Sunday Field Trip And Sketch / Photo Essay

Accordingly, the nature was one of the Romantic themes adored by numerous readers during this era. The author’s description of untamed environment and striking sight inspires and impresses the readers. Soothing and relaxing people through these illustrations, author takes them away from the impersonal society. For example, The Most Sublime Spectacle on Earth by John Wesley Powell vividly displays the spectacular views of Grand Canyon to make readers forget the depraved reality. “The carving of the Grand Canyon is the work of rains and rivers,” Powell stresses that Grand Canyon is the splendid work of nature, not the artificial work of

Hess, D. (2011). Mcknight's Physical Geography; A Landscapes Appreciation. (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc

You are required to discuss a work by a 20th or 21st century artist, photographer, designer, architect, film-maker, philosopher or writer and show how this work reflects, contradicts or extends theories of and attitudes to visual culture current at the time of its making.

Cole has no restrain in describing the beauty of all the elements found in the American scenery. He talks about the mountains, the sky, the streams, the sunset, waterfalls, all of which are overflowing in richness, full of magnificence, and unsurpassed by any other. For Cole the scenery and nature are subjects which must be present in the souls of every American. While he considers himself and even others underserving of “such a birthright”, he is thankful for the beauties given to us by nature. Cole suggests to his audience that the reason behind him painting natural scenes relates to the experiencing of a particular emotional response while doing so. This is a response which can only be compared to a “calm religious tone”, full of “tranquility and peace.” Witnessing the beauties of the American scenery, anywhere one goes, makes one realize how “the sublime and beautiful are bound together in an indissoluble chain. In gazing on it we feel as though a great void had been filled in our minds.” Cole places great emphasis on the importance for all members of society to learn how to cultivate “a taste for scenery.” This can be achieved by appreciating the physical beauty of nature and the ability of said beauty to provide mankind with a different perspective about life and with

For many, Fresh Kills conjures up images of the “World’s Largest Landfill” - bulldozers pushing mountains of trash, flocks of seagulls fighting over table scraps, and plastic bags fluttering in the wind. After the closure of the landfill, many hope that this image will be replaced by Fresh Kills as a public park. The international design competition, Fresh Kills: Landfill to Landscape was the first step in transforming this image. Six finalists suggested six different visions of how Fresh Kills could be re-imagined. The winner of the competition, Lifescape by the landscape architecture firm Field Operations, proposes a design that focuses on nature not only as the antithesis of landfill, but as an agent of cultural change. James Corner, founder and director of Field Operations, first asked how might landscape architecture be a force that enriches and informs people’s perception of nature in his 1997 essay Ecology and Landscape as Agents of Creativity. Through Lifescape, Corner proposes an answer to his own question, and the resulting design responds to Fresh Kills landfill past, and it’s post-industrial future as a park.

Classical landscape by Charles Sheeler is an exterior oil on canvas of the Estate of Mrs. Edsel B. Ford, Grosse Pointe Farms (figure 1) filled with deep, hidden irony. It was painted in 1931, and is based on a watercolor study. It’s a calm, clean, and serene painting that takes your breath away. It’s depicting a place someone would want to be in, a place where things get done, and a place where one can go to achieve this idea of the American dream. Charles Sheeler used American industry as a major theme of his art, his work “lends itself to an analysis in terms of geometric forms” he examines his subject matter so closely in order to fully understand the composition, the effect, and the design he wants to depict. Sheeler painted the plant’s exterior as an idyll, a beautiful, picturesque scene of the industrial age booming; however, in reality the United States was in the middle of the worst years of the Great Depression. Therefore, this painting done in Sheeler’s hyper-realistic artistic style is not actually depicting what the factory actually looked like.

Humanity is but a facet of the sublime macrocosm that is the world’s landscapes. In the relationship between man and landscape, nature is perpetually authoritarian. In her free-verse poems, The Hawthorn Hedge, (1945) and Flame-Tree in a Quarry (1949), Judith Wright illustrates the how refusal to engage with this environment is detrimental to one’s sense of self, and the relentless endurance of the Australian landscape. This overwhelming force of nature is mirrored in JMW Turner’s Romantic artwork, Fishermen at Sea (1796). Both Wright and Turner utilise their respective texts to allegorise the unequal relationship between people and the unforgiving landscape.

At the beginning of the semester, I read Peirce F. Lewis’s “Axioms for Reading the Landscape.” Lewis interprets landscapes through a set of rules which he calls “axioms.” In weeks four and five, I was assigned to read Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s “High-Tide, Low Ebb,” Rebecca Solnit’s “Little Pieces of Many Wars,” and Raymond Williams’s “Culture is Ordinary.” Within Jelly-Schapiro’s and Solnit’s articles, there are two different maps provided by Shizue Siegel and Ben Pease that illustrate and support both Jelly-Schapiro’s and Solnit’s arguments. Jelly-Schapiro focuses on the demographic and racial changes that transpired during and after World War II in San Francisco Bay, California. While Solnit, examines the historical landscape changes that took

The illustration in #7.16, Trestle Work, Promontory Point, Salt Lake Valley by Andrew J.Russell is an image of a railroad track connecting two paths with men working on the site. Russell believed that the west was a great location to conduct his work because of the openness and freedom that was out there. Also to observe the natural scenery that it has to offer, which many have traveled to obtain such freedom and visual aspects of nature. As for #7.17, El Eaches or Three Brothers by Carleton E. Watkins is a description of a landscape winter forest by a lake, his purpose for this image was to capture the viewer's attention with the richness and the detail of the forest. For an individual to absorb the composition of the mountains in the picture

In chapters two and three titled “Sites” and “Movements” respectively, Howard makes the case that there is a “dialectical” relationship between the subject and the landscape (both social and physical) and

In order to compose this assignment, I visited the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum (CAM). The USF Contemporary Art Museum is a compact museum on campus located near the Dance buildings and the Theatres. The museum opened its establishment in 1989 and has offered a wide range of art from around the world including the United States, Africa, Europe, and Latin America (usfcam.usf.edu). In order to keep students engaged in the art, the museum changes its exhibits a couple times a year. Currently, the exhibition on display is entitled Extracted and incorporates “the extraction and circulation of natural resources around the globe” (Megan Voeller). Despite the museum being not large in size, I was able to attain a sense of nature through photographs, sculptures, video messages, and banners produced from artists including Otobang Nkanga, Marina Zurkow, Claire Pentecost, Mary Mattingly and Daniel Shiffman. The social angle most strongly related to the exhibit on display at this time is nature and culture. Extracted was motivated by relationships between humans and the environment referring to “complex technical processes behind oil drilling and mining or industrial agriculture” (Megan Voeller). Most of the artists focus their work on nature including the environment, ecosystems, and life itself.

Robert Smithson’s, “Spiral Jetty,” is an example of earthwork art. In Smithson’s 1972 essay, “The Spiral Jetty,” he explains his first impression of the area where he created one of his best earthwork projects. Throughout this essay, Smithson recounts how his work was built and explains some of his artistic intentions behind the piece. Earthwork art is a type of process art that is also related to minimalism due to its nature of the aggressive character and makeup of bold, “unitary” forms. His essay placed a strong emphasis on how the integration of literature and visual art can develop the perception, interpretation, understanding, and sensory experience for viewers.

Carol Payne’s, “How Shall We Use These Gifts?” Imagining the Land in the National Film Board of Canada’s Still Photography Division,” is a 2007 Canadian article that discusses how the presentation of Canadian landscapes in the 1950’s and 1960’s by the National Film Board (NFB) and its Still Photography Division created a false reality of economic and resource rich value that many come to believe as true.

I am analyzing the form and content of a stylized painting entitled The Palisades by John William Hill. This was found in the collection section of themetmusuem.org which was painted during the pre Raphaelite movement; when artist emphasized meticulous detail in what was observed rather than imagined nature. This artwork shows the aesthetics of nature, depicting a peaceful scenery with spacious green acres during the year of the 1870s. During the late 18th centuries, natural resources weren’t highly industrialized and that in itself shows how nature was essential for all human species. I argue that this painting shows how everything in nature connects and communicates with one another.

It is the first modern landscape in Western art. Though the humans seem to be the main focus, the landscape is just as important.