When Beauty Becomes Subversive

From the vantage point of ecology, beauty in nature is no longer located in formal cultivated gardens; or untamed wilderness; or picturesque country scenes. This is because gardens impose geometric regularity; wilderness instills fear and awe isolating people from natural systems; and pastoral scenes distract people from pragmatic responsibilities.  This is because, the notion of beauty is overhauled to embrace all aspects of the life cycle, and apply the outcomes to all living species now and into the future, it incorporates decay as well as growth and embraces death as well as life!

In this manner, eco artists are updating the concept of beauty so that it becomes resonant with an era beset by environmental blight and ecosystem exhaustion. It is propelled by a desire to ensure the continuity and interdependence apparent in cyclic patterns that comprise core ecological mandates.

Artists who share current concerns for the well-being of planet Earth are revamping cherished notions of beauty that have long gone unchallenged. This change is not merely aesthetic. These artists are applying environmental mandate to their material choices, creative processes, and manners of art display. Their choices carry the mark of renegades because they not only transform prevailing patterns of material consumption and production; they destabilize social values and demolish aesthetic conventions.

Gelitin provides an ideal exanple of artists who affirm ecosystem conditions of interconnection, dynamism, flux, and complexity. This collaborative group applies ‘beauty’ to how things function in the system, not how an art object looks within a frame or upon a pedestal. This radical notion not only contradicts conventions of fine art, it opposes existing protocols in manufacture, governance, and education. It undermines contemporary forms of human delight. Furthermore, it introduces new criteria for determining morality, progress, and success.