Drawing on a rising tide of disturbing ecological statistics, including glacial melting points and rising global temperatures, environmentalists now estimate that global warming, if left unchecked, could lead to grand-scale disaster in as soon as 500 years. With a significant percentage of its natural landscape fully submerged, the earth's crust would be flooded by melted glacier, drowning whole species and cascading upon cities - an apocalyptic vision that might seem more frightening if it didn't still seem so far away.
Eco-activist painter Alexis Rockman, however, senses a renewed need for fear. In his latest oil and acrylic landscape, 2004's "Manifest Destiny," the RISD alum attempts to startle his viewers into awareness with a 24-foot-long canvas, depicting what could one day befall the Brooklyn waterfront if no precautionary measures are taken before the flood. "It's an activist image with a moral core," the artist said. "It shows what can happen if we stop caring about ecology."
On display in the RISD Museum's contemporary art wing, the piece caps years of scientific research, including data analysis and a painstaking taxonomy of the animals most at risk.
It is a grim vision, done in warm hues to convey rust and pollution, as well as cold, entropic tones to connote a sunken world. Birds swoop in from above to feed off the chaos, and only the tattered remnants of stone monuments poke through the water's cloudy surface.
Though still relatively young, the Manhattan-raised Rockman, whose past oeuvre has spanned a variety of eco-related themes, has already seen his craft represented at Boston's Museum of Fine Art, New York's Whitney Museum and other equally venerable institutions.
In bringing his latest large-scale piece to Providence, RISD Curator Judith Tannenbaum said she knew it would be greeted with the same enthusiasm it had received just months earlier at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. "In his art, (Rockman) addresses environmental hazards," she said, presenting the painter to a full house at the design school's auditorium. "And in this way, he portrays the potential future of the individual."
Mediating an artist talkback with Rockman Thursday night, philosopher Arthur Danto, an art critic for The Nation, engaged him in discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the mural. The artist cited 19th-century landscape painters, such as Thomas Cole, and the legacy of activist artists Goya, Rivera and Daumier as his primary influences, adding that Picasso's "Guernica" also introduced viewers to a world of degeneracy they might not otherwise see.
"But what's different about my work is the futurization element," he said. "I want my art to get us feeling proactive about the state of the environment."
Prodded by Danto to reconsider the element of fear in his work - "Is it really scary enough to inspire change?" the critic asked - Rockman demurred. "Probably not. I'm not sure I want to scare people as much as show them what they're in for."
Rockman was also urged to address the haunting coincidence of his piece with the recent deluge in New Orleans. "The idea of toxicity, gas and other pollutants dispelled from the water is what I think is the most immediately moving," he said. "It's the unexpected that's really the most scary."
