Artist talk with Christopher Volpe – Loomings: Melville, Art, and the Climate Crisis

Moving quickly past general background, process, and materials, this illustrated art talk highlights how Loomings addresses our world’s instability through the metaphors at work in Moby-Dick, Herman Melville’s apocalyptic vision of the American quest. Volpe finds in Melville’s account of the doomed commercial whaling voyage of the Pequod a dark, foundational myth of American materialism (and an even darker apocalyptic prophecy of what’s to come). He also finds a “terrible beauty” – and the hope that pairing tragedy and human shortcoming with beauty can redeem our faith in the whole. 

This event takes place at the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts in Downtown Pittsfield in conjunction with the exhibit Moby-Dick.

This event is sponsored by Berkshire Bank.

Image: Westward #13 (Westward the Star of Empire Takes its Way), Christopher Volpe. Tar, oil, gold leaf on wood.