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| Claus Oldenburg is shit | ||||||||||||
| Fragments of a Critique of Environmental Art | ||||||||||||
| The intention of these pieces is to explore the way in which art and the artist can act as a form of mediation between humans and the rest of nature. Wild nature becomes an object for passive consumption. It becomes a commodity. | ||||||||||||
| These works also explore our tendency to attempt to domesticate wild nature; to capture it and treat it as a resource or product. | ||||||||||||
| We no longer engage in dialogue with nature, but impose our will and tame it. | ||||||||||||
| Environmental/Earth/Landscape art too often attempts to ?transform? nature into ?art?. To permanently stamp our signature and authorship upon it. | ||||||||||||
| Obvious examples are the works of Claus Oldenburg which are typify the arrogant disregard for nature of both society and its artists who work within it. | ||||||||||||
| Other artists such as Andy Goldsworthy cheerfully reproduce the logic of the opencast quarry as they stripmine the environment for coffee table photography and banal ornamentation. | ||||||||||||
| There is always a political dimension to this. Not just on the part of the artist, but in the pathology of civilisation that turns living nature into dead economic figures. | ||||||||||||
| ?The land is everything. It is the source of our existence. It?s where the spirits live. It is not a commodity that can be bought or sold.? Joe Sanchez | ||||||||||||