Art & Environment Lineage

[Robert Anderson]

It seems that humans have used art for thousands of years to help them understand their environmet and their relationship to it; indian oral stories and tradition, rock & cave art, Greek pantheon of gods and their stories, poetry like Haiku just to name a few ways. How does the modern artists use of art fit into this continuum? Is it diferent from indian cultures that had to exist in their environment for thousands of years rather than visit it for a few months and then go back to New York?

[Andrew Werby]

Well, no individual Indian existed in any environment for more than a hundred years or so. Our culture has also gone on for a long time, but our relationship with the environment has changed more than theirs did, especially over the last couple of hundred years. Perhaps our motivations are similar to those of the Indian societies you mention; certainly the range of tools and techniques available to us have expanded. Some modern artists use their art to come to terms with the world around them, others use it as an escape. Among those of us who do reference the natural world in our work, there are almost as many approaches as there are artists. It's easy for us to look at human cultures of the past as producing more or less similar artworks that share a common thread in their relationship with the natural world (whether that's true or a matter of uninformed perception is another issue) but when we look at the art of our own time it's hard to discern any particular theme that characterizes us. But certainly not all of us fall into the category of artistic tourists, as you seem to imply.

Andrew Werby
www.unitedartworks.com