John K Grande is author of numerous books on the relation between art and nature including Balance: Art and Nature (1994), Intertwining: Landscape, Technology, Issues, Artists (1998), Art Nature Dialogues (SUNY Press, 2004), Art Space Ecology (2019).He also writes poetry and curates internationally.
Trans-Disciplinary Migrations: Science, the Sacred and the Arts, 2024
The disconnect from the physics of the world, something Denes’ art recognizes and confronts tends... more The disconnect from the physics of the world, something Denes’ art recognizes and confronts tends to works against nature and seen cumulatively against civilization. Nature, like humanity, has a memory. Nature designs effortlessly, and at no excess. Resource use is simply a cyclical life system. So many urban art projects involving nature are decorative and quite beautiful, but they do not encourage a sense of our links to nature and art has a firm footing in the philosophical and poetic intransigence of humanity—its blind spot being the way capital as an abstract concept transgresses earth value.
Antony Gormley discusses his approach to art and aesthetics with John K. Grande presenting a rang... more Antony Gormley discusses his approach to art and aesthetics with John K. Grande presenting a range of his works including the Field project.
Betty Beaumont has made some radical interventions including her Ocean Landmark using recycled co... more Betty Beaumont has made some radical interventions including her Ocean Landmark using recycled coal ash to generate a fish habtat underwater off Fire Island, NY. This exchange with John K Grande offers readers great insight into her remarkable vision and way of working.
Nothing is empty not even a landscape. The idea that the way we read a landscape is very much inf... more Nothing is empty not even a landscape. The idea that the way we read a landscape is very much influenced by technology. In modern evolved societies we perceive the physics of the world much less than we did a century ago. It may be different in the Third World or more marginal societies. Patrick Huse: Indigenous people define the land as something they are a part of, so they are quite aware of the fact that you have to work with nature and not against it. In the Western world we define nature as something outside ourselves, something we want to conquer and exploit, which becomes part of the environmental problem. JG: Joseph Beuys I believe undertook a performance stating he was a part of nature... This idea of the object as a data carrier you had in your Reykjavik show Penetration. Is this close to ideas of art as anthropology? PH: There is a similarity between the artist and the anthropologist in the sense that they both do research to be able to tell a story. The execution of the information is what is different. But the similarity is that they both have to do research on certain materials. Any material reworked into an art object or an art project, imply a research on the basic material.
John K. Grande examines a range of contemporary artists whose interests engage the earth, ecology... more John K. Grande examines a range of contemporary artists whose interests engage the earth, ecology and the land in widely varying ways. Interviews examine art practices, ecological issues, and values as they pertain to siting of works, conception, use of materials and the ethics of artmaking. Included are David Nash, Herman deVries, Alan Sonfist, Betty Beaumont, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Patrick Dougherty, Chris Drury, Nils-Udo, Hamish Fulton, Bob Verschueren, and Michael Singer. Text in Spanish Published by the Fundacion Cesar Manrique, Lanzarote, Spain ISBN 8488550596, 9788488550590
chases idioms and handles the real world of everything around us, including ourselves. He uncover... more chases idioms and handles the real world of everything around us, including ourselves. He uncovers what is right in front of us, unlocks dimensions that draw links with the ancients, with symbols, hieroglyphs. The shapes, shadows, sensuality, and concrete gestures are less surreal than imagined. The inversion occurs as a result of the gesture, and the distance between the image captured and the image realized, which are both ultimately the same thing.
Art Space Ecology ; Two Views Twenty Interviews, 2019
Yahgulanaas art in its many incarnations, as Haida manga, sculpture, painting, carving, mixed med... more Yahgulanaas art in its many incarnations, as Haida manga, sculpture, painting, carving, mixed media or ceramics, has been exhibited in public spaces, museums, galleries and private collections across the globe, and is in such renowned collections as the British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum and Vancouver Art Gallery. His large sculptural works can be seen on permanent display at Vancouver International Airport, City of Vancouver, the City of Kamloops and the University of British Columbia. Yahgulanaas' highly successful books include Flight of the Hummingbird, Red; A Haida Manga and War of the Blink. Yahgulanaas pulls from his twenty years serving on the Council of the Haida Nation to travel the world speaking to businesses, institutions and communities about social justice, community building, communication and change management.
Why is so much art against nature? Is the art world unnatural? We ourselves are nature. And the w... more Why is so much art against nature? Is the art world unnatural? We ourselves are nature. And the world we contribute to is nature transformed, or nature in its own place, a flower by a roadside. Time drifts like a cloud. We can hear the sound of traffic in the middle of the day. Changing nature, we change ourselves. And so we find ourselves within the mirror of nature, an eternal mirror. The mirror is emergence and the mirror is recognition. Ichi Ikeda's art presents us with many mirror-like moments in nature, as in life. The two are inseparable-nature and life. When we divide, measure, segregate, we end up isolated from the sources that enrich us, give us the energy of life. Ikeda brings it all together again. Japanese environmental artist Ichi Ikeda uses water as his main medium. Water is a choice that strongly connects Ikeda to a global movement involved with water rights, and broader environmental issues.
UnHuman Kind: Paradoxes of Speciesism
How different are modernist aesthetic attitudes from those ... more UnHuman Kind: Paradoxes of Speciesism How different are modernist aesthetic attitudes from those of a hunter? Art is segregated and removed from life, aNaesthetized, and like the hunter who sacrifices animals in a vain attempt to capture life, our formal art history did the same. The lawns that surround our public art galleries are as manicured and sterile, devoid of life as the art within. If that isn't an embodiment of the decontextualized state of art and human culture from the culture of nature what is? A look at the works of animals rights advocates Michael Alstad, Carel Moiseiwitsch, Camille Turner and Veronica Verkley's early work art A Space, Toronto, Canada in 1996.
Art Park celebrates the ephemeral event of art combining with nature in a natural historical and ... more Art Park celebrates the ephemeral event of art combining with nature in a natural historical and geographical transition point, Artpark from 1974 to 2014 with its 200-mile form wedged between the Niagara River and escarpment, the village of Lewiston, and Robert Moses Parkway is a crossroads of history that dates back to the early explorers. The French explorer LaSalle landed there in 1678, and a still more ancient Indian burial ground dating back to 140 AD is on site, as are the footings for the remarkable suspension bridge built in 1851 by Edward W. Serrell. In a process of continuous interactivity, some industrial, others reclamation, Art park personifies the word-TRANSITION. And the art, music, and events supported there, are all about this transition. Early land artists included Robert Smithson and Alan Sonfist among others. The Niagara Falls was likewise an inspiration for the great nature painters of the 19th century including Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Vicat Cole. John K. Grande interprets the sculptors and land artists' latest works created for the 2014 40th anniversary of Art Park, New York.
American born, Canadian painter David Bierk mines the pantheon of art history. Objects, landscape... more American born, Canadian painter David Bierk mines the pantheon of art history. Objects, landscape, interiors, once painted to reify a particular reality and cultural hegemony, are orchestrated, brought into compositions, juxtaposed. The resulting artworks are alliterations, build layers of meaning, where the original art historical contexts collide, thus establishing a shift in meaning. The juxtaposition of art from different eras within a single composition is daring, and correspondingly invokes a new set of meanings. A simultaneity develops where visual matrices, detailed down to the very aging cracks, the bodices and portrait faces, the Dutch interiors and pristine landscape representations, become metaphors for the fleeting nature of life itself.
Trans-Disciplinary Migrations: Science, the Sacred and the Arts, 2024
The disconnect from the physics of the world, something Denes’ art recognizes and confronts tends... more The disconnect from the physics of the world, something Denes’ art recognizes and confronts tends to works against nature and seen cumulatively against civilization. Nature, like humanity, has a memory. Nature designs effortlessly, and at no excess. Resource use is simply a cyclical life system. So many urban art projects involving nature are decorative and quite beautiful, but they do not encourage a sense of our links to nature and art has a firm footing in the philosophical and poetic intransigence of humanity—its blind spot being the way capital as an abstract concept transgresses earth value.
Antony Gormley discusses his approach to art and aesthetics with John K. Grande presenting a rang... more Antony Gormley discusses his approach to art and aesthetics with John K. Grande presenting a range of his works including the Field project.
Betty Beaumont has made some radical interventions including her Ocean Landmark using recycled co... more Betty Beaumont has made some radical interventions including her Ocean Landmark using recycled coal ash to generate a fish habtat underwater off Fire Island, NY. This exchange with John K Grande offers readers great insight into her remarkable vision and way of working.
Nothing is empty not even a landscape. The idea that the way we read a landscape is very much inf... more Nothing is empty not even a landscape. The idea that the way we read a landscape is very much influenced by technology. In modern evolved societies we perceive the physics of the world much less than we did a century ago. It may be different in the Third World or more marginal societies. Patrick Huse: Indigenous people define the land as something they are a part of, so they are quite aware of the fact that you have to work with nature and not against it. In the Western world we define nature as something outside ourselves, something we want to conquer and exploit, which becomes part of the environmental problem. JG: Joseph Beuys I believe undertook a performance stating he was a part of nature... This idea of the object as a data carrier you had in your Reykjavik show Penetration. Is this close to ideas of art as anthropology? PH: There is a similarity between the artist and the anthropologist in the sense that they both do research to be able to tell a story. The execution of the information is what is different. But the similarity is that they both have to do research on certain materials. Any material reworked into an art object or an art project, imply a research on the basic material.
John K. Grande examines a range of contemporary artists whose interests engage the earth, ecology... more John K. Grande examines a range of contemporary artists whose interests engage the earth, ecology and the land in widely varying ways. Interviews examine art practices, ecological issues, and values as they pertain to siting of works, conception, use of materials and the ethics of artmaking. Included are David Nash, Herman deVries, Alan Sonfist, Betty Beaumont, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Patrick Dougherty, Chris Drury, Nils-Udo, Hamish Fulton, Bob Verschueren, and Michael Singer. Text in Spanish Published by the Fundacion Cesar Manrique, Lanzarote, Spain ISBN 8488550596, 9788488550590
chases idioms and handles the real world of everything around us, including ourselves. He uncover... more chases idioms and handles the real world of everything around us, including ourselves. He uncovers what is right in front of us, unlocks dimensions that draw links with the ancients, with symbols, hieroglyphs. The shapes, shadows, sensuality, and concrete gestures are less surreal than imagined. The inversion occurs as a result of the gesture, and the distance between the image captured and the image realized, which are both ultimately the same thing.
Art Space Ecology ; Two Views Twenty Interviews, 2019
Yahgulanaas art in its many incarnations, as Haida manga, sculpture, painting, carving, mixed med... more Yahgulanaas art in its many incarnations, as Haida manga, sculpture, painting, carving, mixed media or ceramics, has been exhibited in public spaces, museums, galleries and private collections across the globe, and is in such renowned collections as the British Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum and Vancouver Art Gallery. His large sculptural works can be seen on permanent display at Vancouver International Airport, City of Vancouver, the City of Kamloops and the University of British Columbia. Yahgulanaas' highly successful books include Flight of the Hummingbird, Red; A Haida Manga and War of the Blink. Yahgulanaas pulls from his twenty years serving on the Council of the Haida Nation to travel the world speaking to businesses, institutions and communities about social justice, community building, communication and change management.
Why is so much art against nature? Is the art world unnatural? We ourselves are nature. And the w... more Why is so much art against nature? Is the art world unnatural? We ourselves are nature. And the world we contribute to is nature transformed, or nature in its own place, a flower by a roadside. Time drifts like a cloud. We can hear the sound of traffic in the middle of the day. Changing nature, we change ourselves. And so we find ourselves within the mirror of nature, an eternal mirror. The mirror is emergence and the mirror is recognition. Ichi Ikeda's art presents us with many mirror-like moments in nature, as in life. The two are inseparable-nature and life. When we divide, measure, segregate, we end up isolated from the sources that enrich us, give us the energy of life. Ikeda brings it all together again. Japanese environmental artist Ichi Ikeda uses water as his main medium. Water is a choice that strongly connects Ikeda to a global movement involved with water rights, and broader environmental issues.
UnHuman Kind: Paradoxes of Speciesism
How different are modernist aesthetic attitudes from those ... more UnHuman Kind: Paradoxes of Speciesism How different are modernist aesthetic attitudes from those of a hunter? Art is segregated and removed from life, aNaesthetized, and like the hunter who sacrifices animals in a vain attempt to capture life, our formal art history did the same. The lawns that surround our public art galleries are as manicured and sterile, devoid of life as the art within. If that isn't an embodiment of the decontextualized state of art and human culture from the culture of nature what is? A look at the works of animals rights advocates Michael Alstad, Carel Moiseiwitsch, Camille Turner and Veronica Verkley's early work art A Space, Toronto, Canada in 1996.
Art Park celebrates the ephemeral event of art combining with nature in a natural historical and ... more Art Park celebrates the ephemeral event of art combining with nature in a natural historical and geographical transition point, Artpark from 1974 to 2014 with its 200-mile form wedged between the Niagara River and escarpment, the village of Lewiston, and Robert Moses Parkway is a crossroads of history that dates back to the early explorers. The French explorer LaSalle landed there in 1678, and a still more ancient Indian burial ground dating back to 140 AD is on site, as are the footings for the remarkable suspension bridge built in 1851 by Edward W. Serrell. In a process of continuous interactivity, some industrial, others reclamation, Art park personifies the word-TRANSITION. And the art, music, and events supported there, are all about this transition. Early land artists included Robert Smithson and Alan Sonfist among others. The Niagara Falls was likewise an inspiration for the great nature painters of the 19th century including Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Vicat Cole. John K. Grande interprets the sculptors and land artists' latest works created for the 2014 40th anniversary of Art Park, New York.
American born, Canadian painter David Bierk mines the pantheon of art history. Objects, landscape... more American born, Canadian painter David Bierk mines the pantheon of art history. Objects, landscape, interiors, once painted to reify a particular reality and cultural hegemony, are orchestrated, brought into compositions, juxtaposed. The resulting artworks are alliterations, build layers of meaning, where the original art historical contexts collide, thus establishing a shift in meaning. The juxtaposition of art from different eras within a single composition is daring, and correspondingly invokes a new set of meanings. A simultaneity develops where visual matrices, detailed down to the very aging cracks, the bodices and portrait faces, the Dutch interiors and pristine landscape representations, become metaphors for the fleeting nature of life itself.
The article reviews the exhibition "Mark Dion: Theatre of the Natural World" held at th... more The article reviews the exhibition "Mark Dion: Theatre of the Natural World" held at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, England.
Gates of Perception
a series of interviews with Hungarian artists working with nature
They incl... more Gates of Perception
a series of interviews with Hungarian artists working with nature
They include Imre Bukta, Colin Foster, Peter Alpar, Eross Istvan, Istvan Geller, Gyenis Tibor, Pal Peter, Agnes Peter, Sandor Pinczehelyi, Attila Pokorny, Uto Gusztav,
Interviews by John K Grande
Forward by Keseru Katalin
Hungarian sculptors, artists
Jason deCaires Taylor - underwater sculptor whose environmental approach engages with the livin... more Jason deCaires Taylor - underwater sculptor whose environmental approach engages with the living species in an inter-species way. This article discusses his work in Lanzarote, Spain and in Mexico, and touches on art's role in relation to nature in the 21st century and age of global warming. Taylor's aesthetic engages migrants, who become subjects for casting, and the natural world.
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Books by John K . Grande
Text in Spanish
Published by the Fundacion Cesar Manrique, Lanzarote, Spain
ISBN 8488550596, 9788488550590
How different are modernist aesthetic attitudes from those of a hunter? Art is segregated and removed from life, aNaesthetized, and like the hunter who sacrifices animals in a vain attempt to capture life, our formal art history did the same. The lawns that surround our public art galleries are as manicured and sterile, devoid of life as the art within. If that isn't an embodiment of the decontextualized state of art and human culture from the culture of nature what is? A look at the works of animals rights advocates Michael Alstad, Carel Moiseiwitsch, Camille Turner and Veronica Verkley's early work art A Space, Toronto, Canada in 1996.
John K. Grande interprets the sculptors and land artists' latest works created for the 2014 40th anniversary of Art Park, New York.
Text in Spanish
Published by the Fundacion Cesar Manrique, Lanzarote, Spain
ISBN 8488550596, 9788488550590
How different are modernist aesthetic attitudes from those of a hunter? Art is segregated and removed from life, aNaesthetized, and like the hunter who sacrifices animals in a vain attempt to capture life, our formal art history did the same. The lawns that surround our public art galleries are as manicured and sterile, devoid of life as the art within. If that isn't an embodiment of the decontextualized state of art and human culture from the culture of nature what is? A look at the works of animals rights advocates Michael Alstad, Carel Moiseiwitsch, Camille Turner and Veronica Verkley's early work art A Space, Toronto, Canada in 1996.
John K. Grande interprets the sculptors and land artists' latest works created for the 2014 40th anniversary of Art Park, New York.
a series of interviews with Hungarian artists working with nature
They include Imre Bukta, Colin Foster, Peter Alpar, Eross Istvan, Istvan Geller, Gyenis Tibor, Pal Peter, Agnes Peter, Sandor Pinczehelyi, Attila Pokorny, Uto Gusztav,
Interviews by John K Grande
Forward by Keseru Katalin
Hungarian sculptors, artists
This article discusses his work in Lanzarote, Spain and in Mexico, and touches on art's role in relation to nature in the 21st century and age of global warming. Taylor's aesthetic engages migrants, who become subjects for casting, and the natural world.