The Ecological Imperative: Elements of Nature in Late Twentieth-Century Art

Abstract

The author draws attention to visual artworks of the 1980s and 1990s in which artists, drawing upon diverse trends, disciplines and artistic generations, applied materials directly from the surrounding environment in pieces called eco-installations. The text attempts to explain certain creative postures and artistic decisions in the context of our advanced civilization—its achievements and threats alike. The eco-installations—subtle, subdued, gentle, fragile, fleeting, whose finite existence (like that of living organisms doomed to pass away) reflects the artists' own decisions—are in urgent need of identification, analysis and documentation. Among artists recognized in international circles, the author situates two Polish artists perhaps less well known than their colleagues.

There are different ecological impulses; there is no ecological sense.

—Umberto Eco

The history of human activity can, with great simplification, be called one of perpetual destruction and restoration. A sad qualification ought to be made, though, that since a certain point in time, the activity of restoration has been unable to keep up with that of destruction. Particularly the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been the most disquieting in this respect. It is easy to surmise that this situation cannot last forever.

There are opinions in some scientific milieus that our annihilation—whether by means of our exhaustion of natural resources and other life-forms or through some cosmic catastrophe—is but a matter of time. This seemingly distant but still impending limit to civilization does not absolve us of responsibility, however, and it does not reduce the extent of our present problems, in urgent need of radical solution. As Eco has written, "There is no way of pretending any more that the burning issue of our planet's salvation does not exist" [1].

Human activity has been constantly accompanied by a peculiar inner split resulting from the great expectations raised by scientific discovery and theory, as confronted with the results of our influence upon the environment. In time humanity's drive for cognition and knowledge has brought forth bitter disappointment and disillusionment with the human being as such, and with the effects of our activity.

Stanislaw Lem reminds us, "We must realize that anthropogenesis occurred over roughly a million years, while culture-making human civilizations have taken up but a few most recent seconds upon the face of the four-billion-year-old geological clock" [2]. It is also worth noting that, in those "few most recent seconds," our very culture-making human civilizations have become capable of putting an end to the existence of all Earth's living creatures. It has been our choice and our fault that the world of flowers, animals and people has become endangered. It was not long ago that the maxim "Ars longa vita brevis" ("Art is long, life is short") rang true. Now it seems we must alter it to "Ars brevis vita in periculo" ("Short-lived art, life in danger").

To all these perturbing questions yet another could be added: if we do not understand the multiple advantages of limiting waste, of economizing water resources, if we do not perceive the necessary co-existence of all life-forms, if we do not treat earth, water and air as our mutual home—where, then, is our will to live and who, in truth, are we? If it is a fact that the limits of growth have been scientifically proven, should there not be another dimension to our existence? What is the role of art in this situation?

Fig. 1.

Anna Goebel, from the cycle To Winds and Birches, birch twigs, hemp, linen, 240 x 198 x 60 cm, 1994. (© Anna Goebel)

Fig. 2.

Anna Goebel, Triangular, 56 elements of 40-130-cm-high barked pine trunks, 1992. (© Anna Goebel)

Nature as Material and Co-Creator

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