Buss: Dynamic Landscapes
Franca Buss, M.A.: Dynamic Landscapes
Despite the art theoretical devaluation of landscape painting as a mere accessory or inferior genre, in the early modern period the landscape itself was not only valued as a source of inspiration and recreation, but also admired and feared as a theatre of (natural) forces, controlled as an area to be used and exploited as a resource. At the same time, landscape is a carrier of ideas, desires and memories. Landscape is therefore anything but meaningless. Rather, it is the result of natural processes and an expression of cultural and economic power relations. The research project explores the multidimensional understanding of landscape as an „Imaginarium“ and dynamic space, analyses the conditions of its representation in the early modern period, and examines its potential effectiveness.
Because geological and cultural forces tend to act over very long periods of time and are therefore not immediately apparent, landscape is often perceived as static. This is particularly true of landscape painting. The aim of the study is not only to free landscape from its characterisation as a symbol of permanence, but also to work out the dynamic agency of landscape. Accordingly, the study looks for landscapes that neither passively present themselves to the viewer as a mere background, nor serve as a mere backdrop to an action taking place in the foreground. Instead, the focus is on landscapes that aesthetically reflect and visualise the dynamics and natural, cultural and economic forces that shape the landscape.
The proposed project will focus on the period between the so-called 'invention of landscape' in the early Renaissance and the 'long' 18th century, when industrialisation gave rise to a sentimental yearning for a 'return to nature'. Particular attention will be paid to the periods considered in the art historical canon to be the heyday of landscape painting, and at the same time turning points in the redefinition and reflection of the relationship between dynamics and landscape space.