THE CITY IN THE SEA
ALEXIS ROCKMAN’S ANTHROPOCENE IMAGININGS
Modern megacities are among the most conspicuous signs of the Anthropocene. Towering centers of glass, concrete, and steel have altered the surface of Earth in previously unimaginable ways. One hundred years ago, only 10 percent of the world’s population lived in cities, but it is estimated that by 2050, nearly 75 percent of people on the planet will live in a major urban center. This unimpeded growth of the world’s cities coincides with climate extremes previously unseen by humanity—heat waves, intense rainfall, and rising sea levels. Cities are at the forefront of global climate change, in both its causes and its effects. Greenhouse gas emissions and energy demand are highest in metropolitan centers, which are also more vulnerable to extreme climate events caused by warming temperatures. In short, the modern megacity has increased the threat of megadisasters. Many experts believe that urbanization and climate change are on a collision course that will either spur new, more sustainable living solutions or exacerbate resource scarcity and endanger already vulnerable communities. As the journalist Gaia Vince writes, “The urban revolution of the Anthropocene could prove to be the solution to many of our environmental and social problems….Or, it could finally prove to be our species’ undoing, the apocalyptic version of the dystopian megacity so often portrayed in science fiction.”
The artist Alexis Rockman is well versed in these alarming statistics and dire environmental predictions. Over the past twenty-five years, he has created an extensive body of work that combines art, history, science, and popular culture to comment on the myriad ways that humans have altered the planet, from deforestation and biodiversity loss to genetic engineering. Long before Paul Crutzen coined the term Anthropocene, Rockman was giving visual form to the transformations—visible and invisible, real and imagined—that have come to characterize the Age of Humans. His vivid paintings imagine a familiar yet fictional world, anchored in disturbing reality.
Among the many locales that he has depicted over the years, New York City holds a special attraction for Rockman. The artist was born and raised there and continues to live and work in the city. He spent his childhood exploring the exhibit halls of the American Museum of Natural History, where he developed a passion for science and natural history. His early work frequently references the displays and dioramas that he saw there, but in recent years the city itself has become a recurring subject. Rockman’s first major painting of New York City, Manifest Destiny (2004), was also his first work to directly confront the climate crisis and its toll.
Now in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Manifest Destiny presents a postapocalyptic vision of Brooklyn several hundred years in the future. The borough is inundated by floods or rising sea levels that have rendered the metropolis a semitropical water world. Rockman drew upon extensive scientific research, including consultations with ecologists, climatologists, urban planners, and architects, to create his image of a future New York. This convergence of scientific thought and visionary premonition recalls the style of science-fiction storytelling—a major influence on Rockman’s work.
Manifest Destiny sits squarely within the growing corpus of climate disaster literature and film. A subgenre of science fiction, climate fiction (cli-fi) has become a staple of popular culture, evidenced by the release of a veritable deluge of natural disaster films and docudramas that capitalize on our fear of such events and our morbid fascination with their aftermath. The iconography of the contemporary megacity plays a starring role in many of these films, continuing the long tradition of using cities to represent humanity’s moral and environmental ills. Rockman applies the same fictive device in his provocative image of a city in the sea.
Manifest Destiny extends twenty-four feet (7.3 meters) in length and is framed at left and right by the ruins of two bridges. On the far left of the composition, a reengineered Manhattan Bridge hovers just below the elevated waters of the East River. Rockman’s fictional structure includes a tunnel designed to contend with the city’s population boom and changing topography. Mirroring this futuristic artery is the obsolete architecture of the Brooklyn Bridge. Constructed between 1870 and 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge is a potent symbol of the unbridled drive for technological progress that defined the nineteenth century. Rockman also refers to the era’s expansionist spirit with the painting’s title, borrowing a phrase coined by the New York journalist John L. O’Sullivan in 1845. O’Sullivan used the term as a quasi-religious justification for territorial expansion across the American continent, asserting that the United States had a divine right to conquer and possess westward lands such as Texas, Oregon, and California. The ideology of manifest destiny is deeply rooted in the American sensibility, dating as far back as the Puritan settlers who sought to tame their new frontier and exploit its natural resources. Rockman’s painting suggests the persistence of such attitudes today and comments on the deleterious role of global capitalism and urban development in the Anthropocene. It is a damning indictment.
But the end of modern civilization does not mark the end of all life. On the contrary, Manifest Destiny teems with organic growth. Rockman uses the image of urban decay to demonstrate the resilience of certain ecosystems and the adaptive powers of nature. Local flora and fauna that have survived the climatic scourge are joined by migrant life from equatorial zones. Rockman’s compendium of aquatic creatures raises the question of exactly which species will survive the current biodiversity crisis brought on by humans.
Rockman recently completed two new paintings that explore the interconnected effects that humans have on Earth systems and species. Bronx Zoo (2013; plate 6) and Gowanus (2013; plate 5) picture two dramatically different sites in New York—one famous for its conservation stewardship and the other infamous for its environmental neglect. Like Manifest Destiny, both works imagine a flooded future for Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs. Humans are suspiciously absent, but their imprint is evident everywhere.
In Bronx Zoo, Rockman depicts a scene of anarchy amid the ruins of New York’s historic zoo. Animals have escaped from their neoclassical enclosures and overtaken the flooded park. Created shortly before Hurricane Sandy hit New York City, it is an uncomfortably prescient image of destruction. The exact cause of the destruction remains unclear, but the flooding suggests a severe climate event. The visual and conceptual parallels with Manifest Destiny are undeniable, in particular the allusion to nineteenth-century ideals.
Zoos are a product of the same nineteenth-century impulse that fueled westward expansion across the United States—the desire to conquer and impose order on the natural world. In the era of their inception, however, these constructs were important indicators of the growing acceptance of ecological science and the attendant concern over wildlife depletion. It is no coincidence that the first zoological parks were established in major cities, such as London, Paris, and New York. In these rapidly industrialized areas, “importing” nature satisfied the dual goals of reintroducing wildlife into an urban environment and rescuing endangered species whose habitats were being decimated in other parts of the world. Over the past century, zoos have evolved from places designed for entertainment and dominion over nature to centers geared toward education and species conservation. Centers such as the Smithsonian’s Conservation Biology Institute are critical indicators of the Anthropocene, symbolizing the impact that humans have already had on species loss and the role that humans must now play in protecting and preserving biodiversity on the planet.
While Bronx Zoo alludes to the dangers of neglecting our environmental responsibilities, Rockman takes this thought experiment even further in his terrifying depiction of New York’s Gowanus Canal. Once a thriving tidal estuary nestled in South Brooklyn, the Gowanus Creek was converted into a canal in 1869 to aid transportation and promote industry. Since its completion, serious contamination problems have plagued the canal and surrounding areas. Designated a Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2010, it is one of the most polluted bodies of water in the United States. A putrid reminder of New York City’s industrial past and a cautionary tale for future urban development, Gowanus epitomizes Rockman’s artistic response to the Anthropocene: dark, toxic, apocalyptic.
The taint of our modern megacities will leave an indelible mark on Earth’s geologic record long after they have crumbled into the sea. The question is: how can we forestall the environmental and societal decline that Rockman portends? The answer may reside in the very same cities, where problems of the Anthropocene are most acute. By harnessing their creative and intellectual capital, along with economies of scale that promote efficiency, cities are poised to devise innovative solutions for sustainable living. Artists such as Rockman who work at the intersection of art, science, and imagination will be essential to this process. Rockman’s monumental paintings bring the future into the present, helping us grapple with current planetary changes and serving as a catalyst for social and environmental reform.