Art as a Means of Cultural Transformation
Since the beginning of the first artistic manifestations, art has been a means of linking with our natural, social, and cultural environment. The vestiges found of cave art in caves such as that of Chauvet (in the south of France, Ardéche) correspond to a communicative expression and a real record of how life was lived more than 30,000 years ago. It reflects the interpretations of that time, using the artistic resource, graphic and visual as a source of expression.
The drawings found to show the close relationship that the artists who ventured to capture on the walls of their caves — in the case of Chauvet — animal paintings and daily activities that have disappeared today, had with the natural space.
You could say that these are one of the first forms of ecological art that we know of. The technique shows remarkable handling of the colors made with pigments and natural minerals. The naturalism of its strokes and the perspective used in the diffusion of tones in some areas, achieve visual effects that perfectly account for the message to be communicated. Context is delivered effectively for the community and today as a living record of extinct fauna and tribes.
This close relationship between nature and art has endured over time, in search of the human being to understand its relationship with other beings, the environment, etc. It is precisely the development of artistic tools that have transformed how we contemplate the world, from the depths of our being. Now in artistic expression, there is a complex development of the person its linked to.
It is a social manifestation that it gives us opportunities for equality and contemporary registration of what has been lived in each epoch of our history. Call it a real, deep and forceful testimony when it comes to an understanding our existence and evolution through the years.
The creative potential gives those who execute it (the artist) and those who observe (the spectator) a moment of contemplation and understanding in the face of adverse situations, improving our appreciation for culture, the environment (awareness of our environment), and as a reference to society.
It is for this reason that art becomes transcendental as an educational and explanatory tool for others since we have a valuable record for 30,000 years to the present day.
As an example, the Abu Dhabi Arts Society is an active organization engaging efforts in uniting cultures, minimizing distances in intellectual thought and cultural manifestations. It promotes arts and culture by specially giving opportunities to artists who are a benchmark in bridging cultural divide, preserving historical accounts and heritage of art, and promoting indigenous cultures.
A UK-registered non-profit organization, ADAS’ penetration in the sector is exemplified by its efforts for the past Emirati artists and poets. It has further played a role in curating opportunities for emerging artists with no scrutiny on backgrounds.
Recently, the British government presented the 19th Century painting, The Magdalen by Dutch artist Ary Scheffer. It dates back to 1856 and was offered as a gesture of goodwill to Dr. Hamed Bin Mohamed Khalifa Al Suwaidi, Chairman of ADAS. The painting holds reverence for its culmination during the Romanticism period. The exceptional work by A. Scheffer bears testimony of camaraderie between the Emirati and European artist fraternity.
We can quote another example of the Land Art artistic movement, which has retaken and preserved the artist’s connection with his natural and social environment in artistic representation, transforming the landscape where he develops his artistic endeavor into a discourse delivered to the community that becomes part of said work.
Unlike the literal art of rock art, the message becomes more subjective and less literal for the observer, giving the viewer a more active role in how to understand and decipher the message that transforms and creates awareness in our society on intellectual issues.
The interesting thing about Land Art is that it goes out to meet the viewer, making it even participate in the same work, this way of involving the person who in theory is an observer, makes himself become in some way the extension of that discourse and message to be transmitted by the artist. Art comes out of the refuge of the Chauvet caves, the museum, and/or the gallery and finds itself and its environment, rescuing its key elements.
Another example of the transformation of consciousness and landscape through art is what Argentine visual artist Nicolás García Uriburu (1937–2016) did at the time, called the pioneer of ecological art, focused mainly on changing our everyday context in a new landscape, which would account for environmental problems, which are still present today. His symbolic act was the coloration of the waters of Venice’s canals, showing in the 1968 Art Biennial, the exponential contamination since then to which we were exposing ourselves.
In 1999 he dared again, doing a performance-performance Basta de Contamina in Riachuelo (Argentina) coloring one of the most polluted rivers. Greenpeace joined this cause, who also carried out a study against the contamination of these waters. It should be noted that the substance discharged into the river is harmless to the environment and fleeting in time.
Undoubtedly, its legacy and its revolutionary actions closely marked the link of art as a powerful transforming tool of our society on such transcendental issues that influence and markedly mark our ecological, artistic, cultural, political, and social education. It is a fundamental tool capable of uniting areas that are part of our social structure.
From its beginnings thousands of years ago, embodied and sheltered in caves for a small lucid human group of its reality, until a few years ago with the revolutionary stamp of the coloration of our vital natural resource in contaminated waters, art can create and transform the world around us. At the same time, we could contemplate its various expressions, with a message that makes it unique and special in the time it develops, leaving an elemental trace of our human condition in the present and future generations.
We urgently need to establish an understanding of important problems to solve. Art makes this world around us express in a symbolic way and with endless techniques, a necessary message to manifest that in some way or another They give us a moment of pleasure and happiness in front of visual representations, which from a particular look from the artist to the viewer, are reflected in our eyes, a story, an act and a way of understanding life.
