A bright fringe of red shining leaves on heavy boulders, a row of leaves
changing from greeny white over yellow to dark green, pebbles
concentrically arranged from big to small and from dark to light around
a black hole, icicles frozen together into a spiral: this is only a pick
at random from the meanwhile very popular creations of Andy Goldsworthy.
TECHNICAL BEAUTY
Goldsworthy’s creation is governed by the principle of the elementary.
Elementary is already his choice of the materials. Andy Goldsworthy
processes ‘raw materials’ in the literal sense of the word: materials as
they are found in nature. That has certainly been, in primeval times,
the starting point of human production as such. But gradually nature
itself came to be processed before being subject to further manipulation.
No longer the fleece of the sheep is washed and cut: it is the wool that
is sheared, combed, spun before entering the fabric as a thread. The
same goes for trees, that are sawn up into planks before being
transformed into a piece of furniture; for the grain, that after having
been submitted to cultural selection is previously ground to flour
before being baked into bread; for the clay that is previously moulded
into the shape of bricks and baked before entering the masonry. Not so
with Goldsworthy: his colours are not just squeezed out of a tube. He
uses the very colours found just like that in an autumn forest. They are
all over the place. Just like sticks, pebbles, plumes, icicles and all
the other materials Goldsworthy is using.
Found materials, thus, that deserve an equally elementary processing. In
most cases Andy Goldsworthy restricts himself to the selecting,
displacing or rearranging of leaves, pebbles, sticks and boulders. When
he uses instruments at all, then it is equally ‘found’ instruments: the stick
with which he scrapes the sand, the thorns with which he sticks the
leaves together. More often, he has nature work on her own, without the
intervention of any instrument: as when he lets icicles freeze together.
And also in these cases, the forces of nature are not previously
isolated and boosted, as is the case with the heath of the fire in an
oven. Andy Goldsworthy rather lets his clay dry in the sun. Sometimes
the processing is negative: as when man-made structures of sand are
dismantled through the tide, or when a snowball collapses when melting,
or when the clay enveloping boulders bursts during the process of drying.
And equally minimal is, finally, Andy Golsdworthy's composition. He
replaces the variegated chaos of leaves in the forest or pebbles on the
beach with a progression from one colour to another, from light to dark,
from big to small. He replaces sticks fallen at random on the ground
with a circle, or a line. What is laying down on the earth - the
ultimate fate of everything susceptible to gravity - Andy Goldsworthy
piles up to cones, towers, or even arcs, domes and eggs struggling
against gravity. Sometimes the same effect is obtained through a mere
shift of the direction in which nature had shaped her materials: icicles
pointing vertically in the skies or protruding horizontally from a rock
face – or turning around themselves in a spiral.
Thus contrasted as found versus created order, Andy Goldworthy’s
creations profile themselves as artificial figures against a natural
background. But the new order is not unnatural as such, it is so only in
the given context. Lines, cracks, meanders, spirals, concentric forms or
chessboard patterns, star-shapes, spheres and eggs: these are all
compositions that can be found in nature, albeit applied to other materials
in other contexts. Andy Goldsworthy himself reminds us of that when his
composition explicitly refers to other natural phenomena: as when he
imposes the spiral-shape of the nautilus shell on leaves.
Sometimes Andy Goldsworthy’s composition is so deceptively natural that
we might inadvertently pass it by. That it has been photographed, makes
us exspect that there is something to be seen: a mere crack running
right through a whole series of pebbles. Until it dawns on us that
single pebbles may well crack, but possibly not an entire row! Only then
do we realise that the supposedly natural crack is in fact a composition
borrowed from nature and imposed upon a series of broken pebbles.
In all cases, Andy Goldsworthy realises a maximal effect, precisely by
refraining from isolating his creations from their natural soil.
Precisely the untouched virginity of the environment makes the creation
visible as a disturbance. That is why nature is not only the provider of
raw materials, techniques and processing, but foremost the natural
biotope of Andy Goldsworthy’s creations. Transported into an artificial
environment, they would lose all their charms. Also in this sense do his
creations remain bound to nature by an indissoluble tie.
And that brings us to the meaning of such creation. Andy Goldsworthy is
not out at the mere production of a useful object, let alone an object
that should please man for its sole beauty. He rather wants to embody
the beauty of the act of creation in an exemplary intervention. That is
why the often irresistible charm of his work does not derive from the
final result, but from the beauty of its creation, the deed to which its
owes its existence and that remains visible in the end product. This
kind of creation strikes the all too often disturbed chord of harmony
with nature: man is allowed to intervene, to bend to his will, even to
disturb, but not to rape, let alone to saw off the branch of the tree on
which he is sitting. The technical beauty of Andy Goldsworthy’s work can
be read as a tacit criticism on the industrial and post-industrial way
of production, which no longer processes materials that have been found
in nature, but materials that have been submitted to an often endless
series of transformations for them to subdue without any resistance to
the forces of nature unleashed by man in super-instruments and machines.
As when the laser cuts thick steel plates without any resistance. Not to
mention the silent violence with which, in the digital dimension,
quantities measured in megas and gigas are digested in fractions of
seconds. Precisely the astounding ease with which every resistance is
eliminated beforehand results in the scaling-up that, already from the
pyramids onwards, foreshadows the ultimate tower of Babylon: it is the
awe-inspiring ugliness of many a architectural giga-project, that in its
monstrous proportions is knocked up in a few months, or of the hideous
vehicles that in many a science fiction film are launched in space. Andy
Goldsworthy’s silent criticism is all the more charming since it speaks
through the work itself and is not added to it through some merely
external symbolism. No references to Indians, Zen or yin and yang come
to spoil or fun.
THE BEAUTY OF ELEMENTARY FORMS
We would do no justice to Andy Goldsworthy’s work when we would reduce
it to an embodiment of a harmonious relation to nature. Next to the
pleasure in technical beauty, there is the pleasure in the beauty of the
forms that are created through such harmonious creation. From way back,
man has shown a predilection for forms endowed with a transparent
structure: that is what is so charming about straight, curved or broken
lines, circles, crosses or chessboards, and geometrical patterns in two
or three dimensions. As when in the centre of a concentric form there
appears a dark hole. Which fascinates, not only because it reminds of
the pupil of the eye that already always stole our attention, but also
because, of any hole, we want to know what it hides – a curiousness that
often is accompanied by fear for whatever might show up: hence the aura
of mystery hovering over Andy Goldsworthy’s holes and concentric
structures. Sometimes Andy Goldsworthy soothes the anxious tension
through filling it in: in the hole an object in the form of a spiral is
coiling like a caterpillar in its cocoon, or a tree comes to protrude
from it, or a rocky point is poking out of it.
QUASI-MIMESIS*
The formal beauty of a concentric form as well as the emotional freight
of an encircled hole do not differ from the effect of similar phenomena
in nature. The only difference is to be found in the maker: nature or
man.
But in some of his works, Andy Goldsworthy is doing more than merely
creating a new reality parallel to nature. Now and then, it is as if he
tries to imitate an already existing reality: as when a
three-dimensional spiral reminds of a nautilus shell. Or when
concentrically woven sticks remind us of a birds nest or an eye. Or when
sticks with burned tops are arranged in the shape of a cone, and then
remind us of a volcano. Or when a fringe of red shining leaves on black
boulders remind us of burning rocks. Or when mandorlas remind us of eyes,
mouths or vaginas. Or when the crack in a row of broken pebbles remind
us of the cracks in dry clay. There are also more ambivalent cases where
the ‘reminding of’ is rather a re-creation. As when amidst some real
rocks one single rock is enveloped in weather-beaten branches,
sun-bleached bones or pieces of bark.
Such ‘reminding of’ is mimesis* in statu nascendi. It differs from
completed mimesis* in that we only are ‘reminded of’ something else. We
never have the impression of seeing something else as what there is to
be seen. It was not Andy Goldsworthy’s intention to evoke a birds nest,
bur rather to realise around the hole in the roots of a knotty tree the
concentric shape it seemed to ask for.
Where such quasi-mimetic dimension joins technical beauty and its
critical-utopian dimension, as well as the formal beauty of the form and
its emotional freight, a tension is created between the multiple layers
of the work, that cannot but contribute to a deeper resonance of the
whole.
SCULPTURE?
But it makes also clear why it is rather misleading to call Andy
Goldsworthy a sculptor – be it an ‘environmental sculptor’ or a ‘sculptor/photographer’.
It is not the materials that prevent us from doeing so. It is not because Andy
Goldsworthy does not use traditional materials that he would not be a
sculptor: three-dimensional sculpture can be made in whatever material.
Whether one belongs to the tradition of Praxiteles, the master of the
Western portal at Chartres, Sluter, Michelangelo, Bernini, Rodin or
Moore – not the mention the countless masters from other cultures – does
not depend on the materials used, but on whether the intervention of the
artist transforms his material in something else: like the marble that,
under the hands of Michelangelo, is transformed into the flesh of a
body, or under the hands of Bernini in the mantle of Saint Theresa.
Everyone will agree that such is not Andy Goldsworthy’s intention, even
if some of his creations ‘remind of’ something else.
No: Andy Goldsworthy creates real things that do not at all pretend to
be something else. That is why he belongs in the world of all those who
transform nature into ‘humanised’ nature: from the cook, over the
designer of clothes and furniture, gardens and parks, automobiles and
machines, to the architects. To be more precise: Andy Goldsworthy
belongs to the tradition of garden architecture: from the geometrical
renaissance gardens, over the romantic English gardens, to the mystic
pebble-gardens of the Japanese, or their modern counter-parts: the
ecological landscape. Witness the ‘Sheepfolds Project’ in Cumbria, where
Andy Goldsworthy rebuilds in a more artistic fashion the walls formerly
built by shepherds. Or we can situate him in the tradition of the more
small-scale art of flower arranging (ikebana). But within this group of
‘artists of design’ – designers to call them by their name – he
distinguishes himself – just like other giants like Panamarenko – in
that he does not create functional objects, but objects embodying the
mere pleasure of making – and a rather sympathetic kind of making at
that: creating in harmony with nature.
That is why Andy Goldsworthy may justifiably be called a master – a master of free ('fine') desinn
but npt a master of making images – not an ‘artist’ (or 'sculptor’) in the
traditional, more limited meaning of the word. Which does not mean that
we should condescendingly look down on him. On the contrary: the
designer of the cathedral is no lesser god than Van Eyck. But the former
is a ‘master of design’ – a master in transforming nature into a product
that provides in human needs – the latter is a master in the
transformation of oil paint into a mere represented world - into an image. And, to
distinguish both kinds of masters from each other (and from other masters
such as the masters in philosophy or in making love), it would be better
when we called the former ‘designers’ and the latter ‘artists’.
ROOTS
Which does not prevent that a thorough understanding of Andy
Goldsworthy’s work is only conceivable against the background of the
development of art in the twentieth century. It has no roots
whatever in the history of design.
To begin with, there is a certain relation with the Duchamp’s ‘ready
mades’, or rather: with the ‘objets trouvés’ of surrealism. That is why
we talked about ‘found materials’, ‘found techniques’ and ‘found
processing’.
Next, Andy Goldsworthy’s work is unthinkable without the so called ‘land-art’
which flourished in the seventies. As an offshoot of the happenings and
the performances of the sixties, this movement represented a particular
version of the ‘dissolving of art into life’: the replacement of
conjuring up an imaginary world through real transformation of the real
world – in this case: nature. It suffices to refer to the works of
Richard Long, who equally limited himself to minimal interventions in
the landscape and whose works equally became popular through equally
popular books. At the roots of land-art lies the anti-capitalistic
gesture of those who were no longer prepared to submit to the logic of
the market. It was their intention to free art from the ‘art shops’: the
galleries. One of the places where art was to be accommodated was
nature, where it would be freely accessible to everyone – and where
everyone could create it as well. The descent from land-art equally
explains why Andy Goldsworthy is deliberately out at creating ephemeral
works – exemplary in the use of withering flowers or melting snow. The
predilection for transience is one of the variants of the mimetic taboo:
the reluctance to make enduring works of art – with the concomitant
obligation to measure up to the great masters, who, precisely because
their works are enduring, continue to project their castrating shadows
far into the future. Both strivings inherited from land-art were doomed
to failure. It soon became apparent that land-art was not accessible at
all. And it surely would have been a pity to deliver such marvellous
creations as Andy Goldsworthys icicles to decay. That is why the
anti-capitalistic and anti-mimetic land-art was fixed on photographs or
videos and sold at a bargain. Albeit not in the gallery, but in the
bookshop.
LOSS
The remarkable thing about all this is that of all places here, in the
very bastion of modern art, we stumble upon something that has
supposedly been utterly banned from it: unbroken beauty! It is only most
regrettable that this beauty must bloom on a corpse: that of the art of
sculpture.
© Stefan Beyst, June 2002.
referrers:
the-artists.org
massachussets
art&design
squidoo
glamourbombing
barbara schneider