Environmental art

Environmental art is a range of artistic practices encompassing both historical approaches to nature in art and more recent ecological and politically motivated types of works Environmental art has evolved away from formal concerns, worked out with earth as a sculptural material, towards a deeper relationship to systems, processes and phenomena in relationship to social concerns Integrated social and ecological approaches developed as an ethical, restorative stance emerged in the 1990s Over the past ten years environmental art has become a focal point of exhibitions around the world as the social and cultural aspects of climate change come to the forefront

The term "environmental art" often encompasses "ecological" concerns but is not specific to them It primarily celebrates an artist's connection with nature using natural materials The concept is best understood in relationship to historic earth/Land art and the evolving field of ecological art The field is interdisciplinary in the fact that environmental artists embrace ideas from science and philosophy The practice encompasses traditional media, new media and critical social forms of production The work embraces a full range of landscape/environmental conditions from the rural, to the suburban and urban as well as urban/rural industrial

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It can be argued that environmental art began with the Paleolithic cave paintings of our ancestors While no landscapes have (yet) been found, the cave paintings represented other aspects of nature important to early humans such as animals and human figures "They are prehistoric observations of nature In one-way or another, nature for centuries remained the preferential theme of creative art" More modern examples of environmental art stem from landscape painting and representation When artists painted onsite they developed a deep connection with the surrounding environment and its weather and brought these close observations into their canvases John Constable's sky paintings "most closely represent the sky in nature" Monet's London Series also exemplifies the artist's connection with the environment "For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life, the air and the light, which vary continually for me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere that gives subjects their true value"

Contemporary painters, such as Diane Burko represent natural phenomena—and its change over time—to convey ecological issues, drawing attention to climate change Alexis Rockman's landscapes depict a sardonic view of climate change and humankind's interventions with other species by way of genetic engineering

Within environmental art, a crucial distinction can be made between environmental artists who do not consider the possible damage to the environment that their artwork may incur, and those whose intent is to cause no harm to nature For example, despite its aesthetic merits, the American artist Robert Smithson’s celebrated sculpture Spiral Jetty (1969) inflicted permanent damage upon the landscape he worked with, using a bulldozer to scrape and cut the land, with the spiral itself impinging upon the lake Similarly, criticism was raised against the European sculptor Christo when he temporarily wrapped the coastline at Little Bay, south of Sydney, Australia, in 1969 Conservationists' comments attracted international attention in environmental circles and led contemporary artists in the region to rethink the inclinations of land art and site-specific art

Renewable energy sculpture is another recent development in environmental art In response to the growing concern about global climate change, artists are designing explicit interventions at a functional level, merging aesthetical responses with the functional properties of energy generation or saving Andrea Polli's Queensbridge Wind Power Project is an example of experimental architecture, incorporating wind turbines into a bridge's structure to recreate aspects of the original design as well as lighting the bridge and neighbouring areas Ralf Sander's public sculpture, the World Saving Machine, used solar energy to create snow and ice outside the Seoul Museum of Art in the hot Korean summer Practitioners of this emerging area often work according to ecologically informed ethical and practical codes that conform to Ecodesign criteria
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