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Green Light: Toward an Art of Evolution

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How humans' aesthetic perceptions have shaped other life forms, from racehorses to ornamental plants.

Humans have bred plants and animals with an eye to aesthetics for centuries: flowers are selected for colorful blossoms or luxuriant foliage; racehorses are prized for the elegance of their frames. Hybridized plants were first exhibited as fine art in 1936, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York showed Edward Steichen's hybrid delphiniums. Since then, bio art has become a genre; artists work with a variety of living things, including plants, animals, bacteria, slime molds, and fungi. Many commentators have addressed the social and political concerns raised by making art out of living material. In Green Light, however, George Gessert examines the role that aesthetic perception has played in bio art and other interventions in evolution.

Gessert looks at a variety of life forms that humans have helped shape, focusing on plants—the most widely domesticated form of life and the one that has been crucial to his own work as an artist. We learn about pleasure gardens of the Aztecs, cultivated for intoxicating fragrance; the aesthetic standards promoted by national plant societies; a daffodil that looks like a rose; and praise for weeds and wildflowers.

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Detail Information

Series Title

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Call Number

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Publisher

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press., 2010

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780262265898

Classification

NONE

Content Type

text

Media Type

computer

Carrier Type

online resource

Edition

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Subject(s)

Arts

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

Gessert, George

Other Information

Cataloger

Kholif Basri

Source

https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4363/Green-LightToward-an-Art-of-Evolution

Validator

Maya

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/7940.001.0001

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