Art Beyond Nature

 

https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/11259594-art-beyond-nature

From 1826 when the first photograph was made to 1889 when
rolls of celluloid film became available, photography changed
from a medium that required almost as much work to make
one exposure as the creation of a small painting, to a small
portable box that could take multiple pictures, each taking
a fraction of a second to record. The task of attempting to
represent nature in a single picture became unnecessary. 
Photography changed how we see nature.

Throughout the 19th century photography gradually moved away from the aesthetics of painting to become a medium that was about paying attention to fleeting instances of existence. In the 20th century public understanding of nature was increasingly mediated through picture-magazines, documentary film and television. The expectation of seeing the essence of nature depicted in a single monumental painting, as was the ambition of landscape artists such as Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, was eclipsed by a multitude of photographs and cine-films depicting the natural world. Despite the tendency of photography to create meaning through the accumulation of images, two photographs attained the monumental status of some landscape paintings. Both the Apollo 8 Earthrise and the Apollo 17 Blue Marble photographs of the Earth have been adopted by the environmental

The Blue Marble photograph of Earth

was taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on

the return leg of their mission to the 

Moon in  December 1972. The image 

shows no sign of life that would be

incontrovertible if this were to be a 

picture of an exo-planet. The reception

of the picture by society is framed by

cultural values more often expressed 

by language. The photograph has

acquired the monumental status of some

19th Century landscape paintings. The

picture is sublime in that it is both

beautiful and contains implications that

are terrifying.

movement as emblematic images of our precious biosphere, even though only clouds are visible in them. The pictures are actually enigmatic and the values attached to them are essentially literary ideas inherited from writers such as Henry David Thoreau. His philosophy of simple living in natural surroundings is more influential now than in his own lifetime. His 1854 book Walden; or Life in the Woods insisted that a life lived isolated from nature is not an authentic life. The controversial writer and transcendentalist Laurens van Der Post promoted this idea in the 1950s and, inspired by Carl Jung, proposed that wellbeing could only be attained through access to a universal unconscious that civilisation was diminishing. Avant-Garde art was already exploring this concept as the ideal of pictorial realism became increasingly invested in photography - freeing artists to experiment with non-objective (abstract) pictures. In 20th century European art, two competing ideas of authentic representations of nature coincided; the fashionable Theosophical/Jungian idea that abstract art was pursuing a world of harmony or energy that lay beyond visible reality (Artists as different as Piet Mondrian and Jackson Pollock were interested in this concept), and the traditional but still popular idea that a realistic depiction of an ideal scene can express the beauty (picturesque or sublime) of nature. 

Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red
1937-42      Piet Mondrian 

In 1936 Holger Cahill wrote about modern

art "Art..had its own harmony independent

of nature...(now) art need have no frame of 

reference in nature at all. The relationship 

with nature, which had given the artist a

creative impetus for upward of two hundred

years, thus tended to disappear. "

Modern art, within modernism, became inward looking. The Bauhaus art school had its greatest influence on Architecture, graphic design and product design. The tendency for civilisation to become synonymous with the built environment and social space was legitemised by the 'disappearance' of nature into the laboratory as science explored matter at the level of atoms. Although (like music) fundamental nature has no visible surface, the search for authenticity occurs in modern science. In the age of remote-sensing satellites expeditions are sent out to establish 'ground truth' so as to calibrate instruments in space. In the parallel world of art, Walter Benjamin had a different problem with authenticity. In his 1935 book The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Benjamin argued that the 'aura' of paintings is missing in photographic copies because their uniqueness in a particular time and space is absent. These different aspects of authenticity come together in any consideration of the future of landscape art. The land art pioneer Robert Smithson turned the problem of pictorial authenticity into a creative opportunity when he devised his 'non-site' installations in which sketches, photographs and samples of material from remote landscapes were

Electron orbits of a Uranium atom.

Today the ancient Greek concepts of 

'The Music of the Spheres' and

'platonic shapes' persist in a modified 

form in science. Shells of electrons

orbiting atomic nuclei are reminiscent 

of the concentric crystal spheres,

once believed  to surround the Earth,

and the geometry of molecules

too small for us to see echo the

'Platonic Shapes' of ancient Greek 

philosophers.

Chloroplasts in plant tissue. Genetic

editing could increase their efficiency

by 20%, causing more Carbon 

Dioxide to be extracted from the 

atmosphere.

The outstanding feature of our

relationship with nature in the 21st 

Century will be our ability to change

it at the most basic level of life - DNA.
Because living organisms reproduce,

changes that will be made using 

genetic editing techniques could

become more widespread than our

current onslaught on nature with

mechanical technology. Changes to

ecosystems would be irreversible.

A new ethos of our relationship to

nature will be centred around decisions

about how much of the biosphere 

should be changed. If art is to have

any relevance to this process it will

need to go beyond the type of 

landscape picture that Jaan Wijnants

painted. (Right)Perhaps it wiil take

inspiration from work such as the 

animated data-realisation 

Welcome to the Anthropocene. 

(Below)

Welcome to the Anthropocene

 3minute 38 second video

exhibited in art galleries. Smithson created an aesthetic from the gap between representation of nature and actual landscapes. In the 21st century similar ingenuity will be needed to reflect how the potential use of technologies, such as synthetic biology and the 'reverse-engineering' of the atmosphere by CO2 removal, will bring into focus questions about the authenticity of the heavily managed biosphere. The potential to change nature will be substantially greater than at any time in history. The area between photographic 'realism' and abstract imagining will converge with the evolving boundary between nature and artifice.  

   

     

Wooded Landscape with Figures Walking by a Sandy Bank - Jaan Wijnants  (1635-1684)

Wijnants picture is in the style of most landscape paintings

of that era, but the 'sandy bank' that is depicted is most

unusual. The feature is actually a former cliff-face that was 

left behind by the creation of a polder - land reclaimed from 

the sea. The figures are walking on what would have been a

beach or the sea-floor. This is perhaps the earliest work of

art that can be related to the Anthropocene, our current 

epoch in which humans have become a geological force

that rivals natural Earth systems.

Attempts at reconciling science and art have always been

problematic. The issue is not one of difference of methods

but difference of vision. Evolution has provided us with

senses that are just good enough for survival. Science and

technology have expanded our ability to see into the infra-

red, the x-ray spectrum, radio waves and electrons. 

Crucially it is through our own senses that we live. It is this

aspect of existence that art celebrates. The capacity of

scientific methods to map nature over time is also different

from our lived experience. It was Robert Smithson who

came closest to resolving this conundrum. Along with other

land artists he situated himself firmly within the conceptual

art movement and created a significant bridge between art

and science.

                                              

Lost in Landscape.

https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/11200757-lost-in-landscape-john-stockton

Attenborough nature reserve in

Nottinghamshire is the result of 

gravel extraction that has left

behind flooded areas that are now 

managed by a wildlife conservation

charity. In this Anthropocene epoch

human activity moves more material

than rivers and glaciers. Humans have

become a geological force. Climate

change means that no corner of the

Earth is unaffected. No landscape

can be though of as truly 'authentic'.     

We are familiar with the possibility of getting lost in a landscape but the Anthropocene epoch, the present time in which humans have effectively overridden nature, presents a way of being metaphorically lost in the increasingly artificial world that we are creating by our own technological power. Ideas of nature are as much a product of imagination as landscape pictures. While we believe that we have a relationship with an objectively real world, there is a race between the discovery of its hidden intricacies and the rate at which agriculture and industry is transforming it. The defining characteristic of the 21st century will be the relentless replacement of the natural world by the built-environment, agriculture, synthetic biology and waste materials. Humans are responsible for a new mass extinction event. The expansion of agriculture and globalised consumerism is moving the world towards a homogenised biosphere in which the concept of 'invasive species' will no longer be meaningful. Biomass may remain broadly the same as the number of species within it diminishes. Biodiversity is reduced and Earth systems are being pushed to tipping points beyond which they will operate in new and unpredictable ways. 

The tradition of western landscape art has been complicit in this process. 

Bucolic landscape scenes depicted actual landscapes as constructed 

Flatford Mill c 1816 John Constable

The son of a wealthy corn merchant,

Constable's early paintings exhibit an

affection for the area in which he lived.

His landscapes belong to an era when

commerce was on such a small scale

it could operate in sympathy with nature.

Today, his paintings are part of a nostalgia

'industry' of which tourism is a very real

economic part. Hill farming subsidies

in the UK are partly paid to maintain

farms in the appearance made familiar by

landscape art. The grazing on hill farms

keeps the land free from vegetation that 

would help to reduce flooding and absorb 

carbon dioxide.

achievements that were a combination of providence and virtuous labour. The picturesque sub-genre of landscape art provides a dream of nature, in which the desire to exploit the landscape operates in harmony with a reduced form of wilderness in the form of woods and distant hills. Within landscape art there is no real difference between agriculture and nature.  This still popular aesthetic of the picturesque landscape picture (painted or photographed) suggests that as long as there are a few corners of the world that are still wild, all will be well. Actually, the impact of human activity on Earth systems occurs on a scale that is outside the scope of any single picture. Carbon dioxide emissions are not only increasing global temperatures, they are also acidifying oceans. Methane emissions from cattle also act as a greenhouse gas. It is possible that humans are now driving evolution and creating some new species as well as pushing many more to extinction. Inevitably technology in the 21st century will be used to try to navigate the Anthropocene. Attempts to use genetic engineering to modify not just crops but entire ecosystems to cope with climate change are being considered. The genes that control photosynthesis may be changed so that more carbon dioxide is removed from the air. Machines to capture the gas and store it underground already exist. Nostalgic landscape art is no longer a reflection of life.

Since the iconic Picture 51 x-ray

diffraction photograph was made

by Rosalind Franklin in 1952 the

discovery of the structure of DNA,

which the picture enabled, has resulted

in the invention of genome editing 

technology which will alter plants to

use more carbon dioxide from the air.

Eventually entire ecosystems could be

altered, either to help plants cope with

climate change or to try to return 

atmospheric CO2 levels to pre-

industrial values.

The 21st century needs a new genre of art that contemplates the changing distinction between the natural world and technology as well as acknowledging that the 'technological sublime' is now as eloquent as 'sublime nature' was in Edmund Burke's time. The extent to which contemporary art is characterised by detachment, coolness and irony is unhelpful in this direction. The expectation that minimalism can distill the essence of what is significant into a few lines or shapes goes unfulfilled. Visual art could provide a critical context to the exercise of control over nature by creating opportunities for contemplation and reverie and to momentarily step back from the language of institutions, writers and journalists. Landscapes will change as livestock becomes less prominent in agriculture. Opposing practices of permaculture versus intensive agriculture, including industrialised 'vertical farming' and the production of cultured meat in bioreactors, will probably operate at the same time in different places. While permaculture aims to reduce the impact of food production on nature, paradoxically, industrialised farming concentrated in smaller areas opens the possibility of rewilding and the return of farmland to carbon-sink wetland. Wind and solar energy will become

There is no guarantee that thermonuclear

fusion can be used as a source of electricity.

If a way of harnessing the heat released by

fusing protons together is found it could be

the most significant technical innovation 

since the discovery of how to make fire. 

Fusion power would not eliminate the need

for solar, tidal, geothermal and wind energy,

but the surplus capacity could be used to 

mechanically extract carbon dioxide from

the atmosphere, liquefy it and store it 

underground. Whoever controlled access to 

these underground stores would effectively

have their hand on the 'global thermostat'.

In some distant future the gas could be

released to negate the onset of an ice-age.

 more common. Controlled thermonuclear fusion, if it works, will effectively create artificial suns on Earth.  The diffusing boundary between naturalness and artifice will be the most important subject for art in the 21st century, creating the impetus for a new aesthetic in art as almost the entire world becomes a kind of walled garden with wilderness confined to ever-decreasing pockets - an exact reversal of the medieval hortus conclusus or ancient paradeisos.     

  

A winter garden under cover painted by Franz Antoine in 1852.

The glass-enclosed space is perhaps the ultimate form of a garden

in which the air itself is protected from cold.

Before landscape art evolved from narrative driven history 

painting, walled gardens such as the European Hortus Conclusus

and the  Paradeisos of Egypt and Persia were culturally important

means of maintaining a shared understanding and interpretation

of nature. The ordering of space can serve as metaphor for the 

construction of meaning in general, and the creation of a garden

is specifically symbolic of a belief in an underlying order behind

nature.

A paradox of our age is that although our arrangements of fields,

orchards and herb gardens were created to save what we value

from harm, it is wilderness that is now in need of protection. 

Humans now manage 75% of land that is not ice-bound. What

was once thought of as threatening is now itself in danger. It can

now be understood that although uncultivated nature was once 

seen as randomness it is in fact composed of dynamic 

relationships of organisms in complex ecological communities.

The future will bring increasing ability to alter nature. Genome

editing, synthetic biology and possibly nano-technology that

will join atoms together to form new compounds without chemical

reactions, will define the 21st century. It is over ambitions to 

expect art to reflect all of this, but the active border between 

nature and technology, the actual location of choices, will be 

a subject as significant as landscape was from the 17th century

to the 19th century. Metaphorically, the point of contact between 

nature and technology will be like a weather front dividing 

air-masses. This active zone of interaction will give rise to the 

most interesting art.

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• LOST IN LANDSCAPE
• ISBN
  • Hardcover, Dust Jacket: 9798210452474
  • Hardcover, ImageWrap: 9798210452467
  • Softcover: 9798210452450
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                                    https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/11200757-lost-in-landscape-john-stockton