The Tradition of the Sublime Landscape

The Tradition Of The SublimeLandscape

Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repealLarge codes of fraud and woe; not understoodBy all, but which the wise, and great, and goodInterpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mont Blanc, 1817

As long as the tradition of landscape in the visual arts, so

is that of its expression of the sublime. The artists of

the Romantic era were perhaps its greatest and most apparent

exponents, but scores of artists have transcended medium,

stylistic, and historical boundaries in their mutual

engagement(s) of the idea. Numerous aspects and

interpretations of the sublime landscape have been

presented, and the constant evolution of our conception of

the sublime has helped to make it a relevant dialogue in the

contemporary landscape.

Echoes of the Wilderness

Landscape, considered art historically, is not the oldest of

subject matters. While it is has served as a structural

framework and played a supporting role in a large part of

art’s history, it’s development into an artistic genre of

its own is relatively recent. There are several factors

that account for this. For one, landscape had always

enjoyed a secondary status as the backdrop for human

activity. Historical, biblical, and allegorical themes in

the arts were often enacted in this setting. The presence

of the landscape was essential to the image, but less to the

narrative, and on the whole commanded little attention

outside of this token status. While there were early

ruminations of the landscape’s emergence as a genre proper

to be felt in the Renaissance, it was the Baroque period

that first explored landscape on its own terms. While it

had previously been rare to see nature without human

presence, it increasingly became depopulated and devoid of

humanity. The Dutch especially engaged this subject matter

with a sensitivity and proclivity for interpreting it

eloquently, and the breakdown of the traditional painted

hierarchy of subject matter led not only to the development

of vanitas still life but also to that of the landscape as

appropriate artistic fodder. This period signals the advent

of the subject on par with its historical and portrait

counterparts.

(Albrecht Durer, View Of The Arco Valley, 1495)

Durer was among the most prominent Renaissance artists to embrace the symbolic potential of landscape, most often in his engravings and wash drawings. In this mixed media work we

can see how the artist has re-interpreted the topography andinserted human features into the cliff face.

In a broader respect however, it appears that the most

important causes of landscape’s singularity were

technological. The fresco and oil paintings that dominated

the artistic practice up to and including the Renaissance

were ill suited for use beyond the studio. Careful and

meticulous attention to detail as well as the necessity to

mix one’s own colors both precluded serious investigation of

the world beyond urbanity. One medium that allowed artists

to elude this restriction was that of the etching. The

relative informality and manner of transcription permitted

for work to be done in the field. Because little was

required outside of some simple tools and the etching plate,

the studio could be transported wherever one wished. Early

industrialization also allowed for the pre-mixture of

colors. So whereas one was once required to exact an often

complicated process of fabricating paints, you could now

utilize it straight from the tube. Such is the origin of

plein-air.

(Rembrandt van Rijn, The Three Trees, 1643)

After this initial phase of entrance into the contemporary

currents of art, landscape soon began to expand its

emotional and symbolic character. I have mentioned that the

Dutch are among the most responsible for this, and their

unique history and geography greatly imbues it in such a

tradition. The shipping industries that dominated the Dutch

economy and the low-lying landscape of the countryside

afforded settings for the initial explorations of the

sublime. The maritime atmosphere that surrounded almost all

of life in the Netherlands provided a strong regard and

reverence for the sea. The sea became an increasingly apt

subject for the early conceptions of the sublime in that it

not only was accountable for countless disasters and

shipwrecks offshore but also the below sea-level topography

of Holland allowed for massive flooding and farming losses

whenever nature refused to cooperate. The later Romantic

artist Caspar David Friedrich was known to have studied

several of these Dutch seascapes in the forms of engravings.

Such was the power of the landscape, that from its

beginnings as a genre it immediately commenced investigation

of the awe-inspiring power of the natural world.

(Jacob van Ruisdael, The Jewish Cemetery, 1655)

Some earlyexpressions of thesublime wereevident in thelandscapes of vanRuisdael, who oftenevoked senses ofhuman mortality andtransience withforebodingpaintings such asthis one. Theadvancing storm andreference to death both contribute to an atmosphere of nature’s elevation beyond humanity.

The Enlightenment era was ripe with talk of the sublime.

Rationalism, with its effort to make intelligible the

passions, viewed the concept of the sublime as profoundly

linked to human associations. Immanuel Kant and other

Enlightenment philosophers tackled the subject, but it was

the young Edmund Burke who best provided an accurate

conception of the sublime and its effects on us. Burke

distinguished between beauty and the sublime, unlike Kant,

and posited that the sublime awakens terror, not aesthetic

appreciation within us. To account for our sensational and

profound experiences of the natural world, a notion of the

sublime such as Burke’s seems most appropriate. Just as the

poet Shelley stands before the glacier Blanc and is

enthralled by both its grandeur and awesome power, the

Romantics who would follow in Burke’s wake seem to make a

similar equation. It is because of nature’s often violent

character and ultimate

refusal to yield before us that affords it the respect it

commands in our presence.

(Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey In The Oakwood, 1810)

The Romantic artists and their enterprise burgeoned at the

inception of the full-scale industrial revolution. The vast

urbanization and mechanization of life evidenced in even

this early phase motivated the Romantics to return to nature

as inspiration. Scenes of ruins in the wilderness coupled

with solitary figures in the landscape both communicated the

sense of isolation and minuteness that are the hallmarks of

Romantic naturalism. Other images completely negated human

presence or always presented them in a diminished capacity.

The landscape is always triumphant in the vernacular of the

movement. Nature has attained the status of deity, as for

some such as the atheist Shelley, and achieved the most

remarkable expression of the divine.

The later paintings of the British Romantic artist Turner contain abstract and violent gestural qualitiesthat foreshadow the non-objectivity of thetwentieth century.Turner’s depictionof a snowstorm at sea not only

conveys the torrentiality of the storm but also the inadequacy of the ships that have fallen victim to its phenomenal power.(J.M.W. Turner, Snowstorm, 1842)

(Thomas Cole, The Oxbow, 1836)

In the early nineteenth century a group of American artists known as the Hudson River School expanded the exploration ofthe sublime landscape from Europe to the United States. Here Thomas Cole has depicted the meeting of two worlds- wilderness and civilization. The natural and unencumbered landscape yields and is encroached upon by the man made acclimation of it. The confrontation is a violent one and conveys the unsettling atmosphere that must have been present in Cole himself. 1

Since its invention in the first half of the nineteenth

century, the photograph has possessed the ability to

artistically engage the world in a way which is unique in

its immediacy and power. Because photography is always at

least partially rooted in mimesis, it can relay some aspects

of reality with a more profound effect than other mediums.

The photographic image almost always asserts that this has

happened 2 or does so with a greater certainty than its

visual art counterparts.

That said, the photographic engagement of the tradition of

the sublime is an apt one as much of what informed and

inspired early photography was the existing Romantic

sentiment that had preceded it. What the photographic image

offered was a factual account of the landscape it presented

to us. Granted that throughout the entire history of the

medium there have been those who have composited images,

altered prints, and distorted the reality it claims to

authenticate, but the notion still remains that what the

camera provides us with is a representation of the true

world around us.

(Francis Frith, ThePyramids Of Sakkarah, 1857)

Two decades afterthe photograph’sadvent, FrancisFrith documentedvarious historicalsites in Egypt andon the SinaiPeninsula. Theresult is a seriesof albumen printsthat illustrate the natural attrition of some of humanity’s greatest achievements. The temples of Egypt have eroded andbecome buried by the wind-swept sands of the desert. Even

the great built wonders of the world become dust at the hands of nature and time.While the relationship between the sublime and the landscape

had been thoroughly developed on the European continent, its

extension into photography appropriately finds its roots in

America. Vast expanses of previously undeveloped landscape

dominated what was to become the United States. Manifest

Destiny and an innate pioneer mentality lead to the great

western exploration and expansion. At the same time

photographers themselves participated in this migration, and

provided us posthumously with an image of both the wide-open

space that was the west and what has since become the

contemporary American landscape. William Henry Jackson’s

images of the western wilderness not only gave people back

east a vision of what lay in their backyard but also the

majesty of the nation’s natural resources. Other

photographer’s braved similar journeys and contributed to a

greater consciousness of the sublime in this new and

seemingly endless terrain.

(Timothy O’Sullivan, Black Canyon, Colorado River, 1871)

(Carleton E. Watkins, Solar Eclipse From Mount Santa Lucia, California, 1889)

Watkins photographedmany of the natural wonders of the western American landscape, particularly in California. In thisimage of a solar eclipse we can see how the Romantic

sensibility has informed photography. While this could easily be the subject of a painting, there is perhaps a moreprofound emotional resonance due to the photograph’s authentication of the event. The scene exhibits a

supernatural aura partially due to this certification of rare but naturally occurring phenomena.

(Minor White, Barns & Clouds, In The Vicinity Of Naples And Dansville, NY, 1955)

Minor White’s image of a solitary barn placed in surreal surroundings evidences how landscape could summon such metaphorical connotations of the natural sublime even in themid-twentieth century.Reinterpreting The Paradigm

At some point it was only natural that many artists, having

grown up in cities and not the country, would begin to

approach landscape from a different perspective. A shift

occurred from that of the natural world to that of the man-

made and built one. The great skyscrapers and metropolis’

inspired such phrases as “the urban jungle.” While a

humorous and facetious term, it still exploits the

relationship between the individual and the vastly expanding

urban environment. The cities built upward towards the sky,

as opposed to the vast expanses of the traditional landscape

that lie below it.

What most sparked a kinship between the established notions

of the sublime landscape and the newly developed urban

environment was the

scale of humanity’s

relation to it. Just

as Shelley is paled

by Mont Blanc, so is

any one walking

through Paul Strand’s

image of Wall Street

(1915). A fifty

story building

looming above you can

be just as awe-

inspiring as a

mountain, especially

if it is surrounded by structures of equal measure. The

city offered a new arena for this ongoing discussion.

Modernism may have superseded its Romantic predecessor but

not without subsuming it.

(Alfred Stieglitz, From The Back Window, 291, 1915)

(Michael Wolf, Architecture Of Density, 1995-2006)

Using the backdrop of Hong Kong, the world’s most densely populated city, the German artist Michael Wolf has afforded us a picture of humanity at its most structured level. Images of the complex and compacted network of sky rises andapartment buildings that make up the urban center abstract the architectural forms as well as metaphorically represent their inhabitants. We are left with an image of a society where the mechanical hastriumphed over the individualand utilitarianized itsexistence.

Ironically, the industrialenvironment evinces some ofthe same sentiments as ourclassical conceptions of thesublime. The aggressive andmonumental forms of the built

landscape provide an equivalent to the untamed and expansivewilderness of the Romantics. A contemporary of Charles Sheeler once commented that “for Sheeler the industrial sublime was both heroic and disquieting.” 3 This coupling of the power and beauty of the industrial environment and the imposing and mechanistic implications it could have on society forge the industrial sublime. Sheeler, a Precisionist, elevated these structures to the realm of highart, but not without misgivings as to their potential negative implications upon humanity.

(Charles Sheeler, Blast Furnace, 1927)

(Edward Burtynsky, Rock Of Ages, No. 7, 1991)

Photographer Edward Burtynsky often utilizes the degraded and modified natural environment as the subject of his imagery. In this photograph of an industrial quarry, it is clear how man has severely altered the landscape. The confrontation of nature and humanity’s effect upon it

presents us with a harrowing vision of how man transforms the world.

The Sublime In The Expanded Field

There has been a progression of the concept of the sublime

landscape since its historical inception some four hundred

years ago. It has evolved to not only include additional

contributions to its classical infusion in the

representation of the natural landscape but also its

extension to the man made and built one. Several artists

working in a variety of art forms have embraced some model

of this idea and presented it in their own unique way.

As Modernism progressed, several individuals sought to

expand their area(s) of artistic enterprise beyond the

gallery and museum’s walls. The Earth Artists in particular

sought a direct collaboration between nature and the process

of artistic creation. By not only making the landscape

their subject, but also their medium, this group of artists

sought a deeper connection to the natural world than just

the metaphorical one that had traditionally been explored.

They sought to make this realization entirely physical, in

that they directly worked the land around us and focused our

attention on the landscape as the artwork itself. By doing

so they raised not only pertinent questions regarding

artistic context, but also the character of our involvement

with the contemporary landscape. Their legacy is in part a

further expansion of the notion of the sublime and its

relevance to our current period.(Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970)

It was perhaps the young Robert Smithson who best understoodthe potential of the physical landscape’s ability to be conceived of as art in itself. Smithson’s most famous work altered the landscape of the Great Salt Lake using natural materials that surrounded the site. This work evokes elements of the sublime for several reasons. Besides that it directly uses nature itself as the medium and subject matter, it also displays a direct collaboration between the artist and the world around him. Furthermore, the Spiral Jetty is now usually covered with water and in the process nature has reclaimed this man-made modification. The road to the site is quite desolate; the few signs of human activity upon the approach include a bird sanctuary and

ironically a military testing ground. Artist Buzz Spector has remarked that in essence the journey to Spiral Jetty is as important as the work itself. 4 The confrontation of man’s imposed devastation and nature’s untamed ruggedness is perfectly apt for the tone of the piece. Upon Spector’s trip the jetty was indeed covered by the water but the greater meaning of Smithson’s masterpiece was communicated all the same.

(Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field, 1977)

When one comes upon The Lightning Field, it is a strange encounter. Isolated in the high desert of the New Mexico wilderness, Walter De Maria’s installation of 400 steel poles in a rectangular arrangement seems an odd place for a work of conceptual art. What the artist has done with this expanse however is truly magical. The steel poles harness the power of nature directly and produce a spontaneous and kinetic experience. Because nature itself generates the incredible vision of the lightning’s meeting with the poles,in this manner the sublime is translated independent of any human presence in the landscape. For time infinite this dramatic play of electricity and its conduit will continue without the further necessity of our involvement. The work

functions entirely by its own means and through this simplest method of interaction, produces the most startling of experiences. Conclusion

It is clear that while the tradition of the sublime is

certainly rooted in the idea of the grandeur and power of

the natural world, it has not been confined to this

conception alone. The expansion of the sublime’s ever

evolving dialogue into the realms of the modern urban

experience and that of conceptual art attest to the idea’s

continued relevance. It is certain that as further

developments take place within art and society, the sublime

landscape will progress along side them and remain a viable

tradition that lends itself to the practice of future

artists.

Jim Sienkiewicz

________________________________________________________________

Notes

1. IMAGINING AMERICA: ICONS OF 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN ART. PBS, December 28, 2005

2. Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes.3. Charles Sheeler: Paintings And Drawings, Carol Troyen and Erica E. Hirshler.4. IMAGINING AMERICA: ICONS OF 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN ART.