FRAMED: THE ENVIRONMENT IN PICTURES

Peter Brimblecombe* describes how the visual arts have long depicted our environment, even enabling scientists to gain a better understanding of sea level rises.

The visual arts have long been seen as a source of information and tool for communication in the sciences. Early scientists were often good draughtsmen and biology and geography books were illustrated well. The pioneering work on microscopy, Micrographia (1664) by Robert Hooke, is full of large, copperplate engravings which detail the microscopic world and caused so much amazement to readers of the seventeenth century that naval administrator Samuel Pepys thought it: ' . . .the most ingenious book that I ever read in my life.' Although better remembered for its biological illustrations, our environment is represented among 'several kinds of frozen figures' where Hooke illustrates the intricacies of snowflakes.

In parallel, Renaissance artists took a strong interest in science so that they could paint more effectively. Leonardo da Vinci was interested in the haziness of the atmosphere and this lent a sense of depth to his paintings. He noticed that tones became cooler in the distance.  This spectral shift, arising from the presence of aerosols, may also explain some geographical names, the Blue Mountain Range of Australia for example. Later the painter John Constable used Luke Howard's cloud classification scheme to improve his renditions of the English sky.

The images of atmospheric phenomena were not simply descriptive. They could convey meaning to the viewer. The red sky from a setting sun in Turner's The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to be Broken up (1838) emphasises the  end of the age of sail. Convergent beams in the sky are found in paintings by the German Romantic, Caspar David Friederich, such as Das Kreuz im Gebirge (1808), where they rise behind Christ on a cross, perhaps symbolising hope implied in the resurrection.  The background of Millais' painting The Blind Girl (1853) features a rainbow suggesting natural surroundings which she cannot see, but nevertheless senses.  

Environmental scientists have re-examined the information in paintings to gain information about past environments. Dario Camuffo has used the almost photographic images of Canaletto's paintings of Venice to determine past sea level. The artist used a camera obscura to create accurate pictures of the city. The high tide line along the canals is marked by a layer of algae, so it has been possible to estimate an average change in sea level of 2.7 millimetres per year since the 1720s when the paintings were executed.

The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 was one of the earliest global changes to be communicated rapidly around the world.  Edvard Munch's iconic painting The Scream (1893) is based allegedly on the global optical effects caused by the eruption and seen over Oslofjord, Norway. Krakatoa left a deep impression on Victorians. The apocalyptic novel The Purple Cloud by M P Shiel draws on the event and when the Tunguska meteor of 1908 turned London's night sky to day, viewers thought it  was the effect of some distant volcano.

The impressionist painter Monet visited London in winter months to capture the mood of the city. Monet's choice of this season was deliberate. He said: '. . . without fog, London would not be a beautiful city. It is the fog that gives it its magnificent breadth.'  The impressionist painters brought new approaches to rendering the atmosphere, smoke plumes and fog. It abstracted and simplified their view of the city, thus influencing art of the twentieth century. London's fog has now gone, but Anthony Gormley's exhibition Blind Light (17May-19August 2007) at The Hayward Gallery helped to recreate this. The title work Blind Light is a large glass box filled with water fog and the participant is encouraged to explore a disorientating white void.

Art galleries do not necessarily present us with the most popular form of visualization. Film is perhaps a more popular medium to examine for representation of the environment.  Given the association of the film industry with Hollywood and Los Angeles - also the birthplace of photochemical smog - it is hardly surprising it features in movies. In Falling Down, exhaust emissions and traffic jams drive an unemployed defence worker on a crazed ramble for breakfast and his child's birthday present. Air pollution and crime are often linked in detective films, perhaps because crime is easily associated with deprived and polluted urban areas and low visibility can conceal criminal activity. Blade Runner may be the best remembered film dominated by air pollution.  Writer P. M. Sammon described the opening scene: 'This hellish environment is dotted by dozens of fireball-belching cracking towers cocooned in a thick petrochemical haze.' Blade Runner is a Chandleresque story of 2019AD dominated by smog. It always seems to be dark as night, and if sun ever appears it must cut through orange pollution. Environmental decay is everywhere.

Films have also explored our global futures. In Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running (1971) trees survive only on space freighters and an overheated world of euthanasia and cannibalism is found in Richard Fleischer's Soylent Green (1973).  The Day After Tomorrow (2004) of Roland Emmerich and a rare documentary on the big screen, An Inconvenient Truth  (2006) with Al Gore, treat the theme of climate change for contemporary audiences. Art can now remind us of the fragility of our place in the world and even in celebration we can be asked to pause for thought. The 26p UK stamp of 1999 Steampower commemorates the millennium, but with a troubled image more diabolical than utopian.

*Peter Brimblecombe  is from the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia.

Sources:

Brimblecombe, P,   Aerosols and air pollution in art, in Preining', O. and Davis, J.E. History of Aerosol Science, Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, p. 11-24. (2000).

Camuffo D, Sturaro G  Sixty-CM submersion of Venice discovered thanks to Canaletto's paintings Climatic Change 58 (3): 333-343 (2003).

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