Landscape and Western Art (Oxford History of Art) - Hardcover

Andrews, Malcolm

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0192100467 ISBN 13: 9780192100467

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2000

Synopsis

What is landscape? How does it differ from "land"? Does landscape always imply something to be pictured, a scene? When and why did we begin to cherish images of nature? What is "nature"? Is it everything that isn't art or artefact? This book explores many issues raised by the range of ideas and images of the natural world in Western art since the Renaissance. Using a thematic structure many issues are examined, for instance: landscape as a cultural construct; the relationship between landscape as accessory or backdrop and landscape as the chief subject; landscape as constituted by various practices of framing; the sublime and ideas of indeterminacy; and landscape art as picturesque or as exploration of living processes. These issues are raised and explored in connection with Western cultural movements, and within a full international and historical context. Many forms of landscape art are included: painting, gardening, panorama, poetry, photography, and art. The book is designed to both take stock of interdisciplinary debates and act as a stimulus to rethinking assumptions about landscape.

About this title

Review:

"A splendid text ... with images both celebrated and startling, he shows landscape as a contruction, a theatre in which humans act and enjoy seeing themselves act."--Professor Richard Thomson, Edinburgh University

"A very accomplished surveyof a notoriously complex and elusive subject ... nothing--not even words like 'environment' and 'art' is left unquestioned."--Andrew Wilton, Keeper and Senior Research Fellow, Tate Gallery

"Highly intelligent ... it insists that hte making of landscape is inseperable from the history of the moment of its production, but also recognizes the intense personal experiences that motivate it."--Professor John House, Courtauld Institute of Art

About the Author:

Malcolm Andrews is Professor of Victorian and Visual Studies at the University of Kent. He is the author of Dickens on England and the English, The Search for the Picturesque, and Dickens and the Grown-up Child. He has edited a three-volume anthology, The Picturesque: Sources and Documents and is currently editor of the journal The Dickensian.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0192100467
• ISBN 13: 9780192100467
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256