Towards a Blue Art History

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The visual arts hold a privileged position in exploring human connections to the ocean. Across history, they have expressed ocean emotions and ocean knowledge. In the modern and contemporary periods, they have been associated with its scientific, popular, poetic, mythical, and political approaches. Increasingly, visual studies scholars are surfacing the connections among human practice, the imagination, and the environment to reveal the power of the image, in all its forms, to probe and expand the human relationship with the seas.

This Colloquy assesses the importance and critical role of visual studies within the field of blue humanities, or ocean humanities. It originated from the interdisciplinary symposium "A Blue Art History" (Marseille, France, 2024, organized by Juliette Bessette, with Margaret Cohen as keynote speaker). Bringing together insights from ocean sciences and the humanities, as well as from art historians, artists, and museum professionals, it highlights key issues through which art has shaped conceptions of the ocean across different periods and contexts, as well as specific oceanic modes of understanding the world. These issues include the porous boundaries between artistic and scientific representations of the sea, the emotions and ethics of fishing, and the cultural significance of the marine environment and its biodiversity, whether shown in conventional art venues or visited in underwater installations.

The Colloquy welcomes new contributions that devote sustained attention to visual culture in the broadest sense, ranging from still-life painting, underwater photography and sculpture, and artistic assemblage, to film, drawing, and more. It seeks to explore the ways we see, engage with, and organize ourselves in relation to the ocean through the arts.

At a time when the ocean is in the spotlight both for a renewed attention to marine life and biodiversity and for its role in regulating the Earth's climate, these questions also intertwine with contemporary debates on ocean conservation.

Curators

Juliette Bessette

Margaret Cohen

Oceans: A “Blue Art History” to Stop Reducing Artworks to Awareness-Raising Tools

Interview

New

In an interview with Chloé Leprince at France Culture radio, Juliette Bessette discusses art studies within the "blue humanities" and their place in academia and beyond.

Naer het leven – Linking Early Modern Dutch Still Lifes to Scientific Imagery through the Example of Marine Animals

Essay

This contribution compares depictions of sea animals in early modern Dutch still-lifes with other types of images: emblems from the 16th and 17th century, scientific prints from treatises published between the end of the 14th and the 18th century, and finally drawings by still life artists themselves.

Photographing the Landscapes of the Underwater World at Banyuls-sur-Mer

Essay

This article explores the following question: at the end of the nineteenth century, how did the scientific community, among others, come to be increasingly preoccupied with underwater photography, and how could this world, and its attributes, be made visible?

Eileen Agar and the Undersea Marvelous

Essay

As a reflection on representations on biodiversity in art, this contribution considers the breadth of marine species highlighted in one work by British Surrealist, Eileen Agar (1899-1991). Much of her work relates to the natural world, especially the sea as an ecosystem and all the life within it, referred to here as the marine.

Calar Tonnara: Ethnographic-based Artistic Narratives Around Tuna Fishing in the Mediterranean

Essay

Zambernardi introduces readers to the tonnara: the system through which one of the giants of the sea, the bluefin tuna, has been fished on these shores for millennia. Through ethnographic research over several years, sailing with crews of rais (fishing chiefs) and tonnarotti (tuna fishermen) in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, Zambernardi explores the tonnara from the inside to show how this fishing method works and what is left of it today.

Considering the Art Museum in an Oceanic Culture: Underwater Art, Biodiversity and the Preservation of a Heritage in Flames

Forum

 A discussion between Louise Contant, head of collections at the French Musée national de la Marine, Lisa Cubaynes, art history student specializing in underwater museums, and Thierry Perez, marine ecologist with a strong perspective in ocean conservation. Moderated by Juliette Bessette, historian of art and science.