Mid-Century Modernism and the Landscape Idea
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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Open Access Dissertations 2-2011 Reading Landscape: Mid-Century Modernism and the Landscape Idea Jeffrey David Blankenship University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations Part of the Geochemistry Commons, Geology Commons, and the Geophysics and Seismology Commons Recommended Citation Blankenship, Jeffrey David, "Reading Landscape: Mid-Century Modernism and the Landscape Idea" (2011). Open Access Dissertations. 324. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/324 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. READING LANDSCAPE: MID-CENTURY MODERNISM AND THE LANDSCAPE IDEA A Dissertation Presented by JEFFREY D. BLANKENSHIP Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2011 Geosciences Geography © Copyright by Jeffrey D. Blankenship 2011 All Rights Reserved READING LANDSCAPE: MID-CENTURY MODERNISM AND THE LANDSCAPE IDEA A Dissertation Presented by JEFFREY D. BLANKENSHIP Approved as to style and content by: __________________________________________ Richard Wilkie, Chair __________________________________________ George Roberson, Member __________________________________________ Max Page, Member __________________________________________ Ethan Carr, Member ________________________________________ Mark Leckie, Department Head Geosciences DEDICATION To Kirin ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Sitting in the stacks on the 18th floor of the W.E.B. Dubois library near the beginning of my Ph.D. program at UMass, I first discovered the dusty volumes of Landscape magazine. I was researching some of the prominent academic journals in geography for an assignment in Richard Wilkie’s geographic theory course, but found myself lingering over a magazine that was distinct from the other selections. With my previous degrees in landscape architecture and planning I was instantly drawn to this deceptively unassuming magazine and how it represented a bridge between my earlier work and my new discipline. After all, I was seeking a Ph.D. in geography not as a total change of academic course, but as a theoretical enrichment to what had been over ten years of thinking about and designing landscapes. In Landscape I found a magazine that was open to the contributions of multiple academic and intellectual perspectives and I believed a dissertation on this topic should be equally encompassing. In order to pursue such a topic I would need the help of many supportive and intellectually adventurous mentors. My advisor, Richard Wilkie, always encouraged me to pursue this multidisciplinary interest. His inclusive teaching and broad perspective provided a model of unfettered academic (and personal) inquiry that I aspire to in this dissertation and in my own teaching. Discussions with Ethan Carr in his course on cultural landscapes were instrumental in focusing the direction of my dissertation and since then he has provided invaluable feedback and encouragement. Max Page’s “maverick interests” in combining architectural and social history have set a rigorous example of scholarship that bridges academic terrains and the dissertation is better for his v thoughtful comments. Julie Graham was there through my comprehensive exam, dissertation proposal and early chapter drafts. Tragically she passed away before I could benefit from her insights on the final document. She will be missed. Thank you to George Roberson for the close reading of the document and agreeing to join my committee at such a late date. Any dissertation seeking to expand the discourse on the work of J.B. Jackson must elicit feedback from some of the scholars who knew him best. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Chris Wilson, Michael Conzen, Wilber Zelinsky and David Lowenthal each spent hours talking with me about Jackson, Landscape and the early direction of my dissertation and Pierce Lewis, Paul Groth and Donlyn Lyndon corresponded with me via email. Their feedback gave me the confidence to pursue this topic. While it is not ideal to teach full time while writing a doctoral dissertation, I have been fortunate in the resources made available through my time at both Smith College and at SUNY-ESF. I am grateful to Ann Leone, head of the Landscape Studies program at Smith for the first opportunities to teach and lecture in my area of research, as well as for help in translating some especially tricky French geographic texts. Richard Hawks provided the most valuable gift over the last three years at SUNY-ESF: time to work. Finally, to my parents Barbara and Arden for the palatable pride they take in each of my accomplishments and to my wife, Kirin Makker, for the unwavering love and support. vi ABSTRACT READING LANDSCAPE: MID-CENTURY MODERNISM AND THE LANDSCAPE IDEA FEBRUARY 2011 JEFFREY D. BLANKENSHIP, B.S.L.A., UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY M.L.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST M.R.P., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Richard W. Wilkie This dissertation traces the recovery of the landscape idea during the middle decades of the 20th century by a group of public intellectuals, scholars and designers responding to the everyday realities of the modern American built environment. That recovery served as a corrective to modernism’s construction of landscape as either abstract utopian space or retrogressive historical tableau. The primary catalyst for this renewed interest in landscape as a representation of human cultures and their complex relationship with the natural world was the essayist and critic John Brinckerhoff Jackson and his magazine Landscape. During the years of Jackson’s editorship (1951- 1968), the magazine became a locus for intellectual exchange, a gathering place for a community of scholars from different disciplines who were drawn to Jackson’s unique voice. Jackson’s essays in the magazine used the term landscape in a way that was not common outside of the field of human geography. Here landscape did not describe a picturesque or painterly scene, nor did it describe a process of beautification. Jackson wrote of landscapes that seemed somewhat prosaic: the everyday, ordinary vii environments of city streets, rural farms, individual dwellings, highways and the commercial strip. He insisted that understanding how to read these places for their social, cultural and ecological content was a necessary—though too rarely employed— prelude to imagining new prototypes for the design and management of human environments. The mid-century intellectual milieu fostered by J.B. Jackson ultimately nurtured a contemporary (and still evolving) understanding of landscape as a conceptual medium composed of a diversity of cultures, layers of visible history and hidden narratives and an interdependent human ecology that continues to shape landscape theory and practice today. Keywords: landscape, Landscape magazine, landscape idea, modernism, modernity, 20th century, mid-century, J.B. Jackson, nature, everyday, America, human geography, built environment, architecture, landscape architecture. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................v ABSTRACT............................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................1 Landscape magazine..........................................................................................5 Description of the Study ....................................................................................8 Precedents in Recent Literature........................................................................10 Structure of the Dissertation.............................................................................16 2. RECOVERING LANDSCAPE: J.B. JACKSON AND THE MAGAZINE OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY ............................................................................................21 Anthropogeography and its Critics...................................................................23 Le Géographie Humaine..................................................................................27 Cultural Landscape in American Geography....................................................30 “The Need of Being Versed in Country Things” ..............................................35 “Human, All Too Human, Geography”............................................................40 1956: Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth.......................................44 Humanistic Threads.........................................................................................46 3. EVERYDAY LANDSCAPE AND THE CRITIQUE OF MODERN AMERICA ....55 The Abstract and the Everyday ........................................................................57 “Culture is Ordinary”.......................................................................................64 Everyday Nature..............................................................................................69 ix Evolving