I have been wondering how long it would take for the biggest environmental disaster in history to inspire the creation of some art. Digital artist Ubermorgen has created a series of works entitled Deep Horizon.

25 Million Liters

The images are created from photographs of the oil spill itself, digitally manipulated to create abstract images with various liquefied effects.  Some images (above and below) are part of the “Aerial Series” and, to my eye, manage to convey a sense of the overwhelming immensity of the disaster that is truly frightening.

17 Million Liters

The second “Liquid Series” plays with color and light. Here all evidence that this is a major industrial, environmental and human catastrophe disappear and we are left with bright, happy images that disguise the reality of what is going on. The disconnect between the feeling created by some of these images and the image titles could not be greater.

2 Million Liters

Other Art

Of course the disaster has inspired the more usual forms of artistic endeavours.

From political cartoons…….. (see here for more political cartoons)

Matt Davies political cartoon

To take-offs of what now seems like a laughably cynical BP “all green together” logo and corporate image.

“ When I first went to Kenya in August 1955, I could never have guessed what was going to happen. ….. it was authentic, unspoiled, teeming with big game — so enormous it appeared inexhaustible. 

Everyone agreed it was too big to be destroyed. Now Kenya’s population of over 30 million drains the country’s limited and diminishing resources at an amazing rate: surrounding, isolating, and relentlessly pressuring the last pockets of wildlife in denatured Africa.

The beautiful play period has come to an end. Millions of years of evolutionary processes have been destroyed in the blink of an eye.”

His first works were in the form of more-or-less “straight” documentation of the process of destruction.  This was not conservation photography mediated through a romanticized view of nature and wilderness.  Rather the images were a powerful testament to the impact of man’s interaction with his environment.

Though these initial images were powerful and shocking, Beard soon moved on to the use of complex collages and detailed diaries.  Here he juxtaposed writings, images, paint, found objects, newspaper clippings, drawings, insects or animal bones and often his own blood to create powerful and mesmerizing artworks.

Increasingly complex, Beard’s large collages contain many, seemingly unrelated images.  Yet they are put together in a way that creates a feeling of violence and destruction.  The same intensity of feeling emerges from his tightly packed diary pages.

As well as his passion for Kenya and it’s wanton destruction, Beard’s life was surrounded by beauty, celebrity and the world of fashion.  Based in Montauk, NY, he was part of an artistic and celebrity circle that included Andy Warhol, Jackie Onassis, Bianca Jagger and many others.  Not restricted to images of elephants in Africa, his photography and collage took in supermodels, celebrities and fashion – sometimes all of them ending up on the same page.

Perhaps this mix of celebrity, fashion and concern with conservation reached its peak when he was commissioned to produce the Pirelli calendar in 2009.

On his web site, Beard describes his career as “Escapism through collage, books, diaries and anthropology“.  Through its broad range of subject matter, Beard’s work maintains a continual sense of action, movement, intensity and power with a strong element of violence – sometimes obvious – sometimes as undercurrent.  Beard is a prolific artist who used his skills to bring much attention to Man’s endless capacity for violent destruction of his own planet.  A vast collection of his work has been compiled in a recent book published by Taschen.

Harri Kallio has tried to give us an insight into this lost-forever part of our world with his series “The Dodo and Mauritius Island”

Harri Kallio - Image 1

Kallio undertook extensive research into the dodo, what it looked like, its likely habits and its habitats. He then built two life-size models of the bird and traveled to Mauritius – the only island where the dodo is known to have existed.  There he set up tableaux and photographed his birds in what would have been their natural settings.

Harri Kallio - Image 2

Kallio’s image bring back a world that we have destroyed. European explorers arrived in Mauritius in the 16th century. They brought with them dogs, pigs, rats and other animals that plundered the dodo’s nests. Combined with forest destruction that destroyed the bird’s habitat, the dodo became extinct within 200 years.  This pattern of destruction and extinction continues today – only at a much accelerated rate. The list of threatened and endangered species continues to grow in the face of human destruction.

Harri Kallio’s work makes me wonder how many more animal models we our children have to build in the future to recreate that which we are happily destroying.

Harri Kallio - Image 3

Minkkinen is a Finnish photographer who created ‘self-portraits’ of a different kind. He set himself the task of creating a set of photographs of his own body, or parts of his body, unclothed and generally in some sort of natural environment. The result is a set of potent, elegant and often surprising images.

Self Portrait

Minkinnen’s focus was the exploration of process and the creation of clean, elegant and visually powerful imagery.  Re-interpreting his work today, in a world occupied with environmental concerns, the images become a powerful statement on Man’s relationship with the natural environment.

Looking at these images I am left with the feeling that Man’s relationship with nature has been reduced to that of an intruder; an unwelcome presence that no longer belongs in a natural environment.  All sorts of questions spring to mind. Will our handiwork continue to smother all that is around us?  How long will it take us to snuff out the light and everything that gives life to this world?
As polar ice caps continue to melt, world leaders head to Copenhagen in December for yet more talk, talk, talk as a substitute for any meaningful action.  When they emerge, in which direction will we be headed?

Left, Right, Business as Usual?

Maybe one of Minkkinnen’s most powerful images is the one below. He titled it simply – ‘Self-Portrait, Narrangansett’. What I see is a desperate scream at the point where the Man-made meets what’s left of the natural world.

It has been said that artists do not own the interpretation of their art.  Once an artist puts his art work ‘out there’ it becomes public property, subject to different opinions and interpretations.  It may end up with a meaning that is quite different from what the artist intended.  Focused on the modernist concerns of line and aesthetic, Minkinnen never intended his work to be a commentary on environmental issues. Yet, in today’s postmodern world, it is difficult to see it as anything else.

In her series named “Domesticated” she examines aspects of today’s human relationship to animals and, by implication, to ‘nature’. Looking at her images, I find myself moving through a whole range of thoughts and emotions.

A deer looks forlorn sitting by the side of a highway with the lights of human habitation in the background.  This simple image a stark illustration of how we have invaded these animals’ living quarters.  Tomorrow will this deer just be road kill?

A coyote howls helplessly at an overbearingly bright street lamp. The coyote looks incongruous and powerless.  His howls ineffectual in terrain that has been appropriated and ‘domesticated’ by humans – two pathetic trees, planted and tied down, the only nod towards the natural landscape that was once here.

"Howl"

The simple image of a brown bear with a white plastic bag over his face evokes all sorts of thoughts of human encroachment, discarded waste and our ability to disable, damage and destroy even the supposedly more powerful of animals through our thoughtlessness.

"Struggle"

Two images in particular lay bare our cultural relationship to animals.  Two boys terrorize and attack a defenseless, terrified raccoon trapped cowering in the corner of a basketball court.  None of us can fail to recognize in this image the way our culture has led us to these behaviors – from young boys pulling the legs off spiders to whole industries abusing animals in factory farms.

Roman Candle

And these boys will no doubt grow up to be brave and fearless he-men.  Like the macho hunk featured in his hunting jacket, safely behind a wire fence as he bravely levels his shotgun and takes aim at……………a turkey!  This caricature of all modern ‘hunting’ is the type of image that makes one laugh with what has been powerfully described as ‘the laugh that makes you cry’ at how pathetic so many of our behaviors have become.

"Backyard"

The last image I will reproduce here is one that, for me, encapsulates the relationship that our urban society now has with ‘nature’. The elderly lady pictured here is enclosed in her artificial, uninspiring, cookie-cutter human habitation.  She keeps caged birds – a pitiful attempt at having some form of contact with the natural world – even as she is reduced to peering out of her own cage to an outside world she doesn’t seem to understand or have any meaningful contact with.

"Window"

Like all imagery, Amy Stein’s work is much more powerful when seen in the flesh than when reproduced on the web (her first solo exhibit in NY has just closed at Clamp Art).  As is always the case, not all images in the series manage to be quite so effective.  A bird caught in a net; a dead rabbit in a wheelbarrow; an elderly lady holding a dead bird.  These images tend towards the ordinary and don’t quite manage to pack the same punch.  But overall, this is a marvelous and highly effective series.

How is it done?  Amy’s images are all constructed tableaux vivants in the cinematographic tradition. The animals shown here are often taxidermy specimens; the human subjects are models or actors and the scenes are constructed – though based on real events. These carefully constructed scenes hover somewhere between fiction and reality – a fact that comes across subliminally in all the images and which no doubt contributes to the strength of their impact.

Because it is a personal interest, I spend a lot of time looking at imagery that focuses on animals and the human-animal relationship.  I cannot remember the last time I was struck by a set of images quite as much as I have been struck by this series.  I hope that Amy will choose to turn her considerable talents to some more of the pressing issues that we all face.  Climate change could be an interesting challenge.