On Well's Case Study: Landscape as Genre

Christie Dooley

Before I studied eighteenth century painting, I dismissed the genre of landscape imagery as uniform and futile. All landscapes seemed overly sentimental. However, Thomas Gainsborough’s portraits, which often include elements of landscape painting, changed my mind. I grew to understand landscape as a multidimensional construct rather than a sappy formula. Landscapes are more interesting than I thought. While some landscape images share aesthetic concerns (and are, indeed, sappy), others thwart conventional  compositions to convey, for example, a political message. All landscapes, including photographs, are organized according to cultural values and personal ideologies.

As Deborah Bright points out (and Wells cites on page 304), landscape as a genre was invented in the seventeenth century in Dutch painting, and reinterpreted in English painting and topographical documentation of, for example, the American West. Every “view,” including the romantic garden in your backyard or the national park you visited on holiday, is built (whether for pleasure or commercial purposes, or to deliver a certain sociopolitical or environmental statement). While Gainsborough’s landscape-portraits tooted the landownership of the gentry, Camille Silvy’s photograph River Scene, France (ca. 1858) depicts an idealized rural scene unaffected by the bustle of industrialization. Indeed, certain sights are so iconic, they become trite. Contemporary Norwegian photographers choose to photograph everyday urban landscapes rather than their iconic mountains, discouraging the authenticity of previously constructed views of Norway. Other photographers might decide, for example, to eliminate the “golden rule” from their images to upset the predictable harmony of traditional landscapes. Or, like in Jeff Wall photograph A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) (ca. 1993), they might purposefully follow the golden rule, only to exaggerate the lack of harmony present in the image. As a genre, landscape is constantly rejuvenated and adjusted to reflect new (or returning) attitudes or causes.

For some mind-blowing and unconventional landscapes, check out Richard Mosse's photographs, taken with Kodak Aerochrome: http://www.jackshainman.com/artists/richard-mosse/