Climate Change and Surrealism

A polar bear is seen against a background of human litter, as opposed to the generally expected snow of its natural habitat. Does this make the bear itself unnatural?

Benjamin T. Gordon, The Lake (1935). In contrast to the polar bear, the coniferous trees in the foreground have been bent through years of snow.

Today, surrealist concepts can be easily applied to the issue of climate change.  In her article “Climate Change and the Culture of Surrealism,” Lisa Margonelli discusses that while the surrealist movement first began for the purpose of invoking social change through expressing and portraying the subconscious, surrealism in the present day is more focused upon the juxtaposition of aspects that are out of place.  In the context of climate change, this juxtaposition can be found in such images as that of a polar bear surrounded by a polluted, melted landscape, as opposed to the snowy tundra of its true (and now deteriorating) home. The surreal aspects of the image arise from the displacement of the polar bear’s natural landscape of ice and snow due to drastic changes in our climate, and increases in pollution levels, that have led to the melting of ice caps in the northern regions of the planet. Certain New Deal paintings, such as Benjamin Gordon’s The Lake, which depicts an alpine lake fed by a glaciated mountain range, are now seemingly surreal in their depiction of lands which will soon no longer exist.

James E. Overland and Muyin Yang's article “The Third Arctic Climate Pattern: 1930s and Early 2000s,” discusses symptoms of climate change in the arctic regions, such as loss of ice and “air temperature anomalies.” Scientists have observed that these anomalies are beginning to occur in unexpected seasons and regions; this, of course, is detrimental to our world as these anomalies in circulation patterns of the atmosphere are also affecting the climate in ways such as loss of sea ice, warmer ocean temperatures, and ecosystem changes. Overland also discusses temperatures that were observed within northern regions during the 1930s and 1940s. Scientists observed at the time that arctic temperature anomalies were positive, in this instance positive means that temperatures are higher than what is considered normal. Thus, the winter landscapes depicted in paintings such as Gordon’s The Lake, were already under the threat of climate change during their original representation.