‘New’. ‘Popular’.

Both words apply to art addressing environmental concerns, and both can be described by the adjective ‘extremely’.

This art movement is so new that it doesn’t have an official name yet. I consulted Google to learn the popularity of various candidates. The search results show the astonishing popularity of this emerging art form:

          31,100 for ecoart

  27,200,000 for eco art

        110,000 for eco-art

    2,460,000 for ecological art

  99,700,000 for environmental art

    1,150,000 for enviro art

140,000,000 for earth art

166,000,000 for land art

Does an art movement need a common name and a coherent definition to thrive?

If so, how does it acquire them?

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Most agree that humans are adept at harming the environment.

Do humans also have the capacity to restore, rehabilitate, reclaim, and remediate the environment? Skeptics note that even professional engineers and resource managers frequently miscalculate the effects of their strategies and cause unintended harmful consequences.

Is it reasonable to assume that artists, whose training rarely includes engineering and science can resolve real environmental predicaments?

Although it may not seem reasonable, in fact, artists are expanding the culture’s problem-solving capacity by contributing the imagination and the gumption that government run or economically motivated efforts often lack.

The following artistic solutions are extraordinarily improbable:
Komar and Melamid taught Southeast elephants to paint in order to provide a way for them and their owners to survive after logging was banned to protect the forests. Eduardo Kac shares their willingness to exceed the norm; instead of bemoaning the loss of diversity or rescuing existing species from the brink of extinction, Kac manipulates genetic sequences to create brand new transgenic species. Another norm-buster is Jess Dunn who carried recycling to an unlikely extreme when she designed the Human-to-Oil Press in 2006. The futuristic instrument enables humans to reduce depletions of fossil fuels by contributing their own dead bodies to the pool of organic molecules for making crude oil. Finally, the Chilean artist Marco Evaristti found a use for a detested substance by cooking a meal of pasta and meatballs with oil that he removed from his body through liposuction. All of these artists contribute artistic creativity to environmental reform.

These artistic solutions are extraordinarily resourceful:
Daniel McCormick, Beaumont, and Mel Chin conceived of environmental strategies to stabilize salmon habitats, utilize waste industrial ash, and detoxify a landfill. Their methods are distinguished by the inventiveness of art.

These artistic solutions are extraordinarily comprehensive:
Viet Ngo, Superflex, Amy Franceschini, and Simparch all introduced schemes for generating energy. They activated their artistry by applying holistic perspectives to problem solving. Each of their efforts considered local resources, cultural relationships, biological interdependencies, as well as short-term and long-term outcomes.

All of these artists enhance environmental efforts because their creativity does not depend on professional protocols, established standards of conduct, or official permissions.

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Some pick and choose from the academic study of biology and resource management, while others focus on environmental legislation and political initiatives. Some manipulate mud, wind, stone, vegetation, and animal life; others manifest virtual images implanted in childhood by toys, films, and books, trips to zoos, and memories of summer camp.

Each mentality has its own experts, practitioners, funders, mailing lists, media outlets, and its own manner of inspiring the creation of art.

Diversity may be faltering in the environment, but it is thriving within the environmental movement!

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                                  Can Art Make a Difference?

Some people believe that each healing thought helps the environment.

Others doubt that the consolidated power of global technologies can remedy the planet’s maladies.

What kind of human action is capable of having a beneficial environmental influence?

Can art make a difference?      

Here is one example of art's profound and enduring influence - the contemporary notion of “environment” can be traced to landscape painting.  

 "Landschap" is a general term in Dutch that originally meant “region.” It was the place where people lived and worked. Each person’s comfort, security, longevity, productivity, and health were products of the "landschap" he or she inhabited. The word indicates that the  relationship between people and the place they inhabited were intimate and utilitarian.

In the 16th century "landschap" was appropriated into the specialized vocabulary of art. It described the emerging genre of Dutch painting that depicted natural scenery. This type of art became known as landscape painting. Equating a landscape with an artistic image stuck when the word returned to common discourse, while its former association with functional productivity and habitability were forgotten. That is how “landscape” came to refer to views of natural scenery that are appreciated for their aesthetic qualities.

The influence of 16th century Dutch painting survives in every person who relishes observing the landscape, but makes no effort to restore it, or cultivate it, or protect it.

Many environmentalists today are attempting to establish intimate and purposeful connections between people and their habitats.

Can today’s artists make a difference by reviving the original meaning of ‘landscape’?

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Glory to the Sun

The Sun is a giant incendiary event that has been raging for 4.5 billion years and is only now approaching middle age. It is a blazing celestial mass that is mostly made of hydrogen slowly being converted into helium by nuclear fusion. 700 million tons of hydrogen are converted into 695 million tons of helium every second. The lost 5 million tons of mass per second is converted to pure energy. The earth’s fortunate conjunction of space and time enables it to receive this solar gift. The sun nourishes all the earth's living creatures and supplies its vast storehouse of materials and fuels.

Now imagine an international assembly of sun gods, Brahma, Mithras, Osiris, Bel, Apollo, Zeus, Vulcan, Amaterasu, Inti, Re, Shamash, Liza, and many more, peering down upon us. Consider their consternation when they discover that instead of prayer, feasts, processions, and offerings, many people are performing sun rituals that consist of lathering sun blocks and sun screens, donning sun glasses, issuing ozone shield alerts, or staying indoors with the air conditioners running. When did the sun loose its centrality as the almighty source of life, light, and warmth?

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