Buss: Dynamic Landscapes

Franca Buss, M.A.: Dynamic Landscapes. Man and Nature between 1300 and 1850

The aesthetic discovery of the landscape is seen as the result of man's distancing himself from nature. In his much-cited essay Landschaft. Zur Funktion des Ästhetischen in der modernen Gesellschaft (1962), Joachim Ritter not only put forward the momentous thesis that landscape functions as an aesthetic surrogate for the irretrievable unity with nature.; based on Petrarch's ascent of Mont Ventoux in 1336, Ritter defines the landscape as a counterpart that presents itself from a certain vantage point when the practical purpose of nature is left behind. Such an understanding of nature as landscape not only distinguishes between utilizing use (uti) and enjoying observation (frui), but also declares the category of force irrelevant for aesthetic observation.

In contrast, the research project aims to work out the dynamic qualities of landscape painting in the early modern period and thus to detach the landscape from its static-visual approach. Accordingly, the focus is on landscape paintings that aesthetically reflect and visualise the natural, cultural and economic forces that shaped the landscape. According to the thesis, focusing on the dynamics of the landscape can lead out of the dilemma between the objectification of nature on the one hand and its nostalgic-romantic exaggeration on the other.

In terms of time, the project moves between the so-called 'invention of landscape' in the early Renaissance and the onset of industrialization in the 'long' 18th century. Particular attention will be paid to the periods that are considered in the art historical canon to be the heyday of landscape painting and at the same time mark turning points in the redefinition and reflection of the relationship between dynamics and landscape space.