Artist Closeup/ An-My Lê and Young Suk Suh: Exercises in the Sublime
Upon first sight of An-My Lê and Young Suk Suh’s photographs, one notices the beige misty haze and billowing white smoke impeding upon seemingly otherwise quiet landscapes with almost invisible hints of human presence. In Suh’s Bathers and a Dog (Wildfire series) (2008), a bridge is shrouded in transparent white smoke; people below are unusually tiny in comparison even to the brush and the distant hills, which seem oddly surreal. In Lê’s Mortar Impact (29 Palms series) (2003-04) white smoke drifts over a vast dirt ground that meets a small hill; oil drums in the foreground blend into the vast dirt plain.
Suh’s Wildfires series documents the California fires of 2008-2009, the most catastrophic blazes in history, comprised of over 12,390 fires and burning over 1,780,375 acres of forest and structures. In these instances of fire peoples’ health and welfare was at stake, their homes and businesses in jeopardy as the fires creeped their way from the mountains toward the cities below, it’s choking smoke lingering for months, causing illnesses and fatigue.
Lê’s 29 Palms series documents United States Marine bases, where she was granted permission to photograph training exercises. In this particular image a mortar has been shot onto the target field, accompanied by various actions to teach soldiers how to respond to this war scenario. The tufts of smoke have the appearance of listless clouds. Soon they will dissipate into the atmosphere, but the actions that created them leave an indelible mark.
Both artists are documenting events in real time. Lê is documenting events that are being created in preparation for future events, while Suh is photographing events as a result of an ongoing aftermath that continues to unfold. Suh’s wildfires are being fought by firefighters while Lê’s fires are being created by the military.
Attraction to these images might fall into the general category of the sublime. The Transcendentalists of the early 19th century, concerned with both intellectualism and spirituality were commitment to exploration and contemplation of the landscape. Their belief spawned splinter ideology such as the Naturalists and the Humanists, each with their own commitment to nature, human interaction with it and ultimately providing answers for the age-old question of existence. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay, “Nature”: “There I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.” (1) This solace takes many shapes, from interacting directly with nature, such as walks and farming, to contemplating nature through looking and writing or through spiritual means, such as reflection of the self within a larger, more gentle and beautiful whole. Ultimately they were toying with the sublime.
The sublime as defined by philosophers Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke (et al.) is: “a moment of metaphysical vision occurring when the mind is simultaneously pained and pleased: overtaxed by indeterminacy; it is stimulated toward the spiritual; threatened with annihilation, it is reassured by God.” (2) However, Kant also acknowledges that a scientific reason and phenomenon also occurs with the sublime; after all the foremost dictionary definition of sublime is: to pass from a solid to a vapor state and to condense back to the solid form. (3) One argument that he makes in favor of a “scientific sublime” is the notion of the Dynamic Continuum. Dynamic continuum as “motion as represented diversely in moving forces like attraction and repulsion or elemental forces such as fire, water and air.” Fire in particular is important for the dynamic continuum, as Kant understood, because it does not give way to a predictable repetitive state. (4)
Fire has the ability to be its unwavering self with varying degrees of intensity, and its mobility makes it always in a state of flux . . . that is of course, until it dies. In each of these pictures, smoke plays a metaphorical role beyond its matter. Smoke is the noxious by-product of fire that results from the combustion of materials that produce a mixture of solids, liquid and gas. Here, it is symbolic of man’s ability to create and to destroy, to be participants in generating and using fuel, but also prisoners of our own device.
(1) Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature” in The Portable Emerson, ed. Carl Bode, (New York: Pengin) 1981, 11.
(2) Eric Wilson, “Emerson’s Nature, Paralogy and the Physics of the Sublime,” in Mosaic (Winnepeg: Mosaic), Vol. 33 No. 1, Mar 2000.
(3) One could say that experiencing the sublime when viewing nature results in an indescribable sensation, as if we are transformed into a vapor state in awe of the greatness before us. When reality sets in again and we return to our doldrums, we then return to a solid state.
(4) Erman Kaplama, Cosmological Aesthetics Through the Kantian Sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Group) 2013, viii.
Under the Willow Blog
From time to time we ask writers, curators, and collectors to highlight various artworks in our permanent collection, from some of our salons or to explore the passion and experience of art collecting. Our postings are intended to offer insight about collecting art and to provide thoughtful introspection on the work itself through visual analysis and context.
