In Germany as well as in many other countries, images of extreme floods often found their way on postcards. Here is a selection of postcards. (click on the image to find the online source)
1909
1910
1914
1920
1920
1929
2002
undated postcard from Tokyo, Japan
undated postcard from Panama, probably 1924
A street in the city of Bonn with the Rhine river in the background, January 2024.
Jan Asselijn (1610–1652): “Breach of St. Anthonis-Dike near Amsterdam”, 1651.
“During the night of 4-5 March 1651 the Saint Anthony’s Dike was breached near Amsterdam. Jan Asselijn portrayed the fiercely flowing water with a strong sense of drama. The billowing cloak of the man at the left shows that the storm is not yet over, however the squalls are already moving on at the right. The vivid red contrasts sharply with the bright blue of the parting clouds.”
(from the website of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, NL)
The erupting mount Vesuvius in Italy is one of the most popular motives in modern art history, particularly throughout the 18. and 19. Century – at least as far as disasters go. Between 1766 and 1779 the volcano erupted several times, giving artists occasions to witness the event personally. The topic and it’s visual representation have played a major role in Europe’s public imagination of natural disasters.
Here are a couple of examples, mostly taken from the 2018 exhibition “Entfesselte Natur” (Nature Unleashed) at Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany.
above: Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750–1819): “Eruption of Vesuvius with the death of Plinius”, 1813
above: Michael Wutky (1739–1822): “Vesuvius Eruption”, around 1796
Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797): “Eruption of Vesuvius”, between 1776 and 1780.
Pierre Jacques Volaire: “The Eruption of Vesuvius”, 1771
Jakob Philipp Hackert (1737 – 1807): “Vesuvius Eruption in the year 1774”, 1774
For more information and the philosophical ideas behind the eruption of mount Vesuvius in art history see my post here.
Kota Ezawa (*1969)Flood, 2011
© Courtesy the artist and Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt a.M.
The Bavarian city of Nürnberg (Nuremberg) has been flooded quite often over it’s history. The flood of 1909 is particularly memorable and the most severe flood that has been documented in photography. The visual similarity to Venice, apparent in pictures like these, has been noted quite often by contemporaries.
In an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 2023, contemporary British artist Emma Stibbon exhibited her own wood carving “Collapsed Whaling Station” alongside a selection of works from the Royal Academy collection. All art works depict extreme weather events or ruination or other kinds of disasters. In this nice video she talks about her fascination with these kind of images, referencing explicitly the current climate crisis and it’s effects.
The image shows the painting by painter William Daniell of the Eddystone Lighthouse off Rame Head in Cornwall, England during the ‘Great Storm’ of 1824. Daniell exhibited the painting for the first time in 1825.
“Statues of Memnon at Thebes, during The Inundation”, a lithography from 1848 by Scottish artist David Roberts. It appeared in Roberts book on the Nile region entitled “Egypt & Nubia” published in London the same year.
The flooding of the Nile has been an important natural cycle in Nubia and Egypt since ancient times. It is celebrated by Egyptians as an annual holiday for two weeks starting August 15, known as Wafaa El-Nil. It is also celebrated in the Coptic Church by ceremonially throwing a martyr’s relic into the river, hence the name, The Martyr’s Finger (Coptic: ⲡⲓⲧⲏⲃ ⲛⲙⲁⲣⲧⲏⲣⲟⲥ, Arabic: Esba` al-shahīd). The flooding of the Nile was poetically described in myth as Isis‘s tears of sorrow for Osiris when killed by his brother Set. (source wikipedia)
For a similar rite see my post on the Venetian holiday “Lo Sposalizio del Mare” (the Marriage to the Sea) here.
In a comic book by French authors Benoit Sokal and Francois Schuiten from 2022, an ancient maritime myth is picked up in a comic format. The story is about a small community of refugees who once settled on the back of a giant whale floating in the ocean. The animal is so vast, that it’s back appears like an atoll or a small island. Vegetation grows and various animals have settled, attracted by the mild climate created by the warmth of the animal’s body. After seventy years however there are conspicuous signs that the whale is starting on her journey towards the North Pole, endangering the survival of the small society that has made her back it’s home.
Essentially, the environment for this community is similar to many coastal and island communities: The living conditions are rather comfortable but there is a constant danger of drowning. Whenever the whale moves or sinks, the sea becomes agitated and rises threatening the human settlements.
The authors have come up with a clever piece of bionics as adaptation measure for this condition. The community lives in giant crab-like houses (or rather house-like crabs). These housings have long legs to elevate and hatch like roofs that can close and seal the interior against water in case of inundation. Some of these giant crabs apparently can also swim and cover large distances individually. Here are some sketches from my edition of the book:
This design is not so unlike the houses on stilts that were once common in Bangkok and can now be found again in places like Makoko in Lagos or Apung Teko in Jakarta. Of course these moving and amphibious crabs are much more sophisticated. To inhabit and navigate the crabs, humans had to develop into a symbiotic existence with them. The whole lifestyle of this small community is highly symbiotic and so far adapted to it’s host/surrounding, eventually making it impossible for them to leave. That certainly is the tragedy of this little floating eco-topia.
The two volume book is a wild mixture of maritime folklore, pop-culture references (Moby Dick, obviously), romantic fairy tale and eco-fantasy. Too crude and stagy for my personal taste, but nevertheless interesting as a twist on an old maritime myth – for reference see my post on whales as islands here – seen under today’s light of climate adaptation imperative.