This article is a transcript of an interview broadcast on France Culture radio on June 13, 2025. Transcript prepared by France Culture radio. English translation by Juliette Bessette, with the assistance of AI.

One year after the very first symposium on “A Blue Art History” in France, organized at the Mucem and the Endoume Marine Station in Marseille in the spring of 2024, this conversation with art historian Juliette Bessette, who led this innovative scholarly event, on the place of art history—and its evolution—in oceanic issues, was conducted on the occasion of the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3, June 9-13, 2025) in Nice, France. 

Chloé Leprince: Contrary to what one might imagine, art history has actually lagged behind in what is called the “blue humanities,” that is, this interdisciplinary field of research that takes the ocean itself as its subject, and gives up a continental perspective on it. It feels counterintuitive to think that the arts were late in addressing the ocean…

Juliette Bessette: Traditional art history abounds with depictions of sailors and ports… Marine painting is also a genre tied to the military. At best, we find waves, among the closest we come to the sea as such. There are also representations of the underwater world in the nineteenth century. These drawings and paintings are particularly interesting, but they remain very close to the shore and at very shallow depths. In this sense, they say little about the ocean as such [with an average depth of about 3,700 m], about everything it represents—that is, the multitude of living beings, the vast expanses, and the processes occurring within it. This comes late in the arts, and therefore late in art history, because we, as art historians, only follow what already exists in works of art.

In fact, art stands at the heart of a fascinating paradox: we think through what we see, yet we do not see the ocean. We cannot see it—both because we lack visual access to it, and because of issues of scale. It is too immense, too difficult, impossible, really, for us to conceptualize. Yet art is precisely that which allows us to create representations of what we cannot directly see. So potentially, art has an important role to play, but only if it undergoes what is sometimes called an “oceanic turn”—if it accepts a perspective no longer strictly terrestrial or human, but one that attempts to think from the perspective of the ocean. This is something we’re increasingly seeing in contemporary art, which reflects a broader shift in how we perceive and sense the world—toward a (more) oceanic perspective.

C.L.: This “oceanic turn” coincides with the emergence of what we now call the “blue humanities.” What role does art play in this field, which began to take shape about twenty years ago?

J.B.: These studies mainly come from the field of English literature, especially in the US and the UK. Researchers who worked on narratives were the first to take up this question and theorize the field. They began to analyze images, art, and also cinema. We, as art history or aesthetics scholars, inherited this theoretical framework, but one that was really centered on narratives rather than images themselves. From a historiographical point of view, the field of blue art history as such, at least in the Global North, does not really exist to my knowledge. On the other hand, this question and the oceanic turn have been heavily developed in curatorial practice. In the exhibition world, many curators are now staging exhibitions about the sea. That is interesting, and it brings forward important notions, even theoretical ones. But in my opinion, what is still missing is a long-term perspective—a dimension of strong research and the consolidation of a field that does not yet exist in the way we might dream of it in art history.

C.L.: What do we actually mean when we speak of a “blue art history”? Are we speaking of a history of sensitivity to the sea, or a history of representations of the sea-waves, marine animals, ships, humans in the sea, humans facing the sea? What exactly are we talking about?

J.B.: Both, of course—that is the point. Art is always a reflection of the history of sensitivities. In the period that interests me, from the early twentieth century onwards, contemporary art has increasingly moved away from literal representation, and instead started to explore new tools and artistic media. What we call “media” in art history are new means, new materials—installations, for instance, including ones placed directly in underwater environments. All of this has converged with narrative questions to bring us back on the same issue: how to think our relationship to the ocean, but without representing it literally, since that is impossible. 

“A blue art history,” or this “blue art,” is an image, a kind of branding—we all market our research a bit. It is a way of saying: “Look, this interdisciplinary field of the blue humanities does exist, and the arts may genuinely have something meaningful to contribute.” And of course, it’s great that anthropologists or biologists talk about art, but there are also scholars trained in image expertise and visual culture. Art historians or aesthetics scholars have the tools to think, over the long term, about the evolution of these works, and to connect them to a history of sensitivity.

C.L.: Your work is also linked to the history of science and technology.

J.B.: What interests me is how access to the underwater world obviously changes our modes of representation of marine creatures. From a certain point onward, they start being represented in their environment, whereas before they were represented dead, in jars of formalin, for example… In the field of the blue humanities, art history provides this historical perspective. It also provides a critical perspective, since it’s a discipline very open to critical thinking. Thus, art history helps shape concepts, new approaches, new frameworks that enable us to engage with the ocean.

C.L.: Do you have an example?

J.B.: For instance, the concept of “tidalectics,” which is often used in curatorial circles, comes from Kamau Brathwaite [a Barbadian intellectual, who died in 2020]. Rather than approaching the submarine world from an “Atlantic perspective” in a heavily mediated way, Brathwaite proposes a mode of thought grounded in the rhythm of the waves—an oceanic relation conceived as cyclical, like the ebb and flow of the tides. Maybe it also means learning to wait for what the sea will be able to give us, at the surface and on the shore. This perspective refers to Global South thought, as with many concepts rooted in the Caribbean or Pacific. But this example does not come directly from art history, because blue art history is still being formed. The concepts still need to be forged, and now it is up to us to do that! 

C.L.: Since you work at the junction of the history of techniques and art history, do you see in the history of art an evolution that corresponds to the way techniques evolve over time, including becoming more invasive? And have you seen artworks transform?

J.B.: Absolutely. This is something we can trace, even if our perspective remains partial, and tied to our own research fields. In my case, I chose to focus on contexts where what we might call “Euro-descendant” marine sciences were practiced. That lets me place my research within a kind of shared scientific and technical tradition. For example, the underwater paintings and drawings I mentioned earlier were made in the 1860s, when diving bells first allowed people to stay underwater long enough to paint. Later, with the arrival of diving suits, artists tried other things. Some painted directly underwater, on waterproof canvases, using special paints that could be applied in salt water. With the laying of telegraph cables, new marine life was discovered—when cables were pulled up for repairs, it turned out the ocean floor was teeming with life, something unknown until then. In the early twentieth century, representations thus changed. And importantly, even within the context of prominent marine sciences, art moves beyond the naturalist tradition. Works assert their own agency—they have an impact stemming from the fact that they exist per se. They stand on their own, they act in and of themselves.

C.L.: We still often have an instrumental relation to artworks, as if they were there only to raise awareness or spread scientific work. The UNOC3 Summit in Nice, France this year [June 2025] is no exception, with many exhibitions…

J.B.: Yes, art is very present, with lots of exhibitions. For about ten years now, ocean-related art and science projects have been quite fashionable. But in my view, rarely in the right way. At best, when these works are used outside of art studies, they’re framed under what is called ocean literacy—that is, a form of general culture of the ocean meant to be shared with society. At worst, they get used for “bluewashing,” instrumentalized, for example, by public ministries in charge of the environment that are, let’s say, pursuing rather cowardly ocean policies. So there is a real insufficiency in the way the potential of these works is understood. 

Yet from an art historian’s perspective, those potentialities are very much there. They speak to the history of sensitivities, allowing us to retrace it over time. But in a more contemporary perspective, they also have two key strengths, in my view. First, they can bring together different types of knowledge about the ocean and also shed light on conflicts of use. And when it comes to governance, works can actually help us think through these issues. Second, they bring critical thought in their own right. They have an agency of their own: to think critically about the colonial heritage of Euro-descendant marine sciences, or about imaginaries of the ocean that reduce it to nothing more than a space of exploitation. In that sense, works act directly.

C.L.: To what extent do works speak beyond the discipline of art history?

J.B.: What I notice in interdisciplinary discussions, or outside our field, is that we quickly fall into a dichotomy between reason—that is, science—and the sensitive. As if the arts were automatically placed on the “sensitive” side, with works expected to carry an emotional message that simply complements the rational message of science… which fails to take hold in society. Indeed, while we certainly do not know everything about the ocean—far from it—we do know enough to understand how we, in the Global North, should behave to cause less harm. And yet this knowledge doesn’t translate into society. So we turn to the arts, with the idea that emotion will directly reach people. But that’s too easy. This dichotomy just doesn’t exist for us, as cultural art historians, or for scholars in aesthetics. We don’t think in those terms, because we approach works for what they bring in themselves, for how they provide a framework for thinking about the world. And that dimension is generally not recognized or valued in ocean studies, where art is too often reduced to a simple tool of science communication.

C.L.: Coincidence of timing, you just published, in the journal History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, a deeply interdisciplinary article on “Artistic Value as A New Paradigm to Promote Ocean Conservation”—which again raises the question of how knowledge circulates in society, and the place of art within it…

J.B.: That article was written with Thierry Pérez, a biologist and marine ecologist. I learned a lot from the process of working across disciplines. The first lesson was clear: if you want to be read, you need to write things that are impactful. Right now, what people care about, beyond the artistic community, is ocean conservation. Of course, even the term “conservation” already carries ideological weight. It’s tied to the Anglophone world, especially the US and the UK, where it reflects a particular historical tradition and vision of nature. But what I also realized, while writing this article, is that sometimes you have to use vocabulary you’d rather avoid. For example, the article relies on the notion of “ecosystem services”, the very concept we actually fight against, since it reflects a purely instrumental way of looking at the ocean. Still, if you want to speak to a wider community that’s used to certain terms and frameworks, you can’t just arrive with your social sciences and humanities culture, which in fact remains very marginal, at least in France, where it is structurally underfunded. You have to start from the language and tools of others. A hierarchy does exist: the natural sciences have been working on the ocean for much longer, with completely different means and instruments. If we want to take part in the broader field of ocean studies, I think we also need to adapt to that tradition too.

C.L.: But the article’s argument is not instrumental…

J.B.: No, it’s not about using artworks to conserve the ocean, nor about saying that this is what works are for. The point is rather: if you are seeking to conserve the ocean, if you are trying to implement conservation measures, then art can help you think differently. Artists and art scholars are not saying the arts have to serve that purpose. What we say is: for us, we think through art—and not always for very concrete reasons. But if someone wants to connect this to more practical or urgent matters, then yes, we do have material that can link up with that kind of research. That’s what the article argues. It looks, through three case studies, at how the arts intersect—or don’t—with this notion of ecosystem services, in situations where artists collaborated with marine biologists.

The first case illustrated the idea of embodied knowledge: works that can provide this certain type of knowledge related to scientific mediation. In my view this is insufficient, but at least it exists and it’s already being used in interdisciplinary contexts. The second case is about wonder—more precisely, the capacity to be moved or unsettled by wonder. In this article, it’s about an artist working on regeneration processes in certain living organisms, and how these life processes are plastically highlighted, made visible—even when they’re microscopic or unfold over such long timescales that, except for a few biologists, you’d never normally have the chance to see them. Art makes them visible. This potential for wonder exists, and art can bring it out and share it with the public.

C.L.: And the third case?

J.B.: This, to me, is the most convincing: building a new culture of the ocean by bringing together different types of knowledge. It is based on the work of the US artist Joan Jonas, who explores how human beings relate to the ocean from their own perspective. Her work is no longer about representing the ocean or producing “blue artwork” meant to depict the sea. Rather, she employs diverse media to explore our connections with the ocean—for instance, through narratives, as when she engages with the figure of the mermaid. Jonas creates performances and videos around this figure, which evokes our marine past and its surrounding myths. At the same time, her work carries a documentary dimension, as she draws on biologists’ research or aquarium observations—another kind of narrative that links us to the sea, though not strictly speaking scientific. She also incorporates Indigenous knowledges and fishers’ knowledge. She draws. And she brings all of this together, without hierarchy, to say: there are multiple ocean cultures. The value we must generate through art lies in the ability to think together. 

One of today’s ocean problems is precisely one of conflicts of use: everyone sees the ocean in their own way. Management frameworks are constantly being devised, but they can never satisfy everyone. Our article argues that these three works—our three case studies—create new values, because aesthetic experience activates something at the level of values. Again, we know that the environmental problem in general, and the ocean problem in particular, lies less in the absence of scientific knowledge than in the frameworks of values we project onto it. Contemporary artworks have the potential to forge tools that enable new political understandings of the ocean, by transforming, on a large scale, the values that connect us to it. 

References

Juliette Bessette, Thierry Pérez, “Artistic Value as a New Paradigm to Promote Ocean Conservation,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 47.33 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-025-00679-1. 

“A Blue Art History: Artistic Creation, Biodiversity and Oceanic Environment (19th-21st Century),” (symposium program) Endoume Marine Station, Mucem (Marseille: May 23–24, 2024). Access here

Elizabeth DeLoughrey, “Revisiting Tidalectics: Irma/José/Maria,” in Tidalectics: Imagining an Oceanic Worldview through Art and Science, ed. Stefanie Hessler (Boston: MIT Press, 2018), 93–101. Access here

Joan Jonas, “Moving Off the Land II. Virtual tour at Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza”, TBA21 YouTube Channel. Access here