Professor Graff
Gregory Kurgansky
The greatly intelligent and powerful former President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, stated, “If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.” This is clearly seen throughout the excerpt from Looking at Art, as Alice Elizabeth Chase delineates the fact that various aspects directly influence the way art is portrayed, such as the historical time period and the artist’s ideology behind the painting.
Chase discusses the different methods, perspectives, and perceptions that the artist incorporates in presenting a landscape. For instance, Chase states, “All of us have experienced the thrill of looking at a view. Does the artist’s painting of such a scene merely recall our delight? It can also show us new ways of seeing, can sharpen our perception, and can give us a deeper and richer sense of the relation of nature and man.” This quote shows how each landscape is unique its own way and exhibits novel viewpoints for the viewer, hence providing a perception of greater depth than just what the naked eye can observe. Furthermore, in combination with the artist’s desire for a distinctive portrayal, the time period in which a landscape was created played a great role as well. For example, as presented in chapter 3, “But by the nineteenth century cities were well established, the nation had secured its independence, and the new patriotism and enthusiasm for America showed itself in an interest in the countryside.” Hence, artists were painting beautiful and majestic natural landscapes of the northeast such as the Connecticut River Valley. In addition, once Manifest Destiny expanded artists and explorers like Albert Bierstadt painted landscapes of the Great Plains, and the Rocky Mountains. During this time period, people were proud of America, and therefore the vast views were very important, as they symbolized fertility and new opportunities.
Chase also details the hardships of painting landscapes as she states that “A camera will record the way things look. But to the artist the representation of a wide and distant view offers a real challenge. He must confine its immensity to the limits of his canvas or wall; he must reduce its size, or take a small section of it He must do something with the landscape to express his ideas about it. Perhaps he will cut out some of its myriad detail, will select and emphasize.” This description is extremely interesting as it establishes an idea of further discussion on how different historical cultures and civilizations utilized art in landscapes to “select and emphasize” what was valued during that time. Great examples of that include the contrast between Ancient Egypt and the medieval time period. Egyptian artists maintained the ideology that that shape and placement of the view is more important than the landscape itself. An example would be a pond, in which a painting would be drawn as a map, with the pool shaped as a rectangle, zigzag lines as the ripples, and animals portrayed in profile. In medieval times, on the other hand, artists saw the presence of God in every detail of nature and hence the landscapes of an artist’s own country became worthy settings for a religious subject. Overall, these two disparities show how the difficulties in creating a landscape, influenced cultures to choose certain parts that would be important to them, and utilize various art strategies to delineate unique perspectives.
Throughout Chapter 4, Chase moves on to describe the hardships of artists in accurately presenting components of space in a room or painting. Although, Chase does analyze the fact that there is a proper way to show events and items at the proper distance, through the utilization of science and the vanishing point, Chase also does not discount the methods of other artists. As stated in the book, artists [handle} space in the flat profile method, through overlapping, through modeling in light and shade, through cast shadow…. Each of the systems we have looked at has points in its favor. Vanishing-point perspective is what we are used to, is truer to what the eyes sees, but there are things that can be show more truly by another system.” This conclusion can be seen more clearly throughout the chapter, as each civilization modified the use of the vanishing point in a unique way. For instance, Renaissance innovators experimented with viewpoints and often placed the vanishing point below the painting, hence creating a prominent view for the figure in the canvas. In complete contrast to utilizing a vanishing point, oriental art often included isometric perspective, in which scheme lines that are parallel continue parallel and do not come together at a vanishing point. Each of these styles are greatly important in their own way, as the vanishing point is used in modern day technology and art techniques around the world, meanwhile the isometric style is used by western architects to depict a structure in a better way. Overall, as artists have tried various solutions for problems of portraying people and objects in space, new and unique methods have evolved throughout history, hence creating many different yet correct ways that exhibit space.
Night at the Museum photo of Albert Bierstadt Rocky Mountain Landscape
