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Aug 8, 2023

Art in the Age of Extinction by Esme Garlake

Whilst on the Extinction Rebellion protests recently, I began to question how art history can (and should) relate to the climate crisis… sometimes it’s hard to focus on chiaroscuro when humans are actively heading for mass extinction. My new column ‘Art in the Age of Extinction’ will use a different painting, period or artist every fortnight to explore what art can tell us about human interactions with the natural world, and how an ecological approach might help us reconcile our own turbulent times with the artworks we love. By fighting for climate justice, we are fighting for the survival of our species and, within that, the survival of our histories, and our abilities to continue unpicking and re-writing such histories. The arts play a vital role in raising awareness and encouraging discussions about the world we want to live in, and I hope that this column will play a part in this process.


Our Obsession With Houseplants Friday, 23 April

Painting by Kylah Reed (source: createmagazine.com)


I am very lucky to live in a London house with a garden. It is small and square with grey-soiled flower beds on the edge of concrete paving. A huge block of flats covered in scaffolding looks over our garden. The joy of watching plants sprout new buds – ones that my flatmates and I assumed were long killed off by the winter frosts – is one of the most exciting things about spring this year (lockdown easing included). We have been trying to make the garden as bee, butterfly and bird-friendly as possible (despite all of the concrete), so there are now wildflower seeds scattered, a young butterfly bush, live mealworms in the birdfeeders, and we’re even making our wormery for compost soon. Whether or not you have access to a garden, there certainly seems to be a recent surge in the popularity of houseplants. One online indoor plant retailer Patch saw a 500% increase in sales during the lockdown.(1) Millennials appear to be leading this obsession with houseplants, which is reflected in the increasing circulation of images of indoor plants on social media, in art prints and even as tattoos. A quick Google search of ‘houseplants art’ brings up a whole range of Etsy shops, home décor prints and art websites. The joy of watching plants bloom is echoed in the joy of looking at beautiful paintings. For centuries, artistic depictions of nature have consciously blurred images with reality. Early modern naturalists worked closely with artists to depict flora and fauna as accurately as possible. Images of nature came to be almost interchangeable with the natural objects themselves.(2) The sixteenth-century Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi had a vast collection of natural science paintings and drawings dubbed a ‘paper museum’: people visited the collection with the same awe and wonder that they felt when visiting cabinets of curiosities containing the real natural phenomena. I think of how, centuries later, Henri Matisse’s busy paintings of interiors still encourage us to think about these blurred boundaries between artifice and nature. In ‘The Dessert: Harmony in Red’ (1908) there are no plants inside, but the botanical patterns covering the tablecloth and walls give a strong sense of natural and flourishing growth. There is something magical about the interchangeability between outside and inside and between man-made and natural objects. Matisse’s famous paper cutouts later in life celebrate the boldness of leaf shapes, but almost assume a kind of wallpaper function.

The Dessert: Harmony in Red by Henri Matisse (source: arthistoryproject.com)


In another instance, contemporary American artist Kylah Reed uses houseplants in her work to reflect ideas around female reproduction and sexuality. In one painting, a naked woman sits among a plethora of houseplants, looking down contemplatively among her green fortress. Reed explains how ‘the indoor environments are a call to a post-Eden where Eve builds her own garden without the presence of shame.’ Indeed, there is something comforting and powerful in allowing nature into our interior spaces, particularly into the personal, private spaces of bedrooms. Many of us fill our bedrooms with favourite images that bring comfort or stir our curiosity or memory, from art posters and prints to paintings and photographs. Plants provide a similar visual pleasure whilst simultaneously comforting us by simply being alive and growing. Sociologist Giulia Carabelli notes that houseplants in lockdown ‘made many [people] see for the first time how non-human beings enrich our social world.’ ​ Images of nature – and plants in particular – often have idealising tendencies. Matisse’s interiors may be busy, but they certainly have visual cohesion. Similarly, Reed’s houseplant painting fills most of the space with plants, but there is perhaps an inevitable sense of composition; of organised chaos. I started to wonder whether the compositional control we see in images of nature can, in turn, encourage our obsession with containing nature. After all, we go to all sorts of lengths to curate our own environments, both indoor and outdoor: from artificial grass to excessive weeding or pruning, and even to buying houseplants simply because they are ‘on trend.’ Plants can quickly become aesthetic commodities that bear little resemblance to wild nature.

Is our love for houseplants just a passing fad? (source: tonjawilcox.com)


Whilst this tendency to control nature is perhaps inevitable with houseplants – which can live very happily in plant pots – the wilding of private and public green spaces deserves to be just as celebrated in art. Lucian Freud’s painting ‘Two Plants’ (1977-80) is inspiring: the whole canvas is filled with a huge mass of leaves. Freud has chosen to paint a patch of garden wilderness but, within the frame, the composition seems dictated by what is in front of him: that is, the result of plants left alone to grow without human intervention. It reminds me of the weeds at the front of my house, where dandelions, unnamed flowers and plants are happily growing and, as a bonus, attracting all types of insects, bees, butterflies, and garden birds. ​ Even the potted plants that Freud painted tend to be straggly and unkempt. In a brilliant article exploring Freud’s plant paintings, Giovanni Aloi writes: ‘while paintings of plants are not necessarily rare in modern and contemporary art, their importance has been grossly diminished by critics, curators, and art historians.’ Artistic depictions of plants that celebrate the beauty of untamed green space should be given the critical attention they deserve; they raise powerful questions about the relation between artifice, human intervention and nature. The current popularity of plant imagery hopefully reflects a longer-term appreciation of green environments and the joy that they bring us. However, I fear that we will continue to treat natural imagery as secondary to human priorities and aesthetic trends – a mentality that feeds into our continued exploitation of the planet and its resources. As Aloi puts it: ‘our lack of regard for plants and animals in art is indicative of our lack of appreciation for nature itself. The current climate emergency is surely linked to this longstanding cultural attitude.’

Two Plants by Lucian Freud (source: theguardian.com/artanddesign)

(1) https://theconversation.com/house-plants-were-our-link-with-nature-in-lockdown-now-they-could-change-how-we-relate-to-the-natural-world-147637 (2) The book ‘Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe’ (2002) has an excellent essay by Pamela Long about the interchangeability between artificial and natural objects between 1490-1590. ​

An Unlikely Environmentalist: Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits Friday, 9 April

Monroe on the Nevada desert during shooting of The Misfits (source – magnumphotos.com)

One of my favourite lockdown pastimes over the last couple of months has been watching Marilyn Monroe films. We are so used to seeing Monroe as a static, airbrushed image everywhere, on mugs, t-shirts, magnets, café walls, posters, lighters, that seeing her move and talk on screen is almost like watching a painting come to life. Most recently I watched The Misfits (1961), the final film Monroe completed before her apparent suicide in 1962. Based on a short story by playwright Arthur Miller (who was also Monroe’s husband), the film hinges around a recent divorcee, Rosalyn (played by Monroe), and three outcast cowboys, who come together in the deserted deserts of Reno. As the title suggests, each character is an outsider from society, searching for meaning in a rapidly modernising and urbanising world. Having watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Seven Year Itch, I was expecting Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits to again play the hyper-feminine, over-sexualised dumb blonde role that was consistently written for her (and one which she deeply resented). Instead, the film turned out to be not only insightful and nuanced, but it also had a surprising environmental message that found its voice through Monroe’s character. I won’t spoil the plot – in fact, the story intentionally lacks a strong plot and instead focuses on the characters’ internal struggles and complicated relationships with each other. For part of the film, the three cowboys – accompanied by Rosalyn – plan to capture Mustangs and sell them as meat to dog food companies. When they come across a small family of only six of the wild horses, Rosalyn questions whether it is worth killing them. Gay, the older cowboy played by Hollywood legend Clark Gable (with whom Rosalyn is romantically involved), insists that it is worth it. He continues to round up the panicking family of horses, clinging on to a disappearing sense of masculinity and power. Still, he ponders: ‘I guess the fewer you kill, the worse it looks.’ It is a powerful statement because it is so honest. I thought immediately of the meat industry – the more animals are raised for slaughter at a time (in the UK around 73% of farmed animals are kept in factory farms), somehow the less shocking it is for consumers.* Reality shows over the years that experiment with giving families a lamb, calf or piglet to raise as their own and then slaughter nearly always end with families converting to vegetarianism. Or I thought about how hearing about waves of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean is far more ignored by the media and the general public than the rare instances when individual cases (like the utterly tragic death of three-year-old Syrian Alan Kurdi in 2015) make it to the news.

The more we kill, the better it looks? Chickens in a British factory farm (source – https://civileats.com/2017/09/05/factory-farming-is-sweeping-the-uk/)

I was surprised to be confronted with these questions in what I had thought would be a feel-good Western film starring Marilyn Monroe. It was unexpectedly difficult to watch the capture of the Mustangs. The film’s black and white imagery gives a nostalgia to the in scenes depicting the powerful bodies of the horses galloping across the desert. As the cowboys entangle the horses with ropes one by one, the beasts lunge around the screen in a wild panic. Crucially, we watch the capture through Rosalyn’s eyes, and she is the one who tries to stop it. Although I shared her horror at the violent scene, I was unsure whether her anguish would have been perceived as comical by audiences at the time. Surely a blonde woman screaming hysterically was easily undermined by a 1960s audience accustomed to idolising the Hollywood cowboy as the embodiment of masculine strength and dominance. Gable’s character, Gay, justifies himself to a crying Rosalyn by explaining ‘if I didn’t do it somebody else would,’ as if cruelty to animals was inevitable; as if the solution was her acceptance of this violence, rather than his choice to be violent or not. Once again we see that environmental consciousness is so often framed in relation to femininity and thus perceived as weakness or naivety.

Clark Gable’s character captures the wild stallion (source – bfi.org.uk)

This question of whether environmental destruction is inevitable nearly always comes up in conversations about the climate crisis. Today, people frequently argue that their inaction is acceptable because (to put it crudely) ‘we’re screwed anyway.’ It is a difficult point to answer because we cannot say for certain that we are not screwed. But American writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, in her book Hope in the Dark (2004), puts it perfectly: ‘Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting.’ Instead, when we have hope, we recognise that we don’t know what will happen, and therefore that ‘in the spaciousness of uncertainty [there] is room to act.’ Rosalyn’s refusal to accept the mustangs’ capture as inevitable perhaps casts her as the most morally sound character. As Gay and another cowboy, Guido, stand over a captured mare, her colt circling its mother in distress, they start discussing how to split the money they will get for the horses. Upon hearing this, Rosalyn runs off into the desert shouting ‘killers! Murderers!’ She screams across the vast sands: ‘you’re only happy when you can see something die!’ The shot frames Rosalyn as a tiny figure in the desert, angry, powerless and alone. Later, Rosalyn doesn’t accept Guido’s offer to stop the capture as long as she promises to get romantically involved with him. Her response is brutally truthful: ‘you have to get something to be human?... You could blow up the world, and all you could feel is sorry for yourself.’ It is refreshing to see Monroe cast as a sensitive, astute character, although perhaps less surprising given that Miller wrote the role specifically for her and based the character on Monroe’s life and personality traits. The film made me think about how environmental messages are so frequently used as metaphors for human dilemmas and struggles, rather than for the sake of discussing environmental problems directly. We are too used to holding the natural world up as a mirror only to our human struggles. Environmental questions are there if we look for them, and they nearly always enrich our understanding of the ‘human’ side of the work, be it a film, book or artwork. I am still undecided as to whether The Misfits truly offers a refreshing parallel between environmental conscience and a moral female voice, or whether it ultimately falls into the trap of equating environmental consciousness with (feminine) weakness and naivety. The answer depends on whether or not we take Marilyn Monroe’s character seriously, which in itself depends on whether we can look beyond Monroe as possibly the most famous sex icon – not made easy in the film shots of her breasts and bum, gawped at by men (on- and most likely off-screen) throughout the film. Watching the film today, as Monroe’s character tries to speak up for animals that are unable to voice their pain, her voice becomes even more lonely and overlooked – all the more reason to take it seriously.

The Misfits 1961 film poster (source – pleasuresofpasttimes.com)

In Celebration of Protest Signs Saturday, 27 March

Lithograph poster from the series ‘Guerrilla Girls Talk Back: Portfolio 2’ (2005). The feminist group of anonymous artists was established in 1985. (https://nmwa.org/art/artists/guerrilla-girls/)

Recently, I have been thinking of little else than the importance of protest rights. Whilst this is in part due to the Sarah Everard tragedy and its ensuing limitations on protesters, it is largely a reaction to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill introduced to the House of Commons just over two weeks ago (on 9th March 2021). Led by Home Secretary Priti Patel, the bill essentially gives police the power ‘to stop disruptive protests’ (including single-person protests) so that people ‘can get on with their daily lives peacefully and without unnecessary interference.’ The Home Secretary will be given the power to ‘define’ what actions constitute ‘disruption’ without going through Parliament: the maximum penalty for defacing a statue, for example, would be increased from 3 months to 10 years’ imprisonment. Another change would allow police to arrest protesters without legally having to give a formal warning first (instead, the person would be expected to ‘know or ought to have known’ the legal conditions). To give police even more power against peaceful protesters is not only ludicrous – it is dangerous. Non-violent direct action (tactics used by the Suffragettes, Gandhi and the Civil Rights Movement) is increasingly necessary if protest causes want to receive media and government attention. Disruption is central to protests – that is the point! As the government seeks to restrict protests to (apparently) allow citizens to ‘get on with their daily lives peacefully,’ it ignores the fact that women are being assaulted and murdered, and that racial hate crimes are on the rise – never mind that we are also facing literal extinction. To ‘get on with our lives’ simply means that to ignore the Conservative agenda as it systematically dismantles our welfare state, erodes democratic rights and overlooks environmental collapse – something that it has been doing with relative ease for the last ten years.

Extinction Rebellion protest sign (from Extinction Rebellion Facebook page)

As I reflect on the right to protest, I think about protest art. Much has been written on ‘protest’ art from the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, from the sociopolitical photomontages of Hannah Hoch to the feminist group Guerilla Girls. But what about art made specifically for street protests? Homemade signs make up so much of the visual fabric of protests. Although this week I am less focused on the climate crisis per se, protests are fundamental in the fight for climate action. Without making our voices heard through mass protests, how can we expect the government – who declared a climate emergency in 2019 and has since shown no urgency or initiative whatsoever – to protect the planet without significant public pressure? The wonderful thing about protest signs is that most are homemade. Some are drawn or painted on cardboard and affixed to an upright post or piece of wood. Others are made of paper and simply held up in the air by hand. Scrawled or neat handwriting, colourful or plain lettering, images and photos, or even sewn elements… the range of homemade creations is a constant reminder that, while everyone at the protest shares a common concern, each person brings their own perspective. Every sign is another individual voice added to the collective mix. The creativity of protest signs also brings hope, humour and moments of relief from the seriousness of protests. Some signs are poignant while others are unashamedly frank and often witty. There are repetitions of slogans or phrases, and also highly original ones. At protests, my friends and I frequently point to the signs that catch our eye amidst the crowd, and it will make us laugh, think or talk more about the issues at hand. A protest sign represents a voice. It may be used over and over again, and perhaps years later. Some signs might eventually be gathering dust or will be displayed in museum cabinets as relics of social and political change. The People’s History Museum in Manchester has an extensive archive of protest banners, signs and memorabilia from as early as the 1821 Tin Plate Workers Society banner (the world’s oldest trade union banner), in addition to signs from protests for Black Lives Matter and the current climate emergency.

A number of protest banners on display at the People’s History Museum in Manchester (https://museumcrush.org/peterloo-and-protest-new-banner-display-at-peoples-history-museum/)

What will it mean when holding up a sign in protest becomes an arrestable offence? It will silence the voices that most need to be heard. There has already been plenty of debate within Extinction Rebellion about its tactics of non-violent direct action favouring its white middle-class members. People of colour face significantly harsher treatment and racial discrimination by the police, and as such have often felt alienated by such protest tactics. So whilst Extinction Rebellion has made significant efforts to make the movement more inclusive and accessible, Priti Patel’s new policing bill will inevitably intensify concerns around disruptive protest for people of colour, as well as for immigrants and working-class people. Surely, with such measures in place, only the most privileged and financially stable members of any movement will be able to risk arrest. Such limited representation would be debilitating for environmental – and indeed, any – movements for change. Ultimately, a protest sign is personal and therefore powerful. Over the last two weeks, national protests and petitions against the policing bill have resulted in the bill being delayed. It is far from over, however, and will most likely be rushed through at a later date when attention has moved away from it. Street protests show the power of a visual language that is improvised and imperfect, yet determined to be seen. Whilst the rich history of protests should be celebrated, we cannot allow protest and its art to belong to the past alone.

Can We Still Call Ivory Beautiful? Friday, 26 February

It seems wrong to regard ivory sculptures as beautiful, given the well-known horrors of the ivory trade. The global demand for the so-called ‘white gold’ has reduced Africa’s elephant population from 26 million in 1800 to less than 1 million today, and Asian elephant numbers have also declined by about 50% in the last three generations. The trade’s history is fundamentally tied to centuries of colonial pillaging of resources, destruction of local communities and habitats, and slavery: not only was ivory a colonial commodity, but it was also ‘a symbolic object engendering specific imaginaries of European whiteness’ (as Marianna Szczygielska writes). Today, wildlife conservationists warn that ivory poaching has increased in recent years – the main consumers are in China, South East Asia and the United States – with an estimated 35,000 elephants killed illegally each year for their tusks. That’s around 100 elephants per day. However, when I read a bit more about the ivory trade before the 19th century and the Scramble for Africa, it was less environmentally destructive than I had expected. Going back to the year 1000, the rich and powerful of Europe shared a taste for small objects made from or embellished with ivory, and there was still trading and killing of animals for ivory. But, perhaps surprisingly, there was far less need for poaching, since large numbers of elephants, narwhales and walruses died of natural causes every year. Indigenous communities also perpetuated the myth of elephants’ graveyards to put off foreign ivory hunters.(1) The material was still relatively scarce, and so older ivories were often re-purposed (including ones from ancient Rome). Each type of animal tusk presented difficult sizes and shapes to work with – for example, elephant tusks are awkwardly curved – and so large ivory objects were assembled from smaller pieces. Ivory was traded over great distances, initially via the east coast of Africa (trans-Saharan routes, and Indian/Mediterranean oceans) and, from the 15th century onwards, via the Atlantic coasts of Europe and Africa. One ivory sculpture that I find completely entrancing is Georg Petel’s Venus, made around 1624, and currently in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The sculpture was based on some of Ruben’s drawings of Venus; it even belonged to Rubens for two years after completion, although he later sold it to Charles I’s courtier, George Villiers. The sculpture is just 40cm tall, but the ivory seems to bring this sculpture to life. Its cracks echo the lines in our skin – wrinkles, scars, stretchmark – and also tell of a long-dead animal, whose tusks darkened and hardened over years of survival. When attached to the animal, tusks travelled miles; after death, they travelled further still, to the canals of Europe and into the hands of dealers, traders and artists. Petel gives the tusks new life by carving the goddess of fertility, Venus (also known as Aphrodite). It seems fitting that aphros means ‘foam’, as Petel transforms hard ivory into the soft curves, breasts and stomach of the goddess.

‘Venus’ by Georg Petel, 1624

The Courtauld itself has a significant collection of medieval ivories, once belonging to Thomas Gambier Parry (d. 1888) and bequeathed by his grandson in 1966 (you can see some on display in the National Gallery when it re-opens). Thomas Gambier Parry was an intrepid traveler, and his family had made its fortune through the trade of East India Company in the late 18th century. Whilst his collection is a rich resource for medievalists, I think it is interesting to consider how the tastes of a Victorian collector may reflect broader interests in the aesthetic appeal of ivories. The growing appreciation of ivories in the 19th century continued to affirm the material’s associations with wealth and prestige, and surely boosted the increasing demand for it, which peaked in the ‘ivory frenzy’ of the first half of the 20th century. Even up until 2016, antique dealers in Britain were able to sell an ivory object simply by saying it dated to pre-1947, without proper documentation, showing just how closely modern and antique ivory trades overlap. Clearly, whilst we can appreciate the craftsmanship and beauty of earlier ivory artworks, we must also acknowledge the uncomfortable history of the ivory trade. It not only helps us to better understand the artwork itself (particularly in terms of broader global dynamics) but, more importantly, it avoids justifying the idealisation of ivory that continues to fuel the trade today. Ivory traders in what is now Ghana, 1690 (drawing by Rutger von Langerfeld) (1) See John Lowden’s book ‘Medieval and Later Ivories in the Courtauld Gallery: The Gambier Parry Collection’ (London, 2013)

Fast Fashion: Landfill or Gallery? Friday, 12 February

Stella McCartney shot her 2017 campaign in a Scottish landfill https://wtvox.com/fashion/fashion-waste/

One slogan from a Diet Coke advert years ago still stands out in my mind: ‘a heavy shopping bag heals a heavy heart.’ Amidst isolated essay deadlines and lockdown mundanity, I have to admit there may be some truth in this retail therapy soundbite. Although I hardly ever leave the house, I find myself impulsively ordering new clothes, books, art posters, DIY supplies, room decorations… These are all things I certainly don’t ‘need,’ but I feel excited to know that packages will soon be arriving through the post-box in a steady stream. The feeling doesn’t last for long, but there’s the hook of consumerism: the momentary rush you get from buying something new makes you want to keep doing it. Most of us can recognise that fast fashion in particular presents a serious range of problems. Ecologically, the impact of the fashion industry is staggering. Over the past twenty years, clothing production and consumption have doubled, yet consumers keep their clothes only half as long: three out of five fast fashion garments end up in a landfill within a year of purchase. In fact, each year, 100 billion clothing items are produced – that’s nearly 14 items for every person on the planet. Today, concerns about the treatment of workers in the fashion industry, as well as increasing awareness of the environmental impacts of over-consumption, means that many people are trying to reduce the number of clothes they buy. I recently came across Guerra de la Paz (meaning ‘War of Peace’), an artistic collaboration between Miami-based Cuban-born artists Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz. Guerra de la Paz uses discarded clothes and textiles to create large scale installations, forcing viewers to consider the environmental impact of the fast fashion industry. In their work Mort (2010), we see a pair of feet peeking out from under a vast pile of dark brown, grey and black clothes, suggesting that the person beneath has been smothered. The dark, sunken weight of the pile reminds me of Lynda Benglis’ lead sculpture Quartered Meteor (1969), which shares a formal interest in filling a gallery space with a mass of unusual material. Although lead may seem more imposing than a soft pile of fabrics, Mort ironically presents something far more dangerous: the impact of consumerism on both our world and our wellbeing.

Scale and participation are fundamental components to the installations by Guerra de la Paz. Viewers are able to walk around (and sometimes directly through) the works of art; in other cases, viewers are invited to touch them. When Guerra de la Paz first began working together, they rooted through the waste bins of apparel companies for materials. They explain: ‘we were initially attracted to these large quantities of clothing as they offered an abundant array of colour, sheen and texture to choose from.’ Each installation reminds us of our habits of consumption and, more broadly, the ‘disposability of our culture’ (as Guerra de la Paz puts it). I think of the many times I have attempted to clear out my wardrobe over the years, only to buy more clothes soon after. And although many unwanted clothes go to charity, the statistic still remains that every second a truckload of textiles is piled into a landfill, globally.(1) I am also struck by the colour schemes in the works by Guerra de la Paz. The fact that they are able to create meticulously colour coded structures at such a large scale disconcertingly proves how many discarded clothes are available. Yet their most colourful works also offer a sense of hope and unity. Indradhanush (2008) is a material rainbow of clothes, arching over the gallery space, that viewers can touch and walk under as if sharing a passage or ritual under a symbolically hopeful structure.

The clothes that have been repurposed for Guerra de la Paz’s art installations have found a much longer life than most clothes, serving almost as ‘contemporary archaeological reference(s).’(2) But recycling materials in art can is hardly novel. We might think of Rembrandt’s re-using of etching plates, or George Braque’s collages with newspaper and wallpaper, or how frequently canvases have been re-painted. Discarded clothing and rags have even historically been used to produce paper. But contemporary art that uses recycled materials inevitably invites a far more conscious exploration of modern mass consumption and its direct threat to the survival of our planet and, consequently, of humanity. ​ On a final note, how can we reduce our personal fast fashion intake? Firstly, we must remember that until systematic change makes it affordable to buy sustainably-made clothes, most people simply cannot change their current lifestyle. As climate activist Tom Sinclair writes, ‘our political and economic institutions make it very expensive for most people to live a life that isn’t part of the deadly pattern.’ Still, where possible, we can try to avoid shopping from high-street brands and start shopping second-hand instead. Although most charity shops are unfortunately closed right now, I recommend the second-hand clothing app Depop for all of your lockdown impulse buying (and selling) needs. We must try, as much as possible, to send a message to fast fashion companies that, as consumers, we want to see serious changes to the production (and consumption) of clothing. (1) https://wtvox.com/fashion/fashion-waste/ (2) https://www.mbandf.com/en/parallel-world/sensational-recycled-clothing-art-by-guerra-de-la-paz

Daphne and Ecofeminism Friday, 11 December

The day after the National Gallery re-opened its doors following the second national lockdown, I noticed a (perhaps newly displayed) painting for the first time: Apollo and Daphne by Florentine painter Piero del Pollaiuolo (or his brother Antonio). This small oil painting, made around 1470-1480, is based on the tale of Apollo and Daphne from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The story goes that Apollo, struck by Cupid’s arrow, falls in love with Daphne, a river nymph devoted to chastity. After a chase, when Apollo is about to catch up to her Daphne begs her father, a river deity, to ‘open the earth to enclose me, or change my form’ so that she can ‘be free of this man from this moment forward’. She is transformed into a laurel tree – the moment depicted here by Piero – and yet Apollo still kisses and caresses the wood, which ‘shrank from his kisses’. It is a disconcerting tale. Although Daphne arguably succeeds by maintaining her chastity, this comes at the price of losing her voice and any possible agency. In Piero’s painting, the mobility of Apollo, his robes flowing as he lunges forward and wraps his arms around Daphne’s waist, appears in poignant contrast to the immobility of Daphne’s arms-turned-branches. Her hair still billows loosely around her shoulders, but the transformation is imminent; any trace of human form (and agency) will soon disappear. In the final lines of this tale, we read: ‘Apollo was done. The laurel bowed her new branches / and seemed to nod her leafy crown in assent.’ This muted signal of defeat leaves us wondering whether Daphne is still there, trapped inside.

Piero del Pollaiuolo, Apollo and Daphne, source: National Gallery

One scholar, Katherine Keenan, argues that the #MeToo movement has encouraged important questions to be asked about Ovid’s tales: ‘we must interrogate them in the same manner that we are currently interrogating our own culture, which up until this moment has tolerated, and even fostered the very forms of objectification, dehumanization, and violence that we see in Ovid.’ Few would argue that looking at Ovid through a feminist lens is unhelpful solely because it is a modern approach. Similarly, then, although the climate crisis is relatively new (post-Industrial Revolution), this does not mean that interrogating historical treatments of the natural world are only reserved for the last 150 years. Social structures that today make women (particularly women in the global South and, in the UK, women of colour) vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis – more than 10,000 women are dying from climate change-related disasters each year, compared to 4,500 men[1] – are structures founded on layered histories of oppression. Ecofeminism is founded on the idea that ecological crises are the result of a society based on patriarchal domination. With this in mind, we could argue that for Daphne, becoming a tree does not liberate her from exploitation, it simply becomes a different form of exploitation. In fact, it ensures that she is at his mercy forevermore: Apollo says, ‘since you can’t be my bride, at least / you will certainly be my tree!’ Trees are constantly seen as resources and objects for human consumption; the painting itself is made on, and framed by, wood. The act of chopping down trees has long been an allegory for violence. In a room near to Apollo and Daphne, we see Giovanni Bellini’s Martyrdom of Saint Peter, in which woodchoppers in the background reinforce the violence of the murder taking place. Blood even drips from one of the axe cuts on a tree trunk. This allegory remains intensely relevant today. It is predicted that a quarter of the Amazon rainforest (home to 10% of known species on Earth) will be without trees by 2030, if the current trend of deforestation continues.* Much closer to home, the 106 billion pounds’ HS2 railway project will irreparably destroy 108 ancient woodlands (including the woods that inspired Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox) and nearly 700 local wildlife sites. Looking at before and after photographs taken by anti-HS2 activists is heart-breaking: trees that had been growing for hundreds of years are gone in just a few minutes. These trees are irreplaceable natural monuments, founded on slowness and patience – in poignant contrast to human obsession with speed as signifier of progress. [1] https://www.actionaid.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/emergencies-disasters-humanitarian-response/climate-change

Giovanni Bellini, The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr, source: National Gallery

With this in mind, if we look for tragedy in Daphne’s fate, then it is certainly there. But there is also something faintly humorous about Piero’s painting: Daphne’s branches/arms stick out of her body like two oversized, leafy wings. Neither does she appear particularly distressed; rather, her blonde hair, contemporary Renaissance dress and graceful downward gaze casts her as the ideal Petrarchan beauty celebrated at the time. Compared to a later Baroque sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, in which Daphne, open-mouthed, turns back in horror at Apollo as her fingers begin to sprout laurel leaves, Piero’s Daphne seems unnervingly indifferent. Such indifference reminds me that applying the modern lens of ecofeminism to this fifteenth-century Italian painting ultimately reveals very little – if any – historical information about Piero’s time. Ecofeminism stems from a relatively young environmental movement, and is still dismissed by many as a sort of hippy soundbite. However, by listening to our own responses to this explicit visual merging of women and trees, we better understand how historical exploitations of women and the natural world are based in centuries-old associations and traditions. Alex Johnson presents a fascinating case for the need to deconstruct the gendering of the natural world, arguing that ‘Earth is Not Your Mother’. Perhaps the indifference of Piero’s Daphne reminds us that we too can take the association between women and the Earth as natural, as a given, when in fact it is inherently man-made. Then I think of George Harrison’s lines: ‘Since our problems have been our own creation, they also can be overcome.'

Green vs. Greenwashing Friday, 27 November

Illustration by Emily Lashford

'Seeing comes before words… (so) the relationship between what we see and what we know is never settled.’ John Berger, Ways of Seeing Advertising is such a ubiquitous part of our urban landscape that it can effectively fade into the background as much as pigeons or postboxes. When we pass flashing billboards, it is easy to forget that products are being sold, pervasively, unrelentingly, and often with damaging effects. As environmental issues move higher up on many people’s agendas, we are being sold claims that, as much as we would like to be true, rarely match reality. Such cases of ‘greenwashing’ – when a company has a ‘poor environmental performance but positive communication about environmental performance’* – present a sinister and increasingly common side of advertising. Today more than ever, critical visual literacy is crucial. I would like to suggest that art historians, who are trained in the study of image-making, are especially equipped to critically question the undercurrents of what we are being sold. ​ When I think about the phrase ‘greenwashing’, what first comes to mind is the idea of a tint, the sort that might come from accidentally leaving a piece of green clothing in a batch of white laundry. A tint permeates, yet is not overwhelming. Of course, it is also hard to ignore the well-established association between green and the natural world, one used by environmental movements over many years. In artworks, we might associate the colour green with paintings of the natural world – from Claude Monet’s dappled Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies, to Giorgio Morandi’s soft landscapes of leafy country lanes or the greeny-browns of John Constable’s pastoral scenes. For modern viewers, many such paintings remind us that the pastoral ideal remains powerful. One painting by Morandi, characteristically unassuming and with muted greens, has been the only painting to make me cry at first glance. While I suppose it brought up sentimental memories of being outside in the countryside with my father as a child, it was simply a feeling of a distant innocence that triggered such an emotional response. It seems fitting, in this case, that the word ‘green’ can also mean ‘naïve’ or ‘inexperienced’. It feels reductive to affiliate such works based solely on their use of green in depictions of the natural world. After all, each painting is so personal to the artist’s particular style and context as if a postcard from a far-off landscape. Even less connected are the glossy green landscapes that flash through BP’s #bpnetzero promotional videos; such images can hardly conjure the same effect as when staring into the brushstrokes of Monet’s waterlilies.

Claude Monet, Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies, 1899, oil on canvas, 92.7 x 73.7 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Yet given the emotive potential of green as a colour, it is not surprising that a fossil fuel company like BP has persistently used the colour in its marketing. In 2000, it launched its new logo: a green and yellow sunflower (nicknamed ‘The Helios’ after the Greek god of the sun) to coincide with its updated tagline ‘Beyond Petroleum’. On their website, BP explains that the logo symbolises ‘our greatest source of energy: the sun itself’ and that the colours suggest ‘heat, light and nature.’ They proudly continue: ‘we followed up with 8 billion dollars of investment in wind, solar power, hydrogen and biofuels.’ This may sound hopeful, but BP remains among the top twenty polluters of all time. Alongside multiple oil spills (including 2010 Deepwater Horizon, one of the worst environmental disasters in history), BP donated over half a million dollars to the 2016 inauguration ceremony of President Donald Trump, who has shown unanimous support of fossil fuel industries. Since then, BP has continued to seek out new places to extract oil and gas. While green may appear everywhere in BP’s marketing, other fossil fuel companies hardly use it (almost certainly due to branding and copyright regulations). Still, these other companies are no less guilty of ‘greenwashing’ and all make shockingly hypocritical claims about environmental progress and accountability. One such example can be seen in a recent YouTube video uploaded by Shell, a company that markets itself as helping customers convert to sustainable energy despite investing 90% of its spending in fossil fuels. In its latest greenwashing-par-excellence series #MakeTheFuture, we watch Shell employee ‘Elvin’ talking about his work to ‘help people reduce their carbon footprints’. The video opens with him looking through an old toolbox, nostalgically explaining how his dad inspired him to pursue a career in engineering. Later, we see him walking through the woodland with his two young daughters. Throughout the video, blissful birdsong plays in the background.

bp Net Zero ad

bp logo

It is that feeling of innocence, peace and connection conjured from nature (or merely seeing images of it) that corporations exploit. The use of green within the visual realm is a major player, but ‘greenwashing’ amalgamates a whole mixture of emotive sensory effects. Whilst paintings transport us to places imagined or re-visited in our minds, the green of BP or the birdsong of Shell’s video campaigns eerily echo such personal connections between the natural world and our sense of self. Perhaps it is useful to emphasise the ‘green’ in ‘greenwashing’, then, because it reminds us of how colours belong to a realm of association, memories, imagination and values, simultaneously personal and collective. It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that fossil fuel companies are major funders of the art world, given that art galleries are generally spaces of reflection and escape. Whether a corporation presents itself as ‘green’ in a literal or figurative sense, it constantly draws upon the emotions and joys that we experience in nature. The existential threat of climate crisis already presents us with an emotional minefield. So, it is our task to resist falling into false (and admittedly very attractive) promises and hold these companies to account. ​ * Delmas and Burbano quoted in ‘Visuality as Greenwashing: The Case of BP and Deepwater Horizon’ by Alexia Panayiotou and George Kassinis (2017), p. 3

Nature Morte Friday, 13 November

Illustration by Emily Lashford

In Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum there is a small gallery hidden in a quiet corner dedicated to the Dutch still life paintings from the 17th century. Although sadly behind closed doors for the next few weeks due to UK lockdown orders, inside from the floor to the ceiling are canvases that overflow with flowers, fruits, minibeasts, vases, and feathers, creating a space of grand opulence and exquisite detail. When I was working at the museum a few months ago, one visitor asked me why there were so many oranges and lemons depicted in the paintings. Not wanting to let down the ‘Here to Help’ logo embroidered on my jacket, I hazarded a guess that these motifs might symbolically indicate high social status, since access to such fruits at that time required financial prosperity. I couldn’t say much more to the visitor—I was not entirely sure where those lemons and oranges would have come from. A few weeks later, I was reading historian David Olusoga’s new book ‘Civilisations: First Contact’ (stemming from the recent BBC series alongside Simon Schama and Mary Beard), which examines art in the Age of Discovery and brilliantly balances a history of colonial atrocities with a recognition of mutual exchanges between societies. At one point, Olusoga discusses the relationship between Dutch still life paintings and the nation’s seaborne empire. Through this, I learned that the images I had assumed were reflections of a flourishing mercantile society had a far more sinister side. He explains: ‘the Dutch embraced their new-found globalism wholeheartedly… (from) blue and white Chinese porcelain, Japanese lacquer ware shipped from Dejima, silk from Persia, spices from the East Indies, (to) pepper from Africa, Turkish carpets from the Ottoman Empire’ and silverware metal from Peru or Mexico. Disturbingly, to serve their luxury food and wines, ‘the Dutch trafficked enslaved African boys, who became one of the great ‘fashions’ of the age among the rich’. I realised that such ostentatious lifestyles were dependent on the exploitation of both humans and environments in many countries across the globe.

Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, https://www.ashmolean.org/still-life-paintings

Abraham van Beyeren, Still Life with a Lobster and Turkey, 1653, oil on canvas, 91 x 112 cm, The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/still-life-with-a-lobster-and-turkey-141696

Today, although most of the food products portrayed in the Dutch still lives are readily available on our supermarket shelves, their links to environmental and social injustices remain complex. I think back to a few years ago when I visited an orange factory in Zimbabwe (carbon footprint guilt – yes) I was shown the different categories of boxes that were ready to be shipped: the first-rate oranges would be sent to Europe, the second-rate oranges to neighbouring African countries, and finally, the third-rate oranges would be sold to Zimbabweans. That moment made me reflect on how in Europe we take food products for granted; we receive the best of the batch from Zimbabwe without a passing thought as to where the oranges came from, over 5000 miles away. It is a disturbing phenomenon that air miles allow wealthier countries to avoid responsibility for carbon emissions. When the UK claims to have cut its carbon emissions by more than 40% since 1990, it ignores the fact that emissions associated with imports to the UK (including international travel) have been rising over the same period (316m tonnes in 1990; 358m in 2017; and a peak of 449m in 2007). About half of Britain’s true carbon footprint is made up of international travel and the carbon produced overseas to make goods that are used here.* Is shopping locally an effective solution? Many scientists now argue that the concept of food miles has been oversimplified. According to government data, a tomato grown (out of season) in the UK has three times the carbon footprint of a tomato grown in Spain.* The key, then, is to frame the message ‘buy local’ in conjunction with ‘in season’. Yet at the same time, if we were all to strictly follow this message, then the countries currently dependent on Western buyers would lose out significantly (the Zimbabwean orange factory, for example, was heavily reliant on its European market). This dependency cannot be resolved without sustainable alternatives in place. Clearly, exploring food as a theme can bring a deeper understanding of global trade networks and interdependencies. But it also reveals the disconcerting human impact on the natural world. Soya imports, for example, make up 47% of Europe’s deforestation footprint, the majority of which goes towards animal feed for meat and dairy production (90% of all soya is grown for animal feed). Whilst I had heard that soya was not particularly environmentally friendly, I would never have thought that it formed such a huge part of European consumption habits. Tesco currently buys chicken and pork from two UK companies, Moy Park and Tulip, which are both controlled by JBS – one of the world’s most notorious forest destroyers and violators of human rights. Right now, just 1% of Tesco’s soya is certified deforestation-free, despite its online ad slogans claiming environmental progress. Our demand for meat and dairy means that on the other side of the world, rainforests are being destroyed, and indigenous people are being killed* and displaced, out of sight and out of mind. In a current campaign against Tesco’s role in destroying the Amazon rainforest, Greenpeace puts it starkly: ‘there’s simply not enough land to grow the volumes of soya needed to meet the growing global meat demand without destroying more forests.’ It seems appropriate to translate nature morte* in its most literal way. Our kitchen tables do not display inanimate objects, but rather emblems of dead nature and products of natural destruction. Although we do not post pictures of a lemon or a jar of cumin seeds to show off our status – such objects are neither glamourous nor novel – they still represent global power imbalances between countries and the exploitation of ecosystems and indigenous people. As consumers, we must radically change our eating habits, and move towards plant-based, seasonal diets, in order to increase public demand for responsible food production. It is true that our tables in Britain, especially during winter, may risk looking more like Van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters than a lavish Dutch still life. But as these still life paintings show us, habits change; what once seemed radical is now normal, and what once seemed normal is now horrifying. And finally, it is worth remembering that Van Gogh chose to depict the humble Potato Eaters to show ‘that they have honestly earned their food’.* Today we must ask how we can honestly – and morally – consume our food in a way that protects both the people working the land and the very land itself.

Vincent Van Gogh, The Potato Eaters, 1885, oil on canvas, 82 x 114 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0005V1962

*As reported earlier this year by the conservation charity WWF. * https://www.independent.co.uk/news/food-miles-carbon-footprints-climate-change-sustainability-a9050406.html * In 2019, 212 environmental activists around the world were killed (women and indigenous people are particularly at risk). * The term used in French for a ‘still life’ * https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0005V1962

No Art on a Dead planet: There is simply too little time Friday, October 30th

We are heading towards mass extinction; it is a fact and it is already happening. Extinctions occur naturally, of course, but our human activity on earth is speeding up this process exponentially. At the current rate, almost one-third to one-half of all species on earth could become extinct within the next 30 years.* ​ But as writer Zadie Smith points out, ‘It’s hard to keep apocalypse consistently in mind, especially if you want to get out of bed in the morning.’ To continue our lives normally—to continue doing what we love without descending into a pit of existential despair—we inevitably live in a state of moderate denial. Nonetheless, we can still care deeply about the climate crisis without it being on our minds 24 hours a day. It is easy to assume that any form of activism must take over our entire identities in order to bring about change. This assumption is unhelpful both for activists (who all have diverse lives outside of activism) and onlookers; it can cause a ‘them’ versus ‘us’ scenario to arise, potentially making it harder to feel able to get involved. ​ For students of art history, caring about the climate crisis can feel separate not only from our daily lives but also from our broader personal ambitions and hopes. At the Extinction Rebellion protests in London in September, a friendly protester asked me what I was doing in my life at the moment, and I answered: ‘I’m about to start a Masters in Italian Renaissance Art History’. At that moment, I felt acutely aware of the disconnect between my love for art history and my fears around climate change. It felt selfish doing something that I love when I could theoretically dedicate my time entirely to working in the environmental sector. Then I went to Tufton Street. This unassuming side street in Westminster is home to the right-wing think tanks that have been instrumental in undermining climate science, producing supposedly ‘independent’ reports whilst refusing to reveal who has funded such reports (mainly fossil fuel companies). Outside its doors, Extinction Rebellion protesters gathered. I sat on the kerb opposite the makeshift stage. For the next two hours, I listened, entranced, to artists and writers speaking about the desperate need for creativity in the fight for climate justice. Tufton Street represents the calculated manipulation of our human capacity for emotion, under a shroud of empiricism. We need to use our creativity not only to imagine but to realise a better world.

It occurred to me that I had been compartmentalising the climate crisis and the arts, relating the two only in restricted (and unimaginative) ways. If an artwork does not directly comment on climate change, I thought it could not possibly help to illuminate the crisis. However, if we treat the arts as a multifaceted tool for climate action, we not only open up space for more voices and minds to engage with the climate crisis, but we also confront uncomfortable nuances within the art world and thus can make real progress. The decolonisation of our art institutions, for example, brings with it the moral necessity to ensure that such institutions are environmentally responsible; climate justice cannot be separated from racial and social justice. Accepting financial aid from fossil fuel industries endorses the destruction of indigenous peoples’ lands and the environmental plights of people living in the global south. Whilst British Museum’s new Arctic exhibition, for example, may be laudable for its emphasis on indigenous voices, it is nonetheless sponsored by Citi, the third-largest investor in fossil fuels in the United States, an industry threatening to drill through sacred Arctic lands. Here in the United Kingdom, we are in a position, for now, to largely ignore the effects of climate change; indeed, it is a privilege to be able to choose to focus on the climate crisis when and how we want. But morally we cannot turn away. My goal in writing this column is to explore an ecological approach to art history. How do our passions—the forces in our lives that give us a sense of ourselves—relate to the current context of climate change? The process of answering this question discourages the compartmentalisation of art and the climate crisis, revealing new perspectives on established narratives and grappling with the balance between personal and political, as shown brilliantly in The Courtauld’s ‘Art History and Climate Change’ conference earlier this year. I am also aware that an ecological approach to looking at the past, particularly at pre-industrial cultures, will present inevitable limitations. Climate change conjures up intense emotional reactions, and so our academic responsibility to be as objective as feasibly possible risks being abandoned. Where should the balance lie? As art historians, we cannot allow ourselves to be so absorbed in our academic interests and passions that we end up ignoring present crises. I want future generations to be able to visit museums and to look at artworks as a way of exploring other worlds and eras. But for now, there is simply too little time: we must use everything we can to help us re-frame and re-imagine our place in the natural world, and art will help us do that. What is the point of looking back on history if we do not have a future? After all, there is no art on a dead planet.

*Up to 99% of the animals on the edge of extinction are there because of human activity. https://www.worldanimalfoundation.com/wild-earth/extinction-crisis/

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