This book explores the nature of Britain-based artists’ engagement with the transformations of their environment since the early days of the Industrial Revolution. At a time of pressing ecological concerns, the international group of contributors provide a series of case studies that reconsider the nature–culture divide and aim at identifying the contours of a national narrative that stretches from enclosed lands to rising seas. By adopting a longer historical view, this book hopes to enrich current debates concerning art’s engagement with recording and questioning the impact of human activity on the environment. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, environmental humanities, and British studies.

The definitive survey of Land Art and contemporary environmental art, now available in paperback

Overturning decades of scholarly orthodoxies, James Fox makes a bold new argument about the First World War's cultural consequences.

Environmental art or ‘ecoart’ is a burgeoning field and includes a wide variety of practices, some of which are exemplified in this collection: from sculptures or installations made from discarded rubbish to intimate ephemeral artworks placed in the natural environment, or from theatrical presentations incorporated into environmental education programs to socially critical paintings. In some cases, the artworks aim to create indignation in the viewer, sometimes to educate, sometimes to create a feeling of empathy for the natural environment, or sometimes they are built into community building projects. This timely book examines various roles of the arts in building ecological sustainability. A wide range of practitioners is represented, including visual and performing artists, scientists, social researchers, environmental educators and research students. They are all united in this text in their belief that the arts are vital in the building of sustainability – in the way that they are practiced, but also the connections they make to ecology, science and indigenous culture.

An innovative and lavishly illustrated account of the art, writings, and global influence of one of the 19th century's most influential thinkers This book presents an innovative portrait of John Ruskin (1819-1900) as artist, art critic, social theorist, educator, and ecological campaigner. Ruskin's juvenilia reveal an early embrace of his lifelong interests in geology and botany, art, poetry, and mythology. His early admiration of Turner led him to identify the moral power of close looking. In The Stones of Venice, illustrated with his own drawings, he argued that the development of architectural style revealed the moral condition of society. Later, Ruskin pioneered new approaches to teaching and museum practice. Influential worldwide, Ruskin's work inspired William Morris, founders of the Labour Party, and Mahatma Gandhi. Through thematic essays and detailed discussions of his works, this book argues that, complex and contradictory, Ruskin's ideas are of urgent importance today. Distributed for the Yale Center for British Art Exhibition Schedule: Yale Center for British Art (September 5-December 8, 2019)

How do artists and writers engage with environmental knowledge in the face of overwhelming information about catastrophe? What kinds of knowledge do the arts produce when addressing climate change, extinction, and other environmental emergencies? What happens to scientific data when it becomes art? In Infowhelm, Heather Houser explores the ways contemporary art manages environmental knowledge in an age of climate crisis and information overload. Houser argues that the infowhelm—a state of abundant yet contested scientific information—is an unexpectedly resonant resource for environmental artists seeking to go beyond communicating stories about crises. Infowhelm analyzes how artists transform the techniques of the sciences into aesthetic material, repurposing data on everything from butterfly migration to oil spills and experimenting with data collection, classification, and remote sensing. Houser traces how artists ranging from novelist Barbara Kingsolver to digital memorialist Maya Lin rework knowledge traditions native to the sciences, entangling data with embodiment, quantification with speculation, precision with ambiguity, and observation with feeling. Their works provide new ways of understanding environmental change while also questioning traditional distinctions between types of knowledge. Bridging the environmental humanities, digital media studies, and science and technology studies, this timely book reveals the importance of artistic medium and form to understanding environmental issues and challenges our assumptions about how people arrive at and respond to environmental knowledge.

Exploring the myths and realities of the origins of the "modern artist" in Britain The artist has been a privileged figure in the modern age, embodying ideals of personal and political freedom and self-fulfillment. Does it matter who gets to be an artist? And do our deeply held beliefs stand up to scrutiny? Making the Modern Artist gets to the root of these questions by exploring the historical genesis of the figure of the artist. Based on an unprecedented biographical survey of almost 1,800 students at the Royal Academy of Arts in London between 1769 and 1830, the book reveals hidden stories about family origins, personal networks, and patterns of opportunity and social mobility. Locating the emergence of the "modern artist" in the crucible of Romantic Britain, rather than in 19th-century Paris or 20th-century New York, it reconnects the story of art with the advance of capitalism and demonstrates surprising continuities between liberal individualism and state formation, our dreams of personal freedom, and the social suffering characteristic of the modern era. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art