Gry Hedin - Artistic visions of the Anthropocene North: climate change and nature in art

Artistic Visions of the Anthropocene North

In the era of the Anthropocene, artists and scientists are facing a new paradigm in their attempts to represent nature. Seven chapters, which focus on art from 1780 to the present that engages with Nordic landscapes, argue that a number of artists in this period work in the intersection between art, science, and media technologies to examine the human impact on these landscapes and question the blurred boundaries between nature and the human. Canadian artists such as Lawren Harris and Geronimo Inutiq are considered alongside artists from Scandinavia and Iceland such as J.C. Dahl, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Toril Johannessen, and Bjrk.

Gry Hedin is curator and researcher at Faaborg Museum and holds a PhD from the University of Copenhagen in Scandinavian Studies.

Ann-Sofie N. Gremaud holds a PhD from the University of Copenhagen in Visual Culture. She is part of the international research project Denmark and the New North Atlantic.

Cover image: Photograph on wall, Pyramiden, Svalbard (2014). Eva la Cour

Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies

This series is our home for innovative research in the fields of art and visual studies. It includes monographs and targeted edited collections that provide new insights into visual culture and art practice, theory, and research.

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/art/series/RAVS

The Aesthetics of Scientific Data Representation

More than Pretty Pictures

Edited by Lotte Philipsen and Rikke Schmidt Kjrgaard

Art : Process : Change

Inside a Socially Situated Practice

Loraine Leeson

Visualizing War

Emotions, Technologies, Communities

Edited by Anders Engberg-Pedersen and Kathrin Maurer

Perception and Agency in Shared Spaces of Contemporary Art

Edited by Cristina Albu and Dawna Schuld

Contemporary British Ceramics and the Influence of Sculpture

Monuments, Multiples, Destruction and Display

Laura Gray

Contemporary Citizenship, Art, and Visual Culture

Making and Being Made

Edited by Corey Dzenko and Theresa Avila

The Evolution of the Image

Political Action and the Digital Self

Edited by Marco Bohr and Basia Sliwinska

Artistic Visions of the Anthropocene North

Climate Change and Nature in Art

Edited by Gry Hedin and Ann-Sofie N. Gremaud

Artistic Visions of the Anthropocene North

Climate Change and Nature in Art

Edited by Gry Hedin and Ann-Sofie N. Gremaud

Thanks to Carlsbergfondet, Faaborg Museum and the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen for financing and facilitating our research on this topic. The editors also wish to thank the anonymous peer reviews of the chapters for their meticulous work on the manuscripts.

Contents

GRY HEDIN AND ANN-SOFIE N. GREMAUD

GRY HEDIN

EVA LA COUR

MARK A. CHEETHAM

NORMAN VORANO

KATARINA WADSTEIN MACLEOD

SYNNVE MARIE VIK

ANN-SOFIE N. GREMAUD

1) From the Edge, 42 x 42 in, Oil and Flashe paint on canvas, 2015

2) Landsat Jakobshavn B, 42 x 72 in, Oil and Flashe paint on canvas, 2015

3) UNESCO National Heritage II, 42 x 72 in, Oil and Flashe paint on canvas, 2015

4) Modis 2009, III, 42 x 42 in, Oil and Flashe paint on canvas, 2015. Courtesy the artist.

Gry Hedin is a curator and researcher at Faaborg Museum. She holds a PhD in Scandinavian Studies and an MA in Art History from University of Copenhagen. She has specialized in the relationship between art and science, focusing on Scandinavian art and literature in the nineteenth century and has published several articles in international journals on this subject. Her major publications include research-based anthologies related to traveling exhibitions Jordforbindelser. Dansk maleri 17801920 og det antropocne landskab (Down to Earth. Danish Painting 1780 to 1920 and Landscapes of the Anthropocene) (2018), J.P. Jacobsen og kunsten (Jens Peter Jacobsen and the Visual Arts) (2016), Munch and Denmark (2009) and Gustave Caillebotte: Impressionist Paintings from Paris to the Sea (2008). Her PhD thesis Skrig, Sult og Frugtbarhed (2012) explored the reception of Charles Darwin in works by J.P. Jacobsen, Knut Hamsun, J.F. Willumsen, Edvard Munch, and August Strindberg.

Ann-Sofie N. Gremaud holds a PhD in Visual Culture from the University of Copenhagen and an MA in Art History and Scandinavian Studies from Aarhus University. Her PhD thesis introduced a crypto-colonial perspective on Danish-Icelandic shared history as expressed through visual culture and was defended in 2012. Since then Gremaud has worked as a postdoctoral fellow, writer, and part-time lecturer. She is a part of the international research project Denmark and the New North Atlantic about the cultural history of the former Danish empire. She has published and given talks on the intertwined fields of contemporary art, politics, and philosophy, primarily in Iceland.

Eva la Cour is a Danish visual artist and doctoral researcher at Valand Academy, Faculty of Applied, Performing and Fine Art, Gothenburg University, Sweden. Having a background in fine arts as well as visual anthropology, she works with audiovisual and spatial forms of montages and display, performance and text, always negotiating with her surroundings. This reflects her general interest in epistemology, temporality, and mediation, which she is researching particularly in relation to the notion of the Arctic and anthropological debates on practice and the construction of knowledge. During the last few years Eva la Cour has presented her work internationally, while living and working mainly in Gothenburg and Copenhagen.

Mark A. Cheetham is a professor of Art History at the University of Toronto, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. A specialist in modern and contemporary art and art theory, his major recent publications include Abstract Art Against Autonomy: Infection, Resistance, and Cure since the 60s and Artwriting, Nation, and Cosmopolitanism in Britain: The Englishness of English Art Theory since the Eighteenth Century. Cheethams current research focuses on ecological art and on the uses of analogy in Art History. His book