The Nature of Art: From Cave Paintings to Sustainable Online Platforms

Art is one of the most ancient and most profound means of human expression. The origins of art date back to the Paleolithic Period, i.e. when humans lived in caves. Aside from tool-making, art marked yet another important milestone in human advancement. At a certain stage, early humans felt the need — and developed the capacity — to portray the elements of their immediate environment. And guess that that environment was? Nature.

Cave art contains numerous examples of, inter alia, scenes of everyday life showing our species interacting with the other ones. Think of the lions, horses, and rhinos of Chauvet Cave (France) that date back some 30,000 years. This is how old the human artistic relationship with Nature (and with our creative selves) is.

Since the Stone Age, we have come a long evolutionary way in terms of the tools and subjects of portrayal, yet nature still remains one of the most important focal points. From oil paintings to digital photography, art keeps capturing and expressing Nature in this or that shape or form as one of its most profound and eloquent subject matters.

To date, art still reflects the gist of our relationship with the natural environment. Even more so, art is now used as a medium to channel the human fears, worries and hopes regarding the environmental degradation, along with the messages that stimulate positive change in the human minds and deeds. One may claim that modern art has become as eco-conscious as never before — right on time to deal with an ecological crysis like never before. So how can art be eco? In more than one way, actually.

Nature is a priori and de facto in many art forms and art processes, even when we do not notice it. It can be in the tools and materials an artist uses: plant-based pigments in dyes, wood and animal hair in brushes, clay in sculpture, cotton in canvas, sand in glasswork. The list goes on. Nature is in the water a painter uses for their watercolors! Many artists create by recycling waste collected outdoors. Others care to use only eco-friendly methods by making their art biodegradable or safe for the environment. Last but not the least, Nature is on the artist’s mind when they are creating…

Tautology aside, it is only natural to portray nature. Nature can be the main focus of art. It can be a background. It can be the mood. I can also be the message behind the art creation.

For nature as the foreground subject matter, think of Claude Monet’s impressionist paintings, where plants, elements, and light are fused into holistic visions of Nature as an art form. For nature as a background, think of the Sculpture gardens, like the one at the Kröller-Müller Museum. For nature as a mood, read Haiku poetry or listen to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. For nature as a message, please keep reading.

Being a socio-cultural space, art can mediate and shape human relationships with each other and the world. It is literally a stage where ideas can be expressed in the most striking, visually and sensually appealing forms, textures, colors, movements and compositions. Art speaks better than words, for it is a fusion of several expressive means in one unity. Hence, due to its unlimited expressive potential, art can perform important missions. One of them is raising eco awareness. An adjacent mission is raising funds to turn eco ideas into eco action — conservation, restoration, reforestation. All the aforementioned are Null Art.