"In my dream,
the angel shrugged
& said, If we
fail this time, it
will be a failure of
imagination
& then she placed the world
gently in the palm of my hand."
- Brian Andreas, 1994, Still Mostly True
Orientations to contemporary ecological art continue to change. Many of the concepts contemporary ecological artists draw from can be traced back to the work of Action, Fluxus, Happening, Ecofeminist, and Performance artists such as: Betsy Damon, Allan Kaprow, Suzanne Lacy, and Loraine Leeson and Peter Dunn. Much of the art work of these artists helped to connect art with life-centered issues in the 1950s and 1960s. Ritual, action, performance, and process drama were used by these artist as more than a vocabulary in a new visual art system of communication. Their performances and actions were not intended as texts to be read and decoded. Instead, these artists believed that it was their responsibility to turn the spotlight on themselves and society and to investigate their own aesthetic systems of value that defined art and art making processes. Kaprow wrote
It's not only the transformation of the public consciousness that weare interested in, but it's our own transformation as artists that'sjust as important. Perhaps a corollary is that community change can't take place unless it's transformative within us. That familiar line -'I see the enemy and it is I' - means that every prejudice, every misunderstanding that we perceive out in the real world is inside of us, and has to be challenged. (Keller, 1997, p.33)
Another change in artworld views of art and the earth can be partially understood through a closer look at the past and present work of four artists: Joseph Beuys, domique gw mazeaud, Hans Haacke, and Ana Mendieta. Life-centered issues were the subject of this new genre public art. These artists investigated community concerns and drew attention to and heightened everyday life experiences through their art. Their actions and performances replicated processes of everyday events as a way to critically examine the symbolic meanings of important social issues through open community dialogue. By drawing attention to the patterns and repetitions of everyday life, these artists asked the public to reexamine their own lifestyle choices.
Changing views associated with the transition from environmental art of the 1960s to contemporary ecological art in the 1990s are described by Suzi Gablik in The Reenchantment of Art (1991). She contends that modern aesthetic ways of thinking about art are connected to formal ideals embraced by different members of the many art worlds. Environmental artists in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s were less concerned with issues and more interested in land as a resource to create earthworks or land art. However, land art and earthworks opened interpretation of environmental art in a variety of ways.
Gablik advocates exchanging world views that value the earth as only an object of control for a deeper concern for ecological issues about sustainable development. Most contemporary ecological artists have questioned past practices and assumptions of early land and earth artists, as well as ideas about landscape painting and environmental site-specific sculpture. In the 1990s, some artists attempt to heighten people's awareness of the need for ecological sustainability through interdisciplinary problem-posing and problem-solving. They work collaboratively with civil engineers, community planners, biologists, and journalists to reclaim and restore the webs of life that compose a community's natural habitat.
Some artists are involved in long-term projects that help reclaim and restore ecological systems. They inform the public about ecological issues through art using shock, humor, and educational documentation. One of their aims is to help the public learn more about the systemic character of bioregions. Contemporary ecological artists use ritual, performance, and process drama to engage people directly in environmental affirmation, protests, and actions. In the process, communities are asked to do something about social, ethical, and moral ecological concerns and environmentally unhealthy practices. Artists' roles in society are in states of transition as ecological artists connect art, aesthetics, ecology, and culture.
Contemporary ecological artists examine everyday life-centered environmental issues. They remind us of the effects of global warming and the destruction of the rain forests and wetlands, as well as the dangers posed by contaminants in our air, water, and soil. Some believe that we have reached a crisis state--that our current way of life cannot be perpetuated without grave damage to the entire planet. A basic concern of many twentieth-century artists has been to examine society's most serious environmental problems through their art. For a growing number of artists willful neglect of the environment is the most urgent problem facing us today.
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