Agnes Denes’ Wheatfield – A Confrontation: An Artistic Symbol of the Paradoxical Relationship between Urbanization, Globalization, Environmental Implications and Human Nature
Kyle Cordain
Human Ecology
Colorado State University
Fall 2014
In the Spring of 1982, environmental artist Agnes Denes constructed perhaps one of the most anomalous and thought provoking art installations ever witnessed by New York City titled Wheatfield – A Confrontation (Figure 1). With the assistance from volunteers, Agnes Denes spent multiple days clearing debris from a battery landfill adjacent to the World Trade Center buildings. Once the landfill was deemed suitable for an agricultural operation, 225 truckloads of top soil was spread out over the site
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This phenomenon is largely due to the enhanced socioeconomic stratification in developing countries induced by powerful international economic sectors. “People working in favored sectors (for example, tourism) prosper, those working in export-led manufacturing earn subsistence wages; and those remaining in sectors not keyed in to the global economy (for example, many rural works) suffer (McMichael 2000:1122).” Inequitable subsistence patterns in developing countries inevitably forces the poorest rural inhabitants to migrate to urban areas and most end up surviving by working for export-based industries which are often unregulated, unhealthy, and unsustainable. Export industry workers in developing countries are paid inadequate wages and cannot afford to maintain a life that fosters health and well being. Wage inadequacies coupled with large-scale population migration to urban centers perpetuates the growth of shantytowns and slums characterized by unsanitary and environmentally degrading living …show more content…
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These assemblages of work mirrror a reflection of glimpses of landscape beauty, a particular solace found in the nature surrounding us during her time in the outback, elegance, simplicity and the lifestyle of the physical world around us. Gascoigne has an essential curiousity displayed in her work exploring the physical word that is captured in an essence of this rural home which brings evocate depictions, subject to the arrangement of these simple remnants that offer so much more. The assemblages focus us on viewing the universe from a unique turnpoint, compromising of corrugated iron, feathers, worn linoleum, weathered fence palings, wooden bottle crates, shells and dried plant matter. The art works offer a poetic expression that traces remnants around the world that individually hold meaning to their placement in the
The show’s organizers, Teresa A. Carbone (the museum’s curator of American art) and Kellie Jones, did an exceptional job of strategically placing the artwork in relevance and relating topics to one another. When I arrived, the exhibit was empty and I actually had the opportunity to meet Ms. Carbone, who was on hand at the museum’s entrance.
Over several decades, Canadian women have greatly exceeded and made several advancement in earning women’s equality. Agnes MacPhail was a strong determined woman. At a young age, Macphail disliked housework and preferred helping her father with the farm livestock. She had longed for a life outside the farm work and hoped to attend school. However, Agnes’ family was in dire need for help to support the farm. She took action and never lost hope as she pleaded for two years for her parent's approval to go to school. With persistence and hope she gained their permission to start an education. Several women have shown phenomenal strength and conquered challenges to achieve equality. Women lived in a male-dominated society; however after 1914, Canadian
Robert Smithson is best known as a pioneer of the Earthworks movement. However his involvement in the development of Earthworks is only one of his many contributions to postwar American art. His most popular concepts he innovated was a “site,” which is a place in the world where art is inseparable from its context. In addition to large-scale land interventions, Smithson’s artistic practice also includes photography, painting, film, and language.
16 Oct. 2013. While this is a blog post, it is from a very professional site that specializes in
"Whilst some feminists have argued to be included in 'male stream' ideologies, many have also long argued that women are in important respects both different from and superior to men, and that the problem they face is not discrimination or capitalism but male power." (Bryson, 2003, p. 3). The feminist art movement is unclear in its description because some describe this movement as art that was simply created by women and others describe it as art with anti-male statements in mind. For the focal point of this paper, the goal will be to analyze several female artists and their works of art who influenced, and who are said to have made powerful influence both in the feminist art movement from a political and societal perspective, then and today. With that being said, we will start with the female artist Judy Chicago and a quote from her that calcifies her position as an artist. "I believe in art that is connected to real human feeling that extends itself beyond the limits of the art world to embrace all people who are striving for alternatives in an increasingly dehumanized
In 1886 Mary Gibbons Lawson Hood was born in Honey Brook, Pennsylvania, on August 30 to William Gibbons and Agnes Gaston Lawson (Philadelphia Modernism 38). In 1907 Mary married Albert L. Hood on March 2 at her parents’ home (Philadelphia Modernism 38). “Mary G. L. Hood attended The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts directly out of high school in 1903, but curtailed her studies to marry and raise her four children” (Tow). “Her second experience at the Academy began in 1929 when her eldest child, Agnes graduated from Swarthmore College” (Tow). Dissatisfied with the Academy’s conservative climate, Mary Hood left after a year to study with Henry McCarter and then Arthur B. Carles whose teachings encouraged an individual expression of ideas and emotions with vigorous color and abstraction (Tow). “During the summers of 1937 and 1938, she also studied with Charles W. Ward whose modernist landscapes of Bucks County would exert a strong influence in their landscapes” (Tow). “Mary Hood and Agnes Hood Miller were given a dual “Mother and Daughter” exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in December of 1941, their last exhibition in Philadelphia until now” (Tow). Later that year, Mary G. L. Hood and her family purchased a farm in Springdale, near New Hope (Philadelphia Modernism 41). “There, Hood worked in her studio every afternoon painting the beautiful flo...
11 December 2012. Web.
Artists of the Modernist era responded to the relationship of body and landscape in many different ways. This essay will focus on the works of Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) and Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) and will explore two works by each artist. A desire of the Modernist artist was the pursuit of pure forms and removal of extraneous detail that would encumber their vision of what the world should, or in fact did look like to them. As Honour and Flemming (2009) propose, the thought of seeking original elucidations to the issues that surrounded the production of paintings and sculpture helped to propel the movement forward.
People argue that Ground Zero is a place that someone would not want to visit. Yet, Berne states, “the first thing I noticed when I arrived on the corner of Vesey and Church Streets was a crowd” (175). Therefore, contrary to what people think it is indeed a place millions of people go to see and experience. People claim that Ground Zero is a place to solely go and look at literally nothing, but it is much more than that. When Berne first arrives at Ground Zero she attests, “nothing is what it first looked like, the space that is now ground zero. But once your eyes adjust to what you are looking at, “nothing” becomes something much more potent, which is absence” (175). People mask their emotions about the devastating event by simply proclaiming that the memorial site is simply a space full of nothing. On the contrary, Berne is trying to say that the empty space is everything. That space of nothing is the emptiness left by the destruction of millions of families, thousands of lives, and the United States as a whole. She also states that “the most striking thing about
Arcadian ecology animates man’s loyalty to the earth and its vital energy. White’s Arcadian ecology has been around for a while, but it didn’t get widely noticed until sometime in the Industrial Revolution era. England was fast becoming the first society in the world to enter the technological era (Worster 1994:12). In the late eighteenth century, Manchester’s capital accumulated tremendously from years of trade with the Orient. Also, the New World financed the development of a new mode of production called the factory system.
Environmental art is a genre of art that was established in the late 1960’s and it was created by things found in nature to make a piece of art. Some of the the environmental art would be so large in size, that it would be considered to be monumental. This kind of art can not be moved without destroying it, and the climate and weather can change it. There are many reasons why an artist would create an environmental work of art, such as : to address environmental issues affecting earth today, to show things that could be powered by nature or be interactive with natural phenomenon (like lighting or earthquakes), or to show how people can co-exist with nature, or maybe use it as a means to help restore ecosystems in an aesthetic way. (greenmuseum) Based on the artworks of Michael Heizer, Walter de Maria, and Robert Smithson, that have created and expanded the wonderful genre of environmental art. The major concepts underlying their art will define the roots of this genre throughout history.
Downfall of people who come from developing countries living below $1 per day in East Asia.