Julie Reiss - Art Historian
“Art is a manageable entry point into environmental issues that can seem overwhelming. When we’re overwhelmed, we often shut down, and we can’t afford to shut down now. Artists can help us perceive the world, and they creatively tackle very real challenges, helping us imagine a different future.”
Julie Reiss is an art historian of 20th and 21st century art. She has lectured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and taught at Christie’s Education. She tells us about her move to focus on art as a tool to combat the climate crisis.
You have built a successful career as an art historian of 20th and 21st century art lecturing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and teaching at Christie’s Education. You also found time to publish the book “Art, Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene”. This year you made the move to focus on art as a tool to combat the climate crisis. Can you tell us more about your journey to where you are today and what you are working on now.
I was concerned about the consequences of global climate change, but I didn’t see how to connect those concerns with writing and teaching about art. Then I noticed that artists around the world were addressing climate change in their artwork. The artists led the way, I just caught up. As I detail in the introduction to my book, the 2013 Venice Biennale was a turning point for me; I saw exhibitions in numerous national pavilions calling out the urgency of the climate crisis. One of my current goals is to amplify the work that artists are doing in this area. Another goal is to insert art more firmly into the growing interdisciplinary conversation around the environment. For example, in art as in other forms of cultural production, climate justice has risen to the forefront of the discussion around climate change. How do we use art as a lens onto these urgent social and economic issues?
You write as a guest art critic for The Brooklyn Rail. Why and how does art play an important role in the fight against climate change? And in this context, what makes an artwork “good” or “successful”?
Art is a manageable entry point into environmental issues that can seem overwhelming. When we’re overwhelmed, we often shut down, and we can’t afford to shut down now. Artists can help us perceive the world, and they creatively tackle very real challenges, helping us imagine a different future. I used to think that I could come up with specific criteria to gauge the success of art addressing the climate crisis. I have learned that this is neither possible nor necessary. A successful artwork in this context is one that connects with an individual and becomes part of what motivates their participation in combatting climate change. Large-scale abstract painting? Artist-led community education project? Green remediation projects? Whatever works for you. Artists choose their angle and their means for carrying it out. They’re not working in the service of science; they just can’t be wrong about the science they reference. That’s true for me too, as I write about this art. I have to know what I’m talking about if I’m going to discuss, for example, an artwork dealing with the consequences of deforestation or glacial melt.
There is currently a big move in the artworld to become sustainable. More and more artists, galleries, auction houses etc. are seeking to improve their carbon footprint. What do you think the art world needs to do to enable significant change? What changes have you seen artists making to their practices?
You’re talking about two different things here – the goals of the art industry to lower its carbon footprint, such as reducing air travel, using environmentally-friendly crating materials, rejecting sponsorship from certain corporations to avoid “green-washing, etc.--and artistic practice. Unless they are creating NFTs, an artist’s carbon footprint from their art-making is not necessarily very high. Creating art is not always about making objects, often it is ephemeral or conceptual. Many artists also intentionally use a lot of repurposed and recycled materials. However, I reject the idea that an artist is automatically a hypocrite if the actual substance of their artwork is not 100% ecologically friendly, or that an artist needs to be held to higher standards than other people. One artist remarked to me recently that although producing her artwork involves air travel, she has never had children, so her carbon footprint is relatively low. I thought that was a good point.