Analysis Of Hanging Trees By Andy Goldsworthy

Improved Essays
In diverse manners, artists often successfully reflect, and display the impact and relationship humans have with the environment. This allows for society and the general population to further explore and understand their place within both the natural and unnatural world. Artists such as Jill Orr, Lin Onus and Andy Goldsworthy successfully reciprocate this by responding to the physical environment- and situations they are positioned in- through their creations of thought provoking art. These three particular artists use various forms of media- photography, painting and installation- in order to portray the central message. In short, through diverse manners, artists reflect and display the impact human beings have on and in the environment. …show more content…
Goldsworthy uses this particular work in order to represent the often harmful relationship between wood and stone; the constant battle between farmland and forested landscapes. In Hanging Trees, the centre of the work- the tree, representing the natural landscape- is lying horizontally in what is strikingly not unlike a freshly dug grave. Lining the so called ‘grave’ are four high walls of stone-work symbolising the destructive nature of farming, in the way it acts as a tomb; trapping the tree. It is a powerful work that explores the often neglected idea of the battle between farming and of the natural forests. These two conflicting environments exist in a mutually exclusive relationship; through the choosing of one, the other is ultimately destroyed: through either it’s destruction, or through it’s lack of existence. Through this work, an important question is raised, asking the audience just how do they, as the human race, decide which of the two is more important. Both are important to the development and success of the human race, yet they destroy each other: which is more important to have an abundance of? The effects of farming upon the natural environment is an idea explored through Goldsworthy’s Hanging

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Formal Analysis on The Rhizome Art Piece These artists collaborated and challenged their viewers to recognized nature. Everything in the world deserves to be recognized. Nature is one of the amazing elements God created and put on our planet, in this generation its hard to recognize nature when everything surrounding us has been replaced or distorted, now the world looks to be man made. In this collaboration piece Johanna Paas and Mariah Doren work together and combine their talents into a piece of art that stands out to viewers.…

    • 774 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Emma Marris presents us with a new way of viewing nature in the first chapter of her book, “Rambunctious Garden”. She explains that the definition of nature depicted in our “glossy magazines” describing a place “somewhere distant, wild and free” is incorrect, as it “blinds us” from the truth (Marris 1). Marris argues that we must adjust this definition to also include the nature found in “the bees whizzing down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan” and “the butterfly bushes that grow alongside the urban river” as well as the nature found in “managed national parks” (Marris 2). She uses experiences gained during her time spent in the forests of Hawaii and in Australia’s Scotia Sanctuary as evidence to support her argument. Marris also makes the point…

    • 858 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lewis, Sarah, and Katherine Anne Ackley. “Scientists Aren't the Only Innovators: We Really Need Artists.” Perspectives on contemporary issues: readings across the disciplines, Eighth ed. , Cengage Learning, Boston, 2018, pp. 197–200.…

    • 888 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Today, many like Karen Armstrong, acknowledge the significant role art plays in a community. Throughout her essay, Homo Religiosus, she argues that art, much like religion, has the capability to allow one to temporarily forget and transcend their daily struggles, and rather focus on an ideal future. Maggie Nelson’s essay, Great to Watch, questions how society relates to the world and through what can we do so. Nelson opens her text with a discussion of Sister Helen Prejean, who proposes in her memoir, Dead Man Walking, ignorance was a major obstacle that paused social and moral progress. Prejean was convinced that exposure to a world crisis will inspire others to help make change.…

    • 1649 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Art is all around us, no matter where we go or what we do, there will always be a form of art that is nearby, and as a result of this, art has become one of the most significant aspects of a person’s daily life. In a sense, art is quite like water. It is something that is physical, but the changes that it can embody or bring forth are just like the formlessness of water. Art has become something more than just a work that should be admired, but rather, it has become a medium of speech for the ones that create it. In Dorothy Allison’s “This is Our World”, multiple anecdotes are used to allow the reader to better understand art.…

    • 1233 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Returning to Devon for the first time in fifteen years, Gene oddly finds it looking “newer than when I was a student” (page 1). He contains a certain amount of sentimentality for the school of his childhood, a place where he had many times of joy and mischief. Returning to Devon brings back many memories for Gene, like jumping off the “forbidden tree,” “blitzball,” and missing meals. However, there is a sense of darkness in the beginning. It is raining, cold, and gloomy, the dominant feeling for Gene on his return.…

    • 236 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For billions of years, nature has dictated the survival and appearance of a species. However in Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods suggests that know we– human beings– are the ones changing the face of nature. Louv introduces the article with a study about controlling the color of butterfly wings then moving on to show the comparison between parks and advertising. Then, Louv transitions into a hypothetical example of a mother who did not want to buy backseat entertainment for her child and the mother then clarifies that she is doing this because of how her “understanding of how cities and nature fit together was gained from the backseat” (lines 49-50). Through the use of a scientific study, hypothetical example, series of rhetorical questions, and repetition Louv sheds light on the increasing separation between people and nature to his reader– anyone who has either fallen or is falling out with nature.…

    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Once both Gene and Finny are atop of the forbidden, dangerous tree, Gene describes the countryside view as “long rays of light played across the campus (Devon), accenting every slight undulation of the land, emphasizing the separateness of each bush” (Knowles 59). This illustration of the setting provides a beautifully vivid picture of the setting in the reader’s mind. After Gene purposefully jounced the limb of the…

    • 609 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Differences on How ‘Insiders’ and ‘Outsiders’ Experience Landscapes Landscape can have a wide range of different categories and in the essay the author will mainly focus on the landscape processed by human factors. Landscape, in the context of a place where human live in generally resonates with the concept of 'dwelling' brought up by Heidegger (1971). The process of dwelling is actually an interactive process between the human dwellers and the force of the nature that evolves towards a harmonious status ideally. Therefore, the landscape on earth in this sense is a result of how human tend to build up a harmonious relationship with the environment surround them.…

    • 817 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ben Quilty is an Australian artist producing richly emotive works that effectively exemplify the art of abstraction, having earned him a national reputation. Acclaimed as a portraitist, Quilty creates thickly impastoed canvases using vibrant colours and broad brush strokes that build up layers of paint. He works in a wide range of genres, including portraits and still lives, but also landscapes that reflect his fascination with Australia, a passion which has its origins in Arthur Streeton’s edict that “Australian artists should look to their own backyards for inspiration.” Portraiture for Ben Quilty is about the emotional relationship he develops with his subjects, and the creation of an intimate bond which allows them to place their trust…

    • 899 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Andy Goldsworthy Analysis

    • 961 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Throughout the ages artists have often found inspiration amidst the world around them. Such inspiration expanded alongside progress as humans learned to understand and manipulate their environment. Yet throughout the march forward in time, a single constant connected the cave man to the astronaut, and that was the natural beauty and wonder of nature. The marvel of an ice crystal probably held equal amazement to the cave man staring from his protective cliff cave, as to the child walking into a modern ski lodge. Some modern artists have the ability to connect the wonders of shape and form with the ever present backdrop of Mother Nature.…

    • 961 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The funny and talented actor, Rainn Wilson, was on Oprah today talking about his show, "SoulPancake. " In it two people go around in a lime green VW bus and create, what I would call, "Living Art." They encounter ordinary people on the street and ask them to participate in creating some form of art. One of the little vignettes actually brought tears to my eyes. People were asked to grab an empty picture frame, one of many hanging on a wall, and walk around, looking through it in order to spot things of beauty that they would want to frame.…

    • 270 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During the bustle of England's industrial revolution, many writers sought comfort in the soft caresses of the natural world. In the majority of his works, William Wordsworth presents a similar theme, returning to dwell on the lowest, ordinary things and basking in the restorative abilities of nature. Longing for the day when England would return to its rural roots, his poetry creates an idol of nature and its power. However, in this world, there exists great certainty in the uncertain nature of powerful forces.…

    • 936 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The environmental theme and consequent subject matter of my proposed project was initially inspired by David Attenborough’s three part documentary series The Great Barrier Reef, which addresses the deterioration of the coral reef. The artwork I plan takes further inspiration from artists including Margaret and Christine Wertheim, Bansky and Jenny Pollack. The Wertheims’ The Bleached Reef and Jenny Pollak’s One Degree of Separation, both of which are installations, reference the fragility of coral reef ecosystems (Pollak, 2012; Wertheim and Wertheim, n.d). The focus and subject matter - particularly in The Bleached Reef, which is a “…testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world…” (Wertheim and Wertheim, n.d) - was influential to…

    • 310 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Hanging Gardens are one of the Seven Wonders in the World and still to this day is very attractive to tourist. With walls about “56 miles in length, 80 feet thick, 320 feet high”, this was one of the most impressive architectures (The Seven Wonders). The Gardens were built around 600 BC and got destroyed in the second century BC. Due to an earthquake much of the Hanging Gardens were destroyed. There are two different theories to how the Hanging Gardens were built.…

    • 736 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics