Each artist throughout this edition has presented us with a different way through which to view the natural world today, whether it be via the lens of a Cyanotype print, a thread painting, a Linocut or a stained piece of glass. But now it’s time to take a trip back through time and see how nature, whether it be our own or that of the world around around us, has been perceived through the lens of some of our species most prized art works.
The Starry Night:
For centuries art was considered to be an activity that was fundamentally conducted indoors and one that was primarily seen as a means by which to capture people, religions and still life, such as by painting numerous objects on a table. It wasn’t really understood that one could perceive nature differently through art, for no one depicted any landscapes without people in. This however changed in the mid-nineteenth century with the introduction of plen-air, or ‘open-air painting’, whereby painters brought their studios outside. Suddenly the outside world was intriguing and not just for its aesthetics but its sensations. Whether it was the wind blowing through the trees, the glimmering light from the rivers or the warming of the sun; artists now found that they had new tools by which to depict the world around us.
Arguably, the first to come along and epitomise this change in art was Vincent Van Gough. Take his work here, The Starry Night for instance. Painted in 1889 it shows us not a realistic painting of the night sky but his expression of one. In this regard some art experts (though I’m not really sure what counts as an art expert given how much of a subjective experience it is – but I’m guessing in this instance it’s someone who has just seen or has read up on a lot of famous works) say that the turbulence in the sky reflects Van Gough’s mental illness whilst others say that the bright lights from the village below evoke more comforting tones. Either way, this was a new way of perceiving nature, one that spoke through emotions rather than reality. Doesn’t the night sky speak to us all?
The Great Wave off Kanagawa:
Seemingly dwarfing Japan’s Mount Fuji in the background, Katsushika Hokusai’s Great Wave rises from the sea and towers over a reasonably sized, by 1830s Japanese standards at least, fishing boat. This woodcut created by Hokusai in 1831, Known as The Great Wave off Kanagawa, was long thought to portray an illusion more so than an actual depiction of nature, however. Indeed, as the scientists of the day believed, no wave of such size could possibly occur on its own in the open sea. In fact, so the data said, no wave could ever reach over approximately 50 feet.
On its trip from Southampton to New York in September 1995, the large cruise ship Queen Mary II was doing its best to dodge Hurricane Luis that had for a while been hanging over the Atlantic. The seas were of course stormy, but nothing out of the ordinary was going on for this kind of weather. As the data predicted, the waves were all large, but none had exceeded more than around 30 feet. The captain continued to press on as best he could through the rough seas when suddenly he began to see land appear in front of the ship. Yet this was an illusion, for rising from the deep was a colossus 92 foot wave.
Back in Hokusai’s time in 1831, the captain and his crew would have been dismissed as drunken sailors, but now, in 1995, they were believed. This thanks to the fact that another 85 foot wave had been officially recorded by an oil rig’s laser monitor in the North Sea, an event which led to these monsters being given names – rogue waves. As a result, Hokusai’s Great Wave is no longer seen as an exaggeration or an illusion but a woodcut perception of one of nature’s most powerful events.
P.S. In case you were wondering, the Queen Mary survived the wave.
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