Andy Goldsworthy, (1956--) is a British sculptor, photographer and moreover can be described as an environmental artist. He creates his work with no preconceived notion of what each creation will be. Instead, he relies on the environment for inspiration. His work becomes a document of the energy where he records a place in time and his experiment through exploration a transient addition to the surroundings. He is dependent on the weather and seasons as further inspiration.
Goldsworthy is also sensitive to the natural process of the planet and his place upon it. While his documentation of the more than 2000 sculptures he’s created is primarily in photographs, the original document, the sculpture, remain in situ (on site, or in the place) where it will decay as an part of the natural process. (Witcombe, 1997)
Andy Goldsworthy’s philosophy is that we, as a collective human species and as an individual are connected to the ecology of the planet Earth. He sees art as something that is constructed or man-made whereas the natural world or nature finds itself devoid of human intervention. Goldsworthy convenes with nature and the “natural” landscape and then re-arranges it to create his art.
In an interview, Goldsworthy shared his consideration for the relationship with the natural world that evolves around us and him. “There is no doubt that the internal space of a rock or a tree is important to me. But when I get beneath the surface of things, these are not moments of mystery; they are moments of extraordinary clarity” (Adams, 2007)
Goldsworthy exhibits his work in the connection between human and nature; it to us and us to it. Because time is only a perception of reality that temporary, the ever changing environment and that of hu...
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Bikly, S., & Cempellin, L. D. (2009, November 28). Intertwined Through Time: Andy Goldsworth And His Masterpieces. Retrieved January 25, 2011, from Interconnected Through Art: http://www.kon.org/urc/v9/interconnected-through-art/binkly.pdf
Caddy, J. (2010). Artist/Naturalist Pages- Andy Goldsworthy. Retrieved January 11, 2011, from Morning Earth: http://www.morning-earth.org/ARTISTNATURALISTS/AN_Goldsworthy.html
Famous Naturalists. (2011, January 20). Retrieved January 26, 2011, from Exploring New Horizons: http://exploringnewhorizons.org/old-site-archive/famouslm-goldsworthy.html
Friedeman, T. (2006). Timeline 1976-1986 Vol 1. Retrieved January 25, 2011, from Andy Goldsworthy Digital Catalogue - University of Crichton: http://www.goldsworthy.cc.gla.ac.uk/
Goldsworthy, A. (1990). Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature. New York: Harry N.Abrams Inc.
The “Botanist’s Camp” is a lithograph illustrated by John Wolseley during 1997. As a botanist, John Wolseley takes inspiration from Australia’s unique outback, detailing the minutiae of the flora and fauna in his artworks. His unconventional yet innovative artistry style includes an abstract method whereby natural agents act as printmaking tools or as stimulus. With these principles, John painted many diverse sets of masterpieces and in this case the infamous “Botanist’s Camp”. Within the 74 cm by 93.5 cm canvas, John depicted an assortment of desert wildlife. These include a frog, frill-neck lizards, and various types of flora. Furthermore, as a contribution to the painter’s
In the “Impoverishment of Sightseeing”, John Daniel seeks to inspire readers to experience nature beyond observation. Daniel clearly differentiates between the minute appreciation received from sightseeing, and the aweing admiration you can feel if you engulf yourself in nature. Through sharing his personal experiences and scholarly analysis, Daniel demonstrates the importance of being vulnerable to the environment that is necessary for comprehensively understand nature. He argues by allowing ourselves to be naked to nature, one can understand how the natural World has the power to limit our existence.
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
Nigamananda Das (2007) introduces the concept of ‘positive aesthetics’ which suggests that while ‘[a]rt-work may be good or bad, ugly or repulsive […] nature is all beautiful in its own way’ (p. 18). Positive aesthetics posits that ‘[a]ll [of] the natural world is beautiful’ and that the natural environment ‘so far as it is untouched by man’ (Das, 2007, p. 18). These untouched environments are ‘graceful, delicate, intense, unified, and orderly rather than blase, dull, insipid, incoherent, and chaotic.’ A problem for positive aesthetics is whether all parts of nature should be held as equally beautiful. Holding that all of nature is equally beautiful has a strong motive, since to suggest otherwise may seem to compromise the position of positive
Distinctively visual landscapes are portrayed to be a fundamental impact and influence on an individual’s identity, and how one’s relationship with setting highlights their personal growth and maturation. Goldsworthy’s metaphorical depiction of Darwin as being rich and changing in its abundance of nature reflects Paul’s personal growth and development. The extended metaphor “everything thing was larger than life in the steamy hothouse of Darwin, and the people were no exceptions.” Symbolically signifies the hot, humid climate that acts as a sense of normality, as the fertile environment is metaphorically allowing him to grow and mature. Goldsworthy explicitly juxtaposes Dr Crabbe’s perception of Darwin with Paul’s interpretation as he engages the readers in the differing opinions towards the country. Paul’s father acutely defines Darwin as “a ci...
Humans have used art for centuries as a response to their environments. The use of icons, perspective, and cubism have all reflected the cultures and societies of those times. However, art has often been mistaken as a substitution or creation of reality, rather than a reflection. John Gardner has taken up this attitude in his novel Grendel. While Grendel is a provocative and innovative work, John Gardner's views on art, as reflected in Grendel, are based upon a misunderstanding of art and are therefore unfounded.
Throughout the Romanticism period, human’s connection with nature was explored as writers strove to find the benefits that humans receive through such interactions. Without such relationships, these authors found that certain aspects of life were missing or completely different. For example, certain authors found death a very frightening idea, but through the incorporation of man’s relationship with the natural world, readers find the immense utility that nature can potentially provide. Whether it’d be as solace, in the case of death, or as a place where one can find oneself in their own truest form, nature will nevertheless be a place where they themselves were derived from. Nature is where all humans originated,
In his childhood, George grew up in Diamond, Missouri, near the woods and wildlife giving him an appreciation of nature at a young age. He explored the woods and marveled at the rocks and the trees, the birds and the animal, he also seemed to recall knowing every strange flower, insect, bird, or beast. His main source of knowledge, Webster’s Elementary Spelling Book, did not give any answers to his questions.
Try to fathom the idea that an artist could a take stroll in the woods, along a riverbank, down a beach, and with no tools at all – no paint brushes, no sculptor’s chisels or knives, no canvases or pedestals or quarried granite or polished wood – manage to create absolutely beautiful art from the objects and materials he finds by chance. That person is Andy Goldsworthy, a sculptor that uses nature to create masterpiece. In some way, Goldsworthy’s work in Rivers and Tides relates to Sven Birkerts’ notion of deep time and vertical thinking.
It appears to me that pictures have been over-valued; held up by a blind admiration as ideal things, and almost as standards by which nature is to be judged rather than the reverse; and this false estimate has been sanctioned by the extravagant epithets that have been applied to painters, and "the divine," "the inspired," and so forth. Yet in reality, what are the most sublime productions of the pencil but selections of some of the forms of nature, and copies of a few of her evanescent effects, and this is the result, not of inspiration, but of long and patient study, under the instruction of much good sense…
Benzon, William. Talking with Nature in "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" PSYART: A Hyperlink Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts, article 042011. Available http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/articles/psyart/2004_benzon03.shtml. March 12, 2010
On one side of the conflict, Americans have a passionate relationship with nature. Nature acts as a muse for artists of every medium. While studying nature, Jo...
Kleiner, F.S., Mamiya, C.J., Tansey, R.G. (2001) Gardeners Art Through the Ages. Eleventh Edition, Harcourt College Publishers, Orlando, USA.
theartstroy.org. 2013. The web. 22 November 2013. Warhol, Andy.
Nature is often a focal point for many author’s works, whether it is expressed through lyrics, short stories, or poetry. Authors are given a cornucopia of pictures and descriptions of nature’s splendor that they can reproduce through words. It is because of this that more often than not a reader is faced with multiple approaches and descriptions to the way nature is portrayed. Some authors tend to look at nature from a deeper and personal observation as in William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, while other authors tend to focus on a more religious beauty within nature as show in Gerard Manley Hopkins “Pied Beauty”, suggesting to the reader that while to each their own there is always a beauty to be found in nature and nature’s beauty can be uplifting for the human spirit both on a visual and spiritual level.