Garden of Earthly worries

Garden of Earthly Worries

In the series ‘Beauty has no conscience’:

The Garden of Earthly Worries by Daniel Libeskind

In March 2019, museum Paleis Het Loo, the former royal hunting estate of the Netherlands, welcomed the Polish-American architect with his artwork called ‘The Garden of Earthly worries’ as a counterpart to ‘Garden of Paradise’ which is the name of the palace garden.

Libeskind placed four spherical fragments of a globe as ‘intruders’ within the quadrants of the 17th century Baroque Lower Garden. The four fragments represent four greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, ozone and nitrous oxide, that are largely responsible for global warming. In this way, the artist makes a powerful statement regarding the influence of modern humanity on nature leading to irreversible climate change with disastrous consequences for people and nature.

Many regular guests and friends of the museum consider the bright coloured art pieces in their beloved gardens as intruders indeed. A more independent perspective shows four large cracks of a globe in red, blue, yellow and green placed in flowerbeds matching their colours, a view that is quite hard to consider repulsive. While the 17th century garden was considered an artwork that represented man’s ultimate victory over nature, the 21st century artwork shows the world what this has resulted in. Both are powerful messages worth contemplating, but only if one succeeds to ignore the beauty of the art and the garden for a moment.

At the moment Paleis Het Loo is closed for renovation and extension, but its gardens are open to the public.

Want to know more? Visit: www.paleishetloo.nl and

www.kaanarchitecten.com

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