Alchemy and the Emergence of Eco Art
The implications of the context in which Hans Haacke first exhibited his “Condensation Cube” is discussed in Melissa Sue Ragain’s essay, “Homeostasis is Not Enough: Order and Survival in Early Ecological Art” . “Condensation Cube” was first exhibited in a curious exhibition entitled “New Alchemy: Elements, Systems, Forces (1971).Its curator, Dennis Young, explained that the works he selected slowed the process of perceiving and directed attention to neglected phenomena in our midst – developing an appreciation of the beauty inherent in the subjects, as opposed to being created by the artist.
Typically, these events transpire extremely slowly, almost imperceptibly. Young acknowledged the connection between these works of art to the occult by referring to the events as ‘alchemy’ and ‘transmutations’, and by differentiating them from scientific materialism.
Haacke straddled these world views. He manifested physical laws by displaying photosynthesis, hatching chickens, goats feeding, ants and turtles moving, grass growing, the cycling of water to gas. However, by stating that a system “reaches beyond the space that it materially occupies” , he connects with transcendental cosmologies as well.
Raigan noted that Haacke engaged the artistic presentation of ‘unseen’ phenomena – mostly biological systems and chemical processes – that are either invisible like photosynthesis, or extremely slow like condensation. Instead of art being embodied in constructed form, it consisted of “natural processes as intrinsically meaningful.”
The historic significance of this artistic innovation can best be appreciated by juxtaposing it against the Land Art movement that also commenced in the 1960s. Whereas the latter displaced and replaced massive quantities of matter, Haacke released small events that transmuted over time, replacing the tradition of meaning.
Another way to acknowledge this expansion is to differentiate the simple geometries and mathematical calculations being employed in the 70s by Land and Minimal artists with the exponential structures of dynamic systems that resemble alchemical transformations.
Alan Sonfist’s and Helen and Newton Harrison’s early environmental pieces involving social insects and animals – ants, fish, algae, etc. – share a distrust of the image in favor of direct interactions with material reality. They, too, merge modernist science with ancient alchemy.