Aquatic Imagination or Unweaving the Rainbow: Introduction to Hydro-Stories about American Art

Abstract

As early as the 1940s, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard was convinced that the eye itself is weary of solids. It was obvious to some American artists almost at the same time, because aquatic imagination has accompanied American art at least since the discovery of the fluidity of paint and the oceanic boundlessness of Pollock’s paintings. However, only Robert Smithson has opened the water discourse in contemporary art, which is not about the representation of water but about the specific relation between the subject and its background. Moreover, a liquid mind opens up to the unplanned. This also happens in Ellen Gallagher’s art, because her counter-memories from the future evoke sea creatures, their mutations and their post-human condition.