A survey of the approaches of American and European landscape painting in the last five decades - working title of unlimited territory

Abstract

Scenic painting in this century has lost its traditional definition and its existence as a coherent and unified genre has been questioned. Studies related to it have become interdisciplinary branches, and the recognition and review of relevant works requires the understanding of diverse sources in many fields of knowledge. Considering the lack of Persian sources in this field, the growing importance of this genre and finally the author's personal need to study more in this field (due to the connection of this issue with painting works), this research aims to examine the different definitions and meanings of landscape in art or in general, by presenting relevant theories and researches, in order to answer the questions of this research. In this context, the method used to present the group of six landscape painters including: Mark Lombardi, Alighiero Boatti, Robin O'Neill, Benjamin Edwards, David Hockney and Anselm Kiefer, examining their works alongside the proposed theories and presenting a table of the commonalities of these artists' works as key words and themes in the contemporary landscape. The results of this research in brief are:

Scenic painting as a genre no longer has its former coherence and its borders are being dissolved in other genres, and artists have made fundamental changes in the body of this genre by using different topics and concepts and by using different media. However, landscape painting as a subject and genre has not only not diminished, but after a short hiatus, it has appeared with more and more force in the visual arts.

Among the broad concepts raised in the works of landscape painting, time, politics and identity, among the different aspects, the narrative, tragic and pessimistic aspects, and among the elements used, text and writing are more prominent than others. Art works have been deeply used, by examining the iconography in such works (landscapes), it is possible to trace the conditions of the creation period and analyze them.

Keywords- landscape painting, painting, contemporary landscape, iconography, politics, map

Chapter 1

Introduction

Landscape painting in art, despite its late appearance, has ancient roots. Even if we don't consider landscaping, our close relationship with nature forces us to pay attention to the landscape and our surroundings. We live in nature and "for centuries we have been doing the act of transforming the earth into a landscape in our minds." (Andrews, 2018: 11)

The landscape has different definitions in the perspective of different people; Some like Alberti [1] consider it a pleasant space and view (Andrews, 2018: 74) that we look at from a distance, a group like Jill Cassid [2] consider it an environment that is dynamic and constantly changing - this change may be natural processes such as soil erosion or influenced by humans such as city construction and cutting down trees - and for another group such as Dennis Cosgrove, it is a social structure that results from the past cultural, social, political and economic of its inhabitants. The landscape of any of these had its beginnings seriously in the history of art in the 16th century through the use of [the term] by artists as a technical term to describe a view.

Landscapes until the early and mid-16th century were in the background in images that contained historical or religious messages and were grounds for human activities. But it was in this century that Muslim artists of Northern Europe began to paint landscapes with more independence. In theoretical debates, it was not possible to deal with the idea of ??landscaping until this century. "Giovanni Paolo Lamazzo[3] was the first writer to formally discuss the aesthetics of landscape by making a distinction between places of honor[4] and places of pleasure[5] in his work entitled Treatises on the Art of Painting[6] (1584) (His, 1936). Despite the large number of landscape paintings in the sixteenth century, landscape painting until the emergence of the Dutch and Finnish schools and the works of artists such as Ruysdal[8] did not succeed in the 17th century. It was in this century that people like Roger D. Pyles[10] and Samuel Van Hoogstraten[11] defined and promoted the idea of ??landscape in the 18th century in response to the political and social atmosphere created by the old regimes of England, France and the rest of Europe.In the 18th century, landscape painting expanded in response to the political and social atmosphere created by the old regimes of England, France and the rest of Europe, and new approaches to the natural environment emerged. In short, during this century, landscape painting received growing attention and interest from artists and art patrons and became a more and more respectable genre. In line with these activities, there were important reflections related to the idea of ??landscape - especially in relation to the sublime[12]-. After the great events and developments related to the French Revolution, landscape art became the main genre of artists, art patrons and collectors in the 19th century. This era became the height of the flourishing of landscape paintings with the emergence of European impressionism and post-impressionism movements and the Hudson River in America.

In 1800, the views of landscape art became dramatic both in the scene and in the subject, which was a completely revolutionary approach. With the beginning of the romantic movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the concept of landscape painting underwent a transformation. Representations of nature were used to show the grandeur and splendor of mountain landscapes, the simplicity and naturalness of rural landscapes, and the power and vastness of oceans and seas. At the same time, along with the process of industrialization and urban life in Europe, people's sense of nostalgia for pristine and untouched places became stronger, and landscaping changed from looking for beautiful scenery to trying to experience excellence and connection with spirit and spirituality through meditation and thinking in nature. Therefore, not only these paintings were the embodiment of the truth of nature, but they were depicted to arouse human emotions and express them.

In the 20th century, the landscape continued to exist as a genre. Of course, in a different way and under the influence of various artistic aspects, inspired by the Futurism movement, landscapes with thick and lively and perhaps ugly colors were formed that emphasized the qualities of painting and color. Landscapes of Henri Matisse[13], André Dern[14] and Maurice D. Vlaamnik[15] was a developed version of post-impressionist landscapes that were combined with pointillism and neo-impressionism. Cézanne[16], who had reduced natural landscapes to geometric forms, lines and colors, became a source of inspiration for the Cubists, and under his influence, they used the rules of Cubism in creating landscapes.

"The German Expressionist landscape painters who were influenced by Fauvists and primitive art in general, with the formation of the Paul group[17], looking at the history of art and Gothic art, used bright colors and thick horizontal lines to "(The Spirit of Expressionism: Mc Taggart) Kandinsky[18] the founder of the Blue Rider Group[19] expanded a form of landscape painting from 1907 onwards with his landscapes. Of course, he turned to complete abstraction after 1912. After the First World War, Oskar Kokoschka [20] in his travels throughout Europe "explored the problem of landscape painting, the free, arbitrary and radiant combination of impressionist or fauvist painting along with the traditional organization of deep view space that had its roots in the early stages of Flemish landscape painting". From the Second World War, new movements such as abstract expressionism, op art, pop art, minimalism, conceptual art, etc. They began to change values ??in the field of art. Abstract expressionism with an emphasis on inner feelings, op art by dealing with visual illusions and vision errors, pop art with regard to popular culture and mass media, minimalism with its minimalism, conceptual art by prioritizing the idea and performance by emphasizing the process in relation to the result of the genre of landscape painting, faded until in the mid-1960s with the emergence of earth art [21] or earthy art of looking towards the earth, landscape And the environment turned. This new attitude rejected the commercial aspect and supported the developing environmental movement. Instead of using the earth as a place to create works of art, they used it to create works. The works of these artists, which were often in gigantic dimensions [Snail Dock] by Robert Smithson [23] (Image 1-1), Walking on a Straight Line in Peru [24] by Richard Long [25] (Image 1-2) and Stone Tree [26] by Andy Glosworthy [27] (Image 1-3) also attracted the attention of the public.