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The ‘Scientific Odyssey’ of a New York Artist

Artist Frank Moore suffuses science themes in magical mix of fancy and fact in his paintings and other works of art.

Published April 1, 2002

By Thomas C. Woodruff
Academy Contributor

An inside shot of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Image courtesy of GualdimG, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. No changes were made.

New York artist Frank Moore is a man of fancies and facts turned into magic. His paintings –– as visionary as they are realistic –– address contemporary ecological and biological issues with intensity, austerity, and wit; often with a sense of political morality.

Moore’s interest in and knowledge of science grew from being immersed in nature and environmental concerns as a child and adolescent. After being diagnosed with HIV in the early 1980s, this interest was amplified by his personal need to learn all he could about the crisis that befell him. His work –– as exemplified on these pages –– is suffused with scientific themes and symbols that reflect his hope of helping to “preserve diverse life forms on this earth.”

How did this kid from suburban New York, a graduate of Yale whose works are in collections ranging from the Museum of Modern Art to the Victoria and Albert Museum, acquire his scientific “education?” How does this knowledge affect his worldview and thus his art? Here’s what he had to say in a recent interview.

What was the genesis of your interest in nature and ecological issues?

In summers, I grew up in the Adirondacks of New York State and was surrounded by a pristine ecosystem. Over the years I watched that ecosystem degrade and also saw, at home on Long Island, the scallop industry wiped out and the eelgrass beds in Peconic Bay die. That had a big impact on my view of the human interaction with nature. I became a serious collector –– butterflies, orchids, moths, shells, frogs, bird eggs. I just went from one thing to another, learning all that I could.

How did this early interest translate into your art?

By the time I began painting, I had a level of compassion with the natural environment and felt there were aspects of the animal kingdom that were being abused. I was becoming a kind of activist naturalist. There are many ways that the interests of the larger natural community can be maintained or enhanced at no loss to human happiness. As a painter, I see myself as providing a visual form for people to reflect on what their relationship with nature is and how they feel about such issues as genetic engineering, our use of chemicals and fossil fuels, pollution, and our relationship with technology.

You’ve said that the ecological crisis and the AIDS crisis are related. How is that?

I believe you cannot have healthy people in an unhealthy environment and you can’t have a healthy environment where unhealthy –– greedy, exploitive –– people predominate. In Africa, for example, the AIDS crisis is having an enormous impact on the economies of these countries, how they can handle just housing and feeding these very sick people. This inevitably creates an enormous burden on the ecologies of these countries as well. If there’s no money to take care of people’s health, there’s no money to preserve the environment. When you have a ravaged economy and a society ravaged from disease, you’re going to have a ravaged ecology.

How has your personal battle with AIDS influenced your view of science?

My experience with science –– especially pharmaceutical science –– has been very positive. Genetically engineered formulations have kept me alive. I have some quibbles about the way things are marketed and the way the pharmaceutical industry interacts with the larger social fabric of the world, but on the whole I’m very grateful for the selfless people out there who have helped us all. The AIDS virus is just a virus. It has no personal agenda. It’s just another creature in God’s creation. We need to get over the demonizing of disease, which I believe blocks our ability to understand what it truly is and how it truly operates…and thus how to deal with it.

What is the current focus of your work?

This whole genetic engineering thing is mind-blowing! We’re at the threshold of something that is going to change every aspect of our lives, including health care, in a major way. But in terms of agriculture, what’s going on is more worrisome: How can we integrate advances in the genetic sciences with the overall issue of what humans eat and what we’re going to be growing in the next 50-100 years?

Do you see science and technology as the enemy of art?

I never really conceived of art as being opposed to science. Instead, I see my art as arising out of investigations into the natural world. I think if art becomes unmoored from fact, from some kind of a direct experience of nature, it becomes less interesting. Like science, there’s always a fundamental investigation that’s going on in any great art. And that investigation can be incredibly methodical and painstaking. But so many of the great scientific discoveries reflect a moment of intuitive perception. The guy who figured out the benzene chain was daydreaming in front of a fire and saw a snake grabbing its tail and realized benzene was a ring.

That happens in art, too. There was a moment when I realized that a computer keyboard looks like an ear of corn. So I decided that I would make all the corn in my genetically engineered corn paintings computer keyboards. It was a visual “click” –– that moment when you make a connection. In science, and art, there are probably few “grand” moments, but a huge number of small incremental clicks where you say “what if,” or let’s try this, let’s try that. In art, you may work on something for a few months and you realize it’s a dead end. And that’s what happens with a lot of pharmaceutical research as well.

What is your reaction to some of the recent advances in science?

The human genome project, cloning, stem-cell research are all amazing and exciting –– and fraught with danger. They are marred by the same negative motivations that often plague human activities, but also are ennobled by the higher motivations that accompany human enterprise. It’s a question of how everyone –– the government, society, corporations –– can operate to enhance the positively-directed uses of these advances and how we can suppress the negative uses, such as the development of biological weapons or self-serving cloning practices.

As an artist, I want to inspire people to think about the positive ways new information can be used. I think we all have to work in ways that enhance our overall happiness and reduce our overall suffering. And when I say “our,” I mean every living thing.

Also read:The Art and Science of Human Facial Perception

About the Author

Thomas Woodruff is an artist and chairman of the Department of Illustration and Cartooning at the School of Visual Arts in New York.


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