Landscape Theory
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Page 1 Landscape Theory Artistic representations of landscape are studied in a half-dozen disciplines (art history, geography, literature, philosophy, politics, sociology), and there is no master narrative or historiographic genealogy to frame interpretations. Geographers are interested in political formations (and geography, as a discipline, is increasingly non-visual). Art historians have written extensively on landscape, but there have not been any recent synthetic attempts or theoretical overviews. At the same time, painters and other artists often feel they “possess” the landscape of the region in which they live; that ownership takes place at a non-verbal level, and seems incommensurate with the discourses of art history or geography. Landscape Theory, volume 6 in The Art Seminar series, is the first book to bring together different disciplines and practices, in order to undertand how best to conceptualize land- scape in art. The volume includes an introduction by Rachael Ziady DeLue and two final, synoptic essays, as well as contributions from some of the most prominent thinkers on landscape and art including Yvonne Scott, Minna Törmä, Denis Cosgrove, Rebecca Solnit, Anne Whiston Spirn, David Hays, Michael Gaudio, Jacob Wamberg, Michael Newman, and Jessica Dubow. Rachael Ziady DeLue is Assistant Professor of Art History at Princeton Uni- versity. She is author of George Inness and the Science of Landscape (University of Chicago Press, 2004). James Elkins is E.C. Chadbourne Chair in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is general series editor of “The Art Seminar.”His many books include Pictures and Tears, How to Use Your Eyes, What Painting Is, and most recently, The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art and Master Narratives and Their Discontents, all published by Routledge. 11:20:01:11:07 Page 1 Page 2 The Art Seminar Volume 1 Art History Versus Aesthetics Volume 2 Photography Theory Volume 3 Is Art History Global? Volume 4 The State of Art Criticism Volume 5 The Renaissance Volume 6 Landscape Theory Volume 7 Re-Enchantment Sponsored by the University College Cork, Ireland; the Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughan, Ireland; and the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. 11:20:01:11:07 Page 2 Page 3 Landscape Theory EDITED BY RACHAEL ZIADY DeLUE and JAMES ELKINS 11:20:01:11:07 Page 3 Page 4 First published 2008 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2008 Taylor and Francis Group All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Landscape theory / edited by Rachael DeLue and James Elkins.—1st ed. p. cm.—(The art seminar ; v. 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Landscape in art. 2. Arts. 3. Landscape. I. Delue, Rachael Ziady. II. Elkins, James, 1955– NX650.L34L36 2007 704.9′436—dc22 2007028250 ISBN 0-203-92983-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0–415–96053–3 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–96054–1 (pbk) ISBN10: 0–203–92983–7 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0-415–96053–3 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0-415–96054–0 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–92983–4 (ebk) 11:20:01:11:07 Page 4 Page 5 Table of Contents Series Preface vii James Elkins Section 1 Introduction 1 Elusive Landscapes and Shifting Grounds 3 Rachael Ziady DeLue Section 2 Starting Points 15 Introduction to Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape 17 Denis E. Cosgrove “One with Nature”: Landscape, Language, Empathy, and Imagination 43 Anne Whiston Spirn Writing Moods 69 James Elkins Section 3 The Art Seminar 87 Participants: Denis E. Cosgrove, Rachael Ziady DeLue, Jessica Dubow, James Elkins, Michael Gaudio, David Hays, Róisín Kennedy, Michael Newman, Rebecca Solnit, Anne Whiston Spirn, Minna Törmä, Jacob Wamberg Section 4 Assessments 157 Kenneth R. Olwig 158 Maunu Häyrynen 177 Jill H. Casid 179 V 11:20:01:11:07 Page 5 Page 6 VI Landscape Theory Dianne Harris 187 Jennifer Jane Marshall 195 Robin Kelsey 203 Malcolm Andrews 213 Blaise Drummond 216 Hanna Johansson 221 Annika Waenerberg 229 Stephen Daniels 238 Dana Leibsohn 242 Yvonne Scott 252 Martin Powers 259 Jerome Silbergeld 277 Michel Baridon 281 David E. Nye 284 Robert B. Riley 286 Section 5 Afterwords 313 Between Subject and Object 315 Alan Wallach Blindness and Insights 323 Elizabeth Helsinger Notes on Contributors 343 Index 355 11:20:01:11:07 Page 6 Page 7 Series Preface James Elkins It has been said and said that there is too much theorizing in the visual arts. Contemporary writing seems like a trackless thicket, tangled with unanswered questions. Yet it is not a wilderness; in fact it is well posted with signs and directions. Want to find Lacan? Read him through Macey, Silverman, Borch-Jakobsen, Zˇ izˇek, Nancy, Leclaire, Derrida, Laplanche, Lecercle, or even Klossowski, but not—so it might be said—through Abraham, Miller, Pontalis, Rosaloto, Safouan, Roudinesco, Schneiderman, or Mounin, and of course never through Dalí. People who would rather avoid problems of interpretation, at least in their more difficult forms, have sometimes hoped that “theory” would prove to be a passing fad. A simple test shows that is not the case. Figure 1 shows the number of art historical essays that have terms like “psychoanalysis” as keywords, according to the Bibliography of the History of Art. The increase is steep after 1980, and in three cases— the gaze, psychoanalysis, and feminism—the rise is exponential. Figure 2 shows that citations of some of the more influential art historians of the mid-twentieth century, writers who came before the current proliferation of theories, are waning. In this second graph there is a slight rise in the number of references to Warburg and Riegl, reflecting the interest they have had for the current generation of art historians: but the graph’s surprise is the precipitous decline in citations of Panofsky and Gombrich. VII 11:20:01:11:07 Page 7 Page 8 VIII Landscape Theory Figure 1 Theory in art history, 1940–2000. Most of art history is not driven by named theories or individual historians, and these graphs are also limited by the terms that can be meaningfully searched in the Bibliography of the History of Art. Even so, the graphs suggest that the landscape of interpretive strategies is changing rapidly. Many subjects crucial to the interpretation of art are too new, ill theorized, or unfocused to be addressed in mono- graphs or textbooks. The purpose of The Art Seminar is to address some of the most challenging subjects in current writing on art: those that are not unencompassably large (such as the state of painting), or not yet adequately posed (such as the space between the aesthetic and the anti-aesthetic), or so well known that they can be written up in critical dictionaries (the theory of deconstruction). The subjects chosen for The Art Seminar are poised, ready to be articulated and argued. Each volume in the series began as a roundtable conversation, held in front of an audience at one of the three sponsoring 11:20:01:11:07 Page 8 Page 9 Series Preface IX Figure 2 Rise and fall of an older art history, 1930–2000: Citations of selected writers. institutions—the University College Cork, the Burren College of Art (both in Ireland), and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The conversations were then transcribed, and edited by the participants. The idea was to edit in such a way as to minimize the correctable faults of grammar, repetitions, and lapses that mark any conversation, while preserving the momentary disagreements, confusions, and dead-ends that could be attributed to the articulation of the subject itself. In each volume of The Art Seminar, the conversation itself is preceded by a general introduction to the subject and one or more “Starting Points,” previously published essays that were distributed to participants before the roundtable. Together the “Introductions” and “Starting Points” are meant to provide the essential background for 11:20:01:11:07 Page 9 Page 10 X Landscape Theory the conversation. A number of scholars who did not attend the events were then asked to write “Assessments”; their brief was to consider the conversation from a distance, noting its strengths and its blind spots. The “Assessments” vary widely in style and length: some are highly structured, and others are impressionistic; some are under a page, and others the length of a commissioned essay. Contributors were just asked to let their form fit their content, with no limitations. Each volume then concludes with one or more “Afterwords,” longer critical essays written by scholars who had access to all the material including the “Assessments.” In that way The Art Seminar attempts to cast as wide, as fine, and as strong a net as possible, to capture the limit of theorizing on each subject at the particular moment represented by each book.