Art For Art's Sake

British artist, James Hart Dyke, combines mountaineering and painting. His latest pictures result from his climbing Mont Blanc's ancien passage North face. The North face was the route, taken in 1786, by the first climbers to reach the peak. The same route was taken in 1873 by French painter Gabriel Loppe, who painted its then pristine landscape. Mont Blanc's glaciers are now melting so quickly, that tranversing them has become very difficult. There's 150 years between Dyke's and Loppe's Mont Blanc canvases (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/02/artist-captures-the-impact-of-climate-crisis-over-150-years-on-mont-blanc). Dyke thinks these very different depictions of Mont Blanc, perfectly capture the climate crisis. Sad that it's coming to this!