Eco-art: a visually appealing way to save our planet?

Is it ecological art, eco-art, land art or environmental art? It may just sound a bit too scientific to have anything to do with art at all. But beneath the unglamorous title, the acorn of an idea (excuse the pun) planted towards the end of the 20th century has grown into a many-branched tree. Whichever of these names you prefer to give to the work of artists who use nature as their

raw material to proclaim the precarious majesty of the natural world, its glory is inescapable.
From Japan to the USA, from Western Europe to the Poles, artists across the world have created exquisitely delicate pictures from leaves; they have ridiculed our attempts to restrain Nature’s terrifying strength by emphasising her enormity; they have tried to deepen our links with the earth.

Isn’t all this a little too late, if the aim is to increase environmental awareness and prevent further damage to the planet? If politicians and environmentalists are struggling to get through to one another and to the rest of society, then how can we expect artists to do it? At first their cause certainly seems hopeless, especially as the more obviously propagandist pieces, such as the cubes with a volume equivalent to the average carbon footprint installed in Copenhagen last year, aren’t made of the aesthetically appealing stuff that would sway those whose preferred perch is on the fence. You might say they’re nothing more than a new way of representing the statistics we’re all too tired and guilty to read anymore.

But eco-art is not just about fighting for the conservation of the planet. It is about understanding and respecting the world in which and with which we live, and constantly readjusting accordingly. And it is exactly because of there are so many motives behind it that eco-art has such a profound effect.

Take Andy Goldsworthy’s ‘Hanging Tree’. The piece, found at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, is a rectangle in the earth, bordered by a traditional dry stone wall, with the skeleton of a dead tree inside. It is an open-air coffin which commemorates the now dead tree in an artistically exciting reversal of power between man and nature. Or so it seems, until you notice the branches pushing into and through the edges of its enclosure as if trying to break free, to return to nature in a sort of regeneration or reincarnation.

Because the sculpture is primarily a piece of art, rather than environmental propaganda, the sublimity of nature appears greater. I’m no eco-warrior, and I don’t suppose most of you are, but you can’t deny that when you see something beautiful, you don’t want to act to prolong its life – and in the process you can trample on the ugliness and mundanity that is statistics.
The ephemerality of much eco-art has to be one of its most enticing charms. Built near the sea so that it will eventually be washed away or constructed from leaves and petals that will rot within days, the images and sculptures reinforce the brevity of both their and our stay on the earth, and so generate reverence for our habitat, and a curiosity about unknown parts of the world.

It would be stating the obvious – but I’ll do it anyway – to say that Mother Nature is, and always has been, one of the most talented artists around, and if its underlying meaning is something with the potential to really change the way we live, so much the better. It may seem like an exaggeration to say that without the eco-artists of the 21st century the plethora of visual possibilities and the streams which tentatively trickle out from them will disappear into nothing. But just open a paper tomorrow morning and look for the story about the tragic demise of another natural beauty, big or small, then tell me I’m being melodramatic.

To find out more, search for ‘eco art’ or ‘land art’, or go to www.greenmuseum.org

 From Palatinate 717, March 2010