Andy Goldworthys Art Deals With Which Aspect of Nature?

"Nosotros oftentimes forget that nosotros are nature. Nature is not something separate from us. So, when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, nosotros've lost our connexion to ourselves."

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"A practiced piece of work is a moment of clarity. Then it all becomes unclear."

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"Learning and understanding through touch on and making is a simple but securely important reason for doing my piece of work"

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"I couldn't maybe effort to improve on Nature. I'thou only trying to understand it by an involvement in some of its processes."

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"The reason why the stone is red is its fe content, which is too why our claret is red."

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"Every bit with all my piece of work, whether it's a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock, I'm trying to get beneath the surface appearance of things. Working the surface of a stone is an attempt to understand the internal energy of the rock."

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"People besides leave presence in a place fifty-fifty when they are no longer there."

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"Not existence able to touch is sometimes as interesting as beingness able to touch."

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"Each piece of work is a discovery."

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Summary of Andy Goldsworthy

A sculptor and photographer, Andy Goldsworthy not merely works with nature, but in nature. Rather than building awe-inspiring constructions on or out of the land, Goldsworthy works almost telepathically with nature, rearranging its natural forms in such a way equally to raise rather than detract from their beauty. Often quite small in calibration, his poetic site-specific pieces are made from ephemeral or organic materials - dandelion flowers lain in a band or icicles perched on a rock - and then documented through gorgeous color photographs. Goldsworthy views the inevitable expiry and decay in his work as part of the life cycle - he takes an environmentalist's arroyo, lending an utmost respect toward the natural world as most of his pieces gradually fade away into the land from which they've come.

Accomplishments

• The natural world (and all its myriad forms) is the artist's master cloth. Equally a sculptor working with nature, Goldsworthy harnesses its limitations to gain a deeper understanding of it. His approach non but makes nature the co-writer of his piece of work, simply emphasizes that human being beings are not separate from nature, but are rather an inexorable part of it.
• Goldsworthy'due south piece of work draws upon a Minimalist artful that derives from seeing the poetic in the everyday. Stones, rocks, branches, twigs, leaves and ice are arranged carefully and patiently, making use of diverse repeated motifs such as snaking lines, spirals, circles and holes.
• Goldsworthy is a very easily-on sculptor for whom a large signal of the piece of work resides in the process of making information technology. "Learning and understanding through bear upon and making is a simple simply deeply important reason for doing my work." His enthusiasm and wonder express themselves through the making, as he remarked, "each piece of work is a discovery."
• The passage of time and its eventual dissolution of materiality is central to Goldsworthy's work. In focusing on ephemerality, Goldsworthy rejects the idea of art every bit a article to be exhibited and sold. Furthermore, he sees the fact that he uses temporal objects equally a reflection of the always-irresolute world we live in and the need to understand that nothing is eternal.
• Goldsworthy is interested in the social history of the land on which he is working and that includes its human population. He feels information technology is important to acknowledge a site's rich history and the diverse connections that people have in relationship with the land. Equally he has said, "People too exit presence in a place even when they are no longer at that place."

Biography of Andy Goldsworthy

"My domicile... is the origin of many of my ideas and feelings towards the land," Andy Goldsworthy said. He built Millenium Cairn (2000) on a little hill outside his village because, because he said, it had "a sense of guarding the road."

Important Art by Andy Goldsworthy

Progression of Fine art

1976

Stones sinking in sand, Morecambe Bay, Lancashire

Stones sinking in sand, Morecambe Bay is 1 of Goldsworthy earliest works. Although made while he was withal a student, works such as this were pivotal in shaping his overall direction. Here he uses small rocks found onsite to create a directly line into the water. The orderliness of this manmade line contrasts with the more organic forms created by nature. With the changing tides still, the line loses its shape and eventually vanishes. In Goldsworthy's own words:

This is a very physical piece. I had to move a lot of stones in one day, between the tides. It wasn't even a full day. The line of stones physically affected the place and the people who walked along the embankment. People had to stride over information technology. A horseback rider jumped over information technology. I revisited information technology several times and saw it sink into the sand and disappear. I oft recollect of it all the same being there, although I know it isn't intact.

The significance of this work, possibly more of a report than a finished piece, lies in the artist's acceptance of nature every bit the co-author of the slice. Goldsworthy sees human being beings as part of nature rather than carve up or distant from information technology, something he understands could suggest his work has a spiritual or mystical purpose. His overriding interest though is applied - he wants to investigate what he describes as the "energy of making" inside of things, while seeing the free energy and space effectually a material (the effect of the weather for example) every bit being as of import as the energy and space within. Equally he puts it himself, "motility, change, lite, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I endeavor to tap through my piece of work." Additionally, the ephemerality of the materials triggers a discussion regarding the part of the tape in the artwork itself. Equally is often the case with Country art, the viewer is left wondering if the actual work is the curt-lived sculpture or the photo that documents information technology.

Rocks, sand, and sea water

1983

Red Leaf Patch, Cumbria

Painterly compositions utilizing nature'due south organic colors and forms, such every bit Red Leaf Patch, are one of Goldsworthy'due south trademarks. To create this bright spot, Goldsworthy describes how he constitute "one dark and one light leafage of the same size. I tore the dark leafage in two, spat underneath it and pressed it on to the light leaf: the outcome was what appeared to be a single, two-colored leaf."

Blood-red Leaf Patch is a slightly illusionistic, zinging composition in which the blood-red circumvolve appears to be on a unlike plane from the dark one underneath. In this way, Goldsworthy relates to the Bauhaus artist Joseph Albers whose studies underscored the power of colour in creating infinite. Works such as Cherry-red Leaf Patch led some to criticize Goldsworthy for overly aestheticizing nature. In his ain defense, he has argued: "But I have to work with flowers and leaves, because they are office of the country."

Time passing is the chief aspect of Blood-red Leaf Patch. Firstly, the work is ephemeral, somewhen vanishing in nature. Goldsworthy is especially interested in the concept of decay - it appears time and again in his works and in his writings. The leaves are but red for a season. They will inexorably plow black and rot, ultimately resulting in re-assimilation into the soil. As Goldsworthy has stated, his art has made him aware of "how nature is in a land of change and how that change is the primal to understanding. I desire my art to exist sensitive and warning to changes in cloth, season and weather." This is a point reinforced by the scholar Jeffrey L. Kosky in his assertion that "what is interesting is that for Goldsworthy nature does not specify the place of things simply their motility, not their existence but their being in time."

Red Leaves (color photography, fujichrome)

1984

Hole, Serpentine Gallery

Goldsworthy'south Pigsty, made inside the Serpentine Gallery in London, is a continuation of a commission from 1981, in which he created some other hole in the gallery's garden. This after Pigsty, unusual for Goldsworthy, takes a work of nature out of its solely pastoral setting, and brings information technology into the gallery setting - in a decidedly Robert Smithson way.

Artists accept often used black holes to signify death, and specifically associations between death and art institutions are not uncommon. The perception of exhibition spaces as voids was function of an institutional critique tendency that first inspired the generation before Goldsworthy to work outside. Regardless, whether inside or outdoors, the black hole has been a constant theme throughout Goldsworthy's career. He sees black space as not merely the absence of lite just rather a positive presence, a tangible substance in its own right.

Goldsworthy has described how his concept of stability is brought into question when looking into a deep, dark pigsty. He describes how this run across with blackness has made him enlightened of the earth'south potent energies. He has also suggested that his last work, the one done earlier he dies will potentially be a hole. In the creative person'southward own words: "Looking into a black hole is like looking over a cliff's border ... I've ever been drawn to the black hole - I've been making them since 1976 and I keep on making them ... I tin can't finish making them, and I accept the same urge to brand holes equally I do to look over a cliff border."

For Goldsworthy, the black hole can be seen as the ultimate enveloper of life, the terminal force in his obsession with natural decay, something always lurking at the border of human perception that, brought into the gallery, acts to conjure recognition of our universal, inevitable fate.

Dirt and debris dug from the site

1987

Icicle Star - Scaur Water, Penpont, Dumfriesshire

Icicle Star is of impressive effeminateness, which required a loftier level of dexterity and skill to create. In an effort to avoid high temperatures and sunlight, the work was made during the early morning hours in the night. Goldsworthy used his saliva and bare fingers to meticulously and patiently adhere the icicles. Because of the unpredictability of nature and the importance of ideal atmospheric condition, it often took him many minutes of belongings each slice of ice for them to glue to each other and the process proved extremely painful at times.

The hardship required of the artist in having to withstand harsh conditions to produce works such every bit these turns them into endurance pieces alongside their intended commentary on the relationship betwixt human easily and the machinations of the creator - a common theme in Goldsworthy's work.

Goldsworthy's water ice works showcase his resilience and patience. For each piece that he is able to photo, many others collapse half way through. In his own words, "I take held ice to water ice seemingly for ages waiting for it to freeze merely to allow become and run across information technology drop off. I accept enormous respect for the weather condition." Given that ice is such a tricky fabric these ice works are remarkable for their fragile elegance. As noted past the critic Jeffrey Fifty. Kosky, "the dazzler of Andy Goldsworthy'due south work reminds us, notwithstanding, what it might mean to count on our hands, to count on them to open a world in which things appear, brought forth by the frail, fine touch of human easily."

Ice and saliva - Photograph at the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland Authorities Art Collection

1997-98

Storm King Wall

Storm King Wall is arguably Goldsworthy'south most ambitious piece of work to appointment. In this piece, he subverted the English agricultural tradition of edifice stone walls to delineate territory. His wall embraces and protects the copse instead of denoting a human-claimed space in which they might otherwise exist blighted for immigration. Although unexpected, the accentuated curves in Tempest Rex Wall are based on 'crinkle crackle' or wavy walls - a type of traditional British masonry piece of work that originated in the 18^th century. The artist rejects any symbolism relating the wall to a snake while admitting that swirly and curvilinear forms are often seen in his works. The Storm Male monarch Wall however, does become straighter by the end of the field, thus relating to the New York Land Freeway that passes nearby.

Likewise existence a permanent piece of work - a lesser-known side of Goldsworthy's practice - Storm King Wall can also be seen as political. Equally the fine art critic Kenneth Bakery points out: "Being unable to discern on which side of the wall the tree stands has peculiar echoes for American viewers. They reverberate, for instance, in refrain of an former labor canticle: Which side are you lot on?' Americans feel it a matter of civic duty to take sides (...) on any issue of social or moral import." The work too functions every bit a symbolic reminder of the history of the land, which is also the history of mankind, through the appropriation of ancient devices for land demarcation. Goldsworthy asks us to consider the ways in which we co-opt land to define our own boundaries even if its natural state is one of unfettered liberty and dispossession.

Fieldstone - Storm King Art Center Drove

2002

Moonlit Path

Moonlit Path is a work of incomparable poesy and originality. To create the piece, Goldsworthy delineated a convoluted path with white chalk. The work, which was temporary and site-specific, was meant to exist experienced at nighttime during a total moon. The moon's bluish-white light reflected on the chalk creating a luminescent trail which guided visitors through a one hour walk through the woods of Petworth Park in Sussex.

For visitors used to the excessive use of artificial low-cal at nighttime, the walk became a time of contemplation. With limited vision the other senses were intensified. The quietness of the woods allowed visitors to experience the scissure of each twig, the sounds of all creatures, and the smells associated with a night, clammy wood. This heightened sensation brought visitors closer to their primal instincts, serving as a reminder that we are all also animals. Moonlit Path also functioned every bit a metaphor for life. While at times the path was clear and bright, at other moments it became dark and scary. In a review for The Daily Telegraph Richard Dorment notes that "inseparable from its beauty is its ephemeral nature; since it won't last forever, and nigh people will walk on it one time, its value to us is connected with a sense of loss."

This is likewise a fine example of Goldsworthy's interventions with nature that allow for the environment to collude in his concluding work. The application of chalk, accentuated by the moon, reflects a signature application of using painterly techniques to illuminate pre-existing organic elements of the landscape.

White Chalk

2010

Rain Shadow, Times Square

Rain Shadow, Times Square is one of the latest examples of Goldsworthy's series of body imprints. He started this series in the mid-1980s and it soon became an obsession. In order to capture this Rain Shadow, Goldsworthy positioned himself on the ground in Times Foursquare before the rain began, remained lying in that location throughout a tempest, and then took a photo of the 'shadow' created by his body. When recounting the experience, the artist mentioned that though many passersby would be indifferent to such a peculiar scene, others would also lay down or jump over him. At a certain point, a police officer warned him virtually all the potential diseases he could go from spreading his body on the pavement of such a busy area.

While many of these Rain Shadows were made in rural environments, the urban setting of Times Square highlights the fact that human beings, even while ensconced in urbanity, all the same inherently coexist with nature. Instead of seeing both as opposites and exclusionary, Goldsworthy proposes an understanding of nature's unstoppable quality and of its touch on a manmade world. Equally noted by the curator Molly Donavan, "Goldworthy'southward varied exploration of body shadows has a broader reference: it addresses the human relationship of man and nature as well as the opposition of figure and ground at the ground of our vision, suggesting that the dominant view of homo as a effigy against the background of nature needs correction." As an environmentalist, such issues are of upmost importance for Goldsworthy. Furthermore, although there is no direct human relationship between him and the Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta, the Rain Shadows series share a potent visual and conceptual similarity with her Siluetas washed in the mid-1970s. This is an important example of Goldsworthy'southward work equally it makes connections to a previous generation of artists who questioned the role of the white, sterile gallery space.

Digital photographic record; h2o and pavement

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Content compiled and written by Vitoria Hadba

Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors

"Andy Goldsworthy Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Vitoria Hadba
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
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Starting time published on 02 May 2018. Updated and modified regularly
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