Art422 - Land

Notes referencing slides below. 

LandCR.pdf

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Key:

Laura 

Class discussion.

P2

Man’s control and impact on land. 

• buildings 

• Hedges 

• Hanged landscape by human influence. 

• Landscape. To structure. 

“Picturesque and the pastoral” 

“The vale of the white horse” Eric Ravilloius 

• monument scraped into hillside 

• Significant of a British/English landscape 

• The reference National identity 

“green and pleasant land”

• Jerusalem hymn 

• British identity in land a

• “Dark satanic mills” 

• Satanic side to this beauty 

The common

Land was open, grew what you needed, helped people out. 

P3

(Laura’s ramble) 

Enclosure Act 

• Old ties to land, generational 

• People had to make land efficient. 

• People cleared the land  to test this method. 

• If failed you could be classed as a vagabond. Crime, deported 

Common-> land accessible and usable by

• Enclosure

• “Appropriation of common land for private commercial and recreational use”

 general public to develop agricultural practice. 

• Enclosed meant more control. 

“Exclusion”

• land relationships 

Thomas Gainsborough's 1750 painting 

• What shows private land? 

• Fences, gates, neat maintenance, they look ‘above’ doing the work, less mud. 

• What trace is there of the people that work the landscape? Crop, wheat. 

• The idea of ‘the gaze’ and ‘looking in’ on landscapes. 

• Right to roam trespasses 

• Ability to walk on ‘private lane’ 

• “The first ramblers’ club” 

• People protesting about access to land. 

• “Most effective acts of civil disobedience in British history” 

• + land accessibility 

P4 

Monica Sjoo (piece) 

• “Template” exploring enclosing land and people. Colonisation 

P5 

Megalith sites 

• not understood. 

• Symbols of national identity. 

• “Physical makers in the landscape” 

• In danger of becoming nationalism 

• Mystical 

• The stones were tested. Not local to Britain. Immigrant bones remain. 

• Religious freedom, certain holidays mean increased access to sites. E.g. Stonehenge solstice. 

P6 

THE NATURAL 

• not man made 

• Natural material 

• Found 

• Non constructed 

• Are humans nature? 

• Are we natural?!

• Human nature = behaviours

P7-10

Carl Zimmer 

Justine cooper: The Awe of Natural History

• collecting and colonisation link. 

• Collecting items from colonised places. Taking natural items for their beauty. 

• THEIR beauty, natural items being appropriated for our enjoyment. Displayed, photographed, drawn. 

Mark Dion’s Wunderkammer, part of Tate Thames Dig (1999-2000). 

• museums were like libraries. A rich man’s collection. Showing off

• Monarch and science split. 

• Everything and anything. Collecting the non understood. 

• Uninformed display. 

• Chaotic. 

• Urge to collect. 

• Displaying natural history. 

• How humans are seen as different, separate from nature. 

P11-13

Vibrant Matter- a Political Ecology of Things 2010 

Jane Bennet argued everything should have agency. A ‘power’ 

Useful is with materials like clay. 

Clay has a memory. If breaks it will probably break again 

• Everything is made of atoms. Eg. Why is a table less important than us, for we are atoms too. 

P15

SUBLIME

• Historical. How speakers made what they were saying more accessible. Being powerful.

• In The Middle Ages, it became a verb meaning to elevate. 

• Can be used with the meaning to have transformed something. 

• Art and landscape “art challenges out capacity to understand and fill us with wonder”  

• “The sublime artis was; according to Longinus, a kind of superhuman figure” .. “rising above arduous and ominous events and experiences in order to produce”  .. “more refined style” 

• Land in a 3D setting, what else can it provide? 

• land as a source of wonder. Questioning 

P 16

• Gordale Scar, 1813, James Ward.

• So much scene it’s ‘un paintable’ 

P17

Sublime as Feeling on the edge. The edge of processing and understanding.

P18 

Caspar David Friedrich, The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog 

• looking in on the Sublime 

P19. 

• Seeing something we normally get. 

• Concept of ‘locating the sublime’ 

• Technical and human world. 

• Looking to be made to feel small. 

• Connecting with land and animals- is a  traditional take on sublime 

P20 

Walter De Maria: On the importance of Natural Disaster 1960 

-“I don’t think art can stand

Up to nature”

“The big things always win” 

“They are rare” 

• The feeling of guilt, looking in from a position of privilege

• The geological records now show humans as having the biggest impact on earth. 

• Is it sublime if it’s man made?  

P21 

John Akomfrah, Film 

P23- Laura Bruni 

Landscape,

Body, 

Identity. 

A Beautiful female body. 

Sublime male body, dominance. 

P25.

Bill Brandt

Cropped images on the female form to represent landscape 

• Exploring space between abstraction and figuration. 

P26. 

Jalal Shemza 

Lack of welcome people feel to British rural places. 

• exploring identity and experience, heritage. Shapes and patterns.