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"A DEFENSE of FUNCTIONALITY and DIDACTICISM in CONTEMPORARY ECO ART"
Today I posted a new essay entitled "A DEFENSE of FUNCTIONALITY and DIDACTICISM in CONTEMPORARY ECO ART". This defense was necessitated because contemporary eco artists, unlike those celebrated by the star-studded 'artworld', are inventing new definitions of progress, health, success, and productivity. Such values necessitate including factors that have long been alien to fine art values - functionality and didacticis.This essay is offered to loosen grips upon the cultural ideals that comprise the status quo.
INTRODUCTION
If society was envisioned as a living organism, artists would serve as its sensory receptors (gathering inputs issuing from their surroundings) and its brain (bringing key concerns into consciousness and filtering out extraneous data). That is how the history of art came to be a rich repository of cultures as they evolved through the history of civilization. This ongoing account reveals if people, at a particular time and place, were captivated by the afterlife, or a new technology, or social inequity, etc.
Most Recent
To Life! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet documents the burgeoning eco art movement from A to Z, presenting a panorama of artistic responses to environmental concerns, from Ant Farm’s anti-consumer antics in the 1970s to Marina Zurkow’s 2007 animation that anticipates the havoc wreaked upon the planet by global warming. This text is the first international survey of twentieth and twenty-first-century artists who are transforming the global challenges facing humanity and the Earth’s diverse living systems. Their pioneering explorations are situated at today’s cultural, scientific, economic, spiritual, and ethical frontiers. The text guides students of art, design, environmental studies, and interdisciplinary studies to integrate environmental awareness, responsibility, and activism into their professional and personal lives.
To Life! website »