When art mixes landscape and image with nature as a muse
Land art rethinks the landscape as an image of another nature
Cultural exploration, moment of reflection, visual and communicative poetry, art invites itself into natural spaces. Land art often takes root in nature while taking it both as subject and backdrop. Leaving the framework of the classic art gallery, the imagination of land art artists is expressed in the landscape that hosts their creations. Whether through art photography, a landscape installation or paintings, the artists who follow this approach invite the public to discover the richness of the environment.
Changing the landscape, creating a striking life-size image, these artists express their creativity in a different way. Patrick Doherty use natural materials destined to decompose little by little. Its life-size habitats made from large branches invite young and old to interact with these creations that seem to grow from the ground.
In another register, Rob Mulholland plants mirrors in the middle of large spaces and modifies a landscape where self-image (the reflection) and nature come together. These games of horizons and perspectives challenge visitors to the impact of man on nature, and vice versa.
Environmental or ecological art
This current advocates a return to nature and its preservation, very often it also conveys a political claim and an art that supports the ecological rehabilitation of spaces and to forge links between man and nature.
Reforestation as an artistic achievement
No doubt, the forest represents an image of a return to nature in the collective imagination. Since the 70s and 80s, the artist Agnes Denes has tackled reforestation in urban areas to bring abundance and beauty to environments that have become sterile. Today recognized as one of the pioneers of environmental art, her goal is also to invite the general public to come and recharge their batteries in these neglected places. In 1992, his project in Finland, Tree Mountain, A Living Time Capsule, a reforested forest with 11,000 pines, shows that a permanent work of art can serve ecological and aesthetic issues. In a similar logic, the artist Joseph Beuys and his 7,000 oaks in response to the problem of acid rain, planted in 1982 in Kassel, Germany, show that art can have a concrete and collective utility.
The anxiety-inducing inspiration of melting ice
Other artists apply themselves to creating a landscape and an image that reflects the rapid degradation of nature. The melting ice has fascinated several artists. Simon Beck's snow art challenges the limited duration of any experience in nature and underlines its fragility. We can also mention the very emblematic “Ice Watch” by the artist Olafur Eliasson made up of 12 blocks of ice arranged in a dial in the center of Paris during COP 21. Eliasson's installations take on the subject of global warming head-on by installing it in a landscape known to the public in the form of a striking image of nature in decomposition.To establish oneself in the landscape in an artistic way then becomes a means of reacting to environmental degradation. In this logic, Antony Gormley creates works that endure, but will be impacted by the evolution of the landscape that surrounds them. His metal statue “Exposure” shows a crouching man who will gradually sink into the water with the rise in sea level.
Modify the landscape and the image to confront us with the degradation of nature
Increasingly, artists are grasping the changes taking place in the landscape and nature in the face of human aggression. The aerial sculptures of Tomás Saraceno baptized “Aerocene” float in the air decked out with the slogan “Free the Air”. They move thanks to the heat of the sun and the radiation of the surface of the Earth, a creation in comment to air transport and the use of fossil fuels.
Recreating a landscape favorable to endangered species is what artist Jenny Kendler wanted to do, one of the emblematic figures of ecological art in the United States. Kendler designed "Milkweed Dispersal Balloons to stimulate the return of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) to its natural environment. She distributed silver, biodegradable balloons containing milkweed seeds and an information leaflet to educate participants about the dangers of pesticides for butterflies like monarchs, they were then encouraged to pop the balloons in their quarters, releasing the seeds that will grow into plants that will attract the butterflies.
