as part of a solo exhibition in Taipei.

The artist likely has no environmental statement to make with this installation, but these days it is hard to look at so many bicycles without being put in mind of the energy and transport questions that so many people are working to resolve. Can we really build a successful energy policy on a huge installation of renewables just like this huge installation of bicycles? Or is the mountain to high to climb and talk about moving to a solely renewable energy policy simply the pipe dream of impractical idealists?

Ai Weiwei has gained global fame for his dissident attitude to Chinese authorities. This has earned him persecution by the authorities, destruction of his studios, charges of owing multimillion dollars to the Chinese tax authorities and recurrent arrests and periods of disappearance. The bicycle installation led me to look for any of the artist’s works that addressed environmental issues directly.

An installation entitled “Trees” & “Rocks” (image below) has been interpreted by some to be an allusion to the environmental damage being caused by China’s rapid rate of development. Others, have interpreted the work as the simple recreation of a meditative space.

Filed under Conceptual Art, Installation, Social/Activist Art. Tagged , , ,
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Was Shakespeare A Conservationist?

27 December 2011, 3:15 pm

The ideas of conservation and environmental considerations had not yet been dreamt of in Shakespeare’s time. Yet his Sonnet Number IV already, in those times recognizes that Nature’s gifts should be used wisely, not wasted but preserved to benefit future generations. Here is the sonnet:

 

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beauty’s legacy?
Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free:
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thy self alone,
Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive:
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
Which, used, lives th’ executor to be.

 

Nature gives nothing but it lends

Why do you abuse the bounteous largesse that Nature gives?

Why do you use such great sums [of resources] and yet you cannot live?

And when you’re gone, what legacy will you leave?

 

These sentiments are highly relevant today but it seems amazing that Shakespeare would have put them forward them so clearly so long ago – centuries before Aldo Leopold or anyone else had even imagined them.

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Money for Our Times – Artists Design Money

17 December 2011, 3:08 pm

This week The Guardian asked artists and writers to design images of money that would be appropriate for our times. As one can imagine, numerous themes have been explored by the artists concerned. John Gray (above) and Jonathan Frantzen (below) both take up the theme of endangered species, highlighting that, once gone, they will never return.

Others make broader social commentaries. Alasdair Gray (below) highlights the fact that, in the developed world, we have far more money than we need suggesting that the accumulation of money has gone far beyond satisfying our basic needs. Anne Enright (below that) designs the new currency for Ireland when it tumbles out of the Euro – a return to Celtic values with Yeats’s lines as the reminder that “we have fed the heart on fantasies”.

But my favourite of the lot is the simple, pointed and harsh commentary from British artist Tracy Emin.

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Modernist Autumn – Martin Boyce Wins 2011 Turner Prize

7 December 2011, 4:52 pm

In his winning entry for this year’s Turner Prize, Martin Boyce brings an autumnal park indoors and re-interprets it in classical modernist/constructivist terms.

A large room, re-designed in every detail. White columns from which flows a designed ceiling of white shapes – “trees” with “leaves” and branches. The centrepiece is a table covered in graffiti and with a hanging mobile gently swaying.  All in stark geometric shapes yet oozing a certain romanticism. On the floor lie brown leaves made out of cut paper. The ‘park’ is complete with garbage cans re-designed into unusual modernist shapes.

This installation has its supporters and its critics. It is a space that is clearly inspired by “Nature” yet re-interpreted in classical modernist language. Boyce’s skill is in taking the brutish language of constructivist art and creating something that, through angular shapes created in synthetic, man-made materials, still manages to reproduce the softness and emotional engagement that is felt when we are in contact with ‘real nature’ (whatever that might be).

Boyce is quick to point out that his work is not political but largely driven by his emotion (see video below) but I wonder where this sort of work can take us in terms of thinking about the relationship between nature and the modern world. If Boyce can reproduce the gentleness and serenity of nature in an indoor installation made out of angular, modern materials, is the conflict between nature and the modern world real or is it something that we have created in our minds? Do we have to keep presenting nature and our modern development as enemies or can work like that of Martin Boyce inspire us to break out of our entrenched positions and see more complementarity? Are we even able to consider thinking differently?

 

Filed under Conceptual Art, Installation, Sculpture. Tagged , , ,
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Gary Hume – Are the issues to big for any of us?

18 November 2011, 8:11 am

Hermaphrodite Polar Bear

Gary Hume is a successful British artist who does not usually engage with environmental issues. He became involved with Cape Farewell and created some artworks in an attempt to engage with the issues.  As reported in an article in The Guardian, he found this a challenge:

“How do you depict global catastrophe?” he says. “I’m too selfish to describe the world’s dilemma, so I describe my own paltry dilemma of what it’s like to be alive.”

The image above – Hermaphrodite Polar Bear – is intended to bring attention to the significant changes affecting life on Earth as a result of damaging human activity. “The Industrialist” (below) is a lead tracing of smoke coming out of an industrial chimney. He describes it as an epitaph for industrialists.

But Hume is not really convinced by his own work. First of all he is wary of artists’ fascination with death, global catastrophe, etc. Depicting disaster is maybe the easy path to take. But most revealing is his take on the trip to the Arctic with Cape Farewell. Clearly he found the trip beautiful and was no doubt saddened by the prospect of the damage being done by climate change but found it ‘hard to relate to my life’.

So here’s the question: is all the talk of ‘global catastrophe’ making the problem seem so huge and insurmountable that it starts to be feel totally of reach – impossible for people to relate to their life? Is one possible result that people simply shut these issues out of their minds – the only coping mechanism they may have left to get on with their life?

Is it time for a new narrative?

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The Artist and the Land – Richard Long

24 October 2011, 5:29 am


Richard Long is one of the earliest and best known artists to engage in what has become known as ‘land art’. In an innovative way to engage with the land and the landscape, Long’s work is centred around lengthy walks in the countryside. His walks represent an exploration of the land and his relationship with it. His recorded work is a reflection of each walk rendered in various media.

“Each walk followed my own unique, formal route, for an original reason, which was different from other categories of walking, like travelling. Each walk, though not by definition conceptual, realised a particular idea. Thus walking – as art – provided a simple way for me to explore relationships between time, distance, geography and measurement. These walks are recorded in my work in the most appropriate way for each different idea: a photograph, a map, or a text work. All these forms feed the imagination.”

Long’s work has a strong evocative power. In particular, his ‘textworks’ are often short statements that capture a particular essence of a walk. In their short but powerful form their effect resembles that of haiku verses.

 

Long engages with the land in a highly personal way. His work is not the type of landscape or nature art that produces generic images that fetishize and romanticize nature while lacking any personal connection. Rather, in Long’s work one can feel the intimate connection that, through his long, solitary walks, the artist has achieved with the landscape. This sort of art creates a strong impact and is more likely to stimulate us to seek our own personal connections and meanings in nature and landscape than are simple, generic images that purport to show “the beauty of nature”.

 

Even when exhibited in the gallery, Long’s works contain a strong, organic feel that reflect the artist’s connection with the landscapes that provide the raw materials for his gallery works.

 

 

Filed under Conceptual Art, Installation, Land Art, Sculpture. Tagged ,
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There are chimeras – no more either/or. The work of Ellen Rogers

14 October 2011, 12:16 pm

The work of Ellen Rogers brings focus to the question of whether the human is part of, or separate from, “Nature”.

The giraffe sculpture above has the body of a giraffe, human front legs a mechanical replacement for its hind legs and is made of steel. It is an artistic chimera – an image of a hybrid creature made of man-made materials.

Ellen’s sculptures blend the boundaries between the human and the non-human. We live on the land that used to belong to animals (though we don’t live with animals) and, increasingly, they live in spaces we are trying to make out own. In such a world, pondering the distinction between the human and the natural may be irrelevant. We’re all part of one world or, as Ellen’s work suggests, one living organism, one body. When it comes to the Human and the Natural it may no longer be either/or but both/and.

 

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Will Art Ever Meet Science? Images at the London Natural History Museum

25 September 2011, 1:58 pm

The Natural History Museum in London is making a great attempt at blending an artistic perspective with their main focus of activity – science education. A previously mounted conceptual art exhibit was reviewed in this blog.  The museum has now opened a new gallery entitled Images of Nature focused on showcasing the over half-a-million drawings, illustrations and images of plants and animals in the museum’s collection.

The introductory text states that nature has inspired, and continues to inspire, many artists and describes the long tradition of natural history illustration. The point is made that “for a picture to be useful to a scientist, it must be true to life.” The best natural history illustrators are described as having superb attention to detail and an ability to reproduce what they see – ie. to reproduce faithfully the physical characteristics of the animal, plant or “specimen” they are illustrating.

It is this very attention to reproduction of the physical object that ultimately distinguishes art from science.

The museum’s gallery contains some recent work by Guyanan artist Aubrey Williams. The artist is quoted as saying: “I hope these bird paintings can be viewed as an artist’s visual rendition of how he feels about birds and not as an ornithological treatment as one would have with a field guide.” And here lies the fundamental difference between art and science. Science is concerned with a description of how things are in a physical and material sense. Art, on the other hand, is largely concerned with what we make of things in an emotional, cultural or social sense.  Images that stop at being true to a physical reality are artistic illustration. Art goes much further.

Filed under About Art, Painting. Tagged , ,
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Nature or Environment? The work of Pétur Thomsen

10 September 2011, 7:19 pm

“Umhverfing is an Icelandic word for the state between nature and environment” says Pétur Thomsen of his project titled Umhverfing. There is clearly no equivalent word in English but the concept itself is intriguing.

Icelandic photographer Thomsen has spent the last several years documenting the transformation of undeveloped areas around Reykjavic into suburban developments. He calls this process “nature being transformed into environment”.

This distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘environment’ is an interesting one. The conservation movement is in the habit of equating ‘nature’ and ‘the environment’.  ‘Environmentally-friendly activities’ are defined as those activities which contribute to preserve some concept of nature. By ‘environment’ Thomsen clearly means something different. He means the human built environment or maybe a better phrasing would be the environment in which people choose to live. For the most part, human beings have become incapable of living in ‘nature’. Rather we have to live in a built environment with all the comforts and services that brings with it. Thomsen documents the process by which a ‘natural’ space is converted into an environment in which people can live.

Thomsen does not explicitly make a value judgement about the events he is documenting. However, many people viewing this and similar work would, today, interpret these developments as being ‘destructive’ of nature and wilderness in the interests of yet more suburban development. This interpretation is, however, a very recent cultural way of looking at development. Until relatively recently (late 19th century), most art portrayed human expansion as a positive event – the taming and civilizing a wild and dangerous wilderness. The painting below epitomizes this perspective as civilization hovers over America moving from the already tamed and civilized East (on the right side of the painting) to the still wild and dangerous West (on the left of the image).

Only recently have we realized that our living environment can only continue to exist within a larger context – the larger environment of a healthy ecosphere. This has resulted in a progressive change from our view of development from ‘civilizing’ to ‘destructive’. Thomsen’s use of a language that contrasts ‘nature’ with an ‘environment’ that we can actually live in brings back the idea of development as a civilizing influence even as his images convey human intrusion and landscape destruction.

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