Environmental art and Mt Carmel

One of the controversies that arose in Malta about environmental development concerned the suitability or otherwise of sculptures placed in roundabouts, especially one that was a phallic symbol. This discussion was quite different to that which has accompanied the rise of such forms that are known as environmental art, land art, earth art and ecological art in Europe and America since the 1960s. What do you think about the matter?

The various forms of art that you have named are diverse but related because in all of them the site itself is an important aspect of the work, and the site is more often than not a natural landscape, although sometimes it is an urban setting. The art of the most famous artist of the movement, Robert Smithson, nowadays consists of the reclamation of industrial wasteland. Other younger artists are producing what they call ecoventions, described as "artist-initiated projects that employ an inventive strategy to physically transform local ecology".

Hardly any of the sculptures placed in our roundabouts conform to these descriptions. I have no idea who selected them. The Council for Culture and the Arts was not consulted. Some of the best Maltese artists active today, such as Austin Camilleri, have produced works that could be called environmental art. I am surprised that not many more have done so, since the main inspiration of the ritualistic earthworks produced by such artists as Smithson are megalithic monuments, prehistoric mounds and land drawings such as Malta is famous for.

Discussion abroad has concerned the ethics as much as the aesthetics of environmental art. Words like 'phallic' buzzed around although in a metaphoric sense. The philosopher who has most acutely discussed the subject, Stephanie Ross, perhaps not by chance a woman, has described the primary class of environmental art produced by artists such as Heizer, DeMaria, Turrell, besides Smithson, as essentially "masculine gestures in the environment".

Against her, another philosopher, Sheila Lintott, has argued in Tolstoyan fashion that environmental art potentially unites "human beings in the inclusive and progressive mindset of environmentalism". Its most emblematic example has remained Bog Action: in 1971 Joseph Beuys (who often said, incidentally, that his conversion to this kind of art occurred as a result of his horrible experience when bombing Malta in the last World War) waded into a marsh until only the top of his hat was showing, seeking to bring attention to the destruction of wetlands in the Netherlands.

Many question whether such gestures as those by Beuys are art at all but they are certainly the expression of a kind of spirituality through which human beings seek to recover the sort of quasi-mystical communion with nature celebrated by Meister Eckhart and other mediaeval Dominicans. This motivation could be a potent aid to the Prime Minister's attempt to obtain total commitment by all of us to the cause of sustainable development.

Do you think that the role that artists can play in this movement is exclusively through the production of 'environmental art' as you have described it so far?

Certainly not. For instance, a most impressive contribution to communication of Eckhartian spirituality is the book Carmelo Mangion: His Life and Works 1905-1997 by Joseph Paul Cassar, published in a superb edition by Midsea Books 10 years after the artist's death. Mangion pioneered 20th Century aesthetic sensibility in Malta when he began teaching art in 1934 and was a formative influence on practically all significant Maltese artists until his retirement in 1971, including even such a master as Alfred Chircop.

Mangion shunned any kind of noise or fussiness in his life as he did in his paintings. The Tolstoyan peace and quiet that prevails in all his paintings remained unknown to most people until they could breathe in the balsam of his ecological spirituality through the beauty of the reproductions which 21st Century technology employed by the Gutenberg Press has made possible.

I myself only become aware of his profound religious gouaches such as his Conversion of St Paul shortly before his death. In this small sized masterpiece, Mangion reformulates in a most personal and original manner Caravaggio's idea of the horse as radiant symbol of chivalrous grace in the language of the greatest religious painter of the 20th Century, Georges Rouault. Nevertheless it is in his landscapes, townscapes and above all seascapes that Mangion, often using a highly personalised impressionistic technique, conveys with almost unbelievably peace-giving force the Eckhartian ecological spirit.

I recommend to anyone seriously meaning to spread the environmental mindset to give this gem of a book as a gift.

Mangion's deeply religious work did not find its way into our churches. Do you think the Church should be doing more to help the growth of eco-spirituality?

The publishing house of the Mangion book happens to be located in Carmelites Street, Sta Venera. Next Thursday at the Carmelite Hall, Valley Road, Birkirkara, at 7 p.m., a panel will be discussing the relation between Art and Mysticism. For both the reformers of the Carmelite Order in the Baroque Age, Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross, there was an uncanny interrelationship between their quest of God and Art. Bernini portrayed Theresa in a most fascinating sculpture about which it has been said that "she has decidedly too beautiful a foot".

John of the Cross scaled the highest lyrical peaks achieved in the Spanish language in a celebration of the environment that is unsurpassed. Art historian Keith Sciberras and novelist Frans Sammut will be joining artist John Martin Borg and a specialist on Carmelite mystics, Fr. Charlo' Camilleri, to discuss possibilities and perils of the approach to God through beauty, under my chairmanship. Environmental spirituality is not the prerogative only of Zen Buddhists but one in which all can happily share.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.