No creature on Earth apart from homo sapiens practices the art of landscape painting. An afternoon spent wandering among great works of nature-themed art is liable to get one thinking about the profound implications of this obvious yet extraordinary fact. We humans are part of nature, but we’re also uniquely capable of reflecting on nature; of capturing, embellishing, and drawing out visions of its beauty and terror; even of sharing those visions with far-flung fellow travelers and future generations. We are, so far as we can tell, nature’s best and only process of self-consciousness. Whatever your beliefs about an intelligent Creator, it’s difficult not to see a special role for humanity in that reflective capacity. Insofar as we see and interpret nature, nature sees and interprets itself through us.
“Nature Cult,” Donald Moffett’s encyclopedic and bewitching art show on view through September 11 at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, is a whirlwind tour of highlights from the past century and a half of nature-oriented art from Europe and the Western Hemisphere. The unusual exhibition design was conceived by Moffett and his local collaborator, McNay head of curatorial affairs René P. Barilleaux, as part mixtape curation and part novel creative expression. It includes a rehang of over 140 impressive selections from the museum’s permanent holdings, additional dozens of works from Moffett’s personal collection by other artists, and sixteen Moffett originals sprinkled throughout.
Moffett, who grew up in San Antonio, says he decided to become an artist after an encounter with a Georges Seurat drawing at the McNay. Score one for art making a decisive impact on the viewer, an ambition that underlies the alarmist environmentalist aspect of “Nature Cult.” That early inspiration bore fruit—after earning degrees in art and biology from Trinity University in his hometown, Moffett, now 67, built a successful art career in New York. In the late 1980s, he became known for his outraged and straightforwardly political art for the crucial AIDS activist group ACT UP. In one iconic print, He Kills Me, Moffett calls out Ronald Reagan for his culpability in the mass death of gay men who contracted HIV, then a new and poorly researched virus.
In recent decades, Moffett’s art has matured into more indirect and arguably abstract bodies of work, though he is still inspired by political themes ranging from antigay violence to the wardrobe of former U.S. congresswoman Barbara Jordan, a fellow Texan. As Moffett’s aesthetic interest has shifted into exploring the materiality of paint, canvas, wood, and other materials, the representational relationship between his art and his stated subject matter can be increasingly difficult to see. Still, his work continues to attract acclaim, including a flattering 2019 New York Times profile that featured works included in “Nature Cult.”
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