Ecological Art and Its Main Thesis

Abstract

The article deals with the topic of ecological art, the thesis of which is the necessity to protect the planet from climate and ecological disaster. The question the author poses in the study is: why, despite the great significance of the problem and its place in public (at least Western) debate, eco-art seems to occupy a rather mediocre place? The difficulty of ecological art is, among others, that it must convince its recipients that the future fate of the world is, after all, their own, although the effects of the creeping ecological disaster which takes place in our time will be felt only by future generations. One of the important reasons for the disproportion between the importance of the issue, which is the threat of ecological disaster, the huge financial resources and political efforts undertaken to reduce the devastation, as well as the fairly marginal position of eco-art is a certain paradox (the author refers to it as Nietzschean paradox) – eco-art, on the one hand, shifts the focus from human subject matter to the environment, in which man is only one of the actors, on the other hand, like every type of art, it must remain human. For only the special position of homo sapiens can justify denying and inhibiting man’s aspirations in the name of their “leadership” and species chauvinism.