10 Trashy Ideas About the Environment

Guerrilla Girls, American, est. 1985

10 Trashy Ideas About the Environment, 1994

“I like to use plastic, especially for making art about the environment. After all, art is eternal, and so is plastic.”

Founded in New York in 1985, the Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous collective of women artists who create protest art that exposes sexual and racial discrimination in the art world and beyond. 10 Trashy Ideas About the Environment was created in 1994 and comes from the Guerrilla Girls Portfolio Compleat, a collection of works representing over 30 years of the group’s art activism. The printed plastic bag here lists ten wrongful ideas about the environment, demonstrating people’s ignorance, stupidity, and thoughtlessness when it comes to environmental preservation, conservation, and even art production. By printing their work on a literal plastic bag, the group creates a compelling observation on the irony of art creation, demonstrating how the materiality of art itself can damage the environment. Label by Isabel Williams

Intrigue

Morris Louis, American, 1912-1962

Intrigue, 1954

One of the first things we learn as children are the colors of the rainbow; colors help us describe objects and connect with the world around us. The colors used by painter Morris Louis are physically tainted with toxins. As described by Laura Turner Igoe in her chapter, “Creative Matter: Tracing the Environmental Context of Materials in American Art” (from Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment), Louis used turpentine, among other toxins, which has a history of negatively impacting communities and the environment. This painting is an example of how something meant to be beautiful can have terrible environmental and cultural consequences. It is important for environmentalists and art historians to look beyond the painting itself and analyze the physical materials from which the artwork was created. Label by Lindsey Smith

Pipestone Quarry on the Coteau des Prairies

Morris Louis, American, 1912-1962

Pipestone Quarry on the Coteau des Prairies, 1954

George Catlin journeyed and painted Native American people throughout the western United States. He was the first to paint this sacred quarry where several different tribes made regular pilgrimages to create their pipes, which were carved for spiritual practices. The gravesite located behind the people gathering rock demonstrates the spiritual importance of the place and the longevity of the quarry as a site used over centuries. Though perhaps not intentionally, Catlin forces his audience to question the conventions of other mining practices that destroy landscapes and people when compared against this sustainable and sacred use of red stone for religious art. The indigenous people depicted are not enslaved labor like in the Caribbean, but instead using the stone as creative matter to maintain their own culture. Label by Katie Lee

Miners

Jackson Pollock, American, 1912-1956

Miners, 1934-1938

Miners depicts faceless individuals congregated tightly together inside a mine, with half of the individuals hunched over and gathering materials. Each individual remains anonymous, highlighting that these workers could be any human, yet the rough black and white streaks emphasize the harsh, dangerous conditions these individuals must work through. There are no signs of light or other workers or managers, solely these select few that are isolated from everything else, unethically enduring all potential risks with mining, including exposure to toxic metals and inhaling toxic fumes or other particulates. Label by Sebastian Rios-Melean