Andy Goldsworthy (Great Britain, b. 1956)
Rowan leaves laid around hole, 1987
Damp sand, hollowed out, soft red stone ground into powder around each hole, 1987
Sublimity in Performance
Critical appraisal of Andy Goldsworthy’s artistry can be facile as the work itself is well received by the public. Indeed, the grandeur of nature is somehow a guarantee of the visual pleasure. While at the same time, participation in nature easily exceeds our rational understanding of its essence, causing the experience of, in Kantian definition, sublimity. Thus, the communication between Goldsworthy and his spectators is unproblematic, because we share a fundamental understanding as some kind of entirety of the things that all have touched upon.
But what’s truly admirable about Goldsworthy’s works is his essence and means of creation. In fact, his desire to work with the landscape uplifts the definition of an artist onto an unexplored territory. In the opening of Rivers and Tides, a 2001 documentary of the artist, Goldsworthy expresses his desperate need to touch the land, or else he feels dislocated and unrooted. He promotes “a sensory understanding of what matters most in life”, refusing to wear gloves under any weather or material condition to avoid the sensitivity of the earth, which to him, is the co-creator of the art. Nature’s unpredictability forces Goldsworthy to work closely with time and risk, making failures of attempts an unceasing struggle.
However, having total control over art creation, to Goldsworthy, can be the death of the work. As he explains in the Rivers and Tides, failure continues as he grows in proportion of his understanding of the stone. The root is not a safety zone for Goldsworthy but filled with uncertainty. In fact, similar to how we culturally regard sky as a horizon that conceals the unknown, Goldsworthy views the root the as the surface that separates the earth and the hidden energy that operates all beings on earth. It’s the unpredictability beneath us that attracts him. In order to document his understanding of the energy underneath, Goldsworthy uses metaphors collected from the landscape to form symbols that depicts his gained knowledge.
One recurring theme of Goldsworthy’s ephemeral art is the black hole, which symbolizes an entrance to the underground world where growth begins and death returns to. Rowan leaves laid around hole, made in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in West Bretton, England, is an extremely eye catching piece for its intensely bright colored leaves. A range of color—Mahogany, wine, ginger, tangerine, and marigold form a spinning while that travels to reach the black hole. And the blending of the chromatic diagram adds aesthetic value of the photograph. Damp sand, hollowed out, soft red stone ground into powder around each hole consists seven mini sand dunes piled by the seashore. The “submit” of each dune is melted open, surrounded by iron-colored powder, shaping a recently erupted volcano. The black holes invite us to peer inside, looking for the flow of energy that has caused the eruption, and soon, its erosion. But the energy flow is something that we cannot physical relates to, but can only surrender ourselves to an imagined comprehension. The black hole, in this view, “remains scared and hale, something not to be touched or broken into”.
Another theme that Goldsworthy conducts is the color of red. Goldsworthy recounts his encounter with the color during on a usual workday working with the stones. He noticed the oxides of iron turn some hidden rocks into blood colors. It was a moment of revelation to realize such an alien and intense color is so hidden and rooted in earth, just like the blood that runs in our veins. In Rowan leaves laid around hole, layers of scarlet and blood colored leaves composes shocking contrast with the black hole, performing the vibrancy of its life climax. Similarly, in Damp sand, hollowed out, soft red stone ground into powder around each hole, the fire colored powder describes the most violent and energetic component of eruption, vividly celebrates its excitement to travel above the earth’s surface. Goldsworthy uses the pigment milled from the red rocks that he finds underneath the surface of landscape on top of the sand dunes as a symbolic statement to show a connection between the life and death. Where the leaves and the expelled lava are heading to is tokened by the black hole, completing the cycle of energy exchange.
After the artist’s project completion, the work is handed over to the earth. The tides will eventually erode the sand dunes and the leaves will be quickly enjoyed by the hyphae of fungi. Goldsworthy dedicates his creation to the landscape to receive its deconstruction. But the deaths of the sculptures are not the destination of the work. Goldsworthy reads decomposition and decay as the yin to the yang of growth—the ocean washes away the sands, refining them into smaller rock and mineral particles that forms a new peak; the fungi digests their rowan leaves as nutrition for the soil, supplying the tree for another year of growth. Goldsworthy’s way of seeing all beings as part of a perpetual cycle that harmonizes the message from the classic Chinese I Ching, that “every position in life is balanced by creating a harmony between the inner self and the surrounding world.” Therefore, a complete visual experience of Goldsworthy’s works demands an impossible commitment of time. Photography is used to capture moments of energy exchange between the sculptures and the earth because it efficiently accommodates the perceptual and cognitive demands of modernity. However, as faithful as it gets optically, photography can only be hailed as the instrument of an exacting second sight, because “the real work is the change”. Sublimity is better achieved in participating and imagining the flow of energy beyond the sculptures.
What Goldsworthy exemplifies is a way of human being. The back-to-nature fleeing human culture and the work of making, avoiding technics altogether can be seen as wooly romantic. But with work taken in an active sense, Goldsworthy’s art is an establishment of himself as a human being in relation to the earth, endlessly seeking knowledge of his beloved landscape through the sensory experience.
Documentary on the “Rivers and Tides”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khfR29SB6X4