Plastic Podcast Episode 5: Plastic Art: History and Activism

Episode Description: This episode of Plastic Podcast explores the multifaceted relationship between plastic and art, tracing its evolution from a novel medium to a vehicle for environmental activism. Featuring insights from Greek artist and art historian Dr. Johannis Tsoumas, the episode delves into the early adoption of plastics in art, highlighting the revolutionary shift brought about by acrylic paints in the 1930s and its subsequent influence on movements like abstract expressionism and pop art. It transitions into the role of plastic in contemporary art as a tool for protest against environmental degradation, showcasing the works of artists like Pamela Longobardi and Pascale Marthine Tayou. Through a blend of historical context and artistic critique, the episode unveils the complex narrative of plastic, portraying it as both a symbol of consumerist excess and a catalyst for socio-political awareness and change.

Episode Guest:  Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

Browse his publications on Google Scholar and view some of his art here. 

Find the artwork discussed today using this link 

More information about the episode and the Plastic Podcast

Follow Pine Forest Media on Instagram @pineforestmedia

Hosted, produced, written, and edited by Clark Marchese 

Cover art and PFM logo by Laurel Wong. 

Theme music by Tadeo Cabellos

Transcript:

[00:00:09.660] - Clark

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Plastic Podcast, the show that tells the story of our human relationship with plastic. I am your host, Clark Marchese, and this week we are serving Plastic Art Through History and Protest. I love the aquarium. I love it. I love looking at the sea creatures. I love learning about the ocean. I love that peaceful aquarium music that they make fun of in Finding Dory with the voice of Sigourne Weaver. The last time I went to the aquarium, I learned that goblin sharks use their jaws as a slingshot to catch prey by thrusting it forward 9 % the length of their body. That's That's crazy. But as much as I learned about the sea itself when I visit the aquarium, I also learn how humans are impacting it. More and more, informational displays are telling us about overfishing, oil spills, and yes, plastic. And the aquariums aren't just using words on a plaque. The same visit where I learned about the goblin shark, I was struck by a massive piece of plastic artwork, a whale skeleton suspended in the air above a hallway. You walk underneath it, and as you up, it's almost as if you're inside the whale.

[00:01:32.350] - Clark

It's entirely made of plastic: milk cartons, soda bottles, and jugs stuffed with grocery bags, all strung together in the skeletal frame. I'm not sure who the artist is. I guess I'll have to go back to the aquarium and ask. I'll take a photo of it in the Pine Forest Media Instagram so you can see the whale, too. But the point is, the artwork display initiated a much more visceral reaction inside of me than the paragraphs of information painted on the wall. This got me curious about plastic art. Plastic is a medium that has been increasingly used by artists, both as an effort to upcycle and as a way to protest. But this, as you might imagine, started after we learned that plastic was an issue. What I didn't know is that artists have been using plastic as a medium long before the environmental movement started, and this medium has had a monumental impact on artists and by extension, society around the world for almost 100 years. We're going to talk about that today, and I found the perfect person to tell us all about it. Today's guest is a Greek artist and art historian named Johannis Tsoumas.

[00:02:30.040] - Clark

Johannis Tsoumas has a PhD in the history of art and design, and he's published dozens and dozens of articles about a truly extensive range of artistic topics. I'm talking everything from Japanese pottery, Victorian interior design, Georgian jewelry, and gender stereotypes in art, just to name a few. But he has also done extensive research on how plastic has impacted art and how plastic art has impacted society. We got to talking about the first artist interaction with the medium, the movements that it prompted, when protest entered the scene, as well as some of his favorite artists and artworks along the way. So I hope you enjoy. As a quick note before we begin, this is a very visual, heavy episode. So before you worry, you will be able to find all of the artwork we talk about today through the episode description the Pine Forest Media website, and our social media @pineforestmedia. Okay, let's get started. All right. So first, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. The first question is if you could just introduce yourself and describe your field.

[00:03:40.550] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

Thank you very much for the invitation, first, Clark. It's a no-no for me to be at your podcast series. Well, it's not very easy to introduce myself. I'll tell you some things. My name is Johannis Tsoumas. I did my PhD on the history of art, and especially on the core of the arts during the 19th century Britain. Now, I'm working as a lecturer at the University of Attica. I've worked for a dozen or more years at the Helena Open University as an art teacher in general and an art historian. At the same time, I'm an artist. I forgot to say that. I've got around five private shows and taking part in more than 45 group of TV I'm working on a lot of the paintings.

[00:04:31.200] - Clark

Okay, so you're an artist yourself then. Can you tell us about your mediums? Have you ever worked with plastic?

[00:04:38.260] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

My first exhibitions were about ceramics, but in a more arty type. After that, I did a lot of painting with mixed media, including plastics. And waste material in general, I mean, I've used a set of plastic nails, chains, gears, and all the stuff to make a series of work I have done in the past that has to do with industrial art, basically.

[00:05:04.840] - Clark

Okay. Well, I was looking through your body of research, and it seems like you write about all sorts of mediums from all over the world. What was it that sparked your interest in plastic, specifically?

[00:05:14.230] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

Well, I think that it has to do with my studies because my thesis on my MA in the history of design was on a particular field of plastic sculpture. My thesis was published as a book. The book is called The Emergence of plastic sculpture in Greece, 1950, 1970, 1970. After that, I had a deeper research in that field, and I thought that was a very interesting area and very much unexplored.

[00:05:43.660] - Clark

You wrote one article titled Plastic Waste, both as a source of inspiration and medium for contemporary artists. In it, you explain how artists using the medium of waste in response to feelings of hopelessness, frustration, or even despair about the global and foundation of plastic we're all facing, and that these feelings, I'm quoting now, prompted a protest reaction coming from the art world and design community that constitute an important visual, functional, as well as socio-political movement. Can you help us identify what these movements were?

[00:06:17.730] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

Well, I think that the world of arts and design played a particularly important role in the new socio-political alarm, let's say, about that plastic CCU. Let's start with the visual part. The visual part has to do with the way the plastic was used as medium. I'm talking about plastic waste, of course, in the way that it was used as the primary material for making pieces of art. That's a miracle as to see the actual result. If you can actually imagine how it turned out to be from the scrap, it's unbelievable to see what artists can do with this type of Now, what is functional? I think that not only artists, but designers were very aware of that new phenomenon of plastic waste and tried to take part in this activism, in a way, by using this scrap material to make functional objects. We can have a lot of examples around Europe. For instance, there are people, let's say in the Netherlands, that via plastic waste, they make furniture, lighting objects, textiles as well. Of course, I think that both ways, the visual and the functional transformation of plastic waste, caused a new socio-political awareness of people who visited these exhibitions or of people who used these functional objects.

[00:07:58.820] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

So these people could be more aware of what's going on in the world.

[00:08:03.330] - Clark

I'm curious when all of this started. So we have plastic since the start of the 1900s, even earlier in its very primitive forms. Side note, if you missed the episode on the Invention of Plastics, you can go back and listen. But anyways, the early to mid 1900s, we have plastic more widely available. This is really before we had the widespread knowledge of its harms. There are really two phases. Through an anthropological lens. When did we start to form an artistic relationship with plastic? Then secondly, through a political lens, when did we start to use plastic waste through art as a protest?

[00:08:38.620] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

As a medium, it was used much before. I think it was used sometime in the interval period because of It was an acrylic plastic, acrylic paint, sorry. I'm talking about the 1930s. Acrylic paint was a very new material at the time because we had this type of material revolution in that period, acrylic paint. Was a acrylic polymer emulsion that was produced by a German chemical company. I think it was BASF, B-A-S-F. After that, it became very popular in the '40s, the artists who first started using plastic as a medium. I'm talking about waste plastic. Were much was later. I think they were in the late 20th century, at the beginning of the 21st century, because the problem became more evident at that time, especially the marine debris, the marine waste material.

[00:09:38.380] - Clark

Okay, that's so interesting. When I had the idea for an episode on plastic art, I didn't think that we'd be talking about acrylic paint, but I guess it is composed of a bunch of tiny plastic acrylic polymers, and we have a huge artistic relationship with acrylic paint. In summary, the invention of acrylic paint in the 1930s could mark the beginning of our artistic relationship with a polymer, and the protest movement started at the end the century, let's say the 1990s. Let's take a look at these two waves one at a time. I can only imagine how influential was the invention of acrylic paint on the art world or the shift it prompted. Can you tell us about that?

[00:10:13.440] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

Acrylic paint became very, very popular. It has started getting popular in the '50s, and I think it was first used by Mark Rothko, who is one of the most important representatives of the American abstract painting, and Diego Rivera in the '50s, especially the murals of Rivera. It became more popular in the '60s, especially during the pop art time, pop art period. By Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, and much later with other artists like Damian Hust and many, many more.

[00:10:53.150] - Clark

Okay, so these are some big names. We're going to take them one at a time. Let's start with Mark Rothko. It was generally recognized that the era of abstract painting began in the 1870s, but Mark Rothko is credited with revolutionizing it around 60 years later into what is known as abstract expressionism. Quickly, abstract painting can be seen as a rejection of traditional method, and expressionism refers to a declaration of internal experiences or emotions in contrast to impressions of an external world. If you are an impressionist, you might say, Oh, look, a mountain. I'm going to that mountain and show you guys. An expressionist would say, I'm in turmoil. I'm going to paint, paint, paint my heart out, and I'm going to show you my turmoil. Or it could be happiness. It could be happiness. In any case, Rothko, therefore, combined expressionism with abstraction, so a nontraditional way of expressing internal emotions through artwork. A lot of his paintings are blocks or strips of colors. He has a famous quote, There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing. In many cases, he used his colors and color palettes to evoke human emotion and to tell a story during the tense period in the wake of the World Wars.

[00:12:10.090] - Clark

Secondly, we have Diego Rivera, a Mexican artist who painted massive murals. His work in the same interwar period, is said to have prompted a revival of frescoes, both throughout Latin America and into modern architecture. Now, frescoes are a style characterized by the depiction of both historical events and daily life. So where Rivera used his frescoes to highlight the challenges faced by the working class. On that theme, Rivera thought that museum exhibitions at the time were exclusionary, which is why many of his works were painted on walls of universities and public buildings. Through this, he brought his work and his message to a wider audience. The attention he brought to the importance of art accessibility and his social economic critique, some say, was a source of inspiration for the US Federal Art Program, which funded a myriad of public arts and employed more than 10,000 artists. Bringing it all back to acrylic paint, I think through this example, accessibility is part of the symbolism of this new medium. Acrylic paint itself was less expensive than other paints, therefore allowing more people to express themselves through painting, and by extension, providing a platform for the artistic point of view of those who were previously priced out.

[00:13:24.830] - Clark

Finally, we mentioned pop art, and without this, we would never have had art pop, and I don't know what I would do without that. But in any case, Dr. Sumas mentioned Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockley, and Damien Hearst. But Andy Warhol and Yayoi Kusama are also some of the most influential names in the genre. Pop art similarly challenged the exclusivity of fine art by including elements of popular culture, and it's also characterized by the inclusion of found objects like comic books and adverts, which also speaks to the themes of accessibility and the general public. So I really didn't know that acrylic paint was so influential in the art history of plastic.

[00:14:08.460] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

Very, yeah. It was a very, very new medium that had to offer many different qualities and properties. First of all, it was diluted with water, which is very, very important. It dried more quickly than oil paint. It could give texture, and very, very good texture. It could be applied not only on canvases or on pieces of paper, it's just almost anywhere, even on sculptures, even on wood, metal, anywhere. I also believe that because of these properties, it was the ideal medium for art education, especially for young children that could use it in a much more safe way.

[00:14:53.650] - Clark

So the themes I'm finding so far is that the early use of plastic in art or acrylic paint facilitated increased accessibility and a challenge to existing systems, which is not unlike how it later started to be used to address environmental concerns, which is a perfect transition. You mentioned earlier that if we fast forward a couple more decades to the 1990s and early 2000s, we start to see the environmental protest reflected in plastic art. So the environmental movement, as we know it today, we can trace its origins to the 1960s, but this is when plastic was really emerging as a consumer product. The first plastic grocery bag was invented in 1965, so we didn't really know know how much waste we were eventually going to produce or how it would affect us. Now, marine pollution was the first way we started to notice the impacts of our plastic waste, and this was largely being discovered in the 1990s. I want to talk a bit more about the influential artist you mentioned in this era. Maybe we'll start with one that you write about in your publications, Pamela Longobardi.

[00:15:53.040] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

She's a very talented woman. She belongs to, in my opinion, to the conceptual artist of your She is an activist as well, but at the same time, she tries to make symbols and means. The medium she uses is very symbolic to her ideas, and that's very, very important. But at the same time, It gives us to understand that it's the result of an extensive research and activism. She collects all that stuff either from the sea itself or the shores. After that, she makes all these beautiful for cultures. I think with that, she tries to construct a new ecological ideology for art, which is very important, not only for her, but for everybody. This is the actual idea of the Drifr project. It is an action program, support the creation of art through plastic waste.

[00:16:55.940] - Clark

I want to talk about two pieces of hers that you break down in an article that you wrote. The first is called Bounty. I'll do my best to describe it. It is made of plastic waste, and it has been shaped in the form of a cornucopia. It's quite large. It might take up an entire room in an exhibition, and the cornucopia itself is black inside, and it has more plastic waste inside of it in a variety of colors. The second one is called Anchor, and in parentheses, our albatross is included in the title. And this piece is also very large. It goes from the floor almost all the way up to the ceiling. This one is black entirely and similarly made of plastic waste in the shape of a giant anchor, as the title might suggest. Can you tell us about these pieces with the expertise of an art historian?

[00:17:41.940] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

Oh, yes, I could do that. First of all, I have to say that they were presented, I think in 2013, 2014 in the Hathaway Gallery in Atlanta in the USA. We're talking about two large-scale cultures, which, in my opinion, are the symbols of a anticulture. It actually triggers our minds to understand what is the actual conception of consumerism in our time. Because our result, basically, is a result of heavy and excessive consumerism. Both of them, and this is very, very important, are made of plastic waste, a plastic object. Both are black, but they are painted black, and there's a connotation for that. I would rather say there are two connotations about that. The first is technical because you want actually to unify the form of the sculpture and make it all black because it's composed of different parts of plastic of different colors. The second is conceptual because it deals with the problem of crude oil. It's actually to make us understand that crude oil is another very important factor of the Austrian pollution. And crude oil, of course, is the basis of making plastic.

[00:19:05.140] - Clark

Yes. So fossil fuels are obviously a major symbol in environmentalism, but plastic is also made of fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are emitted through the process of making it. We will be covering this in more detail in future episodes.

[00:19:17.340] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

Now, talking about the bounty, the case of bounty, it is quite interesting. The idea derives from the mythical symbol of Amalthia's Horn. Okay, but Amalthia's Horn gave us only goods. In that case, instead of abundance and goods and richness and all the stuff, that particular horn gives us garbage, waste, pollution. In that case, the sculpture itself constitutes a punch to our face, punch to our stomach, so we can understand and assimilate in a better way, the importance of the environmental issue.

[00:20:01.140] - Clark

Thank you for breaking that down. We can go and see these in a museum and have that visceral reaction that the pieces give us. But having your perspective and the history and the art critique that comes with it, it really enhances our understanding of the pieces. Another artist I want to talk about is Pascale Marthine Tayou, who you also highlight in your work as an influential protest artist.

[00:20:20.880] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

Okay. The guy from Cameroon, he has worked in Europe, of course. I wouldn't say he's an activist in the same way that Longobody is. I think he's more a socio-political commenter because through his work, he wants to comment on his country's socio-political upheavals, say, during the post-colonial times. And at the same time, he wants to comment on some very specific issues such as the human evolution, the globalization, the greenhouse effect, the AIDS, the neoculture in Africa, the environmental pollution. So if he He has a lot of issues around his work. In general, he is that artist. He himself, who wants to travel, to explore, to collect unusual materials, and to collect also extraordinary social and cultural experiences. In that context, he has collected a lot of disposable objects and items which range from batteries to plastic bottles to erasers and bags in order to create a new form of art. I think that plastic bags is the most important item in his collection because he use it as a symbol of production and consumer subculture.

[00:21:44.750] - Clark

Yes, Pascalel Marthine Tayou is from Cameroon, and he's still out there making art, as is Pamela Longobardi, so I'll put some information about both of them in the show notes. But I think Martin Taillou's commentary on globalization and consumerism of plastic is an important perspective because as we touched in our episode on Zero Waste Cities, and we'll cover more deeply in an upcoming episode about the global plastic waste economy, there's a very directional flow of plastic waste from the Western world to the majority world. Now, I want to unpack one of his works as well. I want to talk about a piece he did called Plastic Bags. Again, photos can be found in our socials, but it's basically a giant plastic bag made of plastic bags. In your publication, you reference this piece and you say that, quoting, It dominates any space because of its influence on visitors' psychology. Can you tell us what that means?

[00:22:36.860] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

Yes, this is a very imposing piece of work. It's about 10 meters high. At first sight, you can see that it's quite impressive because it's colorful and it has beautiful textures. On the second level, more closely, we can see that the material of the object, which, of course, obviously plastic, detrays all the history of plastic pollution and all the negative effects on the environment. And it actually give us a second thought that is less sweet and more bitter. But at the end, it's very truthful about what's going on out there.

[00:23:16.030] - Clark

Thank you for breaking that down. I'll ask you now, do you have a favorite piece of artwork that's either inspired by or made of plastic? Also, if you would like to answer that by naming a specific artist, that's fine as well.

[00:23:30.350] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

Well, I think that I've seen many beautiful and very impressive pieces of work, especially from artists from Europe and America. Also African artists who are doing beautiful job with this medium. However, I think that's the most intriguing and most interesting type of work I've seen, and it appeals to me. It has to be two dimensions. It belongs to the photographer, Mandy Barker. She's British, and she has made a really interesting project called Our Plastic Ocean. She has photographed pieces of found objects, plastic objects, which are arranged in very interesting shapes such as jellyfish, turtles, seaweeds, corals floating, and all that stuff. She's actually making an imaginary environment of plastic. She makes an ideal world of plastic in her photography. And I think this is magical.

[00:24:37.870] - Clark

Okay, I'll definitely go give that a look, and I'll put some links in our show notes so listeners can look as well. We're going to start to wrap up the episode But just before, I have two questions I like to ask. The first is, what is your favorite part about being an artist and an art historian?

[00:24:52.760] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

I like both, basically. Being an artist-historian and a design-historian makes me put myself into research deeper and deeper. Of course, as an artist, I can use that research and apply to my work as a Nordic. Having two different ways of seeing things, the theoretical and the practical, I think I'm quite lucky because each part helps the other in a way.

[00:25:18.800] - Clark

I love hearing that. The last question is, is there anything that we did not talk about today that you think we should mention in a discussion about the art history of plastic?

[00:25:28.800] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

What actually I want to say is that we have to turn our sight to other artists and to many artists that are unknown and many designers as well. And they have made beautiful works.

[00:25:44.710] - Clark

I think that's a great way to close out. There's got to be so many artists out there that have something to say, but maybe don't have the platform yet. I think you mentioned a handful of them today. So I hope people go and look into these people and spread their message. And I want to thank you so much for your time today and for coming on the show.

[00:26:02.950] - Dr. Johannis Tsoumas

No. Thank you very much, too. The pleasure is mine.

[00:26:14.330] - Clark

I quite enjoyed that conversation. I know it's a podcast and you can't exactly see the things that we were talking about, but I really do hope that you go digging through the links I've attached to the episode description to take a look at them. I also learned a lot today. I didn't realize that our artistic relationship with this plastic polymer extended so far back in history. But whether it was before we knew what we know now about plastic pollution or not, I did notice some themes across all of the plastic art we talked about today. Whether it was abstract expressionism, pop art, or protest through conceptual pieces, the way plastic has found its way into art has, it seems, been continually used to challenge tradition and to spark change. We also know that plastic throughout history has very affordable material, making it accessible for people of all economic backgrounds. This, I think, applies to plastic art as well, both in a symbolic sense through the work of Diego Rivera, but also in a practical sense as a source material for artistic expression. Be it acrylic paint, comic book magazines, or ocean scraps. Lastly, before we close out, I just want to reflect on our relationship with this material.

[00:27:24.460] - Clark

Literally almost all of plastic coverage in the news or in the media is bad or directly related to environmental harms, not to minimize those things, and we will cover them throughout the show. That's partly what it's dedicated to. But plastic is also so much more than that. After we've completely destroyed ourselves and the alien Anthropology Department takes a field trip to Earth and tries to piece together the story of humans, plastic in all its applications is going to be a big part of that. If you think I'm talking like I've lost my mind, that's okay. Thanks for listening anyways. That's all I have for today. So I'll see you next week. You've been listening to Plastic Podcast. You can find more information about this week's guest, Dr. Johannis Sumas, links to his work and links to all the art we talked about today in the episode description. Join us here next week to talk to Dr. Christine Figginer, self-proclaimed turtle biologist and one of the founding voices in the Anti-Straw Movement. We're going to have a little checkup on our turtle friends and reflect on the effects of this movement almost 10 years later. The cover art for the show was done by Laurel Wong, and the music you were listening to was done by Tadeo Kbezios.

[00:28:45.030] - Clark

I am your host, Clark Marchese. This episode was produced, written, and engineered by me. So if you loved it, I will not only see you here next week, but I would really appreciate a five-star rating across platforms and a review on Apple podcast. Plastic Podcast is part of a larger network of sciencey podcast called Pineforest Media. You can find more information about us in the episode description or on the website pineforestpods. Com and social media at pineforestmedia. We've got a lot of exciting science podcasts coming out this year, and that review I was talking about really helps the entire network to grow. So thank you to all of you who have made it this far, and we'll talk soon.