Fei Gao: MA Graphic Design(Visual Art)2012

How does Andy Goldsworthy elaborate his opinions on the relationship between nature and art in his works?

MA Graphic Design Research Paper

Fei Gao

gaofei_76@163.com

28^th March 2011

Fei Gao: MA Graphic Design(Visual Art)2012

List of Contents

Abstract…………………………… p03

Paper……………………………….p04

Bibliography………………………..p

Annex(images)…………………….p

Fei Gao: MA Graphic Design(Visual Art)2012

Abstract

Nature is the foundation of artistic creation. The essential nature of art should be true. The relationship between nature and art is resources and applying. The artists who hope their works to be real ones should be close to nature. They borrow material from nature, then based on this objective to subjective mapping generated mood and feeling .

This essay intends to demonstrate the relationship between nature and art by Andy Goldsworthy’s works. It begins with analyzing how Andy Goldsworthy applied nature’s material to his works and how the works worked with nature. It finished by discussing nature and art, there is much closed relationship between them.

Key words: Andy Goldsworthy, art, nature, relationship.

Fei Gao: MA Graphic Design(Visual Art)2012

How does Andy Goldsworthy elaborate his opinions on the relationship between nature and art in his works?

In ancient and modern history, the relationship between nature and art has been described by many artists and scholars. In most of their views, nature and art is inseparable. Art is based on nature and is dependent on it. Art can create more beautiful world, once detached from nature, art will not be long-standing. The relationship between nature and art is a momentous part of art view of Paul Cezanne. He thinks that "art is harmony which runs parallel with nature". (Richard Kendall, 1988, p.160)This view gives another explanation of relationship among art, artists and nature. Paul Cezanne thinks that artists and nature are equal. Artists observe, record and interpret nature and display their inner feelings in the form of painting. Although the beauty and ugliness of nature can not be changed by art creation, nature, transformed and sublimed, is not what it is really like. Artists bring nature in the art world new colors by their subjective creation. The aesthetic objective is characterized by interaction, by the oneness of art and nature ,by the new art in nature and the culture approach to the understanding of nature. (Vittorio Fagone, 1996, p.26)

In order to further understand the relationship between nature and art, we should first have some ideas of what nature is and what art is.

Nature generally means essential qualities and innate disposition. In ancient times, nature literally meant "birth". which was originally associated with the organic characteristics of the features in the world and developed with its self-driven power. Nowadays, the word "nature" often refers to geology and wildlife. It is often understood as the "natural environment"–wild animals, rocks, forest, beaches, which have not been actually transformed by human intervention. These are the interpretation from dictionary.

As for the definition of art, different artists and scholars have different explanations. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “art is a term narrating a variety of human activities and the products of those activities". Art is regarded as a cultural phenomenon, and its changes have great influence on the level of material production and science and technology of the time. It also has a close relation to the social economy and culture. In Milton Glaser’s thought,

“ art is work”. He thought “work is essential to our lives. Doing work that is meaningful and excellent seems a fundamental desire of the best human beings, and it becomes more related to our daily life”. (Milton, 2000, p.8)

Art and Nature are closed linked. The relationship between art and nature can be explained as a paralleling one. The artists go into nature and endeavor to explore what nature effortlessly creates. The artists express it in their ways and learn from it. The work of art itself becomes part of nature. Not as a new aesthetic entity, art exists there, but simply goes back be a piece of the natural world. For artists, nature is an original source of artistic creation not a model to copy.

Art does not imitate nature, but it founds itself on the study of nature - takes from nature the selections which best accord with its own intention, and then bestows on them that which nature does not possess, viz. the mind and the soul of man. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)

The forms,colors, and beautiful vistas of nature have always been an inspiration for art. In the fact, the procession of the artistic creation is a mix of spiritual, intellectual and aesthetic conversation based on nature. The imagination and creativity of the artists is allowed to interact. Artists make many landscapes painted and poems written, which are all inspired by rivers or towering mountains, foggy mornings and so on. Nature can give musicians inspiration. Even architecture can learn from nature. Nature is simple full of colors and geometric forms, while it is complex for organisms and the environment are interlaced together in spectacular ways.

In artistic history, there is a form of art closely related to nature, which is Land Art. It is a kind of modern art, beginning with a kind of artistic activity of the 60s last century and artists are mainly from the US and the UK. Land Art is the first genre of art regarding nature itself as a form of artistic expression. Different from Romanticism advocating returning to nature, Land Art assails social and cultural reality in the form of nature. The artists of Land Art think that there is no rigid limit between art and life, art and nature. Art exists everywhere in the space and time for being. (Amanda, 2010,pp.26-7)

The main feature of Land Art is to employ earth materials, and to create art on the earth and concerned with earth.It has two essential features, one of which is to draw materials from the earth and to be finished on the earth. Artists usually use materials from the earth like rocks, sands and organic media and so on. Their creation often interacts with nature, earth and large structure, which, at the same time, are easily damaged or disappear. The other essential feature is gigantic volume. The works of Land Art are dinosaurs of artistic family, some of which even alter the landform. It means that Land Art can not be displayed in the galleries and can not be brought into traditional artistic system.（Ben Tufnell, 2006, pp.46-8)

Land Art can be regarded as a result of indoor ornamental works developing to outdoor. The earliest examples can be tracked back to Egyptian Pyramid and Stonehenge.

The works of Land Art have concerned for the sense of place. The artists integrate the works and environment, strengthen or lessen the topography, geology or the alteration of season, in order to guide people to deeply experience nature.

In the early ten years, Land Art has become the order of the day and there has existed a series of classical works. The most famous one is named Spiral Jetty created by Robert Smithson in 1970. The artist built a huge spiral break water in northeastern of Great Salt Lake of Utah. The length is 1500 feet and width is 15 feet. It was made of black basalt, limestone and earth weighing 6500 tons. The shape of the work is like a snake crawling into the pink lake and because of the elevation of lake in 1971, the work sank in the 15 feet beneath the water（Ben Tufnell,2006,p41)

Robert Smithson, who coined Land Art was the first to challenge the connection between urbanism and development, and the first to advocate non-urban locations for sculpture. The early works frequently exist in the open, located well away from civilization, left to change and erode under natural conditions. Aiming at another artist standing for Land Art named Andy Goldsworthy 's gateshead project, Robert Smithson pointed out that rust was one of the fundamental properties of steel.(Goldsworthy,1991, p.140)

While Andy Goldsworthy is different from Smithson, who enjoys extremes and ideas in terms of polar opposites likeorder –disorder. Compared with Smithson, Goldsworthy is a cool and moderate artist, but he does identify the view that the downsides and upsides of things can both be embodied in the art.(Goldsworthy,1991, p.140)

Andy Goldsworthy is another representative of Land Art. He is a brilliant British artist who collaborates with nature to make his creations.The artistic creation of Andy Goldsworthy is associate with his working experience in the farm when young. When Andy Goldsworthy was studying art in his college, he found that he was set a limit to the studio. He always travelled to the beach, and he enjoyed making temporary sculpture outside. At the same time, because he worked part-time in a farm. Goldsworthy got more creative inspiration from the experience of his labor in that period. He thought that the experience of working in the farm brought him up. Confronting with the brutality of nature and the closeness of death made him learn what school would never teach him.

That experience made him be more sensitive and alert to nature and changes in material, season and weather. He made his art concern more for his own life, his nature and the earth’s nature and environment. When one of art activities came to a disillusionment, he immediately discovered his own nature, because a work process just used one’s own nature like a tool. He made his work literary and symbolic which became a simpler, more effective and honest process.

Andy Goldsworthy always uses the materials of nature straight away to hand to make his sculpture in the landscape. We are now familiar with his art forms – domes, holes, spires, arches, spheres, columns, circles, - lines ,spirals, which strong show the patterns and rhythms of growth. These forms are the attempts to understand the purpose of sculpture as well as the purpose of nature itself.

In my opinion, art is really about the nature. Everything we do in art, is related to our environment and also the things we do. For example we often draw plants and animals, which are nature. Even if we draw objects, they are parts of the environment/ nature. I don't know much but I think in the art world, nature is really important because it is where we get most of our drawing ideas from and from it we might get our own inspiration and build our own imagination.(Andy Goldsworthy)

In Andy Goldsworthy's art, he often used the following materials including leaves, stone, pinecones, brightly-coloured flowers, icicles, thorns, mud, snows, and twigs.He said "There is a whole world in a single leaf".( Goldsworthy, 1991, p.108) Andy Goldsworthy thinks that it's unbelievably brave to be dealing his creation with flowers and leaves and petals. But he persisted doing like that. He believes that he should not choose the materials he works with and his duty is to regard and use the whole nature as his materials. Andy Goldsworthy understands from the literal sense of the word that ‘raw materials’ are found in nature in primeval times, which is the starting point of human production. But nature itself became to be developed then gradually to be further manipulated.

Andy Goldsworthy has become aware of an increasing concern for environmental issues. At the same time he has adisenchantment with the kind of art he was then producing. He wants to find his own nature, and then make use of his nature like a tool. Andy Goldsworthy is also intented to keep himself alert and sensitive about alteration of material and weather.

"Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature."(Goldsworthy,1991, p.160）

Andy Goldsworthy showed his first work to public was a circular hole dug which was outside the Serpentine Gallery,London in 1981. In 1984, he scooped another hole through the floor of the gallery as part of the Serpentine's 'Salon d' Automne. This time is different from before, and it is inside. Deep and dark holes induce people’s curiosity and even fear. Their intense blackness shows a mysterious, limitless space or energy. Goldsworthy encompassed holes because of his strong fascination for caves and tree hollows, which becomes a persistent theme existing through his work.

In 1997, here came Goldsworthy’s first significant project in the United States with “The Storm King Wall” at a celebrated sculpture park at the Storm King Arts Center in Mountainville, New York. Since Europeans settlers entered the region of Hudson Valley, distinct stone walls had been usually built everywhere. But in modern times, these structures had been in the state of disrepair in modern times and were often replaced by forests. Here Goldsworthy used natural rocks from the region which people in that time admired and respect to construct a 2,000-plus-foot wall. The inspiration of “The wall” “comes from an ancient, ruined rock boundary, winding its way through stands of maple and oak trees, leaping under the surface of a small area of water, appearing at an angle on the bank far away then sharply bending before climbing straight up a hill to the edge of a road. Its pace seems to be quick from east to west, and we can feel and get a feeling of similarity of Old World to New and past to present.”

Andy Goldsworthy has regarded colors as a kind of energy. The lively colors existing in nature are unsound. They are destructed and removed by time and erosion like all organic matters. Nature's seasonal or meteorological changes which are based upon his geographical location have been used by Goldsworthy. And because climate has influence on his color palette, it does affect his work's form and pattern.

For the past two decades, Andy Goldsworthy has created works not making use of a given landscape as base but inscribing it with spirals circles and lines. All are based upon elemental forms from nature and all organic matter that is made up of at a molecular level. Goldsworthy has measured long cracks in the earth which were bordered by the imbricated stones. He has also built up and created gigantic arches and cones put in water or on land with rocks which are changed in form or rectangles of ice which are cut down. His sculptures are based on elemental forms, therefore, seriality or patterning often appears in his construction. The temporal and temporary dimension of his work is embodied in his work just because of the effect of seriality or of something that extends over time.

Lots of Andy Goldsworthy’s creations are transient. In order to capture the essence of his work, he always photographs every piece work right now after he makes it. Andy Goldsworthy uses the photograph to record as a form of documentation. He set a goal of understanding nature by directly taking part in nature as closely as he can. He thinks that every piece of work has a process of growing, staying and decaying, and that is a complete circle. The photographs show the highlight of the works and make the moment alive. The artists express the peak of the work in the image, but the process and decay are implicit.

Looking at his works, we can always find there are familiar things, but they give us fresh eyes.

My approach to photograph is kept simple, almost routine. All work, good and bad, is documented. I use standard film, a standard lens and no filters. Each work grows, strays, decays—integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its height, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expresses in the image. Process and decay are implicit.

Andy Goldsworthy thinks the photographs keep the reason and spirit of the work in form, which is not the purpose but the result of his art. Andy Goldworthy’s creations usually happen against a natural background to portrait artificial figures.

This place will always be important to me. It is difficult to define the light, the colours. I cannot describe the effect that  red has on me. It is as deeply moving spiritually as red maples in Japan or the spring green grass in Britain... I have tried to touch that color not just with my hand, but also with light. To understand that colour is to understand something of the spirit of this place.( Andy Goldsworthy, 1996, p.40)

In the given context, there exists a new order and the order is not unnatural. Spirals, meanders, lines, cracks, concentric forms or chessboard patterns, star-shapes, spheres and eggs are all compositions that can be found in nature and they are applied to other materials in other condition. When his composition infinitely refers to other natural phenomena, Andy Goldsworthy himself gives us suggestion on that.

He enjoys the freedom of using his hands to find tools on himself like thorns, the quill of a feather and a sharp stone. He makes full use of every day, every kind of weather and every leave in nature. He learns from nature and treasures nature.

Andy Goldsworthy makes attempt to discover nature in his works which are created indoors or with urban and industrial materials removing far away from their source. He thinks nature goes beyond rural land and everything comes from it. He is fascinated in working with the earth directly. As along as he can make creations on land, he can sensitively get the first fresh perception of the land. That is what he pursues. ( Goldsworthy, 1990)

Most of the artists combine their artistic creation with visits to the countries, which are influenced by the climate or culture of the various countries. Different from them, Andy Goldsworthy's works are based on the British tradition of landscape. That is to say, Goldsworthy seems to place the view upon nature advocated by the founders of British landscape painting who are devoted to make persistent conversation with nature, such as Turner and Constable (Goldsworthy, 1993, p. 113)

Throughout the history of art, there is much closed relationship between nature and art. At the beginning people drew the animals on the wall till now. It is difficult to say art can survival without nature. Nature provides art nutrition, so art is dependent on nature. Artists are deeply attracted by beautiful scenery of nature, then take nature into their art world by the way of their subjective creation, endowing nature with fresher life. All in all, nature and art is closely linked. Nature provides art nutriment and material. Art is derived from nature, and all works of art have nature as their source。Losing contact with nature, no art can survive. Being confined to nature and purely imitating nature will never bring us fine artistic works.

Bibliography

BOOKS

Amanda, B. (2010) The Ethics of Earth Art . Published by the University of Minnesota Press

Andy, G. (1996) Wood. Published in Great Britain by Viking

Andy, G.(1993) Two Autumns. Published by Tochigi Shuppan Design Center

Andy, G. (1989) Touching North. Fabian Carlsson Craeme Murray London Edinburgh

Andy, G. (1992) Ice and Snow drawings. Published by The FruitMarket Gallery,Edinburgh

Miwon, kwon. (2001) One place after another. The hit press. Cambridge,Massachusetts .London England

Nancy, G.(1989) Earthworks and Beyond Contemporary Art In The Landscape. Cross River Press,Ltd

Richard, K.(1988) Cezanne by himself. Macdonald& Co Ltd London & Sydney

Skira. (2009) 1969-1999 Neo-avant-gardes, Postmodern and Global art. Italy: Skira Editore s.p.a

Tacita, D. & Jeremy, M. (2005) Place. Published in the United Kingdom

Terry, F & Andy, G.(1991) Hand to Earth Sculpture 1976-1990. Published by w.s. Maney & Son Ltd in association with The Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpturec

Viking. (1990) Andy Goldsworthy. Published by the Penguin Group

Vittorio, F. (1996) Art in nature. Edizioni Gabriele Mazzotta

Tacita, D. & Jeremy, M. (2005) Place. Published in the United Kingdom

Film /Video