Chapter 9: Environmental Art

Question 1

Agnes Denes

Answer 1

• hungarian-american artist
• Rice/Tree/Burial (1968): planted rice = vitality, chained trees = human disruption of natural processes, and buried haiku poems = land inspires human creativity

Question 2

International Art Show for the End of World Hunger

Answer 2

• Denes (1982)
• 2 acre wheatfield was planted one block from Wall Street
• it yielded 1000pounds which were distributed to 28 cities

Question 3

Tree Mountain: A Living Time Capsule

Answer 3

• Denes
• 11,000 silver fur trees protected by Finland for 400 years until they become old growth
• evolving interactions between the artist, human participants, and other-than-human agents

Question 4

Environmental Art

Answer 4

• Bullot, 2014: all works of art that address environmental topics; regardless of medium, style, and position advocated by the artist
• Thornes, 2008: works either representing the environment pictorially as an image, scene or landscape or demonstrating a non-representational, performative, or participatory approach to the natural world
• Indigenous artforms constitute the first environmental art
• Some megafaunal species shown in Indigenous rock paitnings are now extinct; such as thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) and the fat tailed kangaroo

Question 5

Dampier Rock Art Precinct, Western Australia

Answer 5

• 1 million petroglyphs (rock drawings) ranging from 4,000 to over 30,000 years old
• threatened by natural gas extraction
• contains the Burrup Peninsula/Murujuga

Question 6

Environmental Visual Art

Answer 6

paintings, drawings, illustrations, etchings, photographs, prints, textiles, sculptures, etc. that depict the environment, more-than-human life, people-land relations, ecological issues, and sustainable futures

Question 7

Strolling About in Spring (Zhan Ziqian)

Answer 7

• 6th century AD
• ink composition
• nature’s sublime power
• diminutive human forms in a rugged alpine habitat

Question 8

The Triumph of Death (Pieter Bruegel)

Answer 8

• 1562
• bottom is crowded with skeletons, coffins, and people
• top depicts and ecologically ravaged scene of blackened trees
• radically diversified landscape painting

Question 9

Environmental Sculpture (Blanc and Benish, 2017)

Answer 9

• Sculptures depicting the environment, more-than-human beings, or cultural-natural systems (ex: Indigenous totem poles)
• Sculptures designed to memorialize, harmonize with, or intensify a particular place (ex: Gormley’s 51 Lake Ballard sculptures)
• Large scale sculpture that immerses the observer and produces an architectural microhabitat (ex: Fite’s Opus 40 that took 37yrs to complete)

Question 10

Land Art (The Tate)

Answer 10

• art made directly in the landscape
• sculpting land itself into Earthworks/making structures in the landscape using natural materials
• Ex: Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) on the shore of Utah’s Great Salt Lake

Question 11

Site-specific art

Answer 11

emphasizes the indivisible relationship between the work and its site and demands the physical presence of the viewer for completion

Question 12

Andrew Goldsworthy’s Sculptures

Answer 12

• detailed site specific installations using rocks, pebbles, leaves, branches, snow, etc.
• ephemeral/short lived
• Taking a Wall for a Walk (1990)

Question 13

Eco-art

Answer 13

• brings environmental consciousness to bear on artistic practices by addressing the sociopolitical forces that impact the natural world
• Wallen, 2012 believes ecological artists inspire respect for the environment by shunning Anthropocene values and nurturing processes of renewal
• the work itself becomes a self generating ecosystem (Living Water Garden, Damon)

Question 14

6 key features of ecoart

Answer 14

• emphasizes ecological relationships
• dialogue with science
• engagement with natural elements
• restoration of degraded habitats
• commitment to educating the public about ecological issues
• formulation of new possibilities for interspecies ethics, community transformation, urban sustainability, and personal healing

Question 15

Eco-feminist art

Answer 15

• advocates the importance of non patriarchal values to the regeneration o the biosphere
• Deborah Mathew (2001)
• collaborate with the regenerative cycles of nature and aspire to nurture sustainable Earth systems
• Agnes Denes, Nataile Jeremijanko, Eve Mosher, and Shai Zakai

Question 16

Barry Thomas’s Vacant Lot of Cabbages (1978)

Answer 16

• illegally planted 180 cabbage seedlings in the shape of the word CABBAGE
• anarcho- activist
• protest against he lack of green space in Wellington
• cooperative action

Question 17

Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field

Answer 17

• 1971-1977
• New Mexico
• 400 steel poles positioned in a grid pattern
• changes appearance when viewed from various angles
• the land is not the setting for the work but part of it

Question 18

What does Bullot (2014) say is the primary function of environmental artworks?

Answer 18

tracking, broadcasting, emotions manipulation, cooperative action, environmental reflection, and art science collaboration

Question 19

Tracking and Broadcasting

Answer 19

• recording information about a particular place over time
• public dissemination of the info

Question 20

Emotions Manipulation

Answer 20

an artwork’s ability to induce empathetic feelings that result in cooperative action

Question 21

Cooperative action

Answer 21

action on behalf of ecosystems

Question 22

Environmental reflection

Answer 22

an artwork appreciator’s reflective process

Question 23

Art-science collaboration

Answer 23

enhances viewer awareness o f scientific knowledge by bringing insights from the social and natural sciences to bear on art and its interpretations

Question 24

Eliasson’s Weather Project

Answer 24

• Tate Modern, London
• combines lightning, projection, haze machines, aluminum, and scaffolding to generate a climactic experience for viewers

Question 25

Relationality

Answer 25

• Ecoart’s ability to address environmental concerns
• environmental art participates in a deeper transformation of our relationships to nature and the environment
• Blanc and Benish 2017

Question 26

What did Brown (2017) say about ecoart?

Answer 26

it contributes to knowledge of resilience, challenges social assumptions, and encourages new perspectives on ecological urgency

Question 27

What do Davis and Turpin say is essential to thinking through the Anthropocene?

Answer 27

art

Question 28

Mckibben (2005)

Answer 28

• climate change art
  -call for art addressing climate change
• edify the public and inspire transformation
• enable the public to rethink the role of human beings everyday activities in altering the climate systems (Nurmis, 2016)
• render abstract information visible/accessible

Question 29

Climate Change Art

Answer 29

aims to enable viewers to relate emotionally to scientific ideas of climate disturbance and planetary warming

Question 30

Ecodigital art

Answer 30

• eco art that employs digital media (like topographic maps and satellite data) in the creation and reception of artworks
• Mosher’s High Water Line (2007)

Question 31

Multispecies art

Answer 31

• incorporating other species, organisms, and life forms as participants in the artistic process
• Mignonneau and Sommerer’s Interactive Plant Growing (1992)

Question 32

Artivism

Answer 32

artistically informed activism toward realization of anti-capitalist and anti-globalist aims

Question 33

Environmental art therapy

Answer 33

• employs creative approaches to working with people therapeutically in outdoor settings
• enhance human health through reconnection with the natural world
• Heignworth and Nash

Question 34

Joseph Delappe’s Project 929: Mapping the Solar (2013)

Answer 34

• 460mile, ten-day bike ride
• Attached chalk to his bike and rode it around nuclear testing sites
• 928 nuclear explosions occurred at the Nevada Test site between 1951 and 1992
• The area Delappe encircled could accommodate the world’s largest solar energy facility