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ARTIST’S ARTICLE Gathered from Coincidence: Reflections on Art in a Time of Global Warming
George Gessert ABSTRACT How will global warming affect art? The author proposes that the effects will be continuous with other human-caused threats to civilization such as nuclear weapons. Such threats have hen I was a child, I knew no more about na- ited. The famous passage in which already contributed to devalua- W tion of the human figure. In ture than a squirrel. If someone had asked me what nature he describes the fierce green fire was, I would probably have said that it was my family’s farm, passing from a dying wolf’s eyes is many different times and places, the primary focus of art, with the woods especially and the creek that flooded every spring. representative [1]. It is an elegy, but the notable exception of West- Nature was space and the wild things in it, like the geese that not for something absolutely lost. ern art, has been on nonhuman flew overhead. He considered industrial society’s imagery. Global warming will I sensed that humans are part of nature, but exactly how, I uses of the wild tragically mistaken, give this new significance. Questions of permanence and was not sure. My parents did not discuss the matter with me, as damaging to ourselves as to the impermanence in art are also although my mother loved plants and animals. Evenings, she land. And yet he thought that our likely to become more relevant. often read aloud to my brothers and sisters and me, and once mistakes could still be remedied. she read from Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. This Exactly how he was not sure. Near was in the late summer of 1952, when I had just turned 8. the end of A Sand County Almanac Leopold’s farm was perhaps two hours from ours, so the plants he acknowledged that entire ecosystems were threatened, but and animals that he described were familiar. But I found A even in his reflections on the extinction of passenger pigeons, Sand County Almanac boring. Only a grownup writing for he saw their disappearance as continuous with evolutionary grownups would describe wild geese and say nothing about processes that preceded humankind. wanting to fly away with them. Nature was magic, real magic, Leopold envisions lost species of birds passing into a great and good books were magic, too. My brothers and sisters must prairie in the sky, where they pursue their symphonic migra- have felt the same as I did, because the next evening my tory cycles in eternity. Did he actually believe in an alternate mother switched to Alice in Wonderland. universe? A Sand County Almanac provides no clues, but his My siblings and I were naive because we were children, but musings turn the light of his own fierce green fire away from my mother was naive because of the times. She and my father the threat of extinction. had moved to the country for quiet, fresh air, the presence of It was the times. He was innocent of mass extinction. What- wildness with something of the sacred about it, and a good ever hints of it we may glean from the dying wolf passage re- place to raise children. In those days country life was still un- flects our ecological consciousness, not his. Nor does Leopold complicated by news of peak oil or global warming. consider that the economic, social and technological systems Apocalypse, however, was already in the air. About the time of which he was part might pass away along with whooping my mother tried reading Leopold aloud, I heard a report on cranes. A Sand County Almanac is rich in insights. One, his best the radio about the Red Menace and hydrogen bombs. I asked known, should be inscribed on the walls of courthouses, uni- my mother if we would be killed. She said that the bombs would versity buildings and places of worship: “A thing is right when be dropped on cities, not farms. it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the bi- But what would we eat? I asked. I was old enough to know otic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” [2]. And that in spite of our vegetable garden and marathon canning yet, to read Leopold today is also to read of a lost world.
sessions, most of our food came from town. ♦♦♦ We could grind our own corn, she said. That same afternoon my sister Beth and I ground field corn A Sand County Almanac was published in 1949. Around this between bricks. My mother helped us bake the golden meal time a few scientists were beginning to issue warnings that our into muffins. They were too gritty to eat, but comforting nev- civilization might not survive. These warnings, and the em- ertheless: she was right, somehow we could make do. blem that came to be associated with them, the doomsday clock
♦♦♦ of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, initially focused on nu- clear war. The clock, with its hands perpetually poised near Rereading A Sand County Almanac, I am moved by Leopold’s midnight, was a premonition of other countdowns to come. struggle to understand what was happening to the wildness he The Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth (1972) [3], for ex- loved. By today’s standards his knowledge of ecology was lim- ample, is a countdown for the economic promise of industrial civilization. According to the authors, economic and scientific George Gessert (artist, writer), 86070 Cougar Lane, Eugene, OR 97402, U.S.A. data indicate that if humankind does A, B or C, we are likely E-mail:
©2007 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 231–236, 2007 231
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dance to severe economic contraction. bare beginnings of the revolutionary The authors were not all-seeing prophets, social and economic changes that will but their fundamental premise has come be necessary to halt cataclysmic global to be generally accepted: The world’s re- heating.
sources are finite, and some may be ex- ♦♦♦ hausted in this century or the next. When crucial resources are exhausted, eco- Under these circumstances, Wilson’s nomic and political catastrophes may re- faith that concern for grandchildren can sult. Today this seems obvious, but only a significantly affect policy seems mis- generation ago it was not. placed. In Collapse (2005), evolutionary Underlying the Club of Rome report, biologist Jared Diamond offers more and many similar analyses, one may sense convincing projections. The future, he lingering optimism. Before us lies a menu writes, could bring worldwide ecological of options, and informed people will collapse, but even if this does not hap- choose well. We, or rather the policy pen, we may still face difficult times, for makers to whom much of this literature example, “spread of Rwanda-like or Haiti- is directed, will determine the course like conditions” to many more countries, of history. History is firmly in human with the First World “beset by . . . chronic hands. terrorism, wars, and disease outbreaks” E.O. Wilson voiced a similar optimism [4]. Even at his most hopeful, Diamond when he predicted, in The Diversity of Life suggests that the expanding material (1992), that our species will soon mitigate promise we have long taken for granted the activities that are causing mass ex- may be lost for most of our grandchil- tinction. Although he characterized what dren, real or figurative (many of us will we face as potentially worse than nuclear not have biological descendants). Amid war—-the fossil record indicates that full the shocks and dislocations to come we recovery from each of the five previous may also lose some of our fundamental mass extinctions took up to 10,000,000 values. years—-he offered hope. Human beings, I am in no position to evaluate Dia- Wilson said, do not ordinarily think in ge- mond as a scientist or a historian, but I ological or even historical time, which respect his writing. He uses clear, unas- makes large-scale, long-term planning suming language and is a good story- impossible. However, because most peo- teller. He builds his case by marshalling ple are concerned about the well-being facts and by revealing his own character, of their grandchildren, planning 25 to 50 which is neither misanthropic nor de- Fig. 1. Tawaraya So¯tatsu and Hon’ami years ahead is politically feasible. Wilson spairing. He characterizes himself as Ko¯etsu, Calligraphy of a Poem over a Design of Chrysanthemums, ink, silver and gold on believed that ecological catastrophe was something of an optimist, and his prose 3 11 paper, 7 ⁄8 × 6 ⁄16 in, circa 1615–1637, Edo close enough to soon arouse policy mak- suggests that he is a compassionate man. period (1615–1868). The chrysanthemums ers and the public from their collective He does not think that human beings are are by So¯tatsu, the calligraphy by Ko¯etsu. trance. inherently evil or given to delusion. We Philadelphia Museum of Art. Purchased In the 15 years since the publication of are simply creatures trying to survive as with the W.P. Wiltstach Fund, 1970. Photo by Graydon Wood for the Philadelphia The Diversity of Life, there have been some best we can under social and environ- Museum of Art. encouraging developments. Ecological mental circumstances over which we consciousness has deepened. Awareness have limited control. Even when we rec- of global warming has spread. A few ognize fatal patterns of behavior, they not yet faded, but the sun has set. Evening countries have begun to retool significant are difficult to change as long as they may linger for a few years, a generation, parts of their economies toward sustain- bring immediate benefits, even if only but the meaning of hope in human af- ability. Promising technologies have to elites. fairs is undergoing profound change. emerged and the rate of global popula- Nor does Diamond believe, as do some Hopes of the industrial and post-indus- tion growth has slowed. deep ecologists [5], that much of the trial eras may soon seem as illusory as However, absolute numbers of people agricultural revolution, sometimes called the gods of ancient Egypt. New hopes continue to grow, each year breaking all “the neolithic disaster,” should be un- awaken, night hopes. previous records. Demands for most re- done. He offers examples of agricultural ♦♦♦ sources increase, greenhouse gases pour societies that were largely or entirely sus- into the atmosphere, and as the Earth tainable. At least one, Tokugawa, Japan, How has art contributed to the situation? heats, tipping points pass or soon will be had a highly sophisticated urban cul- The known history of art spans some passed. As the sixth mass extinction ac- ture—-and, I should add, produced ex- 30,000 years. In most societies through- celerates, a phantasmagorical culture traordinarily refined art. It is time to out most of that time, images of animals of denial has flowered in the United re-evaluate Tokugawan art, especially Ko- dominated art (Fig. 2). States. Cascades of consumer goods, rin, So¯tatsu and Ko¯etsu, in the light of The human figure remained periph- mind-numbing religious, political and sustainability (Fig. 1). eral until well after the rise of urban civ- technological follies, and ceaseless en- However, if Haiti really could be a rel- ilizations. In the context of world art tertainments lock in business as usual, atively hopeful exemplar of our future, history, Western art and its focus on the and to date have obstructed all but the hope has grown crepuscular. Light has human figure is atypical to the point of
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sad,” a farmer told us, “but not too sad. He was very old, 67.” I am 61, middle-aged by the standards of consumer society. Mount Kenya was a good place to be reminded that, actually, I am old. Time lay lightly on the moun- tain, green even in the second year of se- vere drought. The monsoons had failed —due to global warming, the farmers said. In East Africa ancestral time is mea- sured in hundreds of thousands or mil- lions of years, and yet each morning the air was so fresh and cool and filled with birds that the world seemed reborn—yes, some clichés about East Africa are true. A danger for old men is to see in our × 7 × 1 Fig. 2. Bird’s Claw Cutout, mica, 5 9 ⁄8 ⁄32 in, Hopewell culture, Ohio, 100 BCE– personal twilight the twilight of civiliza- 1000 AD. Field Museum, A110016c. Photograph by Ron Testa. tion. Am I doing that now? I may not live to know, a comforting thought—-but as I write these words I know immediately the bizarre. Focus on the figure mirrors prosperity and technological innovation. that if I embrace them I will sever my con- and encourages our fascination with our In The Singularity Is Near (2004), he dis- nection with the future.
own kind. The figure can delight and misses global warming in a few sentences. ♦♦♦ illuminate. It can help us understand as- Atmospheric carbon, he says, may well pects of ourselves that we might other- prove to be a valuable resource since Until fairly recently in the West, one sign wise only glimpse. However, the figure nanotechnology is carbon-based and will of serious art was that it was made to last also favors anthropocentrism, that is, the demand ready sources of the element. both physically and spiritually. We no belief that humans are the central fact of This reminds me of the scheme in longer ask these things of art, but the the universe. Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow to weather may force us to reconsider. Contemporary art, with important ex- extract diamonds from the air. But The first major Western artist to con- ceptions, is as anthropocentric as art was Kurzweil is not joking. He is also serious sistently disregard physical permanence in the Renaissance. Most of today’s art about wanting to merge with machines, was Albert Pinkham Ryder [6]. He reinforces the anthropocentric gaze not and waxes rhapsodic about how, in a cen- painted with oils, which when used in only through the figure, but also through tury or so, we will be able to change our prescribed ways, such as in the “fat over its many extensions: technologies real bodies at will. Technology will make our lean” sequence—-slow-drying, flexible or imaginary, human signs, artifacts and deepest dreams come true—-but only the layers over quick-drying, brittle ones—- detritus, avatars, cyborgs, Internet and good ones. Kurzweil does not discuss the produce objects that can last for a thou- media events, virtual realities and most other dreams, the dreams about limitless sand years. Ryder ignored these methods, (though not all) interactive projects. Al- power and world-destroying rage. Greed, and his works began to self-destruct from most all of our extensions in art have one indifference and terror hardly figure in the moment he began painting. thing in common: They validate seeing his vision, although gray goo and germ Ryder explored the sublime, but many the world in terms of ourselves. Very of- warfare do. He is at home with high tech- other expressive possibilities reside in ten disgust with humanity also encour- nology, but not with the rest of nature, ephemeral materials. They lend them- ages this way of seeing. For example, including human nature. Much of his selves to the Dadaist program of de- Francis Bacon’s images of the human language is sloppy. He uses the word stroying art, for example, and opened body in metamorphosis and dissolution “progress” as a synonym for “inevitable the door to the first temporary sculp- keep the focus on us and us alone, as an- technological growth,” and he writes tures, or installations, such as Salvador thropocentrism has always done. about information growth as if it were Dalí’s 1938 Rainy Taxi. It consisted of the In more sustainable cultures, such as something inevitable, without consider- shell of a taxi with two mannequins, one the traditional Hopis’, the human figure ing the dark side of the information rev- with a shark’s head, the other elegantly plays a secondary role. This is because olution, the loss of eons of accumulated gowned and sprawled on the rear seat, sustainability requires mental habits that genetic information. surrounded by vegetation. Live escargot take us beyond ourselves and the human Some of the technological develop- snails crawled about the interior, which community into larger circles of life and ments that Kurzweil predicts may mate- was kept bathed in moisture by a misting being. Images that validate expanded un- rialize. However, much of The Singularity system in the taxi’s ceiling. Rainy Taxi was derstanding of community build and Is Near reads like Silicon Valley boost- a compendium of luxurious transgres- maintain ecological consciousness. This erism. sions rushing to dissolution, with the hu-
is why sustainable cultures (as well as ♦♦♦ man element overwhelmed. partly sustainable ones) favor art that cel- Ryder was the only 19th-century Amer- ebrates what we are not. In December 2005, my wife and I visited ican painter whose work Jackson Pollock
♦♦♦ East Africa. Kate was gathering informa- admired. In 1945, when he began his drip tion about gardening in Kenya and Tan- paintings, Pollock took up where Ryder Not everyone is worried about the future. zania. On Mount Kenya near the village left off. He used ordinary housepaints, Ray Kurzweil foresees unprecedented of Giteru a funeral was in progress. “It is not made to last. This choice was not only
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a reaction to the radical uncertainty of Making work to last has become nine and she was visiting our farm, we modern life (and probably an attempt to problematic. Many paintings done in happened to be alone for a few minutes. save money—-artists’ paints are expen- traditional permanent materials com- I played a Sinatra record for her. She held sive), but, I like to think, a celebration of municate timidity, cynicism or lack of her cigarette as elegantly as a movie star, energy itself. Once Pollock finished with awareness. However, permanence in smiled, and asked me what I wanted to his sticks and brushes, time took over. It itself does not condemn work to irrele- be when I grew up. I wanted to be an continued processes manifested through vance. The E. coli that Joe Davis geneti- artist but most adults thought little of my him that did not originate in humankind, cally engineers can self-replicate, and dream, so I said, “A professor.” I imagined but in being. could endure even after humanity disap- myself wearing a white laboratory coat, This bears comparison to traditional pears. Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, salt- with a naked woman standing in front of Chinese attitudes toward art. Many Chi- encrusted from periods of immersion me. I examined her with a detective’s nese believed that, strictly speaking, art beneath the waters of the Great Salt Lake, magnifying glass. Printed across her is created not by human beings but by na- may very well persist in a mineralized con- torso, in old-fashioned serif type like the ture. Nature flows, so works of art are al- dition until, billions of years from now, lettering on antique maps, were the ways in process, never complete. This is the earth spirals into the sun. words “Unexplored Territory.” one reason why Chinese collectors and ♦♦♦ “Professors don’t make money,” said connoisseurs write directly on paintings Mrs. Durnford—-Doris. She tapped her made by others. In the West, to write on Cynicism in art is not always unwar- cigarette. “But college presidents do all someone else’s painting is to deface it, ranted. One of art’s least appreciated right.” but in China to write on a painting con- functions is to give its admirers enough I got the message: manhood cost a lot tinues what began with the artist but did rope to hang themselves. Jeff Koons, of money. Maybe manhood was a con, a not end there. Old, much-admired Chi- whose well-crafted entertainments con- voice on the radio selling things. My sis- nese paintings are sometimes almost nect seamlessly to consumer culture, may ter Beth must have gotten a similar mes- completely covered with writing and seals more effectively undermine what he sage about womanhood because together added long after the artist’s death (Fig. glorifies than do most artists who set we decided never to grow up. 3). When empty spaces on a painting are themselves apart. Consumer culture is in- The Durnfords’ electroplating com- filled, panels may be added to accom- herently self-destructive, and anything pany did all right. By the time I was in col- modate still more writing. Furthermore, that uncritically contributes to it hastens lege, they had built their dream house in physical changes in a work—discolor- its end. We do not have to attack con- the country. There Mr. Durnford raised ation, cracks, stains—can add to its aes- sumer culture. It will destroy itself. bees and brewed mead. Mrs. Durnford thetic value. Time is the greatest artist. ♦♦♦ composed songs and read Thoreau. Today some artists draw attention to Meanwhile, downstream from the nature by heightening its flow. Many Mr. and Mrs. Durnford owned an elec- company, trees died, first a few, then of Andy Goldsworthy’s most admirable troplating company near my family’s scores, then thousands. Eventually the works last for only a few minutes. Au- farm. They lived in town and seemed daz- government investigated. Substantial ar- diences know such works through zlingly sophisticated to me because they eas around the factory and the land documentation, mostly in the form of had a television set and drank martinis downstream, including parts of our farm, photographs. Goldsworthy’s view of na- from stemmed glasses. Mrs. Durnford, were contaminated with heavy metals, ture is nondualistic. Art is an aspect of who insisted that I call her Doris, occa- cyanide and trichloroethylene, a car- nature. By implication, so are all human sionally made risqué jokes. She even had cinogen. Years of litigation followed. In works. a Tom Lehrer record. Once, when I was 1984 the company buildings and sur-
1 Fig. 3. Chao Meng-fu (1254–1322), Sheep and Goat, handscroll, ink on paper, length 19 ⁄16 in. Yuan Dynasty. Collection of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Purchase F1931.4.
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rounding land became Superfund Site appreciates language as a vehicle of both certain to be difficult to justify. So will No. WID006100275. Initial cleanup costs, information and emotion, and accepts marbled murrelets and spotted owls. In paid by taxpayers, came to more than that culture consists more of art than this way the future will be no different $20,000,000. Six thousand eight hundred science. from the past.
tons of contaminated soil were removed Lovelock presents a few of his ar- ♦♦♦ from our farm and transported to a land- guments with bulldog determination, fill. A full cleanup would have cost an which is a virtue, unless it turns blind. 27 December 2005. Ngorongoro, Tanza- additional $40,000,000, but money was His unqualified acceptance of Edward nia. Jungle covers the rim of the crater, unavailable and work came to an end in Teller’s autobiography as revealing “a which is 10 miles across. Hundreds of feet 1999. good and peaceful man strangely equiv- below is the caldera, a grassy plain thick Parts of the dead forest, now a grassy alent to . . . Andrei Sakharov” seems naive with zebras, gazelles, elephants, warthogs marsh studded with spiky gray snags, are at best [10]. So does Lovelock’s failure to and lions. too contaminated to be safely inhabited consider the danger of nuclear weapons’ Accommodations are $300 a night by people ever again. The electroplating proliferation when he advocates nuclear for a room in the lodge, or inexpensive company went bankrupt, but the dream power as an interim solution for energy tents, with nothing in between. When we house, I heard, was spared under a por- problems. These are not trivial lapses. arrived at the campground we found sev- tion of the bankruptcy code that protects And yet, few books about global warming eral dozen tents haphazardly jammed to- personal assets. are more lucid, thought-provoking or gether. The residents of this temporary
♦♦♦ disturbing. village were as polyglot as a New York ♦♦♦ crowd. I heard French, German, Italian, James Lovelock, in The Revenge of Gaia Russian and Swahili, along with other (2006), argues that if the industrial world What does long-term survival have to do African languages that I could not
immediately scales down CO2 emissions with democracy or justice as we under- identify. Also Turkish, perhaps, and an to pre-industrial levels, temperatures will stand them today? If I had to choose unfamiliar Scandinavian language—Ice- still rise several degrees Celsius in the between a democracy that tolerates eco- landic? next century. With a 5ºC rise in temper- logical catastrophe and a tyranny that We pitched our tent near the dining ature, which some authorities on climate halts it, I would choose tyranny. Of course pavilion, a squalid shack with a dirt floor. now consider possible, most of the earth, I do not want to have to make such a Our Chaga guide, Dennis (the name he both land and sea, is likely to become a choice. uses with English-speaking tourists), del-
biological desert. ♦♦♦ icately warned us not to use the pit toilets The last time the earth underwent any- during the night except for “emergen- thing comparable was 55,000,000 years Protest art, no matter how one-dimen- cies.” “If you need to do the simpler, just ago. Recovery took an estimated 200,000 sional, is often on the side of the angels. step outside your tent. Animals some- years. According to Lovelock the oppor- As for me, aesthetic experience comes times wander into camp.” He was not tunity for sustainable development has before political consciousness. Not that talking about chipmunks, but this was passed; the best we can hope for now is political consciousness and aesthetic ex- welcome news: I was eager for any excuse sustainable retreat. perience are opposed, but the latter does not to visit the pits. They had not been Lovelock predicts that in the centuries not consistently serve obviously useful cleaned in recent memory, and fresh to come, “humans are tough enough for purposes, and may even distract from splashes announced that several people breeding pairs to survive . . . what is at them. Of course, usefulness is to some ex- in camp were ill. risk is civilization” [7]. He believes that tent a cultural construct, but that said, The next morning the trek was un- we should begin to consider how to pre- experienced outside of their original avoidable. As I set out I almost immedi- serve essential knowledge so that our sur- contexts (and sometimes within them), ately stepped into an animal dropping vivors can “rebuild civilization without works by Ad Reinhardt, Odilon Redon, the size of a soccer ball. It was of an her- repeating too many of our mistakes.” Bada Shanran, Morris Louis, Chi Pai bivore, and was not especially smelly. I Such knowledge, he says, includes our Shih, Korin and anonymous West African learned it was from a Cape buffalo, the place in the solar system, circulation of stripweavers do not have utilitarian func- third most dangerous animal in East the blood, the periodic table of elements tions. This is why they reveal the world. Africa, after mosquitoes and hippopota- and the role of microorganisms in di- The universe is composed of things such muses (elephants and lions lag far be- sease [8]. as water lilies and stars, things that do not hind). Lovelock does not discuss art, nor does feed or shelter us, and which most of us, Later we heard that two weeks earlier he say why civilization should be rebuilt. out of choice or necessity, ignore most of a man had been killed in his tent at Not everyone shares the hope. Perhaps, the time. However, these things can re- Ngorongoro by a hyena. His wife lay be- as E.M. Cioran believed, our civilization store us to our primary relationship with side him as it happened. is so toxic that we can survive only if we existence, which is one of wonder. When 28 December. Serengeti. In the other- create a culture in which “one rachitic a human artifact does this, we may honor wise almost featureless plain the kopjes tree is worth more . . . than a museum or it by calling it art. are islands of visual complexity (Fig. 4). a temple” [9]. Under the circumstances, Some of the most aesthetically accom- These conglomerations of rocks, many questions of transmission and perma- plished works of art have been used as strongly vertical or toppling and rich with nence in art will almost certainly return tools of repression. This makes justifying vegetation, flattened acacias and bonsai- with a vengeance. such art problematic. In the century to like twisted shrubs, bring to mind Chi- As a writer, Lovelock has few peers come, as emergency flows into emer- nese gardens, and make me wonder among scientists, living or dead. His gency, art that does not serve politics or again how much of our capacity for aes- prose is lively, well paced and clear. He the immediate needs of people is almost thetic experience evolved on the savan-
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Fig. 4. Kopjes, Serengeti, Tanzania. (© George Gessert)
nah [11]. In their gardens the Chinese long time. Dennis told us that there are This implies that humans should not reduce the rich- re-created Chinese mountains, rivers 50 cheetahs in the Serengeti, and fewer ness or diversity of life, except to meet the most essential human needs. Deep ecologists favor re- and clouds, but were they also tapping than 20,000 in the world. If this is true, it structuring society to greatly reduce human demands into something more archaic, something means that although cheetahs are not in- on the biosphere. Among important advocates of deep ecology are Arne Naess, Paul Shepard, Joanna inscribed in DNA? Even more strongly evitably doomed, their extinction is prob- Macy and Wendell Berry. than gardens, certain Chinese landscape able. Of course we can live without them, paintings recall the kopjes in the plain. quite easily—I have lived without seeing 6. For more information on Ryder, see William Innes Homer and Lloyd Goodrich, Albert Pinkham Ryder: For example, Huang Kung-wang and a cheetah in the wild until now. But what Painter of Dreams (New York: Harry Abrams, 1989). Ni Tsan in the Yuan dynasty and Shen a loss their extinction would be, what a Chou and Tung Ch’i-chang in the Ming diminution of the world and of human 7. James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia (New York: Ba- sic Books, 2006) p. 60. dynasty produced Serengeti-like balances wonder. Eventually a comparable ele- of dense detail and empty space. gance will come into being, but how 8. Lovelock [7] p. 158. East Africa, in spite of its enormous many eons until then? And yet, seeing the 9. E.M. Cioran, Drawn and Quartered, Richard How- problems, strikes me as in some ways bet- cheetah, I feel reconciled to the world as ard, trans. (New York: Seaver Books, 1983) pp. 54–55. ter prepared for the 21st century than the it is. For these few minutes, whatever hap- United States. Languages and cultures pens, I am completely happy. 10. Lovelock [7] p. 97. are extremely diverse, and many people 11. For discussion of how human evolution in East remain largely outside consumer culture. References and Notes Africa may have determined some of our aesthetic Still, I doubt that I will return. Kate preferences today, see Judith H. Heerwagen and Gor- 1. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: don H. Orians, “Humans, Habitats, and Aesthetics,” bought carbon offsets, but nonessential Ballantine Books, 1970) pp. 137–139. in Stephen R. Kellert and Edward O. Wilson, eds., The Biophilia Hypothesis (Washington, D.C.: Island travel will never be so innocent again. Of 2. Leopold [1] p. 262. Press, 1993) pp. 138–172. course, it is easy to promise that I will be 3. The Club of Rome is a global think tank founded less profligate tomorrow. Lovelock puts in 1968 by Aurelio Peccei and Alexander King with it well: Cutting back on consumption is a mission to identify and analyze problems of global Manuscript received 25 July 2006. magnitude. The Club commissioned D.H. Meadows, like trying to lose weight. D.L. Meadows, J. Randers and W.W. Behrens III to George Gessert began his career as a painter 29 December. My first cheetah in the prepare its first report, on how “big” civilization could and printmaker. From 1985 to the present wild. Visually it is the most admirable become. The report was published in 1972 as The Limits to Growth. his work has focused on the overlap between animal that I have ever seen (except for 4. Jared Diamond, Collapse (New York: Viking, 2005) art and genetics. His writings have appeared human beings, of course—-by program- p. 499. in Leonardo, Art Papers, Design Issues, ming I have little choice but to admire Whitewalls, Massachusetts Review, Hor- 5. Deep ecology is the view that humankind is an in- my own kind first). She was pregnant and tegral part of the biosphere and that nonhuman life tus, Circa, Northwest Review and else- lay in the sun. I watched her for a very has value in itself, independent of human beings. where.
236 Gessert, Gathered from Coincidence
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