AHVS121 WINTER 2020 Abbreviated Summary of Material for Week 12 Images provided under educational free use copyright provisions. Please do not repost. This week’s material will be a lot shorter than last week because it’s self-evident (you don’t need me to explain “the environment” to you) and one full class is always dedicated to a film which I hope you will all still get to see (I’ve provided some notes at the end of this PDF - please read them even if you’re not doing Assignment 9). And while I think this is one of the more important weeks of the term (I have a full course around this topic!), there aren’t specific examples I feel that you NEED to know except for the film. We’ve seen an image like this in class before, but instead of asking you what it is. I’d like you to consider: how does it make you feel? Different cultures conceptualize the world around them in a variety of different ways, but one of the marks of the European Renaissance was the preoccupation with the world humans inhabit as opposed to a concern with the space their souls will ultimately get to, but is not the “here and now” that they live in. late 13thC, has some landscape but the world is mostly gold ‘space’ mid 16thC, religious subject subsumed within the land There are artists who treat the land as a subject of (scientific) study & others for which it operates as a cultural or metaphorical marker Do you think this is a work of environmental art? Why or why not? Samuel Palmer The Magic Apple Tree (because we can all use some magic about now) It isn’t a work belonging to the social movement of the 1960’s, but it is the work of a man who found great spiritual solace in the countryside and who was deeply concerned with its preservation (19thC). There are many different kinds of environmental art, just know that some scholars apply the label to one particular 20thC movement. The late 19thC Impressionist movement was one which took innovations in materials (paint in resealable, packable tubes) into the landscape to capture the world around them at specific moments. Series like Monet’s Haystacks were designed to explore the visual effect of environmental conditions at different times of days/seasons/ weather. the physical devastation suffered by the land during the two world wars of the 20thC was subject of concern for many (visual artists included) Which do you find a stronger image? What are you responding to? Here are two images, a painting and a photo, documenting essentially the same WWI battlefield And the creation of the atomic and nuclear bombs, brought destructive power wrought by humans on a scale unprecedented in human history. With the space program of the 1950s and 60s bringing back photographs like this one - people became more aware of the fragility of life on this planet. Which led to artists of the 1960s exploring a var.