Andy Goldsworthy commonly referred to as a performance artist who doesn’t require an audience is fascinated by nature and the various shapes it makes on mother earth. Andy’s work is explored in the film where the natural landscape and sea provides inspiration and captures a perfect image of his ephemeral art. The documentary is underpinned throughout by excellent but eerie apt musical score performed by Fred Frith. The director of the film Reidelsheimer encapsulates the artist Andy and the art perfectly that it deserved much recognition other than the ten year German film Award it got.
Goldsworthy begins by building a cairn in a beach near Nova Scotia and struggled with the recalcitrant stone while actually racing against the tide that was incoming to finish. Goldsworthy does not destroy his art himself but preferred to watch the decay happen naturally and in his famous words remarked “the one thing that brings the work to life will also bring its death” (Goldsworthy, 2006). Art according to him is in the surroundings that essentially provide more deep insights and clarifies our understanding on how nature works where majority deem as a waste of precious time. His use of natural materials like leaves, snow or trees in building sculptures is done with great zeal that it comes out as a surprise to many who adore his art that he would leave them to be destroyed by other aspects of nature. According to Andy, nature in most instances appears or forms shapes that resemble of the whorl, the cone and the serpentine.
Critics have dismissed Andy Goldsworthy form of art on the basis that he is more of an explorer and naturalistic than a modern artist. However, as revealed from this film, Andy’s perception of what art is majorly about is ingenuity at its best. In the 90 minute film, Goldsworthy arrives in a new mission in Nova Scotia, a seaside terrain. With little time to familiarize with the area he begins to build a sculpture made of icicle that embraces well with the cold and desolate milieu. He bites off the icicles in the chilly environment so as to make them fit and perfect in a serpentine shape and glues them using water from his bowl. The sun later illuminates the icicle sculptor and melts away to the ocean.
In Andy’s second piece of art, he builds an igloo from the driftwood available at the beach. He assembles the driftwood against the waters and the black rocks as a spectator follows closely. Andy crawls from the hole at the bottom of the cone and waits for the tide to rise. The cone begins to float and in a very slow swirl drifts into the sea. Andy watches as the cone is reduced to two dimension cone on the water surface and the image of the center hole becomes even more distinct as the white driftwood turns brown due to the water. The remaining pieces of the cone form a flat disc that rotate round the center according to the direction of the river.
Andy’s artistry knows no bounds according to his third piece of art as he explains how the impact left in the environment especially trees by the sheep is devastating. Where sheep have grazed over the past few years in his Scottish home there were no trees which led to Andy creating a river made of white wool at the top of the stony walls which divided the fields.
It is evident from the pieces of art so far that Andy Goldsworthy is an authentic artist using nature to explain processes that marvel before the public eyes. The sculpting of the icicle to form a serpentine shape that was later illuminated by the sun was breathtaking. The need for him to use bare hands in the chilly weather so as to enable him to make contact perfectly with the icicle worked very well eventually. The beauty part about this artistry is that no explanation is needed simply because at one point in time everyone has tried to make something like his art. His audience knows what he is trying to do and eventually the mind gets absorbed on the possibilities that might occur and in this case how long the icicle will illuminate till it melts. Using driftwood or twigs, Andy created an inverse of the salmon hole that when the tides came the twigs spiraled apart in the sea. Common shapes and patterns are reflected in all the acts of brilliance Goldsworthy has managed to reflect (Rabiger 71). People normally make snowmen or sand castles only to be swept away by water or melt in the case of snow, but Goldsworthy’s sculptures or works easily transform into new observations as witnessed in the breakdown of the icicle. In every transformation, Andy views the world with eyes that enable him see the fullness of life or death which explains why he views destruction as a process or transition from one point to another.
Conclusively, the images created in this powerful film are indeed a treat for the eyes despite the unpredictability of the tides and rivers which in the end create a beautiful balance with a dramatic edge in the film.
Work Cited
Goldsworthy, Andy, and Fred Frith. "Riedelsheimer, Thomas (Regie):“Rivers & Tides”." (2006).
Rabiger, Michael. Directing the Documentary. Amsterdam: Focal Press/Elsevier, 2009. Print.
