Global warming a serious problem ~ but so darn cute
Last night Draftfcb hosted an art show and auction in New York. One of the paintings, an acrylic by Estrella Vega, was called “Flamingo Girl and/or the Evolution of Man.” I like it for the most part. It’s obvious that someone is going to look at it and absolutely love it. With the proceeds going to Rock N Renew, where they will used to unleash “art, music and science to create a plan of action for the planet by custom-designing initiatives for schools, businesses, and communities,” little bad could come from this creation. With that said, the painting has some weaknesses.
Essentially, this piece is supposed to be about human evolution and global warming. Vega has accomplished being lighthearted about a serious issue, which was her goal. In general the dimensions are great; we get the feeling of an awkward giant who woke up one morning only to find that she went through a growth spurt overnight. In general, I think that it is much more successful at portraying adolescence than lighthearted global warming, and there are specific parts of it that I take issue to.
First off, the image of the palm tree is the biggest problem for me, and I feel like the artist did not quite bust out of the cliche of a tropical warming earth. There seems to be this general impression that the planet is going to become more tropical. Perhaps that’s what we all want to think. At least then global warming wouldn’t be such a monster.
Yet global warming is much more about invasive species of plants and insects killing the character of a place rather than the propagation of desirable tropical plants. Moreover, sunlight is still going to be limited the farther north or south you go, so the plants will have to evolve more than the girl to make the trip.
The second issue that I have is the choice of the flamingo. Before I read that the girl had evolved into having flamingo legs, I really liked what I perceived as a refraction of the legs in the water. It was much less literal and much more about the perceived awkwardness of being young and changing.
For me on this issue, society is an old curmudgeon who’s not at all evolving to fit global warming, especially here in the United States. The modified painting that I see in my mind that better addresses global warming has a dead hemlock tree buried in water next to a gray-hair-covered head barely above the surface of the water—unwilling to move from their stance. The goldfish are huge as they have grown and adapted to their surroundings. But this image is not exactly lighthearted, but at the same time “lighthearted” doesn’t have to mean that tropical cliche allows us not to think about the flip side of a serious issue.
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Posted on August 24, 2007
Filed Under Art, Global Warming |
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[...] In our desire to save these creatures whom Morgan Freeman hypnotized us into loving, we have placed them in news reports and on the covers of some of the nation’s largest magazines. When everybody started to realize just how much we had all grown to love penguins, we decided to start taking them to our favorite place to show them off: the beach. The goal has perhaps become to help them learn to adapt to the coming beautiful tropical weather that we think we’re creating for them (see my global warming art critique). [...]