Environmental Sculpture: Nature, Art, Ecology
and Society
- draft for an article in the "Adam Olam" Magazine
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| Megalithic Stone Row, Isle of Lewis, Scotland |
Although the concept of 'Environmental Sculpture' is an invention
of the late 20th century, its focus on how human beings can creatively get
involved with the natural environment has been a major concern of human beings for
thousands of years. Prehistoric cultures and tribal societies venerated
landscape - rivers, mountains and trees as well as wind, rain and the stars - as
a symphonic whole animated by spiritual presence. Sculptural monuments like the
stone circles and stone alignments of the megalithic culture were carefully
integrated into this living fabric and orientated to specific landmarks and the
movement of sun, moon and star constellations during the year.
The nineteenth century and the Industrial
Revolution brought almost total estrangement from nature. The artworks of
western civilisation became detached from any living context, tucked away in
sterile museums and galleries - homeless children of an intellectual and analytical
consciousness which was no longer capable or even interested in grasping any
living wholeness. Our current ecological crisis is a direct outcome of this
mode of thinking which sees nature as a mere commodity and resource for
exploitation.
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Richard Long
Line Made by Walking
1967 |
Artists reacted to this loss of context by concentrating on the only kind of integrity
they could still rely upon - the inner lawfulness of the artistic elements of
colour, line, form and space. In an attempt to grasp the spiritual essence of
colour and form, artists resorted to ever more reduced, minimalistic creations.
Land-Art, or Environmental Sculpture, was
born at and out of this moment of utter reduction, as it were, on the edge of
nothingness. One of the first and perhaps most pivotal works of Land-Art was 'Line
Made By Walking', created in 1967 by the British sculptor Richard Long. It
consists of a straight line, brought about by the artist repeatedly and
intentionally walking back and forth on a South West England meadow. This seemingly
banal work breaks with many well-honed art traditions. It replaces the narrow restrictions
of studio and gallery walls with the open natural landscape and, instead of
presenting a refined aesthetic product, promotes the artist's primal, wilful
activity of walking the land as a potent agent of creativity. With this it also
reiterates Paul Klee's claim that "all creation derives from
movement". From this pivotal point onwards, Richard Long has been walking
the globe, over mountains and deserts, leaving behind him humble, ephemeral
traces on the ground in the form of
straight lines and circles. In these works an exciting (although not utterly
new) realm of exploration opened up for him and the following generations of
environmental artists: how many different ways are there to create a straight line
in a landscape and how does each of these lines interact with the specific
landscape setting, the topography, specific landmarks, changing weather
conditions and so on? Just because the form is so simple and universal
("it belongs to everybody" as Long remarks), its 'site-specific'
placement and orientation can speak in a very articulate way - not about
itself, but about the place where it appears.
Andy Goldworthy, another British pioneer of
Environmental Sculpture, started his career by escaping art school and becoming
a naturalist: sleeping outside, waking with the dawn, walking bare-feet,
splashing in the water and digging in the mud. He felt the urge to expose
himself to the elements, explore and play like a child. "When I began working outside, I had to
establish instincts and feelings for Nature. I needed a physical link before a
personal approach and relationship could be formed." This immediate,
physical, "hands-on" relationship to nature enabled him to develop
new sensitivities and organs for nature.
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| Andy Goldsworthy - Willow Sticks with Water Reflection, 1988 |
"Willow Sticks with Water
Reflection" (1988) is a good illustration of his working method. He often
remarked, that, as an artist, he has no personal message to express. It is only
by meeting the particular situation, that his artistic imagination begins to
work. In "Willow Sticks", what we see is the result of a cooperation between
the artist's creation and the reflecting properties of water. This ingenious invention clearly was
inspired by the place itself. So in one way, Goldsworthy makes us aware of what
anyway already exists in the place. On the other hand, he applies principles of
composition, of centre and periphery, of straight and round lines in his delicate,
ephemeral and aesthetically pleasing construction. With this he subtly offsets
natural beauty with a creation penetrated by human consciousness, awareness and
care.
Although the early masters of Environmental
Sculpture did not explicitly place their works into the context of the growing
environmental crisis, their research, their sensitivity and their careful
interventions made a mayor contribution to a beginning shift in environmental
awareness. They helped us to "see what is there" and provided striking
examples of a more empathetic relationship to nature and the possibility for a
truly mutual cooperation with nature. In the last two decades many
environmental artists have expanded their practice by more explicitly
addressing ecological concerns. This included for instance the artistic design
of ecological water treatment plants and projects creating bio-spheres in urban
areas.
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| Axel Ewald - Forest Broom, 1994 |
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| Axel Ewald - Shifting Fences, Germany, 2000 |
My own involvement with environmental sculpture started in England
in 1989, when I attended a conference on "Sculpture and Landscape" which
included as speakers all the mayor environmental artist of the time, including
Andy Goldsworthy. I immediately identified in their search something akin to
the holistic approach to nature introduced by J.W. von Goethe (1). Goethe, whose
scientific writings formed the epistemological basis of Rudolf Steiner's
spiritual science, had pursued his scientific studies of nature by employing
the whole tool set of human faculties, including what he called "exact
imagination", in order to grasp the wholeness of nature. Parallel to
conducting Goethean Science workshops together with the Biologist Margaret
Colquhoun, I started to create my first environmental sculptures. Creating
artworks in situ, in an ongoing dialogue with places, their history, their
material and animated fabric, for me became an exciting artistic challenge and
a fitting way of answering Rudolf Steiner's call to artists:
"Painfully our Mother Earth has become mineralized. It
is our task, through the work of our hands, to transform her into a
spirit-filled work of art." (2)
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Axel Ewald - Back to Earth - Environmental Sculpture
using waste materials, Wadi Nisnas, Haifa, Israel, 1999 |
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Roundabout - Environmental Design Project
of students at the Artways Training Centre, Kibbutz Haruduf, 2011-12 |
Some of my projects attempted the "healing" of neglected
places in more urban contexts, like the "Roundabout Project" in
Kibbutz Harduf. The site was an empty "void", before it became
transformed in the course of a communal environmental design project by a group
of art students studying art in the "Artways" training in
Harduf. This project included a thorough research of the situation, interviews
and community participation in the execution.
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Environmental Workshop
Michael Hall School,
Forest Row, Sussex, UK, 2012 |
In recent years environmental sculpture for me has increasingly
become linked with the question of community involvement and social processes. Two
years ago I was invited by Michael Hall Rudolf Steiner School in England to
conduct an environmental sculpture workshop with the college of teachers. This
workshop led to an ongoing working process in which I guided a group of
teachers in a communal design process, focussing on a problematic part of the
school campus. During this process we arrived, by consensus, at various design
solutions, including an environmental artwork which will be constructed in a
community effort this coming autumn (3).
One of the striking feed-backs, repeatedly
given by participants in such workshops, was that the communal effort, apart
from restoring the individuals' bond to nature and nurturing understanding for
the fragile fabric of landscape, seems to have a healing effect in the social
realm. Sharing our intimate observations and insights as well as participating
with each other in creative work on the land can culminate in a first, humble
hint of what is a lofty goal for the future of humanity - "Social
Sculpture" - a non-material artistic form-creation between human beings (4)
___________________________________
(1) for an excellent introduction into Goethean Science: Bortoft,
H. (1996). The Wholeness of Nature.
Edinburgh: Floris Books
(2) quoted from a speech given by Rudolf Steiner celebrating the opening of the Malsch Experimental Building in 1913
(3) for more about 'consensus design' see previous blog from Oct. 2013 and the book by Christoper Day: Day, C. (2003). Consensus Design, Socially Inclusive Process. Oxford: Architectural Press
(4) for more about 'Social Sculpture' see the previous blog from Nov. 2013
