Paper short abstract:

Considering Andreas Kornerup’s glacial watercolours and scientific drawings we explore an environmental art history that thinks with glaciers to tell stories and centre visual histories that might help us understand and re-imagine our past, present, and future relationships with ice.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers the glacial watercolours and scientific drawings made by the Danish geologist Andreas Nicolaus Kornerup of the glacier Sioqqap Sermia, Greenland in 1878. These pictures, previously used only as illustrations, offer a shift from symbolic strategies to scientific familiarity and indicate an interdisciplinary turn in art historical visual analysis. As co-authors based within the fields of art history and glaciology, respectively, we argue that an ecocritical art history of ice requires active engagement with interdisciplinary collaboration to untangle their unique stories and perspectives. Writing collaboratively on the visual history of glaciers involves adapting scientific terminology to the processes of visual analysis, incorporating western and Indigenous perspectives, and recognising the glacier’s own agency within its respective social, cultural, and environmental contexts. Glaciers continue to be entangled with fantastical views of the sublime, imperialism, race, recreation, wilderness, and global geopolitics. Today, glaciers are often framed by the urgency of the climate crisis and provide some of the most visible signs of change. Our paper is, however, not limited by an endangered glacier narrative, instead we bring together exploratory narratives, scientific studies, environmental history, and visual analysis of historic pictures to elucidate the particularities of glacial environments; its histories, characteristics, and aesthetics. With this, we propose an environmental art history that thinks with glaciers to tell stories and centre visual histories that might help us understand and re-imagine our past, present, and future relationships with glaciers and the cryosphere.