Making Art During Meltdown

I can’t stop thinking about the following two paragraphs in Daniel Sherrell’s book, Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World, in which he describes a scene in Larsen Von Trier’s film Melancholia (2011). In case you don’t know the film, it is the apocalyptic story in which a mysterious planet crashes into Earth, before which a family had gathered and is awaiting Earth’s destruction together one evening.

Sherrell writes:

 “At the beginning of Melancholia there’s a ten minute overture sequence set to an opera by Wagner. Von Trier strings together a series of static shots filmed in slow motion, the figures barely moving. On rewatching the film, I’ve come to notice something I hadn’t seen the first time: amid this opening montage there is a lengthy shot of that same Bruegel painting, which I’ve since learned is called Hunters in the Snow. The frame is full of it: the icy hill and its copse of birch, the dogs and men poised on top, draw your gaze along with theirs toward a tiny bustle of the town and mountains beyond it. For several seconds nothing happens. You watch the painting. Then shards of black begin to fall, obscuring parts of the image, and you realize that the painting is burning, bits of ash flaking off from the top.

The thing about watching a painting burn is that it elicits no reaction from within the painting itself. This shouldn’t be surprising but is, somehow. You half expect its figures to revolt against their demise: for the birch trees to bend, the dogs to howl, the hunters to flee or beg. But everyone and everything holds its pose, even as fire peels back the margins.”                                                 

Quote from Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World. Published by Penguin, 2021. By Daniel Sherrell.

Two things come to mind. One, what is an artist to do awaiting Earth’s meltdown and can artworks be present to this unspeakable horror? And two, Art always makes me think of objects in an ontological sense. Sherrell also discusses objects near the end of his book, that is the inescapable fact that objects will fill the planet and have a kind of life. What is a great heap of abandoned art without people to contemplate it? Objects may replace humanity when all of us are gone. And how does one think about objects in that existential light?

I can’t begin to fathom an artwork so profound that it would slow climate change. Some artworks do raise awareness and draw attention to the awesome destruction begot by us. Edward Burtynsky’s stunning photographic imagery of the devastation that human industry has wrought hits hard. His work certainly promotes climate awareness. Awareness is the beginning of active calls for change.

The anthropologist Michael Taussig, in his book, Mastery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown (2020), introduced me to the idea of a Bataille-like campaign to attack the cultural creation of sublime beauty, as western civilization depicts in painting for example, and instead, to express all feelings, forms, and expressions by way of using slime, goo, and other abhorrent aesthetic matter. Georges Bataille’s rants against industry, war, and high art, featured photography, drawing and written pieces by he and other artists in the journal Documents, published in Paris in 1929-30. Bataille’s work influenced many artists in the early twentieth century and is still relevant today.

Why make more art, just more stuff in the world full of too much stuff? Objects of art will continue to be housed and conserved in the world’s museums until civilization’s demise. How are we to think of Museums in these times? Every day more precious, every day a trip to a museum to cherish art? Art can make life worth living, as solace, reflection, dialogue. If humankind is no longer, will the art take over expressing for us, as Sherrell half expects….the Bruegel painting’s figures to revolt against their demise, as they burn. An absurd thought but vivid nonetheless. The burning painting is also a metaphor for our failure to take action. As the planet burns we are frozen like tiny figures in a painting and do nothing.

My therapist tells me that there is a new field developing called Climate Trauma Psychology, researching how to help people deal with their mourning for lost species, fears of disaster, and utter uncertainty of a future. This emotional trauma is very present. For some, depression is never far off. Can Art, a grand form of expression and connection with the world offer some a possible place for both sorrow and joy in connection with others?

At another point in the book Warmth, Sherrell projects Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow into 2021 and imagines the forest of the hunters retreating northward, as forests are doing now. The little snowshoe hare are dying because as their white world of snow melts into muck, the hare succumb to predators.

Sherrell discusses other works of art too. There are many literary references which include Melville’s Moby Dick, Proust’s Swann’s Way, and Gerald Murnane’s novel The Plains (a writer I had been unfamiliar with).

In Part One there is a vivid behind the scenes description of the NY Renews coalition, an activist group Sherrell has worked with. This is intense because there is a a complex web of failures and successes in their campaign to get the the NY Governor’s office to pass legislation to end carbonization. Street demonstrations, sit-ins, email campaigns, and protests, are described, as well as the political swindling and plotting both against and in favour of the Bill by the political parties in power. Finally, at then end of Part One, there is success, albeit a much watered down version of the Bill as it was originally proposed by the group. Then Trump was elected. Throughout all of Part One, Sherrell’s inner turmoil with The Problem is always close at hand.

I continue to ponder this book. The book covers Sherrell’s development as a climate activist and examples of specific climate regulations that the activists he works with have succeeded in instituting. The book is also about how to deal with the Meltdown on a personal level. Framing the book as a letter to his possible future child is a way to write reflectively about the future of the planet, but it is also a truly felt dilemma.

This book has been very meaningful to me. One of those books that hits the heart and the mind where hitting is needed.

Posted: September 19, 2022

Book: Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World by Daniel Sherrell. Published by Penguin, 2021.