The life medium
George Gessert moved from a BA in English in Berkeley to an MA in Fine Arts by the University of Wisconsin, from painting and printmaking to genetic art.
Presently, he is one of the most well known artists in the contemporary art movement known as bioart.
His work focus is in art and genetics, particularly plant aesthetics and the way human aesthetic preferences affect evolution.
He has received numerous awards, including the Leonardo Award for Excellence and the Pushcart prize for his essay "Notes on Uranium Weapons and Kitsch." He is also an Editorial Board Member of Leonardo Magazine published by M.I.T.
How did you get from a BA in English to an MA in painting and then immersed into genetic art?
As a teenager I was drawn to both literature and the visual arts. For awhile I seriously considered becoming a writer, and studied literature, but then I shifted to visual arts. As it has turned out I have made my way both as an artist and a writer. The step from painting to working with plants and genetic systems was really quite small, considering that I had become interested in natural organization and self-generating systems. Plants manifest these things far more clearly than interactions between ink and paper. It helped, too, that at the time I was completely unknown and had no prospects as an artist, so I had nothing to lose. However, like taking one small step over a borderline into a new country, working with plants and genetic systems turned out to have large consequences.
Why the choice of plants as your art medium?
I wanted to do something straightforwardly joyful, celebratory, expansive. This meant doing something not about myself or about people, as I understood them then. The human world is naturally very important to us, but tends to be overly important and confining. I chose plants because in addition to vividly manifesting the self-creating powers of the nonhuman world, I already knew something about them. I love their visual qualities. My work with plants is very simple: it's about doing what you love. Of course from time to time I also need to say something about things that I do not love, but I do that most effectively, I think, in my writing.
Do you consider working with animals in the future?
Yes.
A while ago you have said ‘I did not paint paintings, I helped paintings create themselves’. What is your role as an artist? Presently, do you see yourself as an art creator or a facilitator?
This may seem like a self-deluded thing to say, but my role as an artist involves keeping myself, my ego, out of it as much as possible. I am a servant. What is important in art to me does not come from what is identifiably the self. It comes from somewhere else, something larger, and I am a willing servant for the privilege of staying in intermittent contact with this larger thing. A psychologist might explain it as contact with the sub-subconscious, with the cellular and molecular level of being. On that level we share affinities with other forms of life, and with nonliving materials. Works can manifest this. With hybrids it is obvious: they create themselves far more than I create them. But much the same is true of some kinds of painting and writing.
You have been editor of Leonardo magazine for a while. Can you give us a brief account of your work at Leonardo?
I submitted my first text to Leonardo in 1989. It was a humorous article about how to transform nuclear devices into works of art. The article was published in 1992. After that I published in Leonardo fairly regularly, mostly articles about art and genetics. In 1996 Roger Malina asked me to become an editorial advisor for art and biology. At the time no magazine had such a position, so I have made it up as I went along.
