Tourist (Andy Goldsworthy). Residents (Omo People)
The beauty of Andy Goldsworthy's outdoor constructions, as they appear in photographs, may not be debateable. As much as anyone, I delight in the formal arrangements of petals, twigs, icicles, and stones he creates. But there is far more than meets-the-eye in these images. Their unintended message conveys a compelling realization. I believe their appeal epitomizes the alienation of contemporary (sub)urbanites from the materials and conditions he adopts as his medium and studio.
Goldsworthy’s constructions and photographs are devoid of evidence that we humans belong to nature as much as nematodes and antelopes.
Extolling Goldsworthy’s site-specific work reveals a delight in beauty based upon abstracted mental principles, not intimate experienced actualities. Their formal elegance mirrors the sensibilities of people who satisfy their survival needs through elaborate technological, mediated, global interventions. Their relationship to the habitats they occupy is so remote; they behave like tourists in their own homeland, not residents.
Goldsworthy’s version of artistic beauty confirms the ‘unnatural’ status of the life he and his many admirers live. Today I discovered photographs of artistry by the Omo people of Ethiopia. They offer a penetrating and in-dwelling version of beauty.
Consider the differences:
Whereas Goldsworthy’s art is derived from brief visit to a site by a lone individual, the Omo people’s art emerges from an entire culture inhabiting land that they have supported, and that has supported them, for generations.
Exploration and discovery are essential to Goldsworthy’s creative process. He enters each site and commences a search for material opportunities for color, form, texture, and scale, and an assessment of light, moisture, wind, and temperature conditions. In contrast, lifelong familiarity with the entire range of physical entities and conditions exists at the core of the Omo people’s creative processes. The materials, tools, and conditions they extract from their site are not merely aesthetic ingredients. They supply nourishment, protection, fiber, fuel, and shelter, as well as their stories, rituals, and belief systems.
Goldsworthy seems to initiate each work with the intention of accomplishing a remarkable feat. This entails overcoming obstacles such as rising tides or defying such limitations as gravity, wilting, melting, etc. The Omo people appear to feel no such competitive pressure. Familiarity gained by life-long practice and cultural tradition permits them to be comfortably and exuberantly spontaneous.
The beauty of the Omo proclaims humanity’s integration with the genealogies and lineages of their ecosystem as much as the beauty of Goldsworthy’s art works proclaims our alienation from them.