Summer’s Rot and The Green of Death: Seeking The Grotesque and The Sublime Through Biology and The Sculptures of Kathleen Ryan

Written By Amy Nugent

The surrounding autumn season projects beauty through shades of decay. Fallen leaves in hues ranging from amber to golden to brown litter pastoral autumn landscapes. But in the wake of autumn’s bounty is also summer’s rot. 

Although fallen leaves are pleasantly intertwined with our perspective of the season to the point of iconography, summer’s rot seems far more insidious. The fruits of summer, existing outside of still life, are left to mould and decay, their once-rich colours desaturated by the fuzz of pale green. At a glance, they seem stripped of their sweet, ripe value. In their rot, they are ugly, inedible, and quite valueless.

Or are they? 

Decay is a biological inevitability in a world that fights to decelerate aging, and not only in relation to ourselves. We do not just preserve fruit through conceptualising it via artwork, but through real-life innovation, and each day humans are acting to delay decay. 

Extending the shelf-life of food through treatment is an innovation that increases access. Your bright, long-fresh food has human intervention to thank for its lifespan. But mould is an organism too, and part of an important environmental chain. In this article, we aren’t going to simply shrug off mould as an inconvenience, we are going to consider its biological advantages and the artistic interpretation of mould that New York based artist Kathleen Ryan portrays in her larger-than-life fruit sculptures. 

Kathleen Ryan, Bad Melon (Moldy Slice), 2020. Cherry quartz, rose quartz, agate, amazonite, jasper, aventurine, rhodonite, rhodochrosite, labradorite, smoky quartz, quartz, Botswana agate, carnelian, horn, citrine, glass, cast iron and brass flies, steel and stainless steel pins, polystyrene, aluminum Airstream, 23” H x 63” L x 21” W.

Image credit: Kathleen Ryan & François Ghebaly

Why should we dig deeper to understand these fickle shades, those greens of mould that are key markers to incoming decay? Well, if rot is a big deal in nature, shouldn’t it be a big deal to artists, too?

Biology of Decay

Decay is part of the lifecycle of fruit, lifecycle instead of life, because this process ensures the likelihood of new life. Although the decay process may be stereotyped as forthcoming absence, like those browning autumn leaves which hint at bare branches, it is also an instigator of new life. 

Mould is a key marker of decay. It exists across the colour spectrum, but the shades of mould of interest here range between the palest green towards almost black. Mould grows in its colourful splotches on the surface of our summer fruit subjects as these are rich in water and are therefore an ideal environment for mould growth. Whilst some mould variants are edible, others are toxic and render the contaminated food dangerous if ingested. For example, mouldy apples can contain a toxin called patulin. Fruit containing high levels of patulin or juices made from contaminated stock can be harmful to human health. 

However, the decaying process mould participates in with fruit can also assist in the spreading of new life. In their article which discusses a simulation of fruit decay, Joseph T. Kider, Samantha Raja, and Norman I. Badler foreground the pertinence of decay through describing how ‘the decomposition of flesh frees and feeds the seeds of the fruit to grow into a new plant’.  

Artistic Decay 

Through examining its biological nuance, it’s clear that the green mould of summer’s rot pertains to both death and new life. Whilst artistic green is often stereotyped more one-sidedly through interpretations of only life, there are portrayals that highlight its nuanced life/death duality that can be found in art history.

For example, in Ancient Egypt, the green pigment malachite (a copper carbonate) was used in activities like tomb painting or to portray Egyptian figures. This included the scarab, which was associated with rebirth, and the god of both fertility and the afterlife, Osiris, who was often illustrated with green skin. 

Although the life/death nuance of green exists through art history, the green mould that also holds this nuance does not often take centre stage in artwork. Common portrayals of those quickly moulding and decaying summer fruits that this article first drew attention to are far more often captured in their prime through still life. The deficit of mould in these works is unsurprising. As art historian Katy Hessel notes, still life, a genre which has been around since antiquity, has historically been a popular way to flaunt wealth through acquisition of rare or imported produce, with the artwork featuring these morally intertwined ‘dainties that once lived’. With this in mind, portraying rot in these works had the gravity of representing a moral decay, or wealth wasted. 

This artistic deficit makes Kathleen Ryan’s sculptures all the more striking. Mould not only takes centre-stage through the sculptures, but, even more surprisingly, it is made beautiful. Ryan’s use of various precious stones creates a lifelike colour range that makes its viewer look again and search through the many details. It ornaments decay, rather than shying away from it. 

The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco considers Ryan’s sculptures as a:

‘[reimagining of] the detritus of American life. Molding, rotting, and spoiled fruits are rendered in gems and crystal—at once beautiful and grotesque. Glittering surfaces of fruit slices invite close looking, while automotive scrap metal and found materials invite us to think differently about the materials we consume and discard.’ 

Kathleen Ryan, Bad Lemon (Sea Witch), 2020. Aventurine, serpentine, prehnite, chrysoprase, rhyolite, agate, moss agate, jasper, peridot, moonstone, magnesite, lilac stone, turquoise, citrine, calcite, feldspar, ruby in zoisite, labradorite, swarovski crystal, quartz, mother of pearl, freshwater pearls, glass, steel pins on coated polystyrene, 16.5" H x 18" L x 20" W.

Image credit: Kathleen Ryan & Karma

There is a parallel here between the moral questioning of waste that can be interpreted from Ryan’s sculptures and the moral readings associated with still life paintings; a parallel which invites us to reframe her work as an immersive still life. Whilst the ICA SF interprets Ryan’s sculptures as inviting us to reconsider discarded materials by bringing together contrasting glitter and scrap metal, their bringing together of grotesque moulding subjects and sublime colours through the mosaiced fruit surface also invites a further re-evaluation: that of the beauty in rot, and the green mould of simultaneous death and new life. 

Sources

Images

Bad Melon (Moldy Slice) https://www.kathleen-ryan.com/2020-bad-fruit-franois-ghebaly-la 

Bad Lemon (Sea Witch) https://www.kathleen-ryan.com/kathleenryan-karma 

Cover Image

Kathleen Ryan & Josh Lilley https://www.kathleen-ryan.com/2022-red-rose-josh-lilley

Amy Nugent
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