Robin Lynch

Focussing on the art and design programs of the Container Corporation of America (CCA) from the late 1930s to 1970, my project at SAAM tracks the conceptualization and employment of the terms “environment” and “ecology” across both the corporate and artistic practices of the company. In examining the cultural programs of the CCA, my project asks what the stakes are in turning to the “environmental” and “ecological” in artistic and corporate methods, and concurrently why this became such a prevalent method within this context. I argue that both the artists and corporate actors were invested in developing “ecological” approaches informed by biological theory, that expanded into a collaborative enterprise centred around ideas about the environment. I further situate this interest in environment and ecology within a burgeoning military-industrial-cultural complex at the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War in the United States. In this context, I consider how the term “environment” becomes a concept used to signify the ability to administrate, represent, and mobilize territory, using art and design as a key medium to construct and communicate space.

Tracing the history of the CCA through the lens of the environment further contributes to our understanding not only of artists such as László Moholy-Nagy and Herbert Bayer, but also how these artistic practices aligned, diverged, and melded with industry in the United States. Unpacking the specificities of this relationship can help ask other important questions, including how these kinds of partnerships are embedded in geo-political issues related to resource extraction, colonialism, and understandings of the natural world.