For climate physicists and scientists, industrialisation is not only an important reference point marking the beginning of anthropogenic - i.e. man-made - climate change, but has also left its mark on art and famous painting styles. What are the "positive" effects of air and environmental pollution on our lives?
To calculate man-made global warming and the negative effect of air pollution, today's emission levels are compared with those from the pre- or early days of industrialisation. The problem is the lack of data because, unlike today, no area-wide measurements were carried out. Meaningful data must therefore be obtained by other means - one new approach is painting.
Climate physicists and scientists have discovered that Impressionism in the 19th century owes its particular style of painting not least to the pollution in the big cities. Impressionism, with its blurred contours and pastel tones, captured air pollution.
The paintings of Impressionism with their pastel tones and blurred outlines would obviously not have been conceivable without the smoking chimneys during early industrialisation - or at least would have looked very different. This is the conclusion reached by a climate physicist from the Sorbonne in Paris and a climate scientist from Harvard University in a study. In the study, Anna Lea Albright and Peter Huybers investigated whether there is a connection between industrialisation and changes in the painting style of Impressionist painters. Particular attention was paid to the Frenchman Claude Monet and the Englishman William Turner, both of whom captured the environment in their capital cities and their immediate surroundings. With the help of paintings by the two artists depicting landscapes and city views, as well as an algorithm that can determine the amount of aerosols clouding the image, astonishing things were revealed. The degree of air pollution that prevailed in the paintings corresponded to that which had also been estimated for the respective time of origin of the work. Investigations from ice cores and tree rings confirm this assumption.
In addition, their pictures are much blurrier than those painted in the countryside far away from emissions from the factories. The slow development of ever-increasing air pollution was also noted. Whereas at the end of the 18th century, when the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, his paintings still had clear outlines, over the next few years his pictures became increasingly blurred.
This makes Impressionism the first artistic development on which air pollution has a direct influence. Impressionism can thus also be described as the creative impulse of industrialisation and the interplay between art and the environment. How will art and styles change in the future - for example through less air pollution, due to driving bans, environmental zones and bans on combustion cars?