HUMANS AGAINST NATURE: WHO WILL WIN?
Alexis Rockman, a New York based artist, who in his painting Manifest Destiny portrays a post-apocalyptic world. Rockman has always tried to showcase nature through his artwork, but this time he pushes it to put an alarming point of view of the future we might witness in a few hundred years from now. The massive landscape depicts the view from the Brooklyn waterfront. The highlights include the Brooklyn Bridge, the skyscrapers, tunnels, and stadiums, all these things that Americans are proud of have flooded under the water because of global warming. No clue of human existence can be found in the painting, and the only things that have survived this catastrophic disaster are the flora and fauna. This dark portrayal of the world raises awareness that climate change is the most pressing issue that the world faces today.
In the painting the bridge has been flooded and broken by the water of the East River, which has risen beyond its normal level. The sunken Brooklyn Bridge, an epitome of man-made structure, symbolizes how punitively nature has destroyed human-made things, regardless how big they were. It is in some ways very hard to believe that a structure so massive and strong can be washed away by something as simple as water.
Humans have built great monuments and statues and have believed that these rock and stone structures will outlive us and will be the reminiscences for human existence. But the biggest irony of all is how inexistence of humans have been implied in the painting, and the closest thing to it is the man-made structures (buildings, stadiums, factories) have been destroyed
and are decayed. This provides a sense of fear and mortality to the viewer who then starts to question the permanence of these hardcore structures.
Our priorities have become a lot more materialistic. In the image, next to the Brooklyn Bridge we see a big trunk, which was commonly used to store gold coins (wealth) of kings and emperors, floating in the sea is a rhetorical attempt to represent the failure of the wealthy. The half drowned image of the icon of wealth (trunk) shows how money is insignificant in this apocalyptic worldview.Money is important to take measures but it is not the imperative part for the change and people need to make personal efforts to bring change, may it be a change in habit or mindset.
The two-tails of a shark wrapped around a man-made structure is a rhetorical example of how nature reacts back to the evil doings of mankind and how deadly the outcomes can be. For one thing, the contamination of water bodies and marine animals with synthetic pesticides and other chemicals can have some very serious consequences, like the one shown in the image that is mutation of animals.
In the back of the painting the buried B-2 Spirit, one of the most technologically advanced aircraft also known as the stealth bomber, gives evidence of the breakdown of technology. The irony here is even though it was supposed to fight the deadliest of things present on the earth, nature defeated it, no modern technology would be able to save us from the inevitability depicted in Manifest Destiny.
The free flying birds over the water, the island of trees and the left over Brooklyn Bridge enclosed in the greenery represent the ultimate triumph of nature over the humans. It shows how nature has taken the control back from humans and eradicated everything that remotely connects to mankind and goes on to show that one should not undermine the power of nature in any way.
The base of the painting has an odd resemblance to a ship, which illustrates a strong message that how the ship of the corporate and capitalistic world has drowned in the big sea of nature.The background of the painting there is a big sun, but Rockman has left it ambiguous as to if this is the time of sunset or sunrise. If this is a sunset, it can be implied to show the flop of human species and with it all the things they believed in but if it is a sunrise, it can be implied that it is the ray of hope and we still can do something to stop this catastrophe.
The painting Manifest Destiny, has tried to emphasize on the uncertainty of the environment. He argues that the environment is extremely precarious and that the quality of our environment is slowly depreciating due to human interference. Manifest Destiny has a lot of images to symbolize the failure of human power over nature. Every little thing traces back to the wrongdoings of humans and tries to prove how they have exploited their privilege of living on this beautiful planet.
The point of Manifest Destiny is to leave a feeling of fear and sorrow and to change the ideology of taking things for granted, especially nature. The aim of illustrating this dreadful image is to show people what our manifest destiny would look like if this cultural mindset is kept on going. Through this painting, we are able to better understand the power of nature and the reward of protecting it.
Text by Muskan Singal
Image Courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum
Find out more about the Artist and Gallery:
https://www.artworksforchange.org/portfolio/alexis-rockman/
http://alexisrockman.net/projects/
