Climate Change and Contemporary Artists

Master's Thesis from the year 2020 in the subject Art - Painting, grade: 1,3, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Kunstgeschichte), language: English, abstract: This thesis aims to investigate the development of the topic of climate change within an art historical context and to answer questions including how the topic of climate change originated in art and how climate change has been addressed in contemporary art. Other questions include what mediums contemporary artists have used, what other themes are linked to climate change in art, and have these works influenced change. To investigate this, I will be examining works from the artists Olafur Eliasson, Julian Charrière, Ursula Biemann, Marjetica Potr¿, and Amy Balkin.Melting Glaciers, Wildfires, Hurricanes, Coastal Erosion, Agriculture Depletion, Flooding, and the extinction of various animal species are only just a few of the contemporary consequences stemming from the global phenomenon of climate change and global warming. Although one can visually experience or perceive some of these effects, others, such as the emissions of greenhouse gases, are invisible to the naked eye and can only be objectively proven through scientific evidence. By definition, climate change is any significant change in climate measures lasting for an extended period of time. This includes major changes in temperature, precipitation, or wind patterns, among other effects, that occur over several decades or longer. Extending back thousands of years, climate change has always been a part of the Earth's history. In the last 650,000 years, there have been seven cycles of glacial development and melting in which the end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago indicated the start of the modern climate era and human civilization.