Yo

643441
landscape and art
READINGS
Ha Series of Art and Architecture
Directors Juan Miguel HERNANDEZ LEON and Juan CALATRAVA
JAVIER MADEROUELO [dir.] All rights
Yo reserved.
No part of
|- this

PAOLO BÜRGI • ALBERTO CARNEIRO • GEORGES DESCOMBES

Yo HORAZIO FERNANDEZ • MANUEL GARCIA GUATAS
; MARÍA DOLORES JIMÉNEZ-BLANCO • JESÚS MARI LAZKANO
JAVIER MADERUELO • JOSÉ CARLOS MAINER • JOSEP MARIA MONTANER
ALBERTO RUIZ DE SAMANIEGO • MARTIN SEEL • GILLES A. TIBERGHIEN
publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, etc., without the prior permission of the
copyright holders.

COVER IMAGE: FERNANDO CASÁS, Trees as ARCHAEOLOGY, PIRACES (HUESCA),

© photography by ESTEBAN ANÍA.

TRANSLATIONS: JOAQUIN CHAMORRO has been translated from German

text by Martin Seel.
LLANOS Gómez has translated from Italian
text by Paolo L. Burgis.
JAVIER MADERUELO has translated from Portuguese
text by Alberto Carneiro.
MAYSI VEUTHEY has translated from French the texts
by G. TO. Tiberghieny by G. Debris.

© OF THE TEXTS, THEIR AUTHORS, 5007

© BEULAS FOUNDATION. CDAN, 2007 A AM
© ABADA EDITORES, S.L., 2007 CENTRAL LIBRARY
of this edition c ASIF ■■-
CL
Jesus Square, 5 28014- Madrid . .P3S _
Tel.: 914 296 882
THINKING ABOUT THE LANDSCAPE 02
fax: 914297507 [CDAN 20071
http://www.abadaeditores.com
ART AND NATURE CENTER

MATRIX _LE——
-NUM. ADQ._44344 AN
design Joaquin Gallego STUDIO

production GUADALUPE GISBERT

ISBN 978-84-96775-15-2
legal deposit M -49647- 2007

preprint ENDIVE LECZINSKA print ABADA PUBLISHERS

LAVEL LANDSCAPE READINGS
 INTRODUCTION: LANDSCAPE AND
i UNAM CENTRAL ART
LIBRARY I " JAVIER MADERUELO
PROV..4P495
FACT._262-- FecKa
£=04-22 PREC10-
3o5ci-
F2_

On April 26, 1336, the poet Francesco Petrarca, who lived in Avignon near the papal court, made his unusual wish of climbing to the summit of Mont
Ventoux, the highest mountain in the region, come true. Such a crazy idea, that of making the enormous effort to climb a mountain without any necessity,
without the purpose of obtaining any specific benefit, was an 'extravagance'. The unusual rarity, the eccentricity of fulfilling such a desire, led the poet to
write a letter to Dionigi da Borgo San Sepulcro, then bishop of Cava-Ilón, explaining the difficulties he had gone through and what happened to him
when he reached the summitII.
Philologists who have analyzed Petrarch's work have discovered a metaphorical and expiatory III tone in this letter. Most likely, the act itself of
ascending to the summit was not physically carried out and what the letter narrates is not so much the hardships of the climb, which would have mattered
little to the bishop who was Petrarch's confessor, as the difficulties and weaknesses that every good Christian goes through in order to achieve ascension.

II Francesco PETRARCA, The ascension to! Mont Ventoux. April 26, 1^3^' Artium, Vitoria, 2002.
III Carlos YARZA, «Life of Petrarch», in Francesco PETRARCA, Works in Prose, Alfaguara, Madrid, 1978, p. XLVIII
 LANDSCAPE AND INTRODUCTION: LANDSCAPE AND ART 7
ART

to the summit of virtue. But, regardless of the true ¡ Alquézar, in Somontano, each one creating a sculptural work to be installed
For this reason, the founder of Italian poetry wrote the aforementioned letter in exquisite in the historic centre of this ancient town that is perched on the banks of the
Latin, the scene he describes in it about what he sees from the top of Mont Ventoux has Vero River4. In this way, without any major initial pretensions, an artistic
had enormous significance for the matter that has occupied us in the course of which I am activity began in Huesca that four years later would become the Artej
now presenting its Acts. Naturaleza Project and, finally, under the auspices of the Beulas
Foundation, the GDAN (Art and Nature Centre).
landscape and art 1
The course for which I am now presenting the written papers, which
AN 1 has been dedicated to the analysis of the landscape from the point of view
q• 40 of art, is the last (for now) in a chain of events, works, meetings and -
exhibitions, of international scope, with which the territories of Alto
CENTHA LIBRARY, 84 Aragón are rediscovering their landscape vocation and their regional
CENTRAL LIBRARY, 183 identity.
Through the works created by artists such as Richard Long, Ulrich
LIBRARY 134 Rückriem, Siah Armajani, Fernando Casás, David Nash and Alberto -
ABADA PUBLISHERS 134 Carneiro, Huesca is discovering its landscapes and showing them to the
world5. The interest aroused by these experiences in other regions of Spain
It was just mere poetic fiction. and in other countries demonstrates this. Through a series of courses such
Many historians mention this letter as the origin of sensitivity towards the landscape as this one, we are studying and deciphering the keys to the landscape at a
in the West. Indeed, thousands of shepherds, carters, soldiers, lumberjacks and farmers time when a large part of the regions of Spain are allowing themselves to
have climbed and continue to climb hills and ; be dragged down by the acculturation derived from globalization, which -
mountains, seeing from them extensive panoramas, being forced witnesses of sunrises manifests itself through the abuse of land and its resources, real estate
and sunsets, of spectacular meteorological phenomena. j speculation and intensive farming, deteriorating the territories and
homes, such as snowfalls, storms, rainbows, starry nights and many other events that disfiguring their historical image. That is why, at CDAN, we are working
today please us or overwhelm us for their beauty, sublimity, wonder or picturesqueness, with the firm conviction that the phenomenon of 'artisation', or, if you
but that, for those who go out into the open countryside out of necessity to exercise their prefer, art, will help us to recognise the values that each enclave and each
respective professions, are not the object of any pleasure but, on the contrary, of deep place possesses and will allow us to recognise countries as landscapes.
anxiety and fear. Last year we dedicated the first of the courses in this cycle, which we
In order for us to enjoy the views of the countryside, the sea, the mountains, the presented under the general title Pensare!paisaje, to analyzing the way in
forest, the riverbank or the desert today, it was necessary for poets and painters to begin which philosophers, historians, scientists and other intellectuals dedicated
to project their aesthetic gaze and artistic intention onto the world. It was necessary for to thought approach the idea of landscape6. Having satisfactorily covered
the complex and diverse world to be 'artalized', as Alain explains. Roger IV, that is, that stage of inquiry into the ontology and phenomenology of the
whether it is turned into art or seen as if we were looking at a work of art. " landscape, we have now decided to ask about its artistic component. While
it is true that the landscape in the West
In the summer of 199° > 654 years after Petrarch's ascent of Mont Ventoux, a group of
three young artists spent a fortnight in
4 Javier MADERUELO, Public art, Provincial Council of Huesca, Huesca, 1994.
5 See the books and catalogues published on the occasion of the construction of these artists' works
by the Provincial Council of Huesca and the GDAN.
6 Javier MADERUELO (dir.), Thinking about the Landscape OI. Landscape and Thought, Abada
— CDAN, Madrid, 2006. ,
11th
IV Alain Roger, Brief Triteness of the Pasage, Biblioteca Nueva, Madrid, 2007 ( ed. in French,
8 LANDSCAPE AND ART INTRODUCTION: LANDSCAPE AND ART 9

It arises from the will of poets such as Petrarch and his painter friends, such Samaniego, who develops an essay on the act of walking as an aesthetic
as Giotto, to describe the world and its wonders as they see and feel them, attitude, analysing moments of philosophy, painting and literature.
today the landscape is understood as a complex phenomenon that concerns In a second block, there are presentations that develop aspects of the
not only philosophers and artists but also geographers, demographers, - landscape from different arts: painting, literature, photography,
biologists, economists, politicians or legislators, and, of course, the manifestations of postmodernism and architecture. Manuel García Guatas
inhabitants of the territories who are its best and most direct builders, writes about the culmination of the modern landscape with Cézanne and its
establishing a dense network of connections and interests that highlights the immediate fall after the first steps of cubism. José Carlos Mainer, under the
complexity of the relationships between man and the world, between man pretext of analyzing the novel La voluntad by José Martínez Ruiz (Azorín),
and that which is outside of him. discusses the role of the landscape in the Generation of '98, relating the
We will discuss some of these relationships in future courses, while this literary world with the pictorial. This issue is also the starting point chosen
year's course has devoted a monographic focus to investigating, at different by historian María Dolores Jiménez-Blanco to analyse the role of Spanish
moments in the history of art, as well as in different arts and artistic genres, landscape painting during the 20th century. For his part, Horacio Fernández
what the landscape is and what it has meant in our culture. Art, as an looks at the landscape through Rodchenko's photography, analyzing the -
aestheticized reflection of human activity, provides us with an unbeatable difficult relationships of the avant-garde with the idea of landscape.
vantage point for analyzing how the landscape has been understood in the Gilles A. In his analysis, Tiberghien raises some conceptual themes that
past and how it is understood today. Each phase of the history of artistic can be traced in land art works, such as point of view, place, size and scale,
evolution, from Giotto's frescoes in Assisi or the visions of Joachim Patinir, horizon, mediation, the world as theatre and limits. For his part, Josep Maria
to the manifestations of land art or the new contributions of photographers Montaner makes an effort to categorize the various morphological systems
and image artists, as well as the surprising work that landscape architects used in the recovery of landscapes in recent years.
have been doing in recent years, show us that landscape is not only a In the third group of presentations, the creators are given the floor. In
concept in continuous transformation but, by making a bijective application, addition to the participation of theorists and professors, we have believed it
it helps to transform art and stimulates aesthetic thought with new necessary for painters, sculptors, architects and landscapers7 to participate
challenges. in this course by showing their work. Thus, Georges Descombes and Paolo
To raise awareness of this evolution and to explore what is happening Bürgi have presented their thoughts and projects and works in separate
now in the art of landscape, to learn about these issues, we have brought monographic lectures, while the painter Jesús Mari Lazkano and the sculptor
together some of the most outstanding professors and professionals in Alberto Carneiro have participated in the course by showing the
Europe at the CDAN in Huesca. They are people who, through their relationships of their art with the landscape in a round table.
research capacity, their generous teaching and their books, are generating a I would like to thank all the speakers for their generosity, effort and
'culture of landscape'. dedication, and I extend my gratitude to Teresa Luesma, director of the
Encouraged by the success and response that CDAN activities are having conference.
around the world, we have invited those who seem to us to be the most
interesting figures. As the director of this course, I must confess with great
satisfaction that everyone has responded to the call by agreeing to study, 7 All of them are also university professors.
present and write about the specific topic that has been assigned to each one.
This publication contains the texts of the lectures given during the
course. The first of them, written by me, aims to place the term 'landscape'
in the field of art, tracing the history of art from the Roman world to the
postmodern present. This article is followed by two theoretical
presentations, one by the German philosopher Martin Seel, which deals with
space and time in the landscape and in art, extending the theses already
stated in his books on 'nature aesthetics', and one by Alberto Ruiz de
IO LANDSCAPE AND ART

CDAN tora, and to the entire team at the Center, particularly Victoria 1. LANDSCAPE: AN ARTISTIC TERM
Falcó, Obarra Nagore and María Pallás, who have worked in the JAVIER MADE RUÉ IT
coordination of the course from which these presentations have emerged.
My thanks to the University of Zaragoza, represented by Professor Manuel
García Guatas, which is the Institution that has provided us with academic
support.
Although the cast of professors who accompanied us was important, the
most important participants of the course were the students who attended
the public presentation of the conferences and who, with their participation,
nuanced the meaning of these contributions by asking interesting questions
and proposing new reflections.

The word landscape has been used, with increasing frequency, in fields as
diverse as painting, geography, biology, urban planning and politics, and
has ended up taking root in colloquial language, being now used with great
aplomb in the development of any subject or activity, both professional and
everyday.
This semantic promiscuity entails the difficulty of being able to offer a
universalist or general definition of landscape, which has led me to trace,
through the 'history of culture', how the concept of landscape has been -
forged until distilling a word to name it.
Therefore, it should be noted that 'landscape' is a term that has arisen in
the field of a specific activity: art, being used to designate a genre of
painting, an activity in which the word has taken on its full meaning. This
evidence leads me to try to explain, even if only schematically, how the
landscape has been forged in Western painting and how it has spread to
other arts, helping to extend the meaning of the artistic to various cultural
practices, such as, for example, gardening or agriculture. Thanks to
painting, when

I See Javier MADERUELO, The landscape. Genesis of a concept, Abada, Madrid, 2005, 32006.
 12 LANDSCAPE AND ART t. LANDSCAPE: AN ARTISTIC TERM 13
We contemplate a territory transformed over centuries by agricultural - It should be noted that, since the 16th century, many artists, such as Anton
exploitation, we make it artistic, appreciating its plastic and picturesque values. van den Wingaerde, Peter Bruegel and El Greco and, later, the vedutísti, with
I have already dealt with the idea on other occasions that the landscape is Ganaleto at the head, worked as topographers, cartographers and quadraturists,
not a physical reality, it is not a large object or a set of objects configured by making maps and topographical views acquire plastic qualities that allow these
nature or transformed by human action, which is why I am not going to insist works to be seen today not only as technical or historical pieces but as -
on it here, but I would not like to begin this brief essay without remembering authentic works of art.
that the landscape is not synonymous with nature, nor is it synonymous with This is particularly interesting because it indicates that the contemplation
the physical environment that surrounds us or in which we are situated, but of the environment as a landscape did not begin until painters began to
rather it is a construct, a mental elaboration that humans carry out through the represent it. Which leads us to the confirmation of an added utility to the art of
phenomena of culture. painting, that of serving as a school of vision.
In all European languages we can see that there is an ambiguity in the use Augustin Berque has empirically established four necessary conditions that
of the term landscape that has given rise to much of the polysemy that the he demands for a civilization to be considered to have a 'landscape' culture;
word has today, since landscape serves both to describe a real environment: the these are: first, that the use of one or more words to say 'landscape' is
physical environment, and to designate a representation of that environment: recognized in it; second, that there is a literature (oral or written) describing
its image. The absence of two or more different words to name both a reality landscapes or singing their beauty; third, that there are pictorial representations
and its representation denotes that, in European culture, both concepts have of landscapes; and fourth, that they have gardens cultivated for pleasure2.
arisen and developed together. Certainly some cultures do not meet almost any of these four conditions, as
As certain philosophical currents explain, we only come to know things and is the case of very refined cultures, such as classical Greece, which, having
phenomena when we manage to name them and can describe them. Ekphrasis developed an essentially humanistic attitude, relegated to the background all
can, however, take on very diverse forms of expression, such as mathematical those physical phenomena that are not human, such as nature and its creations.
formulation, writing or graphic representation, depending on the type of In other cultures, two or three of these conditions have been achieved in order
scientific discipline and the degree of subjectivism with which the knowledge to be considered to have begun to possess the concept of landscape, as
of what is described is approached. happened with the Roman Empire, which enjoyed a splendid literature, called
The physical environment has enjoyed very different ways of being known, pastoral, in which the charm of the placesV and
covering an arc from geographical positivism, of those who represent the
territory on a map, providing the symbols with an exact location and the
strokes with a rigorous measure and proportionality, so that they are 2 Augustin Berque, «Paysage, milieu, h istoire», in AA.VV., Cinq propositions pour une théon'e du
baysage. Champ Vallon, Seyssel, 1994, p-16. In a more recent essay, Berque has allowed himself to
appreciated as a faithful reflection of physical reality, to the subjectivism of the add a fifth condition: the existence of «an explicit reflection on the landscape as a thing», Augustin
painter artist who capriciously transforms and alters locations, shapes and BERQUE, «Cosmophany and modern landscape», in Javier MADE- RUELO (ed.), Landscape and
colors to convey the expression of personal sensations. , thought, Abada-CDAN, Madrid, 2006, p. 190. However, I believe that the four original conditions are
more than sufficient to consider that a culture has achieved its 'landscape' quality.
Geographers and artists have managed to offer landscape visions of the
world before the rest of humans were able to discover what landscapes are in
the surroundings. The first cartographic and pictorial representations began to
show realities that until then were imperceptible, making both the objects and
their representation evident, in such a way that the representation makes the
object emerge, which means that we would not have achieved landscape
awareness without the existence of maps and paintings through which we have
been able to understand many of the qualities that the territory possesses as a
V This literature has its origin in the Idylls of the Hellenistic poet Theocritus (315-250 BC) and reaches
landscape. its peak in the Bucolics of Virgil (70-19 BC) and in the poem known as Beatusille... from the Epode It,
I, by Horace (65-8 BC).
 i4 LANDSCAPE AND ART 1. LANDSCAPE: AN ARTISTIC TERM 15
who built beautiful gardens created for pleasure and not for obtaining any not, simply, a landscape, that, between one and the other, lies the elaboration
productiveVI use from them3 , but nevertheless he did not generate an authentic of art"5.
landscape painting nor, perhaps more importantly, did he have a specific word I intend to show, very schematically, how this aesthetic vision has been
to name it. formed in artists and how the territory, the country, has been transformed into
• C In the ancient world, from Mesopotamia to classical Greece, poetic interest a landscape to the point of now inundating our entire life, as ours is now fully
was not awakened based on the contemplation of the particular characteristics a 'landscape' culture6.
of the territory, the phenomena of nature or the qualities of its elements, but In the first century BC, Epicureanism introduced into the Roman world the
rather the awareness of the place would take on clearly pragmatic and enjoyment of the pleasure provided by the senses as an ethical value, as
utilitarian overtones. opposed to the physical pleasure practiced by hedonists. In this way,
The literary references that have come down to us from these cultures Epicureanism focused intellectual attention on the sensory world and on
respond rather to the exposition of practical and useful criteria that will be empirical knowledge, themes that are related to the pleasures provided by
applied in agriculture, medicine, geography or surveying. : gardens and what, later, would be the enjoyment of landscapes. The Epicurean
f The myths of antiquity that refer to nature or territory also tend to have a influence can be recognized in Virgil's pastoral poetry, in which the value of
'utilitarian' meaning and the mention of rivers, mountains, trees and other his own experience of living in and from the countryside can be appreciated,
elements of nature cannot be interpreted today as poetic signs of contemplative something that becomes evident in the figure of Silenus in his Sixth Bucolic. It
reverence or disinterested delight but as ritualizing emblems that allowed them should be noted that in the pastoral poetry of Augustan Rome, although there is
to meet primary needs, as anthropologists explain. not yet a complete awareness of landscape nor are there descriptions of
In order to access the concept of 'landscape' in Western culture, it has been specific places, the effort to characterize differentiated scenarios for each poem
necessary to overcome the idea of utility by making a conceptual shift to focus can be appreciated, by means of the so-called locus amoenus8. .
attention on pleasurable observation, on the delight of the senses, just as is
done with the perception of a work of art.
When we say that a territory or a place is a landscape, it is because we are 5 Alain Roger, Brece brought from the landscape, Biblioteca Nueva, Madrid, 2007 (the ed. in French,
looking at it with aesthetic eyes, because we are in a position to enjoy the mere 1997). p-23
act of contemplating it. Therefore, the landscape is not something that is in the 6 Term coined by Augustin Berque that has now spread to all literature on landscape. See in this regard,
among other works by the same author, Augustin BERQUE, Les Raisons du Passage de la Chine
territory or in nature, which in themselves are neither beautiful nor ugly, but
antipue auxenvironnemenls de synthése, Hazan, Paris, 1995' PP. 39 sS.
rather it is found in the gaze of the one who contemplates with the intention of 7 VIRGILIO, Bucolics, Georgics, Credos, Madrid, 1990, pp. 55-60.
enjoying contemplation. 8 Locasamoenus is the term used for a typical construction in which a series of elements appear, such as
trees, water, shade, shelter, etc., which create the image of a peaceful place suitable for the installation
It is the aesthetic intentionality placed in contemplation that transforms a of characters. Cfr. Santiago FERNANDEZ MOSQUERA, "On space and the transformation of the
place into a landscape. But an aesthetic gaze is, above all, cultural, that is, it is pleasant place in Cervantes' narration", in Darío VILLANUEVA and Fernando CABO
ASEGUINOLAZA (eds.), Landscape, game and multilingualism. Vol. YO. The landscape in
subject to the conventions of the time, place, social class and level of education literature, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, 1996, pp. 303 s.
of the observer. This phenomenon has been described by Alain Roger, in his The Epicurean doctrines sought to combat superstition by eliminating the
Brief Treatise on Landscape, with the term 'artrealization'. For Roger, two fear of the gods and death, which meant a distancing of myths from religion,
types of artalization occur in the contemplation of nature. The first is direct, in something like what we would call today a vindication of secularism. It is
situ, the second is indirect, invisu. ■ necessary to highlight this feature since, in Western culture, the landscape
He explains it as follows: "The country is, in a certain way, the zero appears linked to the world of the senses, generally repressed by religious
degree of the landscape, what precedes its artistic realization, whether this is ideas, and with a strong pagan, secularVII component. .
direct (in situ) or indirect (in visu)..." and adds: "... it is the artists who are This delight of the senses will have its best expression in the creation of
responsible for reminding us of this first but forgotten truth: that a country is
VII See Francisco CALVO SERRALLER, «Concept and history of landscape painting», in AA.VV., Los
VI See Pierre GRIMAL, Lesjardinsmmains, Fayard, Paris, '1984. Paisajes del Prado, Nerea, Madrid, 1993, p. 27.
 16 LANDSCAPE and ART 1. LANDSCAPE: AN ARTISTIC TERM 17

gardens and very timidly in some parietal paintings that imitate VIIIIX them. Most
of these views are painted in such a way that they are framed in the centre of
wall panels or door jambs. In any case, they do not occupy a prominent place
and are always small in size. Furthermore, they were nothing more than an
expression of a decorative fashion, which seems confirmed by the fact that
they are images that are repeated on different walls and in different houses
without many variations. On the other hand, the motifs they refer to usually
have a sacred origin, which justifies the appearance of satyrs and other -
significant animals in them, thus moving away from the possibility of being
interpreted as images created for merely sensorial enjoyment.
These decorative frescoes would lead us to suppose that the Romans of the
1st century had already achieved the concept of landscape or, at least, that of
'landscape view', however, the term tapia, with which this type of work was
named, did not come to have the function of a noun, but rather always appears
linked to the term opera, as a qualifier, the combination of the two words
taking on the meaning of 'pictorial motifs'. Being an adjective that determines a
particularity of the motives or works, it never came to exist in the singular, in 1. Topiahaopera, Pompeii, 1st century AD
the form topion or topium, so it can be assumed that the concept never
managed to fully take hold in the Latin language, as evidenced by its scarce
use. total ownership, but that term seems to have been on the verge of crystallizing
These reasons lead us to believe that the concept of landscape did not fully then.
take hold in Roman culture, since the Latin language was unable to distill a The question thus arises: why did the concept of landscape not take hold in
specific word that was capable of naming it with the Roman world if the linguistic terms seem to be already ready, if there are
gardens created for the pleasure and delight of the senses, if poetic
compositions of a pastoral nature are written and if pictorial representations of
places are made, even if these are schematic and have a decorative meaning?
Augustin Berque assures in this regard: «Without a doubt, e! The ancient
world would have ended up inventing the concept of landscape... if the advent
of Christianity had not occurred. And he adds later: "... Augustinian orthodoxy
was the reason why the Western world, despite the Roman first fruits, did not
discover the landscape before the Renaissance." Indeed, Christianity
represented for the West a pause of more than a millennium in the emergence
and maturation of this concept.
Thus, for more than ten centuries the landscape will no longer occupy a
place in Western thought, nor will it require the attention of the

VIII IO Salvatore SETTIS, Le pareti ingannevoli. The uílla di Livia e la pittura di giardino, Electa, Milan, 12 Augustin BERQUE, «In the origin of the landscape», in Reuista Je West (89 (February 1997), PP.II and
2002, '2006. 17, respectively.
IX This is what Rosanna CAPPELLI, National Archaeological Museum of Naples, Electa Napoli,
Naples, 1999- p. 72, assumes.
 18 ' LANDSCAPE AND ART 1. LANDSCAPE: AN ARTISTIC TERM I9

artists, who will abandon the representation of places, and poets, who will classical world, the only subjects worthy of being treated by painting were
forget the description of those rural scenes that had reached such high levels, to those actions, divine or human, that were capable of ennobling or morally
dedicate themselves, both painters and poets, to the development of an art with improving those who contemplate them.
deep symbolic roots that will reach its maximum development in what has Both Alberti and Leonardo make it clear in their respective treatises
been called the Gothic style. dedicated to the art of painting that what artists should paint are 'stories' taken
I am interested in highlighting the rejection suffered by figurative from the Holy Scriptures, in such a way that the art of the painter does not
representation and representative arts, which resulted in the abandonment of consist in demonstrating the ease with which he imitates what the eye sees, but
naturalistic imitation in favor of symbolic schematism and the consequent in the capacity he possesses to 'compose stories'5.
delay in the representation of landscape images. For the doctrine of the Alberti's treatise is a normative text based on reasoning, scientism and a
medieval Church, the important thing is not to show the world but to narrate systematic measurability that is applied to the ordered and harmonious
the memorable facts of religion and virtue; therefore, painters had to avoid any composition of stories, rather than to the 'mimesis' of natural objects, which, on
fantastic or superfluous detail since, as Rosario Assunto points out: the other hand, had been expressly censured by Plato in the Republic, when he
"Everything that pushes fantasy beyond the limits of reality is deceptive^, says "mimetic art is something inferior that, coexisting with something
therefore, it does not even beautify^'3.- . inferior, engenders something inferior" 16.
This position will prevent the reproduction of a reality that seems natural Alberti, implicitly citing Pliny and Vitruvius in his treatise De Pictura,
and reinforces a type of schematic and conventional representation made up of leads to the idea that the source for painting is in classical poetry, which he
coded signs and icons that are immediately readable and easy to reproduce. makes clear when he writes: "The eminent painter Phidias confessed that from
The change of direction was to be initiated by the painters of Tuscany in the Homer he had learned how he could best paint Jupiter in majesty. I think that
second half of the 14th century thanks to the new attention that Giotto and his we would be richer and better off reading our poets. The painting that Alberti
disciples paid in their paintings to images of the world which, through the recommends is not intended to reproduce direct observations of nature but
representation of buildings, animals, plants and mountains, accompanied and ekphrasis.
surrounded the stories and which, probably, demanded as much attention from However, in Renaissance paintings that tell stories, there are sometimes
the painter and the faithful as the figures of the saints and the stories they told. spaces between the figures that have been called 'backgrounds', 'distances' and
In some texts of the period, one can see a concern on the part of the 'skies'. These are pictorial fragments, not necessarily executed by the masters,
ecclesiastical powers and the first 'art theorists' who viewed with suspicion the and which, over time, have gradually gained more plastic interest until they
representation of images that lacked an explicitly religious morality. In short, claimed a specificity and became an autonomous genre. But the interest in
the incipient appearance of landscape elements in painting disturbs those who these 'far away' fragments has taken a few centuries to take hold.
watch over religious orthodoxy. If we look at works from before the Renaissance period and even at
As we know, during the Renaissance painting will stand out among the paintings from Spanish Mannerism, from the beginning of the 17th century, we
other arts when, linked to the ideals of classicism, it is the object of attention of can see that many painters can completely dispense with any type of setting in
poets and scholars, such as Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Sacchetti, Filippo the backgrounds of their paintings,
Villani and Cennini, who write about the Tuscan art of their time, which ends
up leading to the appearance of treatises
15 . Lion. Battista ALBERTI, On painting, Fernando Torres, Valencia, 1976. LEONARDO DAVINCI,
Treatise on painting (ed. Angel González García); National Publisher, Madrid, *1983.
16 See PLATO, Republic, Book X. 603 b, Gredos, Madrid, 1986, 31992, p. 470.
13 Rosario ASSUNTO, The criticism of you in the mediaeval pensiero, II Saggiatore, Milan, 1961, p. 62. 17 Leon Battista ALBERTI, On Painting, op. cit., p. 146. . •
14 See Michael BAXANDALL, Giotto and the speakers. The vision of painting in Italian humanists: the
theorists, such as those
discovery of pictorial composition 135°~145° - Visor, Madrid, 1996.
devoted to the art of painting by Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo da
Vinci. For Renaissance theorists and artists, and in general for the entire
 20 LANDSCAPE AND ART 1. LANDSCAPE: AN ARTISTIC TERM 21
showing the figures on a neutral or even black surface, thus avoiding the
representation of the place. This renunciation of setting is intended to focus
attention on the story or the figures represented in them. The definition of the
background will interest Renaissance and Baroque painters only as a mere
instrument to achieve the illusion of perspective and, in this way, make the
story more credible. ,, ‘
The concern for achieving greater visual reality in the backgrounds aims to
improve the effects of depth, for which the painters detail in the first place
some discrete element, such as flowers, a tree, a stone or an animal, but they
schematize the silhouettes of mountains, forests or rivers, so that these
topographical accidents do not distract the viewer from the contemplation of
the historical subject being treated.
However, a political-religious event will occur that will precipitate interest
in landscape painting. At the end of the 16th century, the Protestant
Reformation led to iconoclastic attitudes that devastated many churches,
destroying their images and preventing painters from depicting stories from the 2. Giovanni Bellini, The Prayer in the Garden, 1459.
Holy Scriptures and mythological scenes. This circumstance forced Dutch and
Flemish artists to paint other types of subjects, lacking narrative description,
among which stand out portraits of bourgeoisie, still lifes and country views,
city of Jerusalem; on these mountains you can see a road, an embankment, a
that is, landscapes. In this way, these genres would gain autonomy in northern
forest, a village with white houses, a dark hermitage, a tower, etc., all of which
Europe, particularly in the Netherlands, where Calvinism would become strong
are recognizable but no details can be determined. Finally, at the bottom of the
in the 17th century, giving rise to splendid landscape painters who would even
plain, occupying the central part of the painting, is the city, of which neither
distinguish subgenres: rural landscapes, winter landscapes, urban views or the
outlines nor buildings can be distinguished, just a hint made with light vertical
famous seascapes; needing then a specific word to name this flourishing
brushstrokes on a dark strip. This gradation in the definition of the profiles,
activity, which would give rise to the Dutch term landtschap, from which
which abandons the 'ideal' qualities of the design to adjust to the physiological
landscape is derived.
reality of the loss of visual acuity as objects recede into the distance, allows the
On the contrary, painters from the Catholic area, indebted to the classicist
creation of the sensation of greater depth, but this would not be truly
vision, will keep history present in their paintings. In 1459 Giovanni Bellini
appreciable if it were not accompanied by a new treatment of light and its
painted a panel, The Prayer in the Garden, which depicts one of these stories,
qualities.
that of Jesus Christ in the trance of prayer. In the foreground, the figures of
In this painting by Bellini the light comes from the left, following the
Jesus Christ and the apostles who accompany him, the rock on which they
conventions of his time. This is a diffuse lighting that does not cast shadows on
lean, a tree and a wooden fence that closes the schematic garden, are perfectly
the figures on the ground, but the artist has managed to place the sun behind
defined in their profiles. What we would call the middle ground (although far
the horizon line, at the bottom of the plain on which Jerusalem is located, and
away) is formed by two soft mountains located at the ends of the painting that
has consequently illuminated the clouds from below, as they are usually seen
reveal between them a deep plain in which the
at twilight. This detail, apparently circumstantial, helps to increase the illusion
of depth, by leaving the city and the mountains in backlight and creating a
plane of clouds parallel to the
 2,2 , LANDSCAPE AND ART
1. LANDSCAPE: AN ARTISTIC TERM 23

ground plane that escapes in the same horizon line, thus breaking the sensation
of a backdrop that the 'distant' areas had until then. But, above all, this way of
using light generates a sense of atmosphere, placing the scene in a specific
time of day, at dusk. Thus, Giovanni Bellini has managed to create an
authentic illusion of depth and temporality of the scene. This double artistic
achievement has not emerged from reading the classics, as Alberti
recommends, but from empirical observation of physical phenomena, from
direct observation of what happens in the country.
The commercial activity of the Most Serene Republic of Venice with the
northern countries and a certain religious permissiveness made it possible for
Venetian painters to begin to use the landscape, "what is seen from a site", not
as a mere decorative or complementary background that can be added or
removed without diminishing the narrative effectiveness of the painting, but as
a dramatic agent of the subject being dealt with. Bellini's long life and his
continued capacity for experimentation allowed him to be the master of the
great generation of Venetian painters, among whom were Vincenzo Catena,
Palma the Elder, Lorenzo Lotto and Giorgione, with whom he consolidated a
school based on the sensual delicacy of colours, the control of light to generate
a sense of temporality and the environmental quality of the backgrounds that
become landscapes, although these continue to be instrumental.
The particular political circumstances of Venice and its commercial
3.JOSEPHANTONKOCK, Schmadnbach Waterfall, 1821-1822.
activity allowed the emergence of lay clients among the rich merchants who
made it possible for artists, following the Renaissance path led by Andrea
Mantegna and the brothers Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, to conceive their Poussin, like Lorrain, who worked in papal Rome in the mid-17th century, are
paintings in terms of physical beauty and not spiritual truth. artists who come from the region of northern France. Poussin is originally
During the Baroque period, some painters from the Catholic area, who -
from Picardy and Claude Gellée from Lorraine, the region from which he takes
necessarily had to represent stories, would progressively reduce the size of the
his stage name.
figures on their canvases, so that the background would become increasingly
Despite these changes in taste during the Baroque, landscape in Western
present until it became a true landscape. Thus, in many paintings the figures
painting did not achieve true autonomy until Romanticism, with the works of
seem to serve as a mere pre-text, as a decorative element or a reference to the
painters such as Joseph Anton Koch, Caspar Wolf, Johan Christian Dahl, Carl
Roman countryside of Nicolas Poussin or the sunsets over the classicist ports
Gustav Carus or Caspar David Friedrich, in which the landscape acquired a
of Claude Lorrain. I think it may be interesting to remember that both
spiritual entity and total independence from any other theme, will or interest.
To achieve this, it was necessary for a new aesthetic category to emerge, the
18 The DRAE defines, in its first meaning, the word landscape as: "Extension of land that can be seen sublime, which was now independent of the beauty of classicism that was
from a site."
based on symmetry, measure, proportion and eurhythmy.
The category of the sublime allowed us to judge those types of paintings in
which the forces of nature, without limits or ties, are expressed.
 24 LANDSCAPE AND ART 1. LANDSCAPE: AN ARTISTIC TERM 25
be 'tranquil country life'.
In reality, landscape painting did not achieve its full autonomy until
Romanticism succeeded in placing it on an equal footing with historical
painting, so that pure landscapes, without the support of figures and without
any narrative pretension, came to acquire an epic significance. However, many
romantic landscapes possess a true meaning, which can be very deep, but,
unlike what happens with historical painting, in which the artist articulates
symbolic and allegorical elements to configure a narrative program that the
spectator must decipher through an iconographic reading, in landscape painting
there is no encrypted message that the spectator must interpret through the
syntactical analysis of each of the elements that make up the painting, since the
elements that make up the scene are usually composed naturally, and not
according to any programmatic will.
In most cases, these are paintings that lack dramatic action; nothing
transcendental happens in them; they simply show what is seen from a frame
that cuts out a natural-looking setting. However, romantic landscape painting is
expressed in a symbolic language that has radically separated itself from the -
4. AELBErT CUYP, RIVERSIDE Landscape with Nacas, 1648-1650.
classical tradition and has generated another type of meaning that is not found
in the articulation of its details but in the totality of the painting'9.
dominant and impetuous before the startled gaze of the occasional spectator The landscape thus appears as a symbol linked to Nature, which is then
who appears minimized in the painting. High mountains, glaciers, waterfalls, discovered as something emotional, full of astonishing power and destructive
abysses, gorges, stormy seas and storms will replace stories as themes in the force. Through images of nature and the expressiveness of its forces, romantic
paintings. landscape painters show personal emotional states and emotions, using images
In contrast to the elevation of the sublime and its heroic and of volcanoes, abysses, storms, deserts and the sea.
overwhelming meaning, a debate arose shortly afterwards, at the end of the By using these landscape themes, they depart from the cultural codes,
18th century, over another aesthetic category that was opposed not only to the which, following the arguments of Jean Jacques Rousseau in his Discourse on
norms of classical beauty but also to the sublime. This category, which will be the Sciences and Arts (1750), are supposed to be corrupted, since they separate
called picturesque, is characterized by focusing attention on rough and rugged us from the original condition of humanity. Using natural views, these images
textures, on things rooted in the ground, rustic and rural, and on speak in a universal, evocative and non-discursive language about terror,
inconsequential nature motifs that do not overwhelm by their excessive size or vertigo, fear, loneliness and infinity.
overwhelming grandeur, but are appreciated for their simplicity and humility,
causing a discreet pleasure, being used by painters for their capacity for 19 See Charles ROSEN and Henri ZERNER, Romanticism and Realism. The myths of the 19th century,
characterization. Hermann Blume, Madrid, 1988 (the ed. in English, 1984), pp- 60 ff.
These picturesque elements are simple groups of rough rocks, groups of
trees that seem to have sprung up of their own accord, rural corners, rustic
houses with smoke coming out of the chimney, domestic animals grazing
peacefully, streams with calm waters that bathe the riverside vegetation; in
short, scenes that do not produce the slightest fear or uneasiness, but rather,
they present a bucolic and poetic vision of what the idle spectator supposes to
 26 YARTE LANDSCAPE 1. LANDSCAPE: AN ARTISTIC TERM 27

points out a series of physical characteristics, such as quantity or texture. For

him, sublime objects are large in size, and beautiful ones, comparatively small
- beauty should be smooth and polished; large things, rough and negligent52. "
In the same way, William Gilpin, in the first of his essays on picturesque
beauty, also aims to show the physical characteristics of the picturesque as
opposed to those of the beautiful, pointing out that the qualities of rough,
rugged and coarse are the expression of the picturesque53.
The Italian word pittoresco was used to describe the effects of light and
shadow produced by sensualist painters such as Giorgione and Titian, who
paid attention to changes in luminosity and environmental phenomena in their
landscape backgrounds. The picturesque is the formal quality that corresponds
to the pictorial, that is, to plastic values such as chromatism, light, shadows
and textures, as opposed to the drawing, a category to which lines, silhouettes
and shapes defined by contour lines belong.
These pictorial values are appreciated in the observation of certain effects
of nature such as contrasts of light and shadow, changes in texture, the
5. William Turner, Venice, Grand Canal with Santa Maria della Salute, 1840.
mutation of contours or the differentiation of depth planes. In Turner's work,
the overflow of form and the vagueness of contours will allow an assessment
of chromatism, light and textures, brightness and shadows, that is, of the visual
The Romantic painters sought to endow the landscape with profound and
or, if you will, landscape qualities, which are subjectively projected onto
noble feelings, with an expression of that reality that is hidden behind things,
places.
of the mystery, power and infinity of nature, while presenting the drama of
Without a doubt, one of the stellar moments of landscape painting
man who, having lost the central position attributed to him in the Renaissance,
occurred in the early years of Impressionism, when French painters searched
faces the universe alone and unarmed. The landscape then becomes a means of
the Normandy coasts for phenomena worthy of painting, for which they took
emotional communication, pure emotion. The English landscape painter John
their belongings and went out into the countryside to paint "what is seen." It is
Constable puts it this way: “Painting is a synonym for feeling”20.
also the most famous pictorial moment, so I am not going to dwell on it,
The sentimental nature of Romanticism will lead to free interpretations of
although I do not want to pass without mentioning the work of Claude Monet,
ancient themes, such as those made by Turner of the views of Venice. William
for whom the landscape is going to become a dis-
Turner was a precocious artist and a tireless traveler. In 1788, when he was
barely 13 years old, he copied the prints from William Gilpin's book
22 Cfr. Edmund BURKE, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Observations on the Piver We, which made known the first images illustrating Beautiful, Tecnos, Madrid, 1987 (ed. in English, 1757), pp. 84s. .
the theory of the picturesque. X XI 23 See William GlLPIN, Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, Abada, Madrid, 2004 (ed. in English,
i79i).pp-59ff. ...
It has been repeatedly pointed out how William Turner, a man of his time,
lived and interpreted the theories of Edmund Burke on the sublime and those
of Uvedale Price, Richard Payne Knight and William Gilpin on the
picturesque. Burke, in his Philosophical Enquiry concerning our Ideas of the
Sublime and the Beautiful, when comparing the beautiful with the sublime

X John Constable, in a letter to John Fisher dated October 23, 1821. Quoted in Robert HOOZEÉ (ed.),
L'opera completa di Constable, Rizzoli, Milan, 1979, p. 85.
XI William GlLPlN, Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales, 1782.
 28 LANDSCAPE AND ART 1. LANDSCAPE: AN ARTISTIC TERM

analytical path that Picasso and Braque seemed to take in the initial moments
of the adventure of cubism, but which they quickly abandoned in favour of still
life (the objects) and portraiture (the subjects). A painter as versatile as
Picasso, capable of inventing cubism following in the footsteps of Cézanne,
abandoned the landscape genre after the experiments he carried out in the
summer of 1909 in Horta de Ebro, to focus his attention on still life and the
figure2*. Thus, a painter trained in Cubism, Fernand Léger, published in 1914,
in Soirées de Paris, a text entitled "Les réalisations picturales actuelles". In
which he states: "Now, trains and cars, with their plume of smoke or dust,
monopolize the dynamic load, relegating the landscape to a secondary and
decorative place."
Between the functionality of the machine, the mastery of objects and
expressionist psychologism, interest in the landscape will be diluted during
avant-garde modernity, the landscape will be reduced to a genre of Sunday
amateur painters and, barely, some artists interested in oriental culture, such as
the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, the composer John Cage or the painter Yves
Klein, will keep a latent idea of landscape in their aesthetics that will
germinate again in the next generation of artists.
But, when modernity began to be clearly challenged, at the end of the
6. Claude Monet, Étretat at sunset, 1883.
1960s, postmodern sensibility was going to rediscover a real goldmine in the
old anticlassical category of the picturesque, which would allow the landscape
to recover its position as an artistic theme. The discrediting of the avant-garde's
to analyse atmospheric effects, subjecting the same places to a systematic look presuppositions led to the practice of an art that values the process more than
at different times of the day and at different times of the year. the results, which denies the genres of painting and sculpture, in which the
Thus, ideas about the landscape move from the representation of avant-garde had entrenched themselves, seeking new manifestations and
geographical features to the embodiment of the 'impressions' that these - behaviors, while artists try to escape from the commercial circuits of art
together provoke in the scrutinizing gaze of the painter who pays attention to galleries, finding in the public spaces of the city and in the open territory the -
the mutable and circumstantial, such as the quality and intensity of light and ideal places to create and show their new artistic concepts, thus giving rise to
chromatic nuances. land art. These creators were interested in the ephemeral, in the pro-
With the modernity embodied by the avant-garde movements and isms of
the early 20th century, both landscape painting and the art of gardening were
relegated to the background, if not stigmatized, in favor of the myth of the 24 See, in this same book, the essay by Manuel GARCÍA GUATAS, 77-1IO. ,
machine that represents the ideas of progress and functionality in an eminently 25 Fernand LÉGER, «Current pictorial achievements» (1914), in Functions of painting, Notebooks for
Dialogue, Madrid, 1969, p. 26. •
urban art. Monet himself took up residence in Paris in the late 1870s and
sought out these 'atmospheric' effects in the city's more modern urban settings,
such as the Gare Saint-Lazare and the Place de L'Europe.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Cézanne remained obsessed with

discovering the way in which Mont St. Victoire was made present, an
 30 LANDSCAPE AND ART 1. LANDSCAPE: AN ARTISTIC TERM 31

8. Richard Long, Huesca Stone Circle, 1995-

To develop this type of work, artists abandon the urban framework and its
institutions, moving to work in places as remote and untouched as the deserts
of the southern United States, but there they do not intend to represent the
7. Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1970.
landscape but rather they work in and on the landscape. Unlike the plein air
painters of Impressionism, once the work is finished, these artists do not
transport the work to the gallery or museum, but it belongs inseparably to the
conceptual and excessive, giving rise to impermanent, dematerialized or
place, from which it takes on its meaning and where it acquires all its power.
immeasurable works.
In the late 1960s, when the crisis of modernity was already evident, a flood Robert Smithson discovered the theories of William Gilpin and Uvedale
of surprising works overflowed traditional artistic categories, proposing the Price on the picturesque through Christopher Hussey's book, which was
dematerialization of art through actions, ephemeral constructions, occupations republished in 1967, while other artists found their source of inspiration and
of space, words, ideas, photographs, processes, projections, etc., which were the models of behaviour for their work in the uncontaminated world of
grouped under the convenient label of conceptual art. prehistoric buildings, in the desert lines of Nazca in Peru and in the ancient
There are three events that can help us understand the feeling of cultures of the Far East.
dissatisfaction, utopia and rebellion that gave rise to postmodernism in the late
1960s: the demonstrations against the Vietnam War in Berkeley in 1967, the
May 1968 revolt in Paris and the conquest of the Moon in 1969. In this 26 Christopher Hussey, The Picturesque. Studies in a Point of View, Frank Cass, London, 1927. There
are two reissues of this book, Archon Books, Hamdon (Conn.), 1967 and another in 1983.
environment two genres of works emerge that are directly related to the 27 See Lucy R. L1PPARD, Overlay. Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory, Pantheon Books, New
landscape, called earthworks and land art. York, 1983.
 32 LANDSCAPE AND ART 1. LANDSCAPE: AN ARTISTIC TERM 33

9. Michael HEizeR, Complex One/City, 1972-1976. 10. David Nash, Wooden Boulder.

The image of the cowboy roaming the vast prairies, of the pioneer colonising the territory, of earth, construction of concrete walls or massive installations of
the wandering traveller recreated by writers such as Jack KerouacXII, together with the utopian
idea of a return to the origins, of veiled Rousseaunian inspiration, in its denial of the values of Yo
mechanistic civilisation, coincide with the ideal of simplicity postulated by minimal art, as can be elements that cause strong visual impacts. Others, like Robert ;
seen in the works based on pure geometric forms, which develop according to simple systems of Smithson, gradually became aware of the difficult relationship between civilization and
growth and progression, which all land art artists began to use. These were ephemeral or long- nature, developing projects to recover, through artistic action, quarries that are no longer
lasting actions that were carried out in and for a specific place and that, once completed, exploited;
remained there, inextricably linked to the place. did not prevent Smithson from making resounding earth movements.sir- ;
But not all land art artists approached the landscape with the same assumptions and being seen from a primary geometry, while Walter de Maria in ¡
intentions. In general, American artists proposed imposing actions that altered the place and His most essentialist works will be limited to drawing immense straight lines that .
transformed the landscape using megalomaniacal means, such as huge movements of They cross the desert and will not leave any noticeable wounds in the place, or 1
provoke the pathetic effect of some meteorological agents, such as lightning, which he
exorcises in his widely disseminated work The Lightning Field, installed in the Quemado
desert (New Mexico).
British land art artists, on the other hand, were more subtle.
As heirs to the sensitivity of the 18th century landscape garden, to the tradition of grand
tour travellers and explorers of new territories, they have travelled to the most remote
places in the world, making their ephemeral steps the theme of their work, so their
intervention '
XII Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Anagrama, Madrid, 1986 (the ed. (in English, 1957).
34 LANDSCAPE AND ART 1. LANDSCAPE: AN ARTISTIC TERM 35

along the way, or to take photographs of the places they pass through. Some building sheepfolds, roads, bridges, docks and villages, felling mountains
of these land art works have served to bring back into focus the qualities of and carving slopes, diverting rivers and planting crops. In two words:
certain landscapes, as has happened with the Ffestiniog Valley and the banks 'making history'. When we contemplate these places transformed by work,
of the River Dwryd, through David Nash's work entitled Wooden Boulder, we understand that cultivation, worship and culture have the same root, a
an immense wooden ball weighing 400 kilograms placed in the bed of a common meaning. And if they have not been betrayed by the extreme greed
stream that has flowed through North Wales, being intermittently carried by of speculation, we are glad to see them.
the waters, from the stream in which it was placed in November 1978, until This is when the word landscape takes on full meaning.
it was lost in the sea, more than 25 years laterXIII.
A recent generation of artists, dedicated to photography, has found the
landscape, real or constructed, to be the central theme of their work, while
landscape architecture has been gaining in importance in recent decades, an
importance it had previously lacked. Characters such as Jacques Simon,
Richard Haag, Adrian Geuze, Michel Corajud, Peter Latz, Bernard Lassus or LITERATURE
Georges Descombes and Paolo Bürgi, who have been kind enough to
accompany us on this course, are good examples of this new artistic activity AA.W., Five propositions for a theory of landscape, Champ Vallon, Seyssel,
that takes the landscape as the object of its work. 1994.
Through pastoral poetry, landscape painting, land art and photography, AA.W., DavidNash, Provincial Council of Huesca, Huesca, 2005-
places and territories have been interpreted in artistic terms, countries have ALBERTI, Leon Battista, On painting, Fernando Torres, Valencia, 1976.'
been 'artalized' in visu at different periods in history. This transformation has ASSUNTO, Rosario, The critique of nelpensiero medioevale, II Saggiatore,
not been easy to achieve; it has cost many efforts over centuries and is the
Milan, 1961.
product of a great accumulation of individual and collective experiences. But
BAXANDALL, Michael, Giotto and the speakers. The vision of painting in Italian
this aesthetic gaze has also been projected in situ, so that deserts and
humanists^ the discovery of pictorial composition 1^0-145°' Visor, Madrid,
grasslands, coasts and mountains, valleys and plains, jungles and marshes, -
1996.
forests and moors are now seen by almost the entire population as
BERQUE, Augustin, «Cosmophany and modern landscape», in Javier
landscapes, as territories or as art-rich countries. It is not surprising, since
MADE- RUELO (ed.), Landscape and thought, Abada/GDAN, Madrid,
they are, because what our eyes see when we leave the city is not nature, as
2006.
is naively believed and repeated, but the product of a continued and
—, «At the origin of the landscape», in Revista de Occidente 189 (February
persevering art. When we now contemplate any of these real scenarios and
1997).
apply to them, more or less consciously, aesthetic categories that allow us to
—, Les Raisons du Paysage de la Chine antique aux environnements de
enjoy what we see, smell, hear and perceive with. With all the senses in
mind, we must recognize that any scenario we find ourselves in has nothing synthese, Hazan, Paris, 1995. ’
BURKE, Edmund, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the
to do with the myth of nature, since the entire surface of the Earth has
already been trampled, occupied and exploited by man. Farmers, ranchers, Sublime and the Beautiful, Tecnos, Madrid, 1987 (the ed. (in English,
miners, sailors, builders and soldiers, among many other hard-working 1757).
human beings, have carved the signs of a culture of work into the land in a CALVO SERRALLER, Francisco, «Concept and history of landscape painting», in
ritual, continuous and selfless manner for centuries and centuries. AA.W., Los Paisajes del Prado, Nerea, Madrid, 1993-
When we now look at the countryside and make it a landscape with our
eyes, we are appreciating those other arts that have given concrete forms to
the territory with the plough and the axe, with the pick and the shovel,
XIII See DauidNash, Provincial Council of Huesca, Huesca, 2005, pp. 118-123.
36 LANDSCAPE AND ART

FERNÁNDEZ Mosquera, Santiago, "On space and the transformation of 2. TIME SPACES OF LANDSCAPE AND ART
the pleasant place in Cervantes' narration", in Darío VILLANUEVA MARTIN SEEL
and Fernando CABO AsEGUINOLAZA (eds.), Landscape, game and
multilingualism. Vol. YO. The landscape in literature, University of
Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, 1996.
GiLPIN, William, Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, Abada, Madrid,
2004 (the ed. in English, 1794).
GRIMAL, Pierre, Les jardins romains, Fayard, Paris, 31984.
HOOZEE, Robert (ed.), L'operalínea di Constable, Rizzoli, Milan, 1979.
HUSSEY, Christopher, The Picturesque. Studies in a Point of View,
Archon Books, Hamdon (Conn.), 1967, 1983 (ed. in English, 1927).
KEROUAC, Jack, On the Road, Anagrama, Madrid, 1986 (the ed. (in
English, 1957).
LÉGER, Fernand, Functions of Painting, Notebooks for Dialogue, Madrid,
1969.
LEONARDO DA Vinci, Treatise on painting, Editora Nacional, Madrid,
1983.
LlPPARD, LucyR., Overlay. Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory,
Pantheon Books, New York, 1983.
MADERUELO, Javier, The landscape. Genesis of a concept, Abada, The title of my contribution already contains the thesis that I would like to
Madrid, 2005, 3OO6S. develop. Aesthetic landscape and aesthetic art are both special
PLATO, Republic, Gredos, Madrid, 1986, '1992. constellations of space and time. These are deeply related, although they
ROGER, Alain, Brief Treatise on the Landscape, Biblioteca Nueva, differ significantly from each other in one central aspect: form.
Madrid, 2007 (the ed. in French, 1997). I begin—in the first part—with a brief sketch of the constitution of the
ROSEN, Charles and ZERNER, Henri, Romanticism and Realism. The aesthetic landscape of nature and the city, and I continue—in the second
myths of 19th century art, Hermann Blume, Madrid, 1988 ( the ed. (in part—with an equally brief sketch of the meaning of the artistic form. Both,
English, 1984). let us say, constitute very appropriate occasions to provide man with a
SETTIS, Salvatore, Le pareti ingannevoli. La villa di Livia e la pittura more intense awareness of the present of his life.
digiardino, Electa, Milan, 2002, 22006.
VIRGILIO, Bucolics, Georgics, Gredos, Madrid, 1990.
YO. Time spaces of the landscape
Since a simple definition says little, it is not important to start with a
definition. By aesthetic landscape (of nature or of the city) I understand the
appearance of an immeasurable space. This phenomenon I am talking
about is not just a landscape, but an aesthetic landscape. My brief
definition does not, therefore, aim to reduce to the concept all the ways of
understanding the
 q•
38 LANDSCAPE AND ART “21 2. TIME SPACES OF LANDSCAPE AND ART 39
landscape. That this is a well-defined, that is, perfectly delimited, conception
of the landscape is demonstrated by the concept of appearance. "Appearing"
is a concept opposite to both the permanent "being" and the somewhat
deceptive (or simply: somewhat simulative) "appearance." The appearance ' ' " that have a distant overview or panoramic view (a form
of a thing is the way in which it meets man's sensitive perception here and ' very widespread landscape blindness), but corporeal subjects who are experienced as
now. Aesthetic perception is concentrated in this appearance. I can look at a receptive and vulnerable beings in the midst of a spatial event.
ball in a field in a certain way to see if it is a red ball (which I have forgotten Q:, Landscapes are not, in other words, static at all.
there). But I can also look at that ball through the mist, in its red shape, with 2. " They are not, On the one hand, because the observer can move in them,
its seams and scratches: simply because of its instantaneous appearance; • with which perspectives and views are always changing. And they are not,
then I look at it aesthetically. That something stands out in its appearance for because
a perception that is interested in this appearance is a universal characteristic 91 on the other hand,because in them there is always movement: at least of the
of aesthetic experience. All aesthetic objects are in essence appearances. • XIV light, almost always also from the air and from plants, from animals, from
They are objects of a perception that focuses on how these objects are >. . men and of the instruments they handle. This is an event
offered here and now to sensible perception (whatever the way in which • • not only visual, but also acoustic and olfactory, susceptible to a
perceivers can also know and interpret such objects). In aesthetic synesthetic perception. The perception of the landscape is not only the
experience, it is always a question, in other words, of the time-space of its experience
own realization. It is about the encounter with the how of the appearance of . of the existence and transformation of many things in space; it is the
objects or situations that are their occasions. experience
When he said that the aesthetic landscape is an 'appearance', he was . ...experience of a space that happens: the experience, as it is, of being between and in
referring only to a characteristic that this particular aesthetic object shares the midst of a processual and multiform appearance of spatial figures.
with all other aesthetic objects. The particularity of this object and of its
' This event can only take place in a larger space. Even
perception must therefore reside—not surprisingly—in a particular
"• When in a translational sense we speak of the 'landscape of a room'
commission of its appearance.
2- 'tion', we are talking about spaces that are somewhat larger and more
The space of a landscape is given, like almost all space, along with a
extensive than the
diversity of objects in that space. But for the experience of a space as a
,. currents —and less encompassable with the eye than these—. The landscape
landscape, what is central is not the finding of isolated or phenomenally -
* always has to do with the dimension of a space. Its reality begins where a space
combined objects facing each other, but rather the experience, which means
appears in its dimension in the sense that its measurements cannot be
being in the midst of these objects: in their nearness and distance, in their
encompassed by those who are in it.
oppressive or liberating, eloquent or silent presence.
“ tran. The boundaries of a room can be encompassed with the gaze and
For someone who thus finds himself 'in the midst' of a multitude of
■. you may come across them. The space of a landscape, on the other hand, has
phenomena, there is no centre from which a fixed order of these appearances
neither
can be established. The landscape space surrounds the perceivers; it shapes
edges or limits; it ends in a horizon: there where the contours, shapes and
the place in which they are located. These are not mere observers either
delimitations become diffuse, or there where - as in . the case of a tangled city—the
space continues appreciably: without the areas in which it does so being able to
be covered from the person himself
perspective. Landscapes are, therefore, spaces that, from the point of
observation of those who perceive these spaces as landscapes, cannot be
. neither encompassed nor measured. The landscape of a park, by
• For example, it is distinguished from a minor urban park in that it cannot be
. see through it at all times, in which one can 'lose oneself' in it,

XIV Martin SEEL, Ásthetik des Erscheinens. Munich, 2000 [ed. English: Aesthetics of Appearing, Stanford, 2004].
38 LANDSCAPE AND ART “21 2. TIME SPACES OF LANDSCAPE AND ART 40
to abandon oneself to the events of an undefined place. But
'incomprehensible' in the sense of the word relevant here is also the
landscape of a desert in which the eye finds nothing. For whoever is in the
middle of a desert finds himself surrounded on all sides by an expanse that .
He cannot calculate with sight and hearing, he cannot classify or
group
nest in a panoramic view.
 41 LANDSCAPE AND ART 2. TIME SPACES OF LANDSCAPE AND ART 41

In any case, it is not enough to have no roof over your head. The inner nature as a landscape, but the landscape of the city is characterized by
courtyard open to the sky does not make any landscape. The space of a transparency, comprehensiveness, proximity between citizens, legibility, etc.
landscape only opens up with the absence of all vertical and horizontal XV It would be a multiform and certainly living inside, but not an outside that is
closure. This open state is always openness for a subject who relates in a as vast as it is incomprehensible. The urban landscape with the newly
certain way to the space of his environment. The aesthetic landscape cannot defined meaning of 'landscape' would thus create a completely unsatisfactory
be thought of without the presence of a subject at least potentially situation. In light of this, I would like to clarify that the universal concept of
experiencing its space. The experience of landscape can only take place landscape, developed so far, is also capable of making the particular
where someone is in such a space in a state of aesthetic attention—'among attraction of urbanXVI landscapes comprehensible.
and in the midst of' the plethora of its phenomena—and only here is the All theories of natural beauty have always agreed on one point: the
aesthetic landscape present as landscape. But if aesthetic objects are experience of natural beauty necessarily entails a positivization of the
understood in a formal sense as occasions for aesthetic perception, then any (apparently) contingent, of a certain character of nature foreign to the
larger space in the city or in nature can be summarily said to be a landscape, (familiar) cultural and existential sense. Beautiful nature irritates and delights
that is, a potential place for the aesthetic experience of the landscape. by never being the same, by its own movement, its unpredictable variety in
The openness of a landscape's space is not only a matter of its procedural the particular, especially if the natural landscape is an unarticulated space
manner of appearing and its spatial dimensions. It is also the result of an that frequently shows itself to be incommensurable with our expectations and
essential anonymity and contingency of spatial events. Everything that is purposes. This space is an unfathomable event that absorbs our attention and
there and happens there exceeds not only simultaneous sensory perception, gives us a liberating space from our own fixations. We certainly do not
but also any possibility of understanding and explaining. Even if – something access aesthetic perception purely from our cultural model, but the aesthetic
quite unlikely – every event and every state isolated from the space of the relationship with nature is itself a cultural condition. However, here we take
landscape were explainable (in everyday or scientific language), they would a clear distance from the 'interpreted world', just as in the experience of
escape all explanation. The game of appearances is immeasurable. It's not happy moments we take distance from the continuity of our desire and our -
that this is a defect of the landscape. This does not exist otherwise. Anyone wanting. Aesthetically appealing nature is a digressive part of human culture.
who seeks to contemplate a landscape with aesthetic intent does not want it It is a welcome stranger that pleases us because it allows us to get away from
to be any other way - otherwise, he would not have bothered to look for it. our fixations for a while. Beautiful or sublime nature thus becomes a space of
The whole point of the act of entering into aesthetic landscapes is that in complete freedom that offers the subject of perception the opportunity to
them we go outside: an outside that is both real and metaphorical. This encounter the world as an end in itself. ..
outside is real because we abandon our four walls, the generally
comprehensible spatial coordinates. We went outside. But this is only a
necessary condition, and by itself not sufficient, of the experience of 3 The following observations are based on Martin SEEL, Eine asthelik der Natur, Frankfurt, 1991,
especially chap. [V, pp. 212 ff. and 230 ff. There I also dealt with the question of the sense in
landscape. For the larger space, not closed behind or above, is, as we have which we can speak today of a 'free' nature in general.
described, only a potential place for the experience of the aesthetic -
landscape. The current experience of the landscape occurs when, while being
in that real outside, we are at the same time in a metaphorical outside: when
the ties with the pragmatic orientations that determine our behavior in space
are loosened; when we no longer move in this space with determined goals,
but rather we become receptive to the irregular presence of the larger space.
.
At this point, we might be faced with an objection: this may be true of

XV In this sense, the small urban park can also be part of a landscape when XVIlets you see the street lines. So it's part of an urban landscape.
 42 LANDSCAPE AND ART 2. SPACES OF TIME OR LANDSCAPE AND ART 43

But it is unquestionable that it is not only the larger spaces of a nature that personal interaction. But again it is a special anonymity that characterizes the
is to a certain extent free that can positively exceed our orientations in the condition of the landscape. 'Personal interaction in the city space does not
manner described. In December 1993, anyone who took the Berlin subway to consist of everyone being familiar with each other. On the contrary: everyone
Potsdamer Platz found themselves in the middle of the city, out in the open treats each other, if all goes well, with the greatest possible indifference.
on an empty lot, occupied only by a road junction, from which all other (Here, the affirmation of anonymity and contingency has, along with the
forms of urban life had withdrawn. Where there once was a centre there was aesthetic aspect, a direct moral trait.) Everything remains in the exchange of
a clear horizon, fragmentarily limited by disconnected centres that then had impertinent glances or in the practice of avoiding glances and contacts. One
to be suffered as a horizon. The collapsed wall left nothingness on both sides. moves in the context of urban action of which one is a part, remains in it and
The owner of the kiosk where visitors to the outer wall had long stocked up takes its paths without wanting to act upon it. In human activities in the city,
on souvenirs and groceries has closed down. The sites for construction work one finds oneself in an interaction that is largely outside of any channeled,
had already been marked; some urban nomads had already removed their direct, oriented interaction. Again this is a metaphorical beast. When we treat
caravans. This was also a place where - as in free nature - hardly anyone each other as inhabitants or visitors of the city, we are outside of what binds
could do anything other than, aware of the landscape they saw, adapt to the us as concrete men; we are only connected—if all goes well—by the fear of
given time and space. . inconvenience and mutual offense. This reserved form of treatment keeps us
Finding yourself in a place devoid of urban space and its history is free and leaves us time to participate in the unstaged theatre of a city
something like the pure form of its landscape character, which is populated by many.
undoubtedly rarely given to us in such a pure dose. For the landscape of the
city can only unfold where its organization, beautiful or ugly, ends, where its
amenity has also ended, where the space it occupies cannot take care of it (in II. Time spaces of art ■
its entirety): where a part of its dominion over space ceases: where it lets
space form without being able or wanting to dispose of it. The city landscape Art objects, on the other hand, are always stagings of a certain type. They are
unfolds only where its space cannot be fully coordinated by the things and - presentations that, in the configuration of their appearance, make something
materials of the city—its buildings, roads, parks and plazas, commercial visible or heard—and, thus, understood—by an audience. They are certainly
brands, etc. also landscapes to the extent that they - or the objects in them - are also
Here the city is shown at the same time as a purely historical space. It is historical formations, and often also objects of possible understanding; but
an event of transformations that arise from intentional actions that, however, landscapes are not all constructions whose meaning, however mysterious and
can never be reduced as a whole to an isolated intentional action. The events untranslatable, could be investigated in aesthetic experience. Although many
of the city are, unlike those of nature, per definition, historical events, which figures in them may fit together and play, they are not compositions nor do
is in fact, in many respects and in a lesser way, equally true of present-day they have composition, nor are they forms nor do they have form—however
nature. This results in the difference for the experience of the city as a much it may sometimes seem to friends of art as if they had meaning and
landscape that its starting point is not the loss, as disorienting as it is form. It is, therefore, the particular formal character of art objects that
liberating, of the interpretative sense, but rather a no less ambivalent distinguishes their existence from the presence of
interference of interpretations. Nature as a landscape is empty of oppressive
or liberating meaning, and the city as a landscape, full of oppressive or
liberating meaning. Or, to put it more soberly: urban space is, in terms of the
formation of its meaning, overdetermined, while natural space is
underdetermined.
But in the aesthetic space of a city we are not only exposed to an
overwhelming phenomenal interaction, but also to an equally overwhelming
 44 LANDSCAPE AND ART 2. TIME SPACES OF LANDSCAPE AND ART 45

company of a landscape. But - and this is now the thesis of my second part - knowledge," a play that lets the conceptual determination of the objects of
this form of art objects must also be understood - as in the case of the attention be in favor of an experience of their unlimited determinability.
landscape - essentially as an event that never concerns only space, but at the These objects are - one could add with Baumgarten, Valéry and Adorno -
same time also - above all - the time of its appearance. clear and intuitive in their 'indeterminacy with respect to conceptual thinking.
That the artistic form must be understood above all as an organization of It is true that Kant also tacitly refers to Lessing's distinction between arts of
time, certainly does not mean that it cannot be at the same time an space and arts of time when he says that the aesthetic play of figures—
organization of space. This is often the case - in the construction of outside and inside art—is a play either in space or in time. But the concept of
sculptures and buildings, but also in those arts which in the past were called a game of figures already indicates that what appears in aesthetic perception
'spatial arts'. Just think of the sound of music, which fills space in different are in many cases paradigmatic events or spatial and temporal constellations.
ways, or of the linear construction of texts that unfold in a long succession Therefore, at a second glance everything seems to mean: the nature of the -
precisely when - as, for example, in the novels of Claude Simon - they allow aesthetic form lies in a play of figures in space and time.
an abundance of the simultaneous to become an event. It could also be Even if we are supposedly partly sure, it is worth risking a third look at
argued that space and time are fundamentally interdependent concepts: the scenario of aesthetic experience. The constellations of space and time in
temporal processes are those of something moving or persisting; spatial different arts offer a varied aspect in this respect. A basic principle of
situations are those of something lasting or ending. But even when this is so: architecture is the division of space, the separation of interior and exterior
when time and space refer conceptually to one another and creations of forms spaces, and of interior spaces from each other, with various possibilities of
always represent a temporal and spatial relationship; even when time is opening all these spaces inwards and outwards. But with this division and
always referred to space and space to time, it would not be space, but time distribution of a space, a rhythm is created at the same time and, with it, a
that is the principal element of any aesthetic or artistic form. In the field of distribution of the time of movement in that space: not only an alternation of
art, too, spatial relations must be translated into temporal relations and corridors and places, which the building offers to its users, but also of
experienced as such temporal relations. The reverse is certainly not valid. For permitted and prohibited visual directions to which the building opens and
artistic forms are not generally there to create spaces, at least not in a literal closes. The division of space is thus at the same time a division of possible
sense, but to give time, and this in a completely literal sense. The sense of times of stay in it. In a similar way, sculptures create a place and a time to
form is time. remain in their presence; with their gestures they change the forces of
At first glance, the opposite would be obvious. A box has this or that attraction to which movement is subject.
shape depending on what it is supposed to contain. A flower has this or that
shape, depending on which animal it must attract for the reproduction of the
plant. The meaning of form here is, on the one hand, the space it creates, and 4 «Every form of the objects of the senses (both external and, indirectly, internal) is either a figure, or a
on the other, the way in which it presents itself in a larger space. But as soon play, in the latter case, or a play of figures (in space, mime and dance), or a mere play of sensations

as we direct our attention to the number of forms offered in space, the (in time)». In the second case, Kant is thinking primarily of music: Immanuel KANT, Critique
question of a primacy of either space or time appears displaced. This second of Music, in Works in the Music of the World, ed. by W. Weischedel, Frankfurt am, 1968,
ted in its proximity. The place and atmosphere of a
vol. X, § 14, p. 305 (B 42).
look is directed at the aesthetic value of the figure of the objects. It is
space is also determined by the artistic image (note that I follow the
directed at observing how these appear to a delayed perception. This
Hegelian division of the arts, although without the false hierarchies
appearance can be understood by Kant as a game of phenomena that an
mounted therein). Painting not only opens a space in space - a space of
object unfolds in the space and time of its representation. This game then
the painting in the space in which the painting is located - but at the same
shows not only a delimited figure that is distinguished from other figures, but
time, with its internal configurations, it disposes of the time of its
it also comes to us as a game of figures that can be followed and perceived in
contemplation. Music, on the other hand, is, even in the smallest phases
it4. Kant's thesis is that aesthetic perception begins with an attention to the of silence, a temporal event which, however, always fills the place of its
play of figures or sensations, an attention aroused by the "play of forces of sound in different ways and thus at the same time modifies the spatial
 46 LANDSCAPE AND ART 2. TIME SPACES OF LANDSCAPE AND ART 47

sensation of its listeners. If, in the case of the so-called spatial arts, the Parker's sickly dance of scales. Each of these arts simultaneously produces
spatial situation simultaneously opens up a temporal event, here the another participation of our senses in the play of its figures. Sometimes the
temporal event always simultaneously produces a spatial event. In theatre ear, sometimes the eye take the lead; sometimes they capture together a sense
and dance, this whole distinction certainly has no meaning: both are arts or simply a movement that would not be accessible to any single organ;
of movement that unfold in a space of the imagination that is almost sometimes the role of both is reversed or exchanged, as in horror films, when
always delimited in one way or another by the space of its contemplation. we think we see what we first only hear, or hear what we first only see.
These delimitations are certainly no longer found in those performances When exploring sculptures, buildings or installations, it is not uncommon for
and installations in which spectators remain in the middle of a work that the other senses to become involved in this confusion. Even our sense of -
unfolds spatially and temporally: they participate in the spatial and
balance can literally and metaphorically be thrown off balance, as in a march
temporal extension of an artistic operation. This also applies to cinema
along the distressingly obliquely placed 'Holocaust axis' at Daniel
spectators, with the difference that here there is a virtual space whose -
Liebeskind's Jüdisches Museum in Berlin. Finally, the materials and media of
movement they follow with their eyes and ears. Bodily enveloped by a
the arts have always opened up a multitude of borderline operations through
sound event, they are exposed to a movement of images that unfolds, like
which the boundaries hitherto established between the arts are crossed and
musical movement, in a dynamic in which what is visually absent
continually becomes present, and what is visually present becomes sometimes transformed into a stage outside the territory of aesthetic
absent. In this way, the two senses, which are alien to each other, are led appearance: in films that become projection surfaces for the theatre, in
into a space, and a space only accessible to the imagination, by the paintings that extend into space like sculptures, in narratives in which the
guiding thread of a narration of events that have never happened off- music of words silences all literal meaning, in music whose performance
screen, even though what is seen in the succession of images may refer to fuses with dance - and, last but not least, in the operations of a land art that
real scenarios. Literature also displays a peculiar game of space and time. accompanies the events of an immeasurable space with the calculated
By virtue of a link, striking in its arrangement, of words, the literary text movement of its incalculable figures.
becomes effective for the reader's consciousness in the tension of In all these procedures, the arts lend us another time. Such is the
narrativity and narrated time, and in this it often unfolds a drama of facts meaning of its form. The form of his works gives us time; it makes us
in whose imagined space the readers move during the time of their
reading. .
These few words draw attention to the different management of time that
governs the different arts. Buildings, sculptures, paintings, films, theatrical
performances, installations, literature, etc., in each of their particular objects
generate in the space that they constitute or reorganize, represent or present a
different movement in each case, to which our perception is subjected during
the time that our presence in or with them lasts. They delay, accelerate,
postpone, snatch, dilate the time of the event that they become in the instant
of their aesthetic perception. Just think of Bill Viola's video installation Two
Angels for the New Millenium (AroS, Kunstmuseum Aarhus), in which
mysterious figures emerge from the waves of the sea and then sink back into
them in a darkened space containing five screens of extremely slow motion
images; or the action sequences in films such as The Bourne Supremacy
(USA, 2004, directed by Paul Greengrass), in which the eye can no longer
grasp the highly fragmented courses of action; or the somnambulistically
slowed-down blues of Archie Shepp's Black Ballads compared to Charlie
 4-8 LANDSCAPE AND ART 2. TIME SPACES OF LANDSCAPE AND ART 49

experience time in its own way. It envelops us in the rhythm of its figures. In over time. She can do nothing but sit beside him in the different
this way it takes away time from us – which is no longer at our disposal – circumstances in which time can be calculated and measured, saved and lost,
and receives its configuration during the moment in which we are exposed to remembered and forgotten, taken and given.
its movement. The art form gives us time by taking time away from us, and In this existential and cultural, individual and social management, the
takes time away from us by giving us time. It does not elevate us above our creation of aesthetic forms and the aesthetic awareness of the forms intervene
existence in space and time, as SchopenhauerXVII, for example, thought. no less than the sensations of the landscape. The first and second make time
Rather, it invites us into the space of its objects to a special realization of feel in a particular way; they leave us time for time. In attention to them, the
time. It makes us be, no less than the aesthetic landscape, but in a completely meaning of the present is transformed into meaning for the presentXVIII.
different way, in a transformed present. However, aesthetically experienced landscapes are an outstanding state of
Let me first clarify the reference to the present common to aesthetic - the present; they allow us to be in an incomparable reality of our existence.
landscape and aesthetic art. What the existential present is—and this is what Works of art, on the other hand, although they produce an outstanding
is at stake in both cases—cannot in any way be clarified by mere temporal reality in the place of their presence, present a present; they allow us to
data. If we talk about this conference, we do so in a present that can last up to experience the horizon of possible presents. And they do so by maintaining
an hour. "Nothing is happening at the moment," a sports journalist the past, current or future presents in their temporal constitution, by outlining
commentating on a football match might say, and he will be speaking, as representations that simultaneously produce and exhibit configurations of
most participants would expect, of a present that can be measured in a few presence. This presentation of the world through self-presentation is here the
minutes. When people say the economy is currently limping, they are talking fundamental aesthetic operation.
about at least one quarter — accompanied by fears that the stagnation could The artist's operation is to develop forms in the materials and media at
last much longer. When a political commentator declares that we are his disposal, to form the constellations of realized and unrealized, present
currently in the midst of a culture war the likes of which the world has never and absent possibilities that are distinctive of "human presents." The artistic
known, he may be talking about decades or even centuries. This last example constructions themselves are constituted in such a way that in each case they
is particularly illustrative of the fact that there are no clear lines that delimit a give rise in their appearance to particular relations of interweaving of the
historical or biographical present from the past and the future. The future is comprehensible and the incomprehensible, the available and the unavailable,
something that has always already begun in many areas of life and action, the remembered and the expected, such as
and the past often continues to act in them. And these relationships change
constantly, depending on how small or large we make the circle of our
6 On the relationship between the present and aesthetic presence, cf. Martin SEEL, Asthetik des
present, and also on how narrow or loose it is around us. These relationships
Erscheinens, Munich, 2OOO, esp. pp. [boss, and 215 ff.; also “Von Ereignissen,” in my work
constantly change in proportion to the minor or major contexts of the action ParadoxienderErfülhmg, Frankfurt am Main, 2006, pp. 11-26.
that in each case we understand as the present of our actions and our
experiences. With each of them we find ourselves in a network of near and
distant possibilities, realized and unrealized, realizable and unrealizable,
which in the course of nature, as well as in thought and action, have
sometimes been fulfilled and other times have remained unfulfilled. This is
present: being in a fundamentally unfathomable and untamable flow of
events that last for more or less time and that for more or less time touch and
affect human activity and suffering more or less intensely. Those who feel
part of this flow need scenarios and forms that allow them to work and play
XVIIIHübscher, Zurich, 1977- volumes I and II, volume I, esp. p. 32. Schopenhauer's more than
obvious reason for this implausible conception is the intention to mark as clearly as possible the
XVII Cfr. Arthur SCHOPENHAUER, Die Welt ah Wille und Varstellung, in: Werke in zehn Batmen, ed. distance between aesthetic behavior and instrumental behavior; but this can also be achieved - if I
by A. am right in what I say - beyond a metaphysics of the transcendence of space and time.
 LANDSCAPE AND ART 2. TIME SPACES OF LANDSCAPE AND ART 51
as they generally govern the lived reality of man. The artist invents VALERY, Paul, «The Unendlichkeitsfaktor in the Aesthetic», in Paul
objects in whose spatial and temporal presence we discover a present; he VÁLÉRY, ÜberKunst, Frankfurt aM, 1973- There is a Spanish
plays with possibilities and impossibilities of perceiving ourselves and translation: Pieces on Art, Visor, Madrid, 1999-
the world. In this way we become free to remember not so much the
moment of our existence here and now, as the aesthetic landscape allows,
but rather to remember the potentiality of the present of our life; and not
only this memory, but also an encounter with the strange present, which
has above all the meaning of making our own present strange again and
thus worthy of attentionXIX. Artistic form and the artistically modeled
awareness of form, understood in this way, are means that allow us to
immerse ourselves in the time of our life, to lose ourselves in it, to let
ourselves be frightened and intoxicated by it, something that other time
management techniques—and with them not a few forms of style—try to
prevent with greater or lesser success. The closer we are to art, the closer
we get to remarkable works of art, the less this form succeeds in holding
or dominating time, which would tend to veil the awareness of our
finitude in a state of pleasant attention to what is around; what it does is
rather to gather temporal states that allow us to experience finite -
existence as a force field of unknown and uncontrollable possibilities,
and thus as the only infiniteXX existence.
LITERATURE

KANT, IMMANUEL, Kritik der Urteilskraft, in Werke in zwólf Blinden, ED. BY

W. WEISCHEDEL, FRANKFURT AM, 1968. THERE IS A SPANISH
TRANSLATION: Critique of Judgment, ESPASA-CALPE, MADRID, *1989.
SCHOPENHAUER, Arthur, Die Weltals Wille und Vorstellung, in Werke in
zehn Bánden, ed. from A. Hübscher, Zurich, 1977. There is a Spanish
translation: The World as Will-Representation, Porrúa, Mexico, 1987.
SEEL, Martin, Ásthetik des Erscheinens, Munich, 2OOO [trans., English,
Aesthetics of Appearing, Stanford, 2004].
—, Eine ásthetik derNatur, Frankfurt aM, 1991.
—, ParadoxienderEifiillung, Frankfurt aM, 2006.
XIX The moment of freedom delimits the aesthetically heightened
awareness of the present from a distressing or panic-stricken being
bewitched by the present, which takes away from the subjugated
subjects the space of play of a spontaneous or automatic, but
fundamentally voluntary, remaining in the event without (the one
or which) that horror films and other products of the like do not
cease to be aesthetically enjoyed.
XX See Paul VÁLÉRY, “The Unendlichkeitsfaktor in the
Aesthetic”, in Paul VALERY, Uber Kunst, Frankfurt aM. ,
1973, pp. 141-145.
 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING
ALBERTO RUIZ DE SAMANIEGO

"Above all," Kierkegaard wrote in a letter from 1847, "do not lose your
desire to walk the same path daily until I reach a state of well-being; in
doing so I keep away from all illness. By walking I have come into contact
with my best ideas, and I know of no thought that is so overwhelming in
nature that one cannot distance oneself from it by walking... but when you
stand still, and the longer you stand still, the closer you are to feeling ill...
So if you walk without stopping, everything will turn out well for you. There
is a whole physiology in this statement, in which the body relates its health
to the environment in which it unfolds, to the fact of coming out into an
exteriority, rather than to any internal configuration. It is a perspective that
will undoubtedly have a lot to do with Nietzsche's nomadic and also strictly
corporal thought. In the consideration, precisely, that the "guiding thread of
the body" is the only thing that confers unity to the entire combination of
living forces of and around the individual. For this reason, in Nietzsche,
geography, in addition to being a physics in motion, is always something
mental and corporal. This explains the importance that in Ecce homo is
given to all those factors that can most affect the psychophysiological states
of an individual: food,

• Cit. by Bruce CHATWIN, The Strokes of Song, Peninsula, Barcelona, 2OOI, p. 199.
 54 LANDSCAPE AND ART 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 55

tation, climate, place of, residence, various walks, trips, excursions, climbs...
'
For example, the rock of Surlej, where the vision of eternal return
appeared to Nietzsche like a demon. This rock, this enormous crag of Surlej,
is very important because in a certain way it represents the culmination of all
his famous wandering without direction, many feet high, under the clear
skies, over the precipices and lakes of the wooded areas. On this rock
Nietzsche ends up crying with joy, not only for the joy of the greatest
discovery, but also because he suddenly understood the indissoluble unity
that is established between a thought that projects itself towards the most
remote distance - thought that he calls cosmic - and the greatest closeness, at
the contact with which even the former becomes sharper. In this way, the
dignity of the eternal and, at the same time, of the intimate is granted to the
most peripheral, minuscule and singular feeling of life. This capacity for
interaction between the cosmic and the more concrete, the delight of being
touched by the peculiar life of each form, must surely be the great pleasure
and achievement, the magnificent fulfillment of all wandering. The same
thing happens to Knut Hamsun'sXXIXXII globetrotters, when at the end of their
eternal wandering they manage to be moved by anything, a lit window, a
memory, a detail of life, and all of this under the autumn stars. It also
happens to Rousseau and Cézanne. That, and nothing else, is, ultimately, the
1. Cézanne, aged about 34, walking to his subject near Auvers.
ultimate joy of the wandering man. "On two occasions," Nietzsche recounted
in 1881, "I have had to stay at home for the ridiculous reason that my eyes
Well, philosophy was nothing other than being able to think outdoors, the
were irritated. In both cases it was due to all the crying I did the day before,
fulfillment of a clear instinct of itinerancy that through one's body and head
during my excursions. But they were not tears of sentiment, but tears of joy; I
seeks out its pure air, its height, its climate, its specific type of health. That is
sang and shouted a lot of nonsense, seized by a new idea that no one has
why he speaks of thought as the attempt to translate into reason the impulse,
ever had before. Or, again in Eccehomo, explaining the gestation of a part of
for example, "to the gentle sun, to the clear, moving air, to plants of the
Thus Spoke Pratustra: "Many a hidden place, many a height in the environs
south, [to] the breath of the sea" (Aurora, 3, 323). All this in contrast to the
of Nice are hallowed for me by unforgettable moments; the all-important
secondary role given to intellectual or social influences. In fact, Nietzsche's
section entitled 'Old and New Tables' was composed during the arduous
arrogance already warns us of the vital priority of this nomadic dimension,
climb from the station to the marvellous Moorish eagle's nest that is Eze -
this kind of escape from the world of men: "At an incredibly early age, at
the agility of my muscles was always all the more lively the more
seven, I already knew that no human word would ever affect me." The
impetuously my creative force expanded. It was the body that knew the
conclusion is clear. (Eccehomo, «Why I am so clever», Si): «You should sit
enthusiasm: let us leave the soul. Aside from all this... I could have been
as little as possible; do not believe in any thought in ctjagenesis so that the
caught dancing; at that time I could walk for seven or eight hours in the
muscles do not also intervene happily. All prejudices come from the gut. I
mountains without showing any signs of fatigue. He slept well, laughed a lot
once said that a sedentary life is the true sin against the Holy Spirit. This is
- he was full of vigor and unfailing patience. For Nietzsche,
so much so that, for him, a thought could only have transformative power
XXI Cir. Rudiger SAFRANSKI, Nietzsche. Biography of a Thought, Tusquets, Barcelona, 2OOI, p. 255.
when it pointed directly to the physical or organic realm. "The feeling of
XXII Cfr. Knut HAMSUN, Irilo^a del vagabundo, Alfaguara, Madrid, 2005.
 56 LANDSCAPE AND ART 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 57

style," writes one of his biographers, "is in Nietzsche an almost corporal

sensitivity. He reacts to language with bodily symptoms, from a winged
mood swing and desire to move to exhaustion and vomiting. Nietzsche looks
for phrases that move him and others, for the most part he formulated them
and gave them rhythm as he went alongXXIII. What we are interested in
highlighting here is the idea of an intimate and intense relationship between
prosody, the embodiment of language - and, therefore, of writing in oneself -
and the walk, both sustained by a rhythm, a dizziness or temporal cadence, a
layout that irremediably intervenes in our organism, that affects us in the
most intimate way. Excitement and rhythm of the walk that many poets have
taken advantage ofXXIVXXV. There is, in this sense, an appreciation by Ossip
Mandelstam, in his Colloquium on Dante, which perfectly illuminates what
we suggest here. Mandelstam says: "A question occurs to me, and very
seriously: how many shoe soles, how many ox-hide soles, how many sandals
did Alighieri wear out, in the course of his poetic work, wandering along the
goat paths of Italy.
»Hell, and especially Purgatory, glorifies the human gait, the measure 2. RICHARD LONG, Aline-in the Himalayas, 1975.

and rhythm of the march, the foot and its shape. The step, associated with
breathing)! saturated with thought: that is what Dante understands as the
beginning of prosody»5. The step, associated with breathing and saturated Walser, who was capable of walking 30 or 40 kilometres in a single day,
with thought, here is the entry into language, the very entry into the work, in explained it many times and always very well. Already in his first book he
the manner of Giovanni Anselmo, or in the way HD Thoreau tells it, with writes things like this: "the forest flows, it is a deep green fluid, its branches
regard to his experience in Walden or in his various excursions - experiences, are its waves, the green is the liquid, I die, I flow with the liquid, with the
among other things, of entry into writing, of putting oneself "at the disposal waves. Now I am liquid, I am fluid, I am forest, I am the forest itself, I am
of wordsXXVI" - here is also undoubtedly the key to understanding the walks of everything, everything that I can achieve"3. It is a relationship that can lead to
Richard Long or Hamish Fulton. the very becoming-flow of the world, thereby delimiting all the borders or
We are speaking of an impulse - if not a drive - then, that can only be demarcations of reality itself, which is led to a kind of totalizing vertigo in
understood in its relation to the outside, to a flow that for man comes from which the anthropomorphic dimension itself is annulled. Thus Walser:
outside (flow of animals, of arrows, of the horizon, of heat, of roads or "everything is a current that flows back eternally. And, furthermore, a
winds, of the sea or the desert). Robert current that never returns! Forest, what's that? It spreads across the plain,
climbs the mountains, leaps over torrents, rushes down the mountains, fills
the valleys, and should not have any direction? It sinks into the blue sea,
plays with the clouds, loves the air and flows before us men. The breath of
XXIII Rudiger SAFRANSKI, op.cit., p. 190. men cannot remain in the impulse. We thinkj the free fluctuating hatej
XXIV For example, Antonio Gamoneda: «I go out for walks a lot: the rhythmic wandering of the walk is
disdains thought. Then he comes back to us and we can love him. We see
exciting for poetic thought. In the inner ear, poetic thought is rhythmic. Claudio Rodríguez, the
great Spanish poet of the second half of the 20th century, wrote while walking. "I don't write down how it is reflected in the mirror of the sea, how
ideas, of course: I write down verses, lines that interest me as soon as I identify them with poetic
language" (Statements to El País, Babelia, 24-3-2007, p. 2).
XXV Git. by Bruce CHATWIN, op. cit., p. 264.
XXVI Gfr. Henry David THOREAU, Walden, Cátedra, ed. by Javier Alcoriza and Antonio Lastra, 8 Robert WALSER, THE NOTEBOOKS OF FRITZ KOCHER, Pre-textos, Valencia, 1998, p. 142.
Madrid, 2005.
 LANDSCAPE AND ART 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 59

3. Richard Long, Seven days on foot from and to Punta Mujeres, walking along roads, paths 4. Robert Walser on his last walk.
and trails, Lanzarote (Canary Islands), 12-18 February 2004.

plays with the sky, how it becomes a sea, a storm, a whirlwind, a current. We their being. Although we would rather say that they flee with something or
ourselves become something that keeps running. We are on the march, there towards something stronger than their being, precisely with the intention of
are no more calm places in our hearts" 9. making their enjoyment something real, something tangible, something even
Certainly, as Cézanne noted, everything we see disperses, goes away. lasting. .
The truth of the world is a flux, but we want to follow it, and be in it. What do these guys intend, then? What drags them along?, our friend
«Nature is always the same. But nothing that is manifested to us remains in Zweig continues to ask. Because such an illogical procedure has no
it. Our art must, for its part, convey the thrill of its duration with the reasonable explanation. Undoubtedly, he concludes, they are dominated by a
elements, the appearance of all its changes. "It must make us enjoy it powerful force that fills them with an invincible restlessness.13 Why deny
eternally" (CézanneXXVII)XXVIII. The truth is that there is always something that that there is something strange in all this, something inexplicable and great
reaches the libido from the bottom of the horizon, not from within. "Like a that cannot be realized, but that drags them along in their destiny (ill-fated or
stream," wrote Holderlin, another wanderer, "I feel myself drawn towards beneficial, stormy or joyful, in any case always imponderable and immense -
the end of something that is as vast as all of Asia XXIX." For an eminently like a continent, Asia, no less, or a desert). The nomad, said Deleuze, makes
bourgeois writer like Stefan Zweig, this type of people, who "do not try to go the desert, or better, let us say it in the manner of a Cézanne: the desert or the
here or there," who in truth "do not aim anywhere, but rather shoot like an void is thought in him, it extends through him, as when Baudelaire
arrow from the bow of their restlessness XXX," exhibits enigmatic behavior. magnificently notes about Poe: «He crossed life like a Sahara, and changed
Evidently, he rightly suggests, they are fleeing from something stronger than from

XXVII Ibid., pp. 145s.

XXVIIITO Cit. by Joachim GASQUET, Cécanne. Lfí que viji what he told me, Gadir, Madrid, 2006, p. 157.
XXIX Cit. by Stefan ZWEIG, The Fight Against the Devil. Holderlin, Meist, Nietzsche, The Acantilado, Barcelona, 1999, p. 151.
XXX Ibid., p. 175.
 LANDSCAPE AND ART 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 59
13 Ibid., p. 174.
6th LANDSCAPE V ART 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 61

place like an Arab>>. All of this is something that, undoubtedly, has to do

with desire, or even more: it only has to do with love or desire. A desire...
sadistic, voracious, demonic; a thirst for infinity that perhaps reaches its
own impossibility here. The desire, par excellence, of a Rimbaud: "For a
long time I boasted that I would possess all imaginable countries," he writes
in A Season in Hell. Or a thirst that is, in the end, like in Nietzsche, always
for health—unattainable—and of extreme power in contact with the living
world; also the pleasure of reaching, in the manner of Robert Walser or
Peter Handke, pure joy through exhaustion: "What a healthy joy wandering
brings! "Only innocent joys are true," wrote the Swiss. Of course, Walser's
passion for failure seems to have already assimilated Nietzsche and
Rimbaud's hostility to the concept of identity - the recognition of the other is
assumed to be at the heart of the self - or of permanence; ideas that would
prevent us from noticing the noise of the world. In Walser, significantly, the
aversion to the pen is not accidental. The ink flows, calling for perpetuation.
The pencil, on the other hand, accepts precariousness, the possibility of
disappearing, leaving no trace. In his correspondence, the Swiss writer notes
that the pencil brought him back to the beginning of writing, to the learning
of childhood, when - or better: where - things are shown for the first time -
as in every true walk - without the pressures or perversions that routine and
custom bring. .
Incidentally, Baudelaire himself tried to analyze this illness of wandering
from which he always suffered. An evil, if we want to put it that way, that
undoubtedly has to do with both nostalgia and the desire for estrangement,
fatally linked, as he himself explains in his famous poem The Journey,
where he questions the reasons why authentic travelers, those whose desires
are shaped like clouds, are continually driven to the need to leave. By the
way, the poet of the forests too! He did not feel the joys of a flow equivalent
to Walser's becoming-forest: that of the multitude, that of the multitudinous
city. The vertigo felt in the big cities was for him analogous to the vertigo -
experienced by so many in the bosom of nature since the pioneering enso- .
Rousseau's wandering nations. If we want to truly perceive the strength of
this affection, we must listen to his words: what men call love - Baudelaire
goes so far as to say - is a very small thing, XXXI

XXXI Robert WALSER, Vido de Poeta, Alfaguara, Madrid, 1990, p. 153.

6th LANDSCAPE V ART 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 62

landscape and art................................................................................1

AN..................................................................................................1
q •.........................................................................................................40
CENTHA LIBRARY,...........................................................84
CENTRAL LIBRARY,........................................................183
LIBRARY...........................................................................134
ABADA PUBLISHERS.....................................................134
Baudelaire's story is that of a man with no fixed address. A being of perpetual wandering that will
take you from hotel to hotel, from room to room, in more than 30 directions.
nes in Paris in a period of less than 20 years.
16 Mario Campaign, Baudelaire. Game without triumphs, Debate, Madrid, 2006, p. 244.
 63 LANDSCAPE AND ART 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 63

a blow in a lightning-fast, brilliant, crowded, imprecise fog; chaos begins, 17 Robert WÁ.LSER, The Assessor, Siruela, Madrid, 1996, p. 55
18 Ibid., pp. 58s.
and orders disappear"7. Or also, from Walser himself, in another truly 19 Cfr. Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY, «Cézanne's Doubt», in Sense and Nonsense, Peninsula, -
exceptional passage: "The spirit of the world had opened, and all suffering, Barcelona, 2000, p. 35.
20 Ibid., p. 43.
all human disappointments, everything bad, everything painful seemed to
vanish never to return. Previous walks appeared before my eyes, but the
magnificent image of the modest present became the predominant sensation.
The future grew pale, and the past faded away. I myself was burning and
blooming in that burning^blooming instant. (...) All other fantasies sank and
disappeared into insignificance. I had the whole rich Earth before me, and
yet I only looked at the smallest and most humble things. With loving
gestures he rose and sank the sky. I had become an interior, and I walked as
if through an interior; everything outside became a dream, everything until
then understood, incomprehensible. From the surface, I plunged into the
fabulous depth that I then recognized as the Good. That which we
understand and love understands and loves us back. Yoya was no longer me,
she was someone else, and precisely for that reason, me again. In the sweet
6. Paul Klee, Im Wind Schreitende (She Who Walks in the Hundred), 1926.
light of love, I recognized or believed I had to recognize that perhaps the
inner man is the only one who truly exists. The thought struck me: 'Where
would we poor men be if the Faithful Land did not exist?' What would we
the reason. He is not interested in geometry, nor perspective, nor even the
have if we did not have this beauty and goodness? Where would I be if I
laws of color decomposition, but in the motif: the landscape in its absolute
couldn't be here?'»'°.
plenitude. Through him, everything disappears, the theme, the subject itself;
We should also situate this physiological, but at the same time ethical,
in him, everything is transfigured. Beautiful holy intransigence of the motive
aesthetic and productive dependence on the Earth - and this same rapturous
that would lead him, as Joachim Gasquet points out, to the point of dying in
forgetfulness of self - with the life of Cézanne. With his extreme attention to
it. «I began by discovering the geological foundations. Then he would stop
nature and with what Merlau-Ponty called the inhuman character of his
fidgeting and stare, wide-eyed, says Mme. Cézanne. "'It germinated together
painting. As if his devotion to the visible world meant nothing other than,
with the landscape.'" The idea was to achieve, having forgotten all science,
precisely, a "flight from the human world, the alienation of his humanity" 9.
through these sciences, the constitution of the landscape as a nascent
Cézanne's painting certainly suspends man's perceptive and constructive
organism. It was necessary to weld together all the partial views that the gaze
habits, the very interiority of the psyche, to reveal "the depths of inhuman
was taking in, to reunite what is dispersed due to the versatility of the eyes,
nature in which man is installed. This is why his characters are strange and
to join together the wandering hands of nature', as Gasquet himself pointed
seem seen by a being of another species" 70. It is, says Merlau-Ponty, a world
out, or in Cézanne's words: < 'There is a minute of the world that passes, it
without familiarity, uncomfortable, which paralyzes all human effusion.
is necessary to paint it in its reality. (...) The landscape, he said, thinks itself
Cézanne, we would say, has gone beyond constituted humanity; his painting
within me and I am its consciousness»7'.
has become a way of giving space to the elements. For this reason there is no
In his extraordinary memoirs on Cézanne, Joachim Gasquet highlights
other interest in him than nature in its refractory state, at the same time
an important statement by the old painter: “Painting from nature is not
extremely proud and absolutely present, even genetic; it is what he
copying the object, but realizing sensations.” Indeed, everything in Cézanne,
insistently calls for,
especially his taste for vibrant evocations, responds to an attempt to live up
to an immense and complex territory of sensations and synaesthesias, a
 64 LANDSCAPE AND ART 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 63

world of affects coming from very diverse strata of physical reality. This is
what Deleuze calls-

21 Joachim GASQUET, op. cit., p. 44.

 64 LANDSCAPE AND ART 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 65

maba a haecceity: «a set of relations (winds, undulations of snow or sand,

the song of sand or the crack of ice, tactile qualities of both); it is a tactile
space, (--Jj a sound space, much more than visual» 22. Nothing could be
more similar to what Cézanne thought: "The sunny dust - Gasquet tells him -
the sweat of the horses, the smell of blood, all that literature, we, the
painters, must infuse it into our tones... Don't come and tell me it's not
possible"33. In Cézanne there is an authentic desire to install plans, plans of
vision ("you have to see the plans... Clearly.:. "There lies the crux of the
matter," he said to Gasquet, through which the propulsion and pursuit of the
line of (con)fluence of the world will be established: "In us," he writes in a
letter, "the vibration of the reflected sensations of that pleasant sun of
Provence has not fallen asleep, our old memories of youth, of those
horizons, of those landscapes, of those prodigious lines, which leave so
many deep impressions on us..."3*. This is Cézanne's taste for the broken
line, the line of vibrations and intermittences where reality drinks and grows.
This passion generated in the old painter nothing but hatred and
intransigence—in the eyes of the young Gasquet—with regard to engineers,
those individuals who, according to Cézanne, cared nothing for the
landscape, with all its "damned operations^ constructions in a straight line."
On the contrary, to follow the line - that uneven line of the world's unfolding
- also determines one's happy condemnation to always wander in the middle,
7. Pessoa with his family, 1917.
through the whirlwind of one's environment. Cézanne, again, praising
Poussin's arabesque: "Where does the line of bodies in the landscape begin,
where does it end?" ... They are all one. There is no center. But I would like
like a hole, a look of light, an invisible sun that stalks all my bodies, bathes I would like to give off that essence. (...) The delicacy of our atmosphere is
them, caresses them, intensifies them... in the middle»2G
due to the delicacy of our spirit. They are one in the other. Color is where
We cannot stress enough the importance of the environment and the way
our brain and the universe meet." 26 Paul Klee is a painter who, in many
in which each person must register and select the territory in which, as
aspects, should be considered exemplary from the perspective we are
Cézanne said, we habitually move. For example, a medium as light—
analyzing here: for his yearning for frontiers and for the conscious attempt to
Cézanne's fiery realm, could also be that of the late Nietzsche, or of Klee
renew the plastic language that occupies him in order to respond to that new
—"... that sun... look... The chance of the rays, the march of infiltration, the
relationship he has established with reality; for the tremendous voids in
incarnation of the sun in the world, who will ever paint that? Who will tell
which he installs his characters, for their textures and densities, for their
it? It would be the physical history, the psychology of the Earth. More or
states of transit and intermittence, for that nomadic becoming that the line or
less, all of us, people and things, are simply a little stored, organized solar
the graphic undoubtedly has in him, eternally propelled in an emphatic, non-
heat, a memory of the sun, a little phosphorus that burns in the meninges of
sequential and very variable temporality -with its delays and its vertigo, with
the world. (...) I
its folds and its breaks, rests and undulations-. Line that propels itself beyond
the surface of the blade. The essential thing there is, therefore, the journey,
the unprecedented journey of a line that abandons itself to the flow as with
"movements in directions
different, obstacles overcome, the stops, the breaks, the emotions, the dynamism [that] have a double perspective: the hand of the artist that draws lines, colors, stains... ,,j a
walk through a field, a forest, a landscape»'1''. In short, because of the unexpected flows that drag along its figures and representations, even because of its demonism. Klee or

26 Ibid., p. l6l.
 66 LANDSCAPE AND ART 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 67

the arabesque, like that undulating line that connects nature and the head and hand of the painter at the same time; consciousness, impulse or instinct and realityXXXIIXXXIII.
It is therefore advisable to always try to be in relation with this outside, with this whirlwind driven by exteriority.
Perhaps for our own survival, however much its attraction may be destructive, at times (think, beyond the destiny of a
Holderlin or a Nietzsche, of the wanderings of Beckett's Molloy). It is not a minor problem for the nomad, precisely, to
know how to manage those territories of sensitivity to which he has arrived. Especially when the intensity, this affect - an
affect is always more and something else than a feeling - can only be lived through the relationship between its mobile
inscription in a body and the pure exterior. Ultimately, it is always a matter of avoiding being trapped in the rules of the
bureaucratic machine of powers, of the codes of nomination, identification and registration. It all consists —as Jean Genet
explained in his Diary of a Thief— in always seeking a periphery, going beyond the limits or borders where the subject or
the community undertakes an adventure that disrupts their sedentary lifestyle XXXIV. This adventure is, therefore and always, a
policy, a Deleuzian war machine that petrifiesXXXV.

We are talking, then, about the Hamada of the exterior, its vertiginous -
movement, its hypnosis. It is well understood that this departure or this leap from
distance is not, of course, an escape or a neglect of responsibilities, not even an
evasion into the imaginary, but on the contrary: it is about "fleeing to produce the
real, to intensify the experience of life and reality. It is about a growth of
sensations to live longer, to live better. Or, as Zweig explains the case of
Nietzsche: "The 'feeling of

even more: of the empire, with all its bureaucratic, hierarchical and depersonalized ramifications. So
where the regular soldier sees only desert, the nomad sees an articulated network of tracks and lines along
which to move. Seen in this light, war against states is only a consequence of nomadic nature. We see the
same in Nietzsche, once he discovers in his most serious feeling the yes to death: "My attitude towards
8. Richard Long, Being in the Moment, 1999.
the present," he wrote, "is no longer anything but a war with knives."

XXXII Gfr. his fundamental writing "Creator's Creed", in Paul Klee, IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia, 1998, pp. 235 ff.
XXXIII There is, moreover, a very suggestive becoming-animal in Klee - just as there is a becoming-arrow or a becoming-angel or puppet, in the manner of Kleist. It is a question of becoming-beetle or fish and, in particular, of becoming-
bee, when Klee tries, precisely, to follow the powers of the earth: " Great unification of forms^ perspectives following nature, with a bee-like eagerness" (Fragment of annotation 859 of his Diaries). How can we not think, moreover, of
the spiritual proximity between Klee and Walser? Both share, without going any further, a very singular and strange, humorous and falsely naive irony. Both are fascinated by the theatre machine, and even more so, by its stage
machinery, its backstage and its mechanics.
XXXIV A beautiful example of escape: that of the artist Mauricio Cattelan. In 1992 he was invited to carry out a project for a collective exhibition entitled Una domenica en Rivara. The night before the opening, Cattelan made a 'ladder' of
knotted sheets in his hotel, which he used to climb out of the window - a third floor - and take the train back home. The improvised staircase remained as his contribution to the exhibition.
XXXV Lawrence of Arabia saw this well in the confrontation between the nomadic Arab tribes and the Turkish Empire. While the Arab army was a mirror of nomadic society, and was therefore in constant flux, the Turkish army reflected
the statism and complexity of the state,
 68 LANDSCAPE AND ART 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 69

"exuberance of existence has taught him a passionate way of looking at

everything that belongs to the world, animal truth and immediate object" 3.
This is the idea expressed, for example, by Pessoa, when in his Book of
Disquiet he stated that, when you think about it, the only reason for writing is
to try to make life itself more real. ■
We have, then, Nietzsche; someone who lived as a nomad, a shadow, from
boarding house to boarding house. Of his countless searches for a suitable
climate for his soul, of his eternal pilgrimage, Stefan Zweig writes with
somewhat humorous admiration: "God knows," he comments, "how many
kilometers this fugitive erran traveled, always seeking that fabulous place
where this excitement, this burning of his nerves would cease. From his
pathological experiences, little by little, the whole geography of health 9. Francis Alys, Magnetic Gapatuses, 1994.
emerges; he leafs through thick volumes of geological works looking for that
place he never finds; that place that, like Aladdin's lamp, will bring him peace
and tranquility. No trip has seemed too long; he plans to go to Barcelona, and
despised, and their existence is completely anonymous. They own nothing in
he also thinks about the Mexican mountain ranges, Argentina, and even Japan.
the world: neither Kleist, nor Holderlin, nor Nietzsche have ever had a bed of
The geographical location, diet and climatology become his second particular
their own; nothing is theirs; the chair they sit on is rented, the table they write
science. In each place he notes the temperature and pressure; with the
at is rented, the rooms they stay in are rented. They do not put down roots
hydroscope he measures the humidity and records the atmospheric
anywhere, nor does love manage to bind them permanently, as happens with
precipitation; his body is like a kind of barometric column, an alembic . Indeed.
those who have found the devil as a life partner. Their friendships are fragile,
What Zweig does not realize is that the walker's thoughts live and breathe in
their positions are tenuous, their work is unrewarding, they are in a vacuum,
the paths, in the plans that give rise to interruptions and routes. The nomad is
and the vacuum surrounds them on all sides. His life has something of a
continually going from one point to another, from one part to another, in
meteor, of a wandering star in eternal decline; not so the life of Goethe, which
between, in the infinite succession of connections and changes of direction; he
forms a clear and defined line. Goethe knows how to take root, he takes root
himself is a map. Nietzsche thus constitutes, before being a subject or a person,
deeply, his roots sink ever deeper»33. Anonymity, therefore, evaporation,
a body that could be defined by the climate that passes through it, or better yet:
inconstancy and fragility in the face of clear line drawing. The will that
it has become a temperature, a diet, a specific weather season, a light, a precise
Deleuze traced in individuals who make their lives a continuous line of flight
light and geographic longitude, a whole series of intensities, sensations and
could not appear more clearly, those beings in whom everything is escape,
visions that run through it and modulate it without pause. A still.
becoming, passage to the limit, demon, relationship with the outside. They are
Stefan Zweig also admires with some surprise the distancing of Kleist,
figures of the event, rather than of the essence. Individuals, let us say,
Hölderlin and Nietzsche from any community. Not only is it the case, he notes,
eminently geographical, who find themselves confronted, whether they like it
that none of them has a wife or children, but that "none of the three • has a
or not, with subjects that are all too human, historical men, those who, like
home or property, none of them has a permanent profession or a long-term
Hegel or Goethe himself, live worried about the future, the state, traditions, the
job. They are - continues Zweig - nomads by nature, eternal vagabonds,
past. Individuals who do not know how to draw lines, who do not know how to
external to everything, strangers, XXXVI XXXVII
make holes or voids, those who "like roots too much"

XXXVI Stefan ZWEIC, op. cit., p. 304,

XXXVII Ibid., pp. 234s.
 I LANDSCAPE AND ART 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 71
(Deleuze); those who, in short, do not know how to become. Compared to impropriety, he is the one who breaks and jumps, the one who crosses and
them, the nomads have no future or past—as Walter pointed out—since they traverses the paths. He always has to do with the middles. It is always the one
have no firm foothold. Therefore, it should be said that they never start from that betrays the stable, the (pre)determined forms. Another statement by
scratch, they are always starting over, continuing their interrupted paths. Holderlin is appropriate here: "We know little about ourselves, for we carry
Gaschet tells us the following about Cézanne: "There has never been anyone within us a dias that dominates us."16 This spirit has a name, according to
(...) who felt so much disdain for a finished work. He felt totally alien to her. someone—Baudelaire—whose emblem was the glorification of vagrancy; in
Her most beautiful fabrics were lying on the floor, she stepped on them. One, fact it signifies the archetypal condemnation, or as he himself calls it: the
folded in four, fit a closet. He left them abandoned in the fields, he left them to Great Ailment: the horror of home. Baudelaire's restlessness is certainly similar
rot in the farmhouses where the peasants sheltered them. With his fanatical to that of Kleist, Nietzsche or Rimbaud; he himself diagnosed it - without
taste for perfection, his cult of the absolute, they represented for him nothing remedy, of course - in the prose poem entitled, precisely, A Place Outside This
more than a moment, an expressive impulse towards the formula that he would World: "I think that I would be happy in that place where I happen not to be,
never assimilate. (...) He would forget them immediately, to get excited about a and this matter of changing houses is the subject of a perpetual dialogue that I
more significantXXXVIII task. maintain with my soul." More dramatic, perhaps, also because he did reach the
The beginning and the end are never interesting, because the beginning and absolute of an imperceptible becoming, was the destiny of Rimbaud, who truly
the end are mere points. The interesting thing is the medium, the layout, the abandoned everything. He writes home from Ethiopia and states with terrifying
jumps, the interruptions, the flows and their route. We must follow the line of immediacy: “What am I doing here?” Problems in line tracking. Problems of
flight, in Nietzsche's manner, if we wish, under the sky of the peaks and living up to their demands. In fact, in his complaint Rimbaud expresses nothing
between the rocks, through a narrow gorge or above the void that always seems more than his helplessness and his profound inability to incorporate this avatar,
to surround the walker on all sides, as Zweig noted. Because in reality they, the precisely him, whom Verlaine had already defined as "the man with wind
globetrotters, make every extension a void, they conceive space as a void, soles," the one of whom the Ethiopians themselves said that he was a great
traversable and extendable. For this very reason their existence has become, to walker. «Oh! An amazing walker, grey open jacket, a little fez on his head
the surprise of people like Zweig, completely anonymous. In their emptiness, despite the sun! Perennial stranger on earth or crazy vagabond with an urgent
they have become clandestine, perfectly imperceptible, true strangers to thirst for infinity. His destiny has been a wild exteriority38.
everyone. They have dissipated geographically, having escaped the plot or the
distressing network of dominant meanings and categories. What they have lost,
what they have stripped themselves of, is all name, face and fixity; they have 36 Cit, by Stefan. ZWEIG, op. cit.,p. 151.
lost their properties. We suggest, again with Deleuze, that we could no longer 37 Cit. by Bruce CHATWIN, op. cit., p. 197. .
38 Perhaps we should also have made it clear from the beginning that the nomad is not necessarily
say that they are persons or subjects, but rather collections of intensive someone who moves: today, immobile journeys, journeys in intensity» (Deleuze). For example, it is Pessoa's
sensations, "each one is one of these collections, a package, a block of model: «Vejo as landscapes dreamed with the same clarity as what you real. I was told about my
accommodations about whatever reason I was told about. "Se vejo a vida passa, sonho qualquer cousa"
variableXXXIX sensations." A nomad is, from this point of view, an individuation, (Livro do desassossego). It is the idea, so popular, that, in short, we are "eternal passers-by by ourselves,
a maximum individuation, to the extent that it results from his encounters or nao ha paisagem sendo or what we are." Nomadism has much more to do with the speed or intensity with
which a body is affected by energies or powers that take possession of it and that it propels, accelerates,
combinations made; a maximum individuation, indeed, or an instant, but
organizes or dynamizes, than with physical movement itself. With speed or slowness, with gravity or rest,
without a subject. • therefore: with the power to be affected and vertigo more than with movement. In fact, as Deleuze
Let us continue, however, with Zweig: why would this dynamic be concludes, there is nothing in common between nomads and travelers or emigrants. Quite the opposite,
nomads are "those who do not move, those who become nomads in order to stay in the same place and
something like the devil? Because in contrast to the static hieratism of the escape the codes" (Deleuze). This is, by the way, the obvious case in the life of the writer Robert Walser.
divinities - the gods always have fixed attributes, properties and functions,
territories and codes - what is characteristic of the devil is, precisely,

XXXVIII Joachim GASQUET, op. cit., p. 142.

XXXIX Gilles DELEUZE and Claire PARNET, Dialogues, Pre-texts, Valencia, 1980, p. 49.
 72 LANDSCAPE AND ART 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 73

Wildness is that which transports the subject to a state close to -

annihilation. There where the self is not yet determined, or better: where it
is no longer determined: Certainly, what preserves the world, the very
depth and foundation of the universe, is this untamed or wild thing, as H. D.
Thoreau in his book on WalkingXL. Only this empathetic territory that gives
us signs can also penetrate the mind with the force of the demonic. He is, in
fact, lodemonic himself. What Nietzsche called the feeling of primitive
freedom that is granted to the "winged man," the aeronaut of the spirit. It
should be noted here the recurrence in Nietzsche, Pessoa, Rimbaud, Walser
or Kleist to mediumistic or hypnotic phenomena, clearly visionary, if not
even catatonic or purely dreamlike. We should point out the ignoble
presence - not only in Baudelaire - of the devil and his covens as stones that
form the path to hell. Well, the devil or fallen angel represents nothing
other than the gravity of raw matter. The attraction and force of stain and
chaos. The drag and time itself of a matter not subject to fixities. The devil
—we already know this—is the lord of separation and of the desert.
Often, however, like a geologist or a careful researcher, the artist must
seek out rhythms and folds; he works on the accidents of the terrain and the
10. Richard Long, Midday on the mad, Huesca, 1994.
discoveries, he arranges them on a support and creates a ground, he multiplies
the encounters. Only in this way can we say that space has been felt and
traveled. To describe a space in this way is to populate it with signs, to make it environmental. As Nietzsche would say, knowing is nothing other than
passible, to construct all kinds of poetic operations that make it a sensitive interpreting facts, evaluating things according to the ways in which they affect
becoming. Each work is, in this way, a condition of possibility for a place. us. Who can doubt that the world is susceptible to many meanings and
Cézanne knew this very well. good. In his own words, he "writes like a painter interpretations? To interpret is to feel connected, to feel affected by something.
that which has not yet been painted; he turns it absolutely into painting." XLI Things do not exist apart from their connections, this is something that any
Thus, in the manner of Paul Klee, the painter makes visible, fixes the vertigo, walker knows. The walker is, in this way, a body open to pure exteriority that
the equivocal and floating appearances that constitute the origin of things. In is shaped, made and unmade according to the spaces it crosses and through
short, he has the will to write. which it is crossed. It is a subject made of spaces. H. D. Thoreau maintained
What we are dealing with, therefore, is nomadism as a kind of that a harmony could be perceived between the limits of a landscape sensed
configuration of a setting. The wandering individual is someone who, due through a walk and the totality of human life, precisely in the fact that one
to his strict relationship with the Outside, does not wish to submit to unity. never fully knows them. "I continued my journey very happily," writes Walser
To the extent that there is, for him, no other determination than the in a story entitled Excursion41, "as I walked I had the impression that the
whole round world was moving forward with me. Everything seemed to travel
with the traveler: meadows, forests, crops, mountains, and finally, the country
road itself.

41 Robert WALSER, Life of a Poet, op. cit., p.

151.
XL Henry David THOREAU, Walking, Ardora, Madrid, 1998, p. 31.
XLI Cit. by Maurice MERLENU-PONTY, op cit., p. 45.
 74 . LANDSCAPE AND ART 3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 75

It is always worth remembering that the history of our world is, after all, that between materials and spirit, or between writing and physical space. Between
of walking and the earth, that of walking on earth, even that of an earth that reality, in short, and representation, between the most intimate self and the
walks, grows, emerges, spreads and gives us signs, even though, as Heraclitus exterior of the world.43 For this reason, walking is also an asceticism and a
also said, nature likes to hide. For its history or narrative is also that of strange peace that is always sought after. Where self-forgetfulness is
infinities; veils, emanations and glimpses, that of enigmatic traces like floating prescribed. The rotation of silence that emanates from the naked walk; and,
mirages or apparitions that follow one another, come and go. And they call us, with this, perhaps one reaches the end of oneself, that is: nothingness, if we
and we have to pursue them. There, space appears as an active and vibrant follow Jabes. But a nothing that, truly, listens. A nothing, Cézanne would
subject, an autonomous producer of affections and relationships, and then the say, lurking. 'The absent man, but all of him in the landscape' (Cézanne)44.
destiny of man cannot be anything other than a transit, a becoming or a sending, The painter wisely told Gasquet: "The artist is a simple receptacle of
as Heidegger (Ge-schick) already pointed out. That is our existence: a sensations, a brain, a recording device... Of course, a good apparatus,
wandering; thrown from the origin to the outside or to the outdoors: ex-sistence. fragile, complicated, especially compared to the others... but, if it intervenes,
The nomadic space is smooth, it is only marked with lines that are erased if it dares, for its part, weak as it is, to voluntarily interfere with what it must
!
and move with the journey. Walking is, certainly, like a way of annulling translate, it infiltrates its smallness into it. The work is inferior. ■
habit, therefore the order of things and with it even the order of time itself. In In the beginning, then, there was walking; a primitive wandering that has -
the sense that what we call habit is the taming of pure experiences; turning continued to live in religion (the journey as a myth, the homo-viator) or in some
the transition of what happens (to us) into a rule, a forecast and a system. literary forms (the journey as a narrative) 46. Walking, like writing, once
Habit thins out the experience of the world to the point of the ungraspable, constituted sacred activities; they belonged to the sacred order. And this is so to
but only in this way does it allow for the generation of meaning, and with it the extent that only the journey is sacred, when it is walking that conditions the
of time and stories (just as we call habitus the bark of a tree or wood, the gaze, to the point that, as Robert Smithson pointed out: it seems that only the
covering that protects against the elements). The one who walks, on the other feet are capable of looking. And that is why the action of those feet has so often
hand, lives, so to speak, in a broken or split time, no longer linear; he flows, been transformed into a dance, a procession, a purification rite or, as Eustaquio
therefore, in a landscape without habits. The wandering man is, therefore, Barjau sovereignly declaims in Peter Handke's film The Absence: «Walking.
always untimely. Someone who is out of step. In truth, the wanderer wishes Just walk. Getting there, I have only gotten there on foot, never by car. Walk.
to go outside the temporal continuity, to escape from the story(s); to be a Hit the ground with the soles of your shoes. Regulate the heartbeat.
nomad of meanings. He yearns for that aura-like and somewhat tragic
dimension that acts as the exteriority of a nonsense; in fact, he goes outside,
onto the road, because he cannot stop pre-sensing it. He senses that there is 43 Let us recall Robert Smithson: “One's mind and the earth are in a constant state of erosion, mental
an extemporaneity and a pre-historicity as a non-experienceable foundation phenomena roughen abstract shores, brain waves undermine cliffs of thought, conceptual
crystallizations break apart to form deposits of sandy reason.” Robert SMITHSON, «A sedimentation
of our experiences. of the mind: land projects», in Pobeii Smithson, [VAM Centre Julio González, Valencia, 1993, p. 125.
However, "the vastness of everything that has grown and inhabits the 44 Joachim GASQUET, op. cit., p. 171, '
surroundings of the path dispenses with the world" (Heidegger)XLII. This 45 Ibid., p. 157.
46 Cfr. Francesco CARERI, Walkscapes. Walking as an aesthetic practice, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2002,
walking is, therefore, a waiting for that encounter of things, when they make p.20. '
cosmos. Being in nature would be like being "at the disposal of words" Wipe your eyes. I have never taken ownership of a world moving on wheels.
(Throeau). An initiatory wandering, if you will, which is also inscribed on the And walking, walking, walking, the things of the world came to meet me. It
map of a mental territory; a psychogeography, to use a situationist happened, it was narrated. And that was the story. The model. The goal. (...) Air
expression. Through wandering through the most diverse places one acquires the earth by walking, make the blue turn blue, make the green turn green, make
new states of consciousness, other bodies. The limits are experienced, the the brown shine. Let the grey bloom. Yes, for me walking has been doing
frames are crossed between, for example, conscious life and dream life, everything. Walking has made me. Walk, walk, walk. Walk in peace."

XLII Martin HEIDECCER, Country Road, Herder, Barcelona, 2003, p. 31.

 76 LANDSCAPE AND ART

4. CÉZANNE AND CUBISM: PREAMBLE AND EPILOGUE OF THE MODERN LANDSCAPE

MANUEL GARCIA GUATAS

LITERATURE This is true and we can compare numerous written and painted examples
from 18th century English landscaping and Romanticism to Impressionism.
AA.VV., PaulKIee, IVAM, Julio González Center, Valencia, 1998 (cat. But it was in the second half of the 19th century when it was. photography
exp.). interposes between the eye of the painter and that of the writer. The divorce
AA.VV., Robert Smithson, IVAM, Julio González Center, Valencia, 1993 between literature and landscape had begun, but it would be consummated
(cat. exp.). with Cézanne and the Cubists, as writers, for example Zola - his great
CAMPAIGN, Mario, Baudelaire. Game without triumphs, Debate, Madrid, childhood friend - would not only point out the paths of naturalism, but as a
2006. critical supporter of the Impressionists and modern painting, he would
CARERI, Francesco, Walkscabes. Walking as an aesthetic practice, Gustavo
henceforth dedicate himself to photography. Around the same time,
Gili, Barcelona, 2002.
Huysmans took the path of decadent symbolism, and neither of these writers
CHATWIN, Bruce, The Traces of the Song, Peninsula, Barcelona, 2001.
DELEUZE, Gilles and GUATTARI, Félix, A Thousand Plateaus, Pre-texts, owed anything to the direct contemplation of nature.
Valencia, 1988. With Cézanne and the Cubists, the preconceived idea and speculative
— and PARNET, Claire, Dialogues, Pre-texts, Valencia, 1980. thought will prevail over the immediacy of the received images,
GASQUET, Joachim, Cézanne. What I saw, what he told me, Gadir, Madrid,
2006.
HAMSUN, Knut, Trilogue of the Wanderer. Alfaguara, Madrid, 2005.
HEIDEGGER, Martin, Country Road, Herder, Barcelona, 2003.
MERLEAU-PONTY, Maurice, Sense and Senselessness, Peninsula, Barcelona,
2000 (the ed. in French, 1948).
SAFRANSKI, Rudiger, Nietzsche. Biography of a Thought, Tusquets,
Barcelona, 2001.
THOREAU, Henry David, Walking, Ardora, Madrid, 1998.
— , Walden, Chair, Madrid, 2005.
WALSER, Robert, The Passage, Siruela, Madrid, 1996.
— FritzKocher's notebooks, Pre-textos, Valencia, 1998.
— , Vidade Poeta, Alfaguara, Madrid, 1990.
ZWEIG, Stefan, The fight against the devil. Holderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche, The
Cliff, Barcelona, 1999.
1. LANDSCAPES HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED BY LITERATURE

I wanted to begin this topic with a brief reflection on landscape and literature,
accompanied by the citation and commentary of some examples. Especially
because the aesthetic visions of poets and prose writers of the landscape have
accompanied in other times those reflected by the painters of their
generation.
78 LANDSCAPE AND ART 4. Cézanne and cubism

which they dismiss as picturesque or anecdotal. For Cézanne and his from Jaén. The river, be it the Duero or the Guadalquivir, seen from above,
followers, in what would be the new and final expression of landscapes is always for the poet a tension concentrated in metaphors such as these:
taken from nature, Braque, Picasso or Léger, priority over vision would be 'crossbow curve' or 'broken scimitar', metaphors, in turn, of what he defines
the idea of constructing it with new integrative values, which are no longer in another verse as 'the arch of life'. •
those of light and colour, but those of time and space.
But we know and imagine many landscapes because of the power that
prose and verse literature has to evoke, create or recreate them. We can
even say that some of them have been discovered by literature. But it was
painting that constructed them on a flat support, differently in each era.
If it had not been for Azorín and Machado, Castile would not have
become the reference point - which an overused usage has turned into a
cliché - of a spiritual landscape and, therefore, internalized to the point of
profound solitude, although animated in some places by the flow of its
rivers. The two most significant texts by both authors, in prose and verse,
respectively, are titled Castilla (1912) and Camposde Castilla (1907-1917).
Both also coincided, although only in time, with the interest in new
ways of interpreting the landscape among modern painters, from Cézanne to
Cubism, or in Spain, from Aureliano de Beruete (to whom Azorín dedicates
his book with this artistic title: "wonderful painter of Castile") to Zuloaga,
extending even to the young painters of the so-called Vallecas school in the
1930s.
It is evident that until the last decades of the 19th century (which is the
one from which we come culturally), the landscape was discovered for us
by writers and painters. If that landscape is crossed by a river, large or
small, it acquires mobility and life, either naturally from the flow of its
current or that which has been given to it by the work of thousands of
anonymous hands. Then the writer turns it into a metaphor for the course of
life or the reconstruction of memory.
Professor Mainer will discuss the concept and feeling of the Spanish
landscape in Azorín, through his early novel, La voluntad. I do not want to
refer to these philosophical visions of the landscape, so close, I believe, to
Schopenhauer's ideas, nor to the compilation of articles that Azorín
published years later under the title Castilla, but to other more direct visions
of the landscape by a poet and a travel narrator, who have written at each
end of the last century and have discovered and shaped some of Spain's
landscapes.
For the first example, we can stop and contemplate how the rivers flow
through Machado's verses. They do it at dusk,
Yo between the fields of his intimate and painful Soria or of the
luminous lands
78 LANDSCAPE AND ART 4. Cézanne and cubism

landscape and art 1

AN 1
q• 40
CENTHA LIBRARY, 84
CENTRAL LIBRARY, 183
LIBRARY 134
ABADA PUBLISHERS 134

But in another writer-walker closer to us, like Julio

Llamazares, who travels through landscapes and goes up river
beds, the vision he reflects is quite different. It is no longer that
of the walker, but that of the one who walks the roads to
reconstruct his history or personal memory.
The prose of this Leonese writer sometimes has something
of the Proustian sensation that objects and landscapes retain the
traces of previous eyes that looked at them, but his vision is no
longer a contemplation, but a physical journey through nature
and a mental journey through memories. The position of this
writer is very significant when, in his work The River of
Oblivion (1990), he begins with these paragraphs the story of
his journey on foot in the summer of 1981 along another river,
the Curueño, the river of his childhood. But this solitary
journey becomes a "memory of a path"
 8th LANDSCAPE AND ART
4. CÉZANNE AND CUBISM 81

"which I traveled with the growing conviction that the most unknown paths are those perception of reality has been different. Well, passing through the fiery and
closest to our hearts." passionate poetry and prose of the romantics, or from some registers and nuances of
That is why he begins the presentation of this travel book with these reflections perspective in the style of the compositions of the impressionists. Cézanne and the
that gave meaning and impetus to his journey: «The landscape is memory. Beyond its early Cubists also went out to see the landscapes, but the filter of their minds and
limits, the landscape holds traces of the past, reconstructs memories, projects in our their sensitivity left no room for the effects or nuances of light and the chiaroscuro of
eyes the shadows of another time that only exists as a reflection of itself in the plein air painting, so dear to their precursors the Impressionists.
memory of the traveler or of the one who simply remains faithful to that landscape.
'For the romantic man, the landscape is also the main source of melancholy. Symbol CLASSIC and ROMANTIC
of death, of brute transience! of time and life - the landscape is eternal and almost
always outlives the person who looks at it - it also represents that ultimate scenario Being an artist of his time meant, in the first decades of the 19th century, either under
in which dispossession and vertigo gradually destroy the memory of the traveler - the neoclassical aesthetic, or according to romantic impulses, harmonizing nature
man, in short - who has always known that the road he is following leads nowhere. with the composition in the workshop, that is, manipulating it.
This recreation of the river of his childhood, now barely inhabited, is a But the landscape painting done by those we call classic and romantic could not
metaphor, at the same time, of the eternity and transience of landscapes, especially compete with the considered superior genres of religious painting, history painting or
those lived or anthropic, which engender melancholy when we remember them or portraiture. It will take, as is known, many more years to be recognized as a genre
return to them. with its own perception and purpose, independent of other meanings or intentions.
Therefore, as I was saying, thanks in large part to the testimonies of travelling For a long time it will continue to be called country painting.
painters and writers, we have discovered the landscapes, as Gézanne did with the It is known that in England there were landscape painters, poets and writers of
mountain of Sainte-Victoire. treatises ahead of them in unison. Among the latter I would like to mention, due to
When these are unique, like the Piedra Monastery, a favourite place for Spanish the recent accessibility of his translated texts, the pastor of the Anglican Church
landscapers in the last decades of the 19th century, or linked to a historical site, they William Gilpin, who in 1794 published a work with an eloquent and comprehensive
have come to be recognised in Spain throughout the 20th century, legally in their own title: Three essays: on picturesque beauty, on the picturesque journey and on the art
right, first, in the 1920s, as Natural Sites of National Interest, then as Natural Parks, of sketching landscapes, to which is added a poem on landscape painting, which is
and since the Spanish Historical Heritage Law of 1985, Assets of Cultural Interest.
presented and commented on by Javier Maderuelo in the Spanish edition ■.
However, on the Continent, nature was measured by different parameters, from
the bottom up and, therefore, with spectacular effects.
2. THE LANDSCAPE FROM THE STUDIOS OF THE PAINTERS

In the following considerations that I am going to comment on in chronological

2 William G1LPIN, Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, Abada, Madrid, 2004-
sequence of the most representative moments of landscape painting, I am not going to
focus on styles or movements, nor will their formal characteristics be a priority, as we
could continue in a class, but rather on the

I Jallo LLAMAZARES, The Forgotten River, Alfaguara/Santillana, Madrid, 2006, p. 13. I quoted the first of these
two paragraphs from Llamazares' text in my presentation entitled "Landscape, tradition and memory", in Javier
. structure of vision
MADERUELO (ed.), E¡ Prmajr, Diputación de Huesca, Huesca, 1996, p. 80.
that the most receptive painters have transferred to canvas. ‘
And I will begin by saying that every landscape is an experience of the vision of
the painter who perceives and constructs it; but, in addition, the artist's eye is not a
passive eye, but rather it completes the forms and modifies them subtly to establish
contrasts that are then interpreted on the canvas with colors.
But it is worth remembering, although it may seem obvious, that in each era the
 82 LANDSCAPE AND ART .Cézanne and cubism 643441 83'
homes. It remained something strange and even unintelligible, because although both everything that surrounds them are absolutely contrasting visions and, therefore,
classical and romantic painters displayed it on their canvases as a spectacle, nature defining two very different styles. In the first he intended to stage an exciting vision,
was, rather, an enigma, it had omens of fatalism and, in addition, when it was painted, while in the second it is the real testimony of a heavy structure that defines the limits
it had to be beautified. Furthermore, it did not contain any moral teaching.
. For this reason, some, the classics, will give it a solemn, sometimes premonitory and of a new landscape, a product of industrialization, as was this bridge or another
elegiac sense, and others, the romantics, an emotional or exciting feeling, turning the railway bridge that Monet would paint the following year with a similar architectural
vision of the landscape into a total and grandiose spectacle, in which there is no lack composition and lighting effects.
of waterfalls tumbling down, torrents crossed by a fragile little bridge and gorges But what legacy did Cézanne take from Romanticism in his aesthetic thought and
rising up to the clouds. in his painting? We can glimpse a third, that of the national tradition of Delacroix,
These motifs and others of a more sedate but immeasurable nature that appear in which would also reach other impressionist painters. However, as subjects, he was
romantic landscape paintings represented a break with the rules of balance in the more interested in the figure and its compositions in scenes than in the landscape,
presentation of subjects and feelings that should be conveyed to the viewer and with which was scarcely relevant, as is known, in French romanticism.
the order established on the canvas by the regulating presence of classical -
architecture.
Nature was interpreted by Immanuel Kant, as Professor Miliani reminded us in 3. GOING OUT INTO THE COUNTRYSIDE: THE IMPRESSIONISTS
his lecture last year, according to the feelings of the beautiful and the sublime XLIII. The
great philosopher structures and develops his aesthetic theory in the Second Book of However, the landscapes that the Impressionists would paint decades later were
the first part of his work Critique of Judgment (1790), where under the title of chosen, like those in Argenteuil, for new reasons of approach. The countryside
"Analytics of the Sublime", he comments on up to three definitions of this concept; around the cities, in this case Paris, had no grand or striking reliefs, they were the
but I will stick with the third, which best expresses the romantic sentiment: "Sublime countryside and the forests that, in addition, had begun to stop being a place of work
is that which, only because it can be thought, demonstrates a faculty of the spirit that to become popular places for excursions and entertainment, where people went to
surpasses all measure of the senses." have picnics, since they could move with
And he illustrates it at the end with these examples of a Nature, understood, in his
own words, as an immeasurable and inaccessible force: "Rocks boldly hanging,
threatening, so to speak, storm clouds gathering in the sky, advancing with lightning 4 Immanuel KANT, Critique of Judgment. Part one. Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, translation by Manuel
G. Morente, Victoriano Suárez, Madrid, 1914, p. 158. •
and thunder, volcanoes in all their devastating power, hurricanes leaving desolation
behind them, the boundless Ocean roaring with anger, a deep waterfall in a powerful
CENTHA LIBRARY,
river, etc., reduce our ability to resist to an insignificant smallness, compared to their
UNAM
strength. But their appearance is all the more attractive the more fearful it is,
provided that we find ourselves in a safe place. We gladly call these objects sublime
because they elevate the faculties of the soul above their ordinary average. XLIV ease by rail. The Impressionists would travel and paint regularly along the great loop
. of the Seine to the west of Paris, between Carriéres-sur-Seine, Crissy-sur-Seine
But we can also illustrate this literary vision by comparing a romantic painting (where the Grenouillére floating café was located, immortalised by Monet and
with another by an impressionist artist in which the common element of a bridge - Renoir) and Le Port-Marly, Sisley's favourite place, which he would capture under
appears in the title and in the centre of the canvas. For example, that of the German the effects of river flooding.
: Painting outdoors represented liberation from the constraints of the studio and the
painter and stage designer Karl Blechen (1798-1840), entitled Construction of the
academic servitude of respect for drawing and line. But it also involved physical
Devil's Bridge (1833), with one of the two bridges that Monet painted, for example,
effort in travelling and walking to the subject and the inconvenience of painting
The Argenteuil Bridge (1874), the place along the Seine that best identifies with the
outdoors in the heat, cold and wind. And then, a battle between colors to capture the
beginnings of Impressionist painting.
light and its reflections. Many years later, Sorolla acknowledged in one of his letters
In short, the effect of the image they transmit coincides in that both bridges are
that when he painted figures in the sea, he often had difficulty capturing its ever-
the visual architecture of the canvas because they are placed in its center, but
changing colours and successfully transferring them to the canvas to his liking.
XLIII Raffaele MILANi, «Landscape aesthetics: forms, canons, intentionality», in Javier MADE-
XLIVRUELO (ed.), Paiso/ej Thought, Abada/CDAN, Madrid, 2006, p. 71. PISSARRO AND MONET ■
 84 , LANDSCAPE AND ART 4. Cézanne and cubism 85
The first was the teacher of Gauguin and Cézanne, and the second, an admired traditional pictorial compositions, that of Pissarro, and from an instantaneous vision,
example and aesthetic reference for all young painters who wanted to create new like a photograph, that of Monet. That is why the composition, the visual architecture
paintings. Both of them, needless to say, were pure impressionist landscape painters. : that configures them, is equally very different. The snowy landscape is based on that
For the first time, colour forms a whole with light and is exalted to become the subtle arrangement of the gate posts, like a pentagram, with the black accent of the
protagonist on the canvas. But, in addition to the technical change that will be magpie, like a quaver, and those of the small fence hidden by the snow that, parallel
required to capture the variable lighting effects, it must be executed quickly. That is to the walls and roofs of the two houses and the stain of shadows in purple tones on
to say, two new values are introduced into painting: speed, a sign of current events, the foreground, defines from side to side the three planes of the painting, while in the
and syncopated and fragmented workmanship, one of the lessons for modernity or urban road of Louveciennes we find ourselves before the traditional geometric
immediately for what we conventionally call the post-impressionism of Seurat and perspective in depth, similar to that of The Dutch landscapes, but with the
Signac. incorporation of a seasonal effect of late
A significant and clearly visible difference between a romantic landscape and a
realistic or impressionist one is the format. In the first ones, the vertical predominates
to present nature as a spectacle. grandiose that seems to want to swallow up the
viewer, while among the latter the landscape shape of the canvas will prevail, which
favors the extensive and panoramic vision formed by the nuances of light and color.
-
From these experiences with the Impressionists, painters such as Braque, before
Cézanne, would begin to learn how to interpret a landscape so dear to both of them,
such as the bay of L'Istague in Marseille, or Charles Gamoin, a visitor to Cézanne in
his later years. . : . .
It goes without saying that in order to be able to apply colours so freely and so
quickly and achieve very vivid effects, one must not lose sight of the progress
brought about by the manufacture and sale of prepared colours in zinc or tin tubes,
which made it easier for the Impressionists to paint outdoors and create a painting au
plein air. For example, Monet placed the colours not only as he saw them, but
practically as they came out of the tubes, putting the three primary colours (red,
yellow and blue) into the composition without attenuating them, which produced a
sensation of liveliness and spontaneity unknown to critics and painters of the time.
Pissarro was also expected to apply a very similar technique, and Cézanne
learned from him: first, to paint outdoors in front of landscapes, specifically views of
the town of Auvers, and then on the fly, that is, outside the protection and comfort of
the studio, to use these same very clear colours with an unconventional distribution of
values.
Two examples of contrasting chromatic values and effects and two equally
opposite compositions can be found in these paintings by Monet and Pisarro. In The
Magpie it is the naked and superb effect of a heavy snowfall with which Monet
covers the entire canvas with a blinding luminosity, enlivened by the poles of the
gate, on which a magpie has perched. The other canvas conveys the winter effect of
thawing or frost on the Louveciennes road which, flanked in perfect symmetry by
small houses, fades into the depths in the luminous effects of the morning's low light.
•.
These landscapes convey different emotions, from a picturesque style indebted to
 86 , LANDSCAPE AND ART 4. Cézanne and cubism 87
of winter and of grazing light that constitutes the architecture, at luminous intervals, twenty-nine years younger than Cézanne. '
of this composition. He was a privileged artist because he personally knew the creators of
The first aesthetic lesson that Cézanne will learn from these masters will be to contemporary painting: he met Gauguin in Pont-Aven, he was with Cezánne and he
represent nature in a renewed way, with luminous colours, without arrangements in corresponded with him and with Van Gogh. He was an art critic and writer and had
the studio or expressionist emotional additions as, for example, he had done in his spearheaded the symbolist movement in painting.
first, rough paintings. But he will also assimilate this way of composing landscapes An artist, therefore, key to understanding through his mediation what painting
with solid architectural references5. . was like and the foundations that these three solitary and distant painters had to do it,
each one from the antipodes of Paris, which continued to be the mother and crucible
of all innovative ideas and artistic fashions in the decades of change from one century
4. CÉZANNE: FATHER OF MODERN LANDSCAPE to another.
Cézanne revealed to him the secrets of his painting and his landscapes: verbally,
The last decades of the 19th century were of transcendental changes in painting that in writing in his letters and directly, whether in front of his apples and fruit gathered
led from different aesthetic proposals to the liberation of the aesthetic norm or in a china table on a table in his studio or contemplating the magical mountain of
principle of imitation of nature. Because, as the writer and professor of Aesthetics Sainte Victoire.
Antoni Mari reflected, beauty was no longer an objective quality of forms, but a
product of thought6. CÉZANNE'S PALETTE: DELACROIX'S COLOURS
From then on, painting was more a memory of the artist's experience than a AND OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS '
representation of natural facts, which photography could now do with greater fidelity.
Artistic creation therefore began in the mind and not in the observation of nature. Years later, Bernard published the list of colours that Cézanne used. There were
For this reason, Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin sought to establish the basically four, each with its own variations and nuances: yellow, red, blue and green.
difference that exists between things that are thought and things that are seen, and That is, the palette of the impressionists, which would be missing two complementary
that the mental image was more important than the visual image with which the colors, orange and purple.
world is presented to our perception. Significantly, the colour with the most variants in tubes was the red one:
Cézanne, like these contemporary artists, doubted the senses and wanted to create vermilion, ochre, burnt sienna, madder lake (bright red), fine carmine lake and burnt
a painting that, from the start, would make a clean slate with what had come before it, lake. Of the yellows he used five kinds: brilliant, Naples, chrome, yellow ochre and
not only with that of conventional naturalism, but even with that of the natural sienna. ■
impressionists, from whom he learned to paint in a more spontaneous and much less
sombre manner.
But, to begin to understand his painting, there is nothing closer than being able to
know the real colours that a painter has used and even being able to see the tubes with
their names and, better yet, having another painter who has painted alongside him tell
us about it. '
In his later years, Cézanne had a young painter friend who travelled to Aix-en-
Provence to visit him, who collected his phrases on painting and descended to the
detail of noting the colours he saw in his studio. It was Emile Bernard (1868-1941),
Y
O
7 John REWALD et al., Paul Cézanne, Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art. Ministry of
5 Richard SHIFF, The Last Supper of Impressionism. Study of the theory, technique, and critical Culture, Madrid, 1984 (cat. exp.). Paul Cézanne, The History of the City, New York, 1993.
assessment of modern art, Visor, Madrid, 2002, pp. 156-158 and note no. 25 of the pp. 369s. Mathé VALLES-BLED, Cézanne: biography, 1839-1906, Jean-Claude Latts, Paris, 1995. I
6 Antoni Mari, "Cézanne, Husserl, Valery", Kalías. Aide Magazine, IVAM, n° 10, Valencia, 1993. I
I
¡
Y
O
 88 LANDSCAPE AND ART 4. Cézanne and cubism 89
In the last two letters he wrote, a week before he died, Cézanne asked his son for September 1906. .
two dozen paint brushes and impatiently reminded a supplier that he had not received Cézanne not only saw the same landscapes over and over again, he became part of
the ten burnt lacquers. • them. I had a life-long relationship with them. I needed to paint inside it, but not to
They were enough to model apples on the white of a wrinkled tablecloth or a make a painting in the open air like the Impressionists, but to feel other components
chinaware and to carve rocks and pine branches. But he did it with parallel and elements of the landscape such as the heat, the blinding light, the aromas of the
brushstrokes in one direction or another and without resorting to the drawn contours earth, the wind or even the rain. For example, the last time he went out to paint (on
of those shapes. «The choppy tone of these brushstrokes, inherited from October 15) on the hill of Les Lauves he was surprised by a downpour (like those that
Impressionism —observe Eosenblum and Janson— conveys not only the sensation of usually fall in Provence) that was lethal, as he was caught unconscious in the open air
a real fabric of pigmentations that brings together the disparate elements of the and died eight days later.
landscape into a meshed whole, but also the truthful description of a reaction to Although it may not seem like it at times, Cézanne was a great colourist in his
nature that must necessarily remain incomplete in order to reflect infinite and subtle landscape paintings, not so much for their variety, but for the brilliance and
transformations within the more enduring quality of earth, rock and sky.»S. parsimony with which he distributed them on the canvas, always in an irregular
But this palette of a painter like Cézanne, who began to be one and to like manner, apparently, but in which he left nothing to chance. He used colours with an
luminous colours when Pissarro converted him to Impressionism, will apply it in a unknown chromatic intensity to give new forms to the things he painted, whether
very different way. This was already suggested by the comment of the painter they were rocks, fields, houses of humble architecture or pine trees. As I said to the
Bernard: "Such a palette has the advantage of not allowing too many mixtures and of young poet from Aix-en-Provence, Joachim Gasquet: "When I paint, I don't think
giving too much relief to what is being painted, because it allows one to discard about anything: I see colours that arrange themselves as they wish; everything is
chiaroscuro, that is, vigorous contrasts"3: And, in addition, it often left parts of the organised, trees, rocks, houses, by means of patches of colour. Only colors continue
canvas uncovered by paint. Perhaps due to the influence of watercolor, to incorporate to exist ..........................................] Colors are the place where our brain
the light from the white of the support into the pictorial surface. "meets the universe" ■ .
This was precisely where Cézanne's relationship between colours and realism, Naturally, this pictorial universe was no longer that of the variable light effects of
based on chiaroscuro effects, and with the vigorous contrasts of the Impressionists Impressionist painting. Cézanne recreates a nature that does not change even in the
ended. It was the palette of a modern painter, but also that of the classics and masters colour of the green of the tops of the pine trees (which, furthermore, are evergreen),
of painting, as the Venetians, Rubens and Delacroix had been for him, or as much or nor does it reflect the changes of the seasons, much less the hours of the day or the
more so for Renoir, with whom Bernard relates it a few lines later in his memories. subtle atmospheric nuances after the rain or under luminous clouds. Cézanne's
It is known that his admiration for Delacroix would accompany him throughout landscapes are bathed in light, but it is a light that comes from the colors themselves
his life. In this regard, Bernard recalls that Cézanne had prepared a sketch for a that serve to bind each one together.
painting that he would call Apotheosis of Delacroix, where he was carried dead to
heaven by two angels, one with his brushes and the other with his palette. At the
bottom there was a landscape that Pissarro was painting at his easel, on the right 10 Paul CÉZANNE and John Rewald (eds.), Coms/sondencio, Visor, Madrid, 1991. p. 409
II Joachim GASQUET, «Paul Cézanne (Conversations)», quoted in Walter HESS, Documents for the
Monet was depicted and with his back turned in the foreground, Cézanne was joining Understanding of Modern Art, Nueva Visión, Buenos Aires, 1973- PP.29 ff. •
the scene.

8 Robert Rosenblum and H. W. Janson, The ai-te of the 19th century, Akal, Torrejón deArdoz, 1992, p. 476, 9
Emile BERNARD, Souvenir sur Paid Cézanne etletres, Paris, 1925, pp. 63 s. rich,
so representative of his
masters of the figure and the landscape to whom he paid this lifelong tribute and
wanted to emulate with the colours. And in his later years he still hoped to have the
strength to finish this apotheosis.
But even though his wishes were not fulfilled, the romantic painter remained
embedded in his aesthetic thinking. "I am reading the evaluations that Baudelaire
wrote about the work of Delacroix," he wrote in a letter to his son at the end of
 90 LANDSCAPE AND ART 4. Cézanne and cubism 91
of the forms and thus highlight the solidity of its essential structure. For this another, and in the measurements of the paintings: three of 65 x 81 cm, and two,
reason, compared to them, the paintings of the Impressionists seem, as Gombrich slightly larger, of 73 x 92 cm. I emphasize these dimensions because it is the usual
states in his timeless manual of art history, "mere ingenious improvisations." His and most manageable format for views painted in open air and the visual effect and
new painting announced a different vision of nature from the elaboration in the composition are similar in all of them.
artist's brain under a new pictorial order created by the immutable forms of He depicted the common forms of the Aix-en-Provence landscape, which in one
geometry. way or another were distributed and repeated around him. Rocky outcrops, pine trees
and small houses in the countryside. But they are tight shapes that close the
THE GEOMETRY OF THE CLASSICS: HOUSES, ROCKS AND PINES perspective on all sides of the canvas, except on two where the Santa Victoria
mountain stands massive in the background, spreading its slopes towards the ends
Another secret that the old and humble solitary painter from Aix will reveal to and revealing the grey, blue and green spots of the sky.
Bernard will be that of geometry as the foundation of his visual system and Cézanne always focused on simple, even simplified forms found in nature or
articulation of landscapes. ' constructed by man, which promote a sense of balance. I contemplated them from a
It is more than a coincidence that the landscape was born in the 15th century with slightly low point of view, which predisposes one to a more enlarged or monumental
geometry, that is, with geometric perspective. It can be said that the modern vision of each one of them. But it also contributes to literally throwing those broken
landscape was an invention of perspective. That is why in the Renaissance painting or cracked rocks, which seem to be about to break off and roll to one side or the
was compared to a window (the idea is Alberti's) and the laws of perspective led to other, literally over our eyes, among which grow, like wedges, thin pines.
the exactness of the deception of space represented with forms created by the There are two paintings that are very illustrative of what I am saying, but also the
proportions between themselves and with the whole, that is, again with geometry. most precursors of what will be and be called cubism, due to their powerful
Whether in the painting of a Flemish master, with his revolutionary and exclusive oil orthogonal geometric forms, arranged by the painter before our eyes in the
on panel technique, or in that of a Florentine or Venetian painter of the quattrocento, foreground. Both depict the same subject: Bibé'mus Quarry (Essen, Museum
done in tempera or fresco, the landscapes they captured were at the same time a Folkwang) and The Mountain of Sainte-Victoire, Seen from the Bibe'mus Quarry
concept, sometimes a symbolic space, and a feeling. Perspective manifested a new (Baltimore, Museum of Art, The Cone Collection). ;

structure of vision, which, in addition to having to reproduce figures and things with He also paints these and other shapes in apparent disorder, one on each side and
their volume and proportions more similar to reality, established on the board or in all directions. This is illustrated exemplarily by the expressive painting The
canvas the very truthful fiction of a foreground and a background, of a front and a Millstone (Philadelphia Museum of Art), in which the extremely powerful circular
back. And the backgrounds will be the spaces of the painting intended for image of the stone that Gézanne has rolled into the foreground of the lower left
architecture or rural or marine landscapes. corner is just another form, detached from the stones roughly ground into
It is understandable, then, that the modern landscape of the early twentieth parallelepipeds and from the rocks.
century, from the brushes of Gézanne, also did so with some of the basic figures of
geometry, which he selected: the cone, the sphere and the cylinder. That is, the
immutable forms of classicism.
In some of the landscapes painted by Cézanne in his later years, the integrative
lesson of geometry can be most exemplarily followed in order to fuse rocks, small
isolated buildings and graceful young pines into a perfectly constructed and -
interlocking whole. From there comes his influence in the first landscapes that
Braque would paint in L'Estaque in the summer of 1908, with an innovative plastic
language that would give rise to the name 'cubism', or he would try them again the
following year much further north, next to the Seine, in La Roche-Guyon. Compared
to those of just eight years earlier, we immediately notice the continuity of Cézanne's
vision and the bolder step forward taken by the young Braque. .
I would like to illustrate these reflections with five quotes from other Cézanne
paintings, which coincide in similar dates, in the years between one century and
 92 .LANDSCAPES AND ART 4. Cézanne and cubism 93

2. Paul Cézanne, The Millstone, ca. 1892-1894.

THE Holy Mountain . ' '■

Always the same main motif - the Sainte-Victoria mountain, sacred and magical at
1. Paul CÉzANNE, Bibémus Quarry, ca. 1895.
the same time, which rises imposingly, almost a thousand metres high, and solitary,
to the east of Aix-en-Provence. Visible from all sides and, most advantageously, from
what tourist brochures now present as les sites cézanniens, that is, the places where
forms that occupy the centre, between the trunks of the pines, thin as tubes, which he
he went to paint, some of which have now been converted into parks. From them he
has tilted towards that side and whose tops he has completely dispensed with at the
would paint it in oil almost fifty times and make as many notes and colour
top, to close the landscape as if it were a capricious hollow or wooded grotto.
experiments in watercolour, during the last twenty-five years of his life, until the year
An irrelevant pictorial motif, that of those carved stones that the stonemasons had
of his death. He had already been preceded in his painting by many other Provençal
prepared for an oil mill that was never built, but which the pine forest had completely
artists, including his fellow countryman Franqois M. Granet (who painted beautiful
surrounded. But that is precisely where that dynamic sense appears, which even
watercolours of the mountain and later gave his name to the Aix museum with his
includes points of view in simultaneous perspectives, as Cézanne seems to have tried
legacy); but the names of Cézanne and Sainte-Victoire have remained in the visual
in this canvas, stripped of any grandiose or even picturesque vision. But Cézanne's
memory of all of us since his canvases, in a single image of the artist and of this
modern landscapes add a new concept: that of the implicit dynamism generated by a
landscape of ProvenceXLV.
plural vision, comprehensive from various points of view.
Of the views he painted of Santa Victoria, two groups and two stages can be
distinguished. In the oldest (between 1885 and 1890)

XLV Denis COUTAGNE etal., Sainte-Victoire. Cézanne 1^0, Granet Museum,

Aix-en-Provence (June-September 1990)» Reunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris,
1990 (cat. exp.).
94 LANDSCAPE AND ART 4, CÉZANNE AND CUBISM 95

3. Paul Cézanne, The Sainte-Vidoire Mountain, Seen from Bibémus, ca. 1897. 4. Paul Cézanne, The Sainte-Vidoire Mountain Seen from Bellevue, 1882-1885.

the panoramic view prevails, with the extensive and peaceful valley of the pine trees on the left, which project their branches framing the view of Sainte-Victoria -
Are River and, in the background, the mountain massif closing the within the canvas with an expansive and rhythmic effect (as in the 1885-1887 version at
landscape. In the next one (between 1894 and 1900) he painted it from the Courtauld Institute Galleries in London), or placing a slender one in the centre to
another place much closer to his skirt and these views captured on the confuse/hide the shape of its crown with the top of the mountain, to a much more
canvases are, I would say, approximation and not panoramic. austere one of shapes and colours and with the intention of creating a constructed space
Cézanne's change in perception of this landscape is not trivial, as it in which the mountain, painted in planes of colour and the rocks of the quarry or the
signifies an evolution of the expansive general composition, with slender geometric silhouette of the Château Noir form a single compositional unit.
landscape and art................................................................................1
AN..................................................................................................1
q •.........................................................................................................40
CENTHA LIBRARY,...........................................................84
CENTRAL LIBRARY,........................................................183
LIBRARY...........................................................................134
ABADA PUBLISHERS......................................................134
94 LANDSCAPE AND ART 4, CÉZANNE AND CUBISM 96
unique, constructed structure between the background and the foreground.
natural or built forms to show only their visual nature through colours, the Its landscapes are still there and can be seen as they were, despite the urban growth
pure pictorial technique of the firm and slow brushstroke to apply it, of Aix-en-Provence, although they have been fixed up or prepared for tourists. These
increasingly transparent, in greens and blues, in small spots that create a are the surroundings of the Chateau Noir estate
 96 LANDSCAPE AND ART

4. CÉZANNE AND CUBISM 97

(where he had a room to paint) and the rocks and pines that surround it. The rooms in which they exhibited paintings and watercolours by Cézanne. It
Bibémus quarry, with its detached blocks, which provided some powerful was the moment of his consecration and of his discovery by other young
views of the Santa Victoria mountain. The Trois Sautets bridge over the Are painters, Braque and Picasso in particular, and by the poet Rilke, who visited
river. The family estate of Jas de Bouffan, west of Aix and then on the the exhibition several times and left moving testimonies'4'.
outskirts. The perched houses of the village of Gardanne, south of Aix, or That posthumous anthology of Cézanne has been recognized as an
the Mediterranean at L'Estaque, as he had painted it on other previous exhibition of transcendental generational consequences, as valued by the
occasions. Sainte-Victoria seen from the path of Le Tholonet or from Les historian of Cubism John Golding: "After the great retrospective exhibition
Lauves, where he had his last studio, high up (a kilometre of steep climb of Cézanne at the Salon d'Automne in 1907, his influence became
from Aix for an old painter), today his intimate museum. The upper district, primordial again, and from then on, following the example of Braque,
with such an evocative name, of Beauregard, "where the road is certain painters began to interpret Cézanne from a more formal and
mountainous, very picturesque, although it is very exposed to the mistral," intellectual point of view, less directly visual"5.
he wrote to his son ten days before he died. They were the painters whom the critic Vauxcelles, who is credited with
But when young Bernard spent a few days with him, the meetings discovering the disparaging word 'cubes', described in March 1910 in the
between the two painters did not remain only in words or theories, but old newspaper Gil Blas as "ignorant geometers, who reduce the landscape and
Cézanne would lead him by shortcuts to the subject or theme to be painted: the human body to insipid cubes."
"I led myself towards Sainte-Victoire and we began to paint each one with But the genre or landscape themes had little and only occasional appeal
watercolor, oilXLVI." to the early Cubists. It seems that Braque was the one who influenced him
Cézanne's landscapes are still there in the area around Aix-en-Provence the most and for the longest time, since he had already been experimenting
with their evocative power, marked and indicated so that we can now with new ways of representing the landscape since his first post-
explore them on foot or by sight, since there is not a single painting of his in impressionist canvases of the bay of L'Estaque, influenced by the views and
the 19th century Granet museum. technique of the paintings of Signac, his friends the Fauves and Cézanne.
But why doesn't he hang a single still life or landscape of his in his local Picasso was always more interested in the figure, nudes and architecture.
museum? Well, because he was envied by a painter who was totally Other Cubists who followed in the footsteps of these two pioneers, such as
misunderstood by his own people and by a stern and strange neighbor. The Gleizes, Léger or even Delaunay, also oriented themselves towards
testimony of the then director of the museum (from 1892 to 1925), the landscapes with figures among trees or with animated urban references,
sculptor Auguste-Henri Pontier, who had said that no work by Cézanne constituting a whole of cylindrical forms with the trunks, as, for example, in
would be included while he was director, is very illustrative. And he did. Léger's disturbing canvas: Three Nudes in the Forest, 1909-1910 (Króller-
Personal grudge or sheer ignorance of what his countryman's painting Müller Museum, Holland).
represented at the time and will mean for posterity? Fernand Léger is known to have had great admiration for Cézanne and
for the effects of his concise theory that nature was reduced to the three
elementary forms of the cone, the sphere and the cylinder. Well this is the
5. CEZANNI'S CUBISM
one
As is well known and we remember precisely in this year that marks its
centenary, 1907 will be decisive for contemporary painting. At least that is 14 Rainer Maria RILKE, Letters on Cézanne (edited by Clara Rilke), Paidós, Barcelona, 1992.
how we can interpret it from the perspective of 20th century art history. Not 15 John GOLDING, E! cubism. A story^ an analysis. 19°7~J9¡4' Alliance, Madrid, 1993, p. 28
(first ed. (in English, 1959). . .. . ____________-..............
only because that year Picasso showed a large canvas in his studio to a few
painters and friends that years later they would call Les Demoiselles
d'Avignon, but because at the Salon d'Automne that year they reserved two

XLVI Émile BERNARD, op. cii. (1925), p. 56.

98 LANDSCAPE AND ART 4. Cézanne and cubism 99
later see hanging in the Fauve room at the Autumn Salon of 1905. They
surprised him so much that that same winter he began to paint landscapes
following their brushstrokes and colours, for which he did not hesitate to
move south, to L'Estaque. And here he will spend the summers of the
following years painting landscapes in the style of his famous friends. But in
the process he came across the first paintings by Gézanne, which, as Braque
himself recalls, were at the home of the dealer Vollard, and then, in a big
way, in the aforementioned retrospective dedicated to the recently deceased
master of Aix at the Autumn Salon of 1907. Also around that time, the
disconcerting canvas Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which Apollinaire had
shown him in Picasso's studio, intruded on his visual stimuli.
Thus, in the spring and summer of 1908 and from L'Estaque, Braque
began to paint in a different way, following in the footsteps of Gézanne in
his own land, warm and scorched by the sun, and in the same places where
the solitary master had set up his easel. But he soon took his way of painting
even further: to bare geometric forms, or cubism, as one critic is said to have
disparagingly defined his canvases full of strange cubes and other similar
5. Fernand Léger, Three Nudes in the Forest, 1909-1910.
figures when he saw them in the Kahnweiler gallery in the autumn of that
same year.
predominant and unique geometric structure of this canvas, which he There are quite a few landscapes of L'Estaque that he painted in that
conceived as "a battle of volumesXLVII" and which only satisfied him more year, but their dispersion among private collections has made it difficult to
than the color, reduced to that somber and eigmatic range of grays. get to know them directly. Some of them are very similar to the geometric
But although this phase of dedication to the landscape by Braque, concepts applied by Cézanne, such as those entitled Viaduct at L'Estaque
Picasso and some of the first Cubist painters was brief - just over three (Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1907), or in the vertical version at the
years, between 1907 and 1910 - critics and art historians have given it a Museum of Modern Art in Paris (in which he applied the same pattern of
proper name: 'Cézanne Cubism'. It was born from a few real landscapes that small parallel brushstrokes to distribute the colour over the surfaces of some
they saw and lived in during the summers of those years: L'Estaque and La of the planes of the forms), Houses at L'Estaque (1908, Kunstmuseum,
Roche-Guyon and some corners of the Carriérés-Saint-Denis park for Bern), which can be considered one of the first decidedly Cubist works, or
Braque, and in the small village of Gósol, in the rugged Cadi mountain others with trees, houses or a road in the foreground, which penetrates -
range of the Lérida pre-Pyrenees, in La Rue-des-Bois, a village next to the deeply between agitated trees (Museum of Modern Art, New York).
Oise river, 75 kilometres north of Paris, and finally, in Horta de Ebro for But in all cases, Braque established two differences of starting point
Picasso. with the views of the old master. He dispenses with panoramic views with
Georges Braque devoted himself to landscape painting for a longer the bay as a background, which does not appear in any of the landscapes
period of time, and a few years before Picasso, or at least he was ahead of from this year of 1908, and concentrates the vision on a few motifs, houses
him. But in truth, he was predestined to paint landscapes: he was born in and pine trees, which
Argenteuil-sur-Seine, one of the mythical places on the river where the
Impressionists had painted. But from the age of eight he lived in Le Havre,
where his painter friends were Duly and Friesz, whose landscapes he would
XLVII AA.W., Musée Krdller-Müller, Joh Enschedé en Zonen Grafische Inrichting BV, Haarlem,
1981, p. 94.
 4. CÉZANNE AND CUBISM IOI
roo LANDSCAPE AND ART

They completely fill the surface of the canvas, overflowing with their - Precisely when Braque was painting what has been called the
vigorous geometric shapes, with an absence of sky and an almost total 'vertiginous series' of landscapes of La Roche-Guyon, in which he was
decrease of light on the shapes. In short, landscapes much more sparse in testing a new method of painting, he explained it thus: "When I start with
visual data and austere in colours than those painted by Cézanne'7. the close-ups, I need the limits in depth to help me! motion. After I have
Cubism had been born, but this reductionist vision of landscapes into started with the background, I gradually approach it, I reach those limits in
orthogonal cubic or circular planes in the form of cylinders came from the perspective and that is when the canvas advances»19.
theory and practice of the old painter. Although I doubt very much that In these early landscapes by Braque and Picasso we find a common
Braque could have known some of his letters in which he said things like "in feature and theme, which is the presence of architectural motifs: houses,
nature everything is modeled after the sphere, the cone the cylinder." "that castles and bridges or a viaduct. They were logically interested in them as
one must learn to paint on the basis of these simple forms, and then one will essential geometric forms that they could use to resolve the landscape and
be able to do whatever one wants"'S. perspective, forming a whole in successive planes.

19 AA.VV., Georges Braque. Rétros/khedive, Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul deVence, 1994- pp. 76s.
(cat. exp.). Braque's original text reads like this: «Jusque la j'attaquaís d'abord les premiers plans,
il me fallait des cadres en profondeur pour aider au mouvement. "Puis jó commence par les
Jondstje me rapprochais peu a peu, je pregnais de ces cadres en Fuite, qui advance la toile."

6. Georges Braque, Viaduct at L'Estaque, 1907. 7. Georges Brague, Houses of L'Estaque, 1908.
 102 LANDSCAPE AND ART 4. Cézanne and cubism 103
As I have already anticipated, Picasso was attracted by the landscape
only very little and occasionally. He also used his camera to select the views
or subjects that he liked most, as he left several testimonies during his
second stay in Horta de Ebro, in the summer of 1909.
This is clearly deduced after reading the testimonies of his first
companion Fernande Olivier, who lived with him in the first landscapes he
painted in Gósol and La Rue-des-Bois, comparing the texts of the first
scholars of his work and making a list of the landscapes he would draw or
paint.
It is worth noting that Picasso's reasons for moving to these towns during
the summer were fundamentally to recover from the fatigue and nervous
tension of life in Paris and to be able to enjoy the country emotions, far from
what was happening in the big city, although accompanied whenever he
could by his urban friends. He was not looking for landscapes to paint, but to
entertain himself with the people who inhabited them and told him stories.
From the summer of 1906 in Gósol he left only a few watercolors of the
houses, represented in a very succinct manner. During the month of August
1908 spent in Le Rue-des-Bois he was not very interested in those wooded
and humid landscapes, so opposite to those of the Catalan Pyrenees.
His partner Fernande will later tell it, which, although it may seem like a
domestic anecdote, is quite illustrative of the fact that Picasso's relationship 8. Picasso, Factory in Hoiia de Ebro, 1909.
with landscapes was more instinctive than visual and that he was moved by
those he carried within him from Spain: from Malaga and, above all, the last
ones he had travelled through the Catalan provinces of Lérida and However, he would at least paint a landscape of this place in L'Île-de-
Tarragona. France, where he spent the summer of 1908, entitled Landscape. The Rue-
With this simple story his companion explained Picasso's temperamental des-Bois (1908, Pushkin Museum), of a fairly large format, which we can
way of feeling and seeing the French landscape of that summer of 1908: «[. compare in an exercise of surprising formal and compositional coincidences
]But Pablo liked peace and quiet, although not so much the landscape. The with that of the Houses of L'Estaque, already mentioned, which Braque was
surrounding forest was magnificent, but I could tell that Picasso felt quite painting around the same time, precisely in the south of FranceXLIX.
out of place in the French countryside. It seemed too damp and monotonous However, it was not until the following summer, already in Horta de
to him. “It smells like mushrooms,” he used to say. He preferred the warm Ebro, that Picasso would decisively paint cubist landscapes. But he will do
aromas of rosemary, thyme, and cypresses from his homelandXLVIII. so from photographs that he himself took and from a few small pen drawings
that he had taken a few weeks earlier in Barcelona from the window of the
hotel where Fernande's nephritis had stopped him. This, although with
inaccuracies, he remembered it thus bluntly: "It was in Horta, a

XLIXThe translation of these memories by Fernande Olivier, taken from the edition of this author,
coincides entirely with the one published in 1964 by Fernande OLIVIER, Picassoji sus amigos, -
XLVIII John RICHARDSON, Picasso. A biography. Vol II, igof-ígif. Alliance, Madrid, 1997, p. 94. No Taurus, Madrid, 1964, p. 82.
103 LANDSCAPE AND ART 4. Cézanne and cubism 103
21 David COTTINGTON, Cubism, Encounter, Madrid, [999. He makes an accurate comparative
commentary on both paintings, which he reproduces in color on successive pages, 22 and 23.
 4. CÉZANNE AND CUBISM 105
io4 LANDSCAPE AND ART

10. Picasso, Paf'sageaupont, 1909.

and even bored him - as his biographer Richardson states - but rather in the
room at the inn in Horta?
And these landscapes that attracted him, however irrelevant they were,
always had marked orthogonal geometric references to the simplest
9. Picasso, The Warehouse, architecture of popular houses and buildings, church bell towers or industrial
1909.
warehouses, or the cylindrical shapes of tree trunks and the arches of a
bridge. The synthesis, in the form of a construction in overlapping and
small town near ^'ogoza [sic], where his cubist formula was definitively
ascending blocks, is shown to us in the canvas entitled The Warehouse (New
concretized. Or, more accurately, upon returning from this trip. From there
York, colee. Rockefeller), part of this series of views of Horta.
he brought some fabrics, two of which, the best, were acquired by the
Picasso, without a doubt, must have seen one of Cézanne's paintings of
Steins.
Saint Victoria and in Horta he also had his mythologized mountain named
But there were no palm trees in the landscape of Horta, and yet Picasso
after the saint, that of Santa Barbara, to whose summit he had climbed
placed them as the background of the small oil painting that he titled
during his first stay in this town in Tarragona, he had painted it and now he
Factory in Horta de Ebro (Ermitage), taken from those he noted in the
would recreate it in a canvas, from this summer of 1909, The Mountain of
drawings of his stay in Barcelona, and he completed the image of the factory
Santa Barbara (The Denver Art Museum).
with a chimney that it did not have, but which rose in another place on the
The researcher of Picasso's life and work, John Richardson, does not
outskirts of the townLLI.
hesitate to establish more than one relationship between both painted
Therefore, a first consideration is that Picasso saw and recorded the
mountains, extensible, logically, to both authors: "Given the similarity
landscapes that caught his attention, he thought about them and recomposed
between the mountain of Santa Barbara and that of Sainte-Victoire, Picasso
them on the canvases according to what suited his aesthetic interests. But we
began to paint it in the faceted, slightly out-of-focus manner of Cézanne's
can ask ourselves, did he paint these landscapes from nature, which did not
late landscapes. Although it didn't
need to be?
to get hold of the way Cézanne captures the form, yes, he cost him anything
L Fernande Olivier, op. cit., p. 84. found it difficult that his landscapes
LI John Richardson, op. cit. (1997), pp. 128 s.
106 LANDSCAPE AND ART 4. Cézanne and cubism 107

reflect light as those of the latter do (traditionally Spanish painters use

colour to enhance emotions rather than to generate light) ■
And, a paragraph later, he continues to discover the relationships
between the mountain painted by Cézanne and Picasso: "Fifty years later,
when Picasso bought the Chateau de Vauvenargues, which included a
considerable part of the Sainte-Victoire mountain, he felt, not without
reason, that Cézanne's favorite motif belonged to him."

FOLLOWERS AND RIVALS: LÉGER, GLEIZES AND DELAUNAY,

OR THE INSTRUMENTALIZED LANDSCAPE

The envy that Picasso and Braque aroused as protagonists of the new
movement, presented by Apollinaire as its creators and as artists protected
by the gallery owner Khanweiler, caused other painters, of that new trend
recently baptized as Cubism, to dispute the prominence of who was the
inventor, who were its theorists and who had taken it further or in other
directions. A good example of how Paris in the early 1910s was a hotbed of
passions and how the battles between the two sides were fought in the
Autumn Salons, in the galleries and in articles and publications of their
conflicting theories, such as the oft-cited little works, or rather pamphlets:
Du cubisme, which Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger published in 1912
and Apollinaire the following year with Les Peintres cubistes: meditations II. Albert Gleizes, Landscape with a Walker, 1911.
esthétiques.
After the radical Cubism of the early years of destruction of the pictorial
conventions of the single perspective and the volume of things interpreted
city world. The urban takes its place, it is nature LIILIII"; that is, a second,
from a single point of view, or 'deconstruction' - as Delaunay coined to
artificial nature was being configured, which is ours of the 20th century,
define his versions of the Eiffel Tower - the exterior landscape, nature, will
developed by humans and, consequently, more habitable and comfortable
no longer interest Cubist painters as a subject in itself, but will include
than the other.
figures in action, but frozen by geometry: walking through a landscape of
Indeed, now the new landscapes that appear in the Cubist canvases are
Meudon (Gleizes), at a dance (Lhote), as bathers (Metzinger) or practicing a
domesticated landscapes seen from interiors, which once again serve as
modern sport (Delaunay).
backgrounds, for example, for still lifes on a table, enclosed between the
All these young Parisian painters are heirs to the art of Cézanne, who
leaves of a wide open window, or through the lattice that forms the railing of
studied and was a source of inspiration for all of them, but who interpreted it
a balcony, as is frequently seen in the still life canvases by Juan Gris.
in very different ways." Although soon, as Professor Valeriano Bozal states,
the natural landscape gave way to "the

26 Valeriano BOZAL, The first to leave. igOO-l^lO, the origins of contemporary art, Visor, Madrid,
1991, pp. 187s.
It is a significant anecdote that what we can consider the third testimonial
LII Ibid., p. 132,
LIII John Golding, op. cit. (1993), p. 71.
108 LANDSCAPE AND ART
4. CÉZANNE AND CUBISM 109

publication of the origins of Cubism, written by Kahnweiler in 1920 in BOZAL, Valeriano, The first ten years. IQOO-ipiO, the origins of
Munich: Der Weg zur fiubismus, had a cover illustrated by Feininger with an contemporary art, Visor, Madrid, 1991.
urban landscape with tall buildings with moving facades, in the style of his CÉZANNE, Paul and REWALD, John (ed.), Correspondence, Visor,
colleague Delaunay.
Madrid, 1991.
This decorative domestication of the landscape was equivalent to the -
then-called aesthetic movement of retoura l'ordre, an expression promoted COTTINGTON, David, Cubism, Encounter, Madrid, 1999.
by Parisian critics in the early 1920s. After the earthquake that Cubism had COUTAGNE, Denis etal., Sainte-Victoire. Cézanne iggo, Reunion des
caused and these last corrective movements back to the figurative, to Musées
stylized representations or to magical realism, the landscape would cease to Nationaux, Paris, 199° (cat. exp.).
interest the avant-garde; perhaps, perhaps as a title for a canvas or as an GARCÍA Guatas, Manuel, Paul Cézanne, History 16, Madrid, 1993.
emblematic and enigmatic background extracted from the well of the GlLPIN, William, Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, Abada, Madrid,
subconscious or the fantasy of some painters. 2004.
GOLDING, John, Cubism. A history and an analysis, igo'y-igid, Alianza,
EPILOGUE: THE LANDSCAPE RETURNS TO NATURE Madrid, 1993 (the ed. (in English, 1959).
HESS, Walter, Documents for the understanding of modern art, Nueva
The landscape genre will be a refuge for painters who love the picturesque Visión, Buenos Aires, 1973.
or an impulse for renovating, transitory and national movements, such as, for KANT, Immanuel, Critique of Judgment. Part one. Critique of Aesthetic
example, for the Spanish landscape before and after the civil war that will be Judgment, Victoriano Suárez, Madrid, 1914.
created by the aforementioned painters of the Vallecas school and others, as LLAMAZARES, Julio, The River of Oblivion, Alfaguara/Santillana, Madrid,
a way of escape from modernity and, deep down, of a hidden freedom. 2006.
We will have to wait until the last years of the 1960s and, above all, the MADERUELO, JAVIER (ED.), The Landscape, PROVINCIAL COUNCIL OF
following decade, for land art, earth art or environmental art to find new
HUESCA, HUESCA, 1996.
discoveries of the landscape of non-pictorial dimensions and techniques, but
— (ed.), Landscape and Thought, Abada/CDAN, Madrid, 2006.
integrating vision, memory and art. They will be the consequence of man's
MARÍ, Antoni, «Cézanne, Husserl, Valery», Kalías. Art Magazine, IVAM,
intervention within nature itself and with the same materials and colours.
No. 10, Valencia, 1993.
It is clear that from then on, since the end of the 20th century, the
OLIVIER, Fernande, Picasso (and his friends), Taurus, Madrid, 1964.
relationship with the landscape and with nature can no longer be understood
REWALD, John eí ai., Paul Cézanne, Spanish Museum of Contemporary
only as contemplation or expression of feelings, as the Romantics,
Impressionists and even Cézanne himself had done, but as action, since the Art. Ministry of Culture, Madrid, 1984 (cat. exp.).
landscape is regenerated by the culture that surrounds it. And, of course, RICHARDSON, John, Picasso. A biography. Vol. II, igoj-igij, Alianza,
with the presence of man walking through it. Madrid, 1997.
RILKE, Rainer María (Clara RILKE, ed.), Letters on Cézanne, Paidós, -
LITERATURE Barcelona, 1992.
ROSENBLUM, ROBERT AND JANSON, H. W., The art of the nineteenth
AA.W., Georges Braque. Retrospective, Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul de
CENTURY, AKAL, TORREJÓN DE ARDOZ, 1992.
Vence, 1994 (cat. exp.).
SHIFF, Richard, Cézanne the end of impressionism. Study of the theory,
AA.W., Muse'e Kroller-Müller, J oh Enschedé in Zonen Grafische Inrichting
technique and critical assessment of modern art, Visor, Madrid, 2002-
BV, Haarlem, 1981.
BERNARD, Emile, Souvenir sur Paul Cézanne etletres, Paris, 1925.
IIO LANDSCAPE AND ART

VALLÉS-BL.ED, MATHÉ, Cézanne: biography, 18pg-igo6, JEAN-CLAUDE

LATTÉS, PARIS, 1995.
VALSECCHI, Marco and GarrÁ, Massimo, The complete pictorial work of
Braque. From cubist decomposition to the recovery of the object igo8-
ig2g, Noguer, Barcelona/Madrid, 1976.
5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND
LITERATURE: ABOUT AZORÍN
JOSE CARLOS MAINER

BRITISH LANDSCAPES, SPANISH LANDSCAPES

The reorganization of the veteran Tate Gallery in London into two

different buildings, the original one that houses Tate Britain and the very
postmodern Tate Modern, has turned the first center into an attractive
monographic exhibition of the history of British painting, aptly organized
as a chronological-thematic tour. It may be this systematization that best
fits a national painting that has been modest, meticulous, effective and,
above all, very functional, almost utilitarian, with respect to the patterned
and admirable social life in which it has been inserted: as British, in short,
as has been a music that abounds so much in sacred oratorios, ceremonial
pieces and symphonic poems (that is, in music with a concrete argument).
Returning to the vast halls of Tate Britain, when the visitor has barely
stopped seeing the reflection of domestic life in the paintings of the 18th
century (the world of Hoghart), he moves on to the room dedicated to the
beginning of the 19th century, under the sign of the discovery of the
landscape and its corresponding sentimentality. Something that, as we
knew beforehand, Constable and Turner worked on very well, but which -
grew under the romantic impulse. Please note that we are talking about
 5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE US
112 LANDSCAPE AND ART

Romanticism is the place where the word itself arose, but also where it
reached the complex plenitude of its meaning: it was not only an ideological
meteor, as in France, nor a modern philosophy, as in Germany, but, in
addition to linking both things, it was a reform of sensibility. The
explanatory plaque that presides over the room asks how much the discovery
of the Lake District (and other sacred territories of old England) had to do
with the constitution of the modern notion of nation. And the invention of
those territories, unsociable but beautiful, full of meaning, was the work of
the moderns, the discontented and the progressives, who swarmed in a
country that was consolidating itself as an Empire but was also on the border
of the Revolution.
Perhaps they were the ones who could best see that the modern notion of
landscape is emotionally constituted when that very landscape is about to
cease to be such; when it is threatened precisely by that modern life -
industrial transformation and the collapse of rural life - because at the same
time, its discoverers were very aware that they were enthroning it as a lost
paradise, as the natural seat of spontaneity and innocence. The question and
its answer on the label undoubtedly refer to the works of the notable critic
Simon Schama, author of an essential essay on Landscape and Memory
(1995), and whose most synthetic work is A History of Britain. Lite Fate of
Empire 1^6-2000 (2002), opens with a pair of dense chapters eerily titled In
his memorable pages, Schama considers the relationship between the
democratic and innovative spirit and the return to nature, with its ambiguous !. DARIO DE RECOYOS, GOOD Friday in Castile, 1904.

consequences. And the Spanish reader ponders that perhaps we could do the
same at another historical moment when the landscape appeared with great
force in the aesthetic-moral panorama of national ideas: in our case, the term hide, for example), or both may symbolize the sadness of a disastrous
a quo would be the eighties of the nineteenth century, when the collective destiny, as reflected in the most striking paintings of a 'black
consolidation of the academic discipline in the Schools of Fine Arts took Spain' that was firmly established after 1898. Inevitably, the landscape also
place and there were landscapers of the stature of Martín Rico, and the term became the visualization of the country's insurmountable contradiction
ad quem would be in the first two decades of the twentieth century. And the between progress and the past, between tradition and rupture. Darío de
historical setting. It would also include, as in the United Kingdom, an acute Regcyos, a persistent landscape artist, was Zuloaga or the laughing
awareness of moral and historical crisis, alongside the obvious symptoms of more right than he perhaps thought when, tradition
a modernization of national life. Once again, it would become apparent that in his painting Good Friday in Castile (Bilbao Fine Arts Museum), he
crises of values redirect our spirit towards nature (and towards the human painted, with his usual somewhat naive joy of warm stains, a masonry bridge
landscape that it entails), because in it are written the signs of the past that spanning a road and above it and under its arch, two dark, almost black
we have forgotten and the pure voice of truth. elements: above, a
But, paradoxically, this area is also presented to us as the victim of the
stigmas that afflict the present: the landscape may be beautiful, but, more
than once, its inhabitants are mean and cruel (as Antonio Machado did not
II4 LANDSCAPE AND ART 5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE f 115 ;

a railway crossing the bridge, and below, with their backs to those looking ■the most iconographic elements of historical painting or street names - never
at them, a procession with candles escorting a pedestal on which the disappeared and new additions were made in subsequent years. But a book as important
silhouette of the Virgin of Sorrows can be seen. as En torno al casticismo, by Miguel de Unamuno (first version in the magazine La
España Moderna, 1895; expanded edition in volume, 1902), warned two fundamental
things that marked a new era in the history of Spanish nationalism: first, it warned us of
the progressive mummification of those historical memories, converted into a sterile
THE AESTHETIC CONSTITUTION OF LANDSCAPING shell of dried-up History that hid the true inner history of the Spanish peoples; second, it
opened the tempting possibility of searching for other more integrative references, along
It is clear that a new perception of Spain led straight to an aesthetic the same lines that the nationalist and radical thought of Joaquín Costa was exploring at that
time - although more clumsily.
nationalism that displaced the historicist nationalism that had been solidly But none of this would have been successful without the existence of a new
established in the 19th century (although it came from further back in time), aesthetic language, more appropriate for the expression of emotions, intuitions and
and that, in this way, it was possible to proceed gradually to the replacement reminiscences that had nothing to do with the absolute solidity of historicist evocations.
of patriotic iconography, developed in the form of two antagonistic lines of Understanding a landscape as a spiritual experience and a way of communion with
lieux de mémoire4: the liberal memory included the Castilian commoners, collective life was an exercise in idealization that had already had a long track record:
the rebel Antonio Pérez, the liberal and dissident perception of figures such European, since the fertile decline of the Enlightenment and the beginning of
as Fray Luis de León and Cervantes, the War of Independence, the liberal Romanticism, as recalled above: the discovery of the Alps, the sentimental colonization
conspiracies..., while the traditionalist and markedly Constantinian memory of the British Lake District; the meticulous exploration of the surroundings of Barbizon,
took pleasure in the memory of Recaredo, of the monarch Fernando III the were very important milestones. ; Yo
Saint, of the Catholic Monarchs, of the Empire of the Austrias, of the
theological theatre of Calderón... Of course, such references - linked to
school texts, to curricula -

I Aigo of what is demanded is in the book by Rafael NÚÑEZ FLORENCIO, found in the volume. From
the feeling of nature to the national construction of the landscape, Ministry of the Environment,
Madrid, 2004. The Regoyos painting mentioned above figures significantly on the cover of Lily
LITVAK's book, The Time of Trains. The Spanish landscape in art, literature of realism (84^-
Serbal Editions, Barcelona, 1991. But neither this title nor its predecessor, a work by the
same Hispanist, Industrial Transformation^ Literature in Spain, 18gp-igo5, Taurus, Madrid, 1981,
although interesting, exhaust the latent possibilities of its statement. María del Carmen Pena went
further in her monograph Landscape Painting and Ideology. The Generation of '98, Taurus, Madrid,
1983, interpretive key to the interesting exhibition he directed, Centrojperiferia in the
modernization of Spanish painting (1880-1918), whose catalogue was published by the Ministry of
Culture, Madrid, 1993.
2 The concept of lieux de mémoire was developed by the historian Pierre Nora during a seminar at the
Ecole d'Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, between 1978 and 1981. In 1984, under the same title,
it became an extensive reference book that sought - in the words of its compiler - to group together
the most "eclatant symbols" that have constituted the national identity of France over the centuries:
"From the highest place to institutional sacredness, Reims or the Pantheon, to the humble manual of
our republican children. Depuis Ies chro ñiques de Saint-Denis, an xmé siécle, jusqu'au Trésor de la
Langue Fran^aise; en passant par le Louvre, La Marsellaise et 1' Encyclopedic Larousse» (Les
lieux de mémoire, Gallimard, Paris, 1997, I, p. 15). All of which is carried out on three different
levels of conception and adherence, ordered from the greatest complexity to the most intuitive and
closest: "The Republic", "The Nation" and "The Frances". In this last place, the sections "Partages
de l'espace-temps" and "Hants lieux" contain an inventory of geographical-historical and landscape
perceptions that could undoubtedly be increased.

landscape and art 1

AN 1
q• 40
II4 LANDSCAPE AND ART 5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE f 115 ;

CENTHA LIBRARY, 84
CENTRAL LIBRARY, 183
LIBRARY 134
ABADA PUBLISHERS 134

They mutually enhanced each other: firstly, to a mode of knowledge that,

beyond the merely conceptual, brought us closer to presences, evocations and
nuances that were not associated with pure meaning; secondly, and in a more
technical order, it sought to explore (and exhaust) the possibilities of verbal
language to communicate effects and

;
sensations more typical of other artistic languages. In this second e

¡
important sense, it was evident that the arts of the second half of the 19th
century

Yo

ii
 116 LANDSCAPE AND ART

5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 117

They always wanted to go beyond what their expressive code prescribed. And of a feeling that is becoming progressively acute - although not always
in this intention came together things as disparate as Pre-Raphaelitism, with traumatic - and that is preventing him from writing as he used to. And the
its desire to sentimentally colonize the values derived from literature and with contemplation of the most trivial things appears to him with such a wealth of
its reverent vision of the artistic past, and Wagnerism, which sought a total art suggestions, such complexity of elements, that he feels unable to fit them into
where the score, the libretto, the scenery and even the theatrical architecture the linear order of a conventional description. An astonished contemplation
itself would be harmonized in a coherent spiritual tension, stirred by the and a suspension of all reasoning are replacing in his mind the former
emphasis of the repeated leitmotifs that gave the whole the desired unity. But, certainty with which he previously recorded his experiences and reflections in
if one looks closely, the ideal of so-called programmatic music (so indebted writing. Because another victim of contemplative ecstasy is precisely the
to literary themes and modes), or of subject painting (which was its visual identity of that Jo who, in the greatest symbolist ravings, unified the artistic
counterpart), also had a lot to do with this longing for the fusion of the arts. product as the ultimate reference ■. the guarantee of a personal sensitivity
In a famous poem by Lesfleursda mal, And, not long after, symbolism and that had organized it.
its predecessors made possible titles that openly reflected the expressive
brotherhood of the arts, the tempting possibility of finding simultaneous
echoes in literature, art or music: Théophile Gautier had included among his END OF THE CENTURY; AZORÍN AND THE LANDSCAPE AS A RESPONSE
Emauxetcarnees (Enamels and Cameos) a «Symphonic en blanc majeur»
which Rubén Darío undoubtedly had in mind when writing his «Symphony in Chronology is the realm of arbitrary chance, but perhaps it is also the realm of
major grey»; Paul Verlaine took this tendency to the extreme to write some destiny. We are reluctant to think that the publication of Lord Chandos Brief,
Romances sansparoles, and Claude A. Debussy had something similar in in a Berlin newspaper in October 1902, does not help us see something more
mind when producing his Images, pourorchestre, as a new programmatic along the lines of two illustrious contemporary Spanish products: La voluntad
discipline that would allow him to move between the visual and the auditory. and Camino de perfecta, with which José Martínez Ruiz and Pío Baroja
At the turn of the century, the field of sthesiaLIV was already widely confirmed their literary careers. They are two modern novels that also speak
explored, but the desire to broaden the horizons of aesthetic perception of artists, their frustrations and impotence, their dreams of an ideal art and the
seemed insatiable. For this reason, to a large extent, the famous and suggestion of landscapes as reflections of their disturbed spirits.
disturbing Lord Chandos Letter, written by a complex and refined German We should not be too interested in what both stories have to do with the
symbolist writer, Hugh von Hofmannsthal, pointed to a limit to those sensory laborious moral digestion of the fateful year of 1898. To understand the
experiences'1. And it can be read as a requiem for the ambitions of function of this historical context, one must first check the scant direct
symbolism and as a premonition of the birth of abstraction and a poetics of reflection of the colonial war (somewhat greater in La voluntad,
silence, which would be necessarily sober and implicit. As you may recall,
Von Hofmannsthal pretends to reproduce in his writing a letter from the 4 I quote from the excellent first Spanish edition, Curta de Lord Chandos, trans. José Quetglas,
young Lord of Chandos to his teacher Francis Bacon of Verulam, where he prologue.
Claudio Magris, Official College of Quantity Surveyors, Murcia, 1981 (Col. of Architecture, 2).
tells him about his progress on the path of humanism, but also speaks to him almost non-existent in The Way of Perfection). Its authors knew very well
that, if the shadow of that year represented anything, it was the culmination of
LIV As a rhetorical figure, synesthesia is related to metaphor (since it involves, in a way, a substitution) a general crisis of values; the lost ships and the patriotic exudations of the
and, even more so, to endfoge and hijadlage: the first figure seeks expressiveness through a Boeotian press were not as important as the political unrest that was
modification of the logic of the components of the sentence ("mañana me voy" would be an enálage emerging: the ghost of the ruin brought by the invasion of the vineyards by
for the normal and expected "mañana me iré") and the second, so beloved of Borges, involves an
phylloxera hovers over the fields of La Mancha and Murcia that Antonio
emotional transfer of the adjectival values of something to another element of the sentence that may
seem more evocatively related: it is an hfalage to say "las inquietas lanzars de los salvajes" for "las
Azorín, the protagonist of La voluntad, wanders through in a daze; the
lanzars de los inquietos salvajes." Synesthesia operates with the confusion of the senses and, as such, dramatic constitution of a lumpenproletariat can be perceived in the suburbs
was known in the Baroque (Góngora spoke of "lightning bolts of crimson laughter" to refer to the red of Madrid that Fernando Ossorio tirelessly walks through in Camino de
lips between which the white teeth flashed) and in symbolism (cf. the corresponding entry in Dimona perfecta, which, not many years later, would inspire his trilogy «The Struggle
of Rhetoric, Criticism and Literary Terminology, by Angelo Marchese and Joaquín Forradellas, for Life» and which was already arousing the alarmed attention of hygienists
Ariel, Barcelona, 1986, pp. 385 s.).
 Yo -
5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE II9
118 LANDSCAPE AND ART

like Philip Hauser and sociologists like José María Llanas Aguilaniedo and we must continue to note: the landscape is, in itself, a moral metaphor, but its
Constancio Bernaldo de Quirós. What the hell did the disaster of 1998 matter perception occurs through dispersion, through fragmentation. In fact, it could
to the painter who, like Osorio, saw one of his paintings rejected at the be said that it is a metaphor in intention and a metonymy in practice; it
National Exhibition of Fine Arts, or what did it add to the musings of those
writers described by Martínez Ruiz who transformed themselves into functions as a unitary and intensifying whole, but it is produced before us -
intellectuals and took refuge in bohemianism as a repudiation of bourgeois and thus we transmit it to the readers - as a succession of disjointed signs
society? although full of meaning. It is as if literature had covered in one go the long
The general crisis was the climate, but the response was, as always, a journey that, in landscape painting, elapsed between its impressionist version
complicated metaphor, made of refinement and catastrophism, of anguish and (the capture of a moment that can never be the same as the next, the reduction
sensitivity. A year before the Disaster par excellence, in 1897, the young of volume to the effects of light, the blurring of the line and the profile) and
writer José Martínez Ruiz, the future Azorín, published Bohemia, a forgotten the appearance of expressionist traits in the eighties and later in the nineteenth
book of stories that deals with the artist's attitudes in his rejection - reciprocal, century, which were characterized by the predominance of moral intention
by the way - of bourgeois hypocrisy. The fragment that I now transcribe over the copy of nature (distortions of volumes, arbitrariness of chromatism,
belongs to the story "Landscapes" and contains the troubled speech of a writer almost cruel underlining of the profiles of things). Perhaps because a written
who will fail in his attempt to write a book of impressions of nature. There is language can hardly be impressionistic (despite the dream of so many
no better text than this one to begin the journey through the work of the man symbolist authors), expressionist underlining is com-
who has been considered the best Spanish literary landscape artist and to
continue talking about the suggestive coincidence of the return to landscaping
and the historical crisis at the end of the century. Here is the substance of the 5 Bohemia, en. Complete works, Aguilar, Madrid, 1959, I, pp. 313-317 (significantly, the story
literary project of the Azorinian character: reproduces in French the verses of "La chanson d'Automne", from Verlaine's Poémes satumiens -
"Les sanglots longs / des violons / de l'automme / blessent mon coeur / d'une langueur / monotone...
»—, which is one of the most celebrated phonic games of symbolist synesthesia).
"It will be called Landscapes; it will be a series of paintings without figures, of spots of colour,
of visions..., states of soul before a piece of Nature, sensations of mother earth [...].
Landscapes... No action or figures in the foreground. Landscapes only; an album of
watercolors, of views of my land. I have the titles: Nap Hours, Summer Dawn, Winter
Afternoon, Autumn Gale... I will paint the burning days of summer when the sun beats down,
setting the air ablaze, melting into a thousand dazzling rays, creating a world of blinding light
that reverberates off the white walls of the houses, off the great green sheet of vine leaves, off
the calm waters of the sea, off the golden sand of the beach; I will paint the hours of infinite
laxity, of stifling heat, of sleep, of laziness... [...]. I will also paint the autumn afternoons with
the grey horizon, the bare trees, the wind that raises great clouds of dust and moans
melancholically, filling the soul with sadness [...]. But where I will put my energies will be in
the description of winter nights, those nights of immense grandeur, of unsurpassed poetry"5.

How many books with similar titles would be written in the following
years! We are interested, in any case, in noting that for the imaginary writer
(and for his inventor, of course...) landscaping is a way of making evident the
inextricable relationship between the spiritual and the physical forged in his
conscience: terms such as 'visions', 'sensations' and 'states of soul' bring us
closer to a laboratory where the artist's morbid sensitivity and the disturbing
imprint of things merge. And where a descriptive strategy is perceived that
 120 LANDSCAPE AND ART
5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 121
they appeared so soon. And for that reason, among other things, the voice useless, the profuse, to preserve and fix

and meaning of the landscapes are associated - in Azorin's text - with 1

1
"only the characteristic" .
6

paroxysmal and expressive states of the cycle of the seasons. How can we
not remember, by the way, that the master Rubén Darío had included in his At the date of this text, Azorín had associated his name in
first book, Azul... (1888), a series of poems, under the common title of «The Yo many times to the new Spanish painting. In 1912, the dedication
Lyrical Year», entitled «Spring», «Summer», «Autumnal» and «Winter»? of Castile, one of his key books, was addressed to Aureliano de Beruete, "a
And that - surely following his lead, between 1902 and 1905 - Ramón del wonderful painter of Castile. Silent in his art. "Fe'rvided." In 1915, the
Valle-Inclán had grouped his short novels by the Marquis of Bradomín chapter "Aranjuez or Spanish Sensitivity" in Literary Values was a full
under the generic and philharmonic label of Sonatas, so dear to his teacher, praise of Santiago Rusiñol and his book Jardines
and with the advocations "of autumn", "of summer", "of spring" and "of 1
from Spain, published the previous year. In neither case, you will be
winter"? He hid from Azorín - linked at that time to the conservative forces of
A few years later, the author of the Bohemian Tales had abandoned all politician Antonio Maura - the significance of his praises: a
his political unrest but had remained substantially faithful to his aesthetic 1 a man closely linked to the secular and radical spirit of the Free Institution
program. And the country, its public, had accepted the substance of the of
proposed premises: that the landscape was a transcendental artistic genre, that Teaching and a painter and writer who represented the European and
every landscape implied in its lines, or in its brushstrokes, a 'state of soul' of its Catalanist spirit of modernism. As for his aesthetic preferences, the devoted
author, and that the landscape embodied the most refined spiritual heritage of admirer of authoritarian politicians had no major problem in siding with
the nation. When compiling his Selected Pages of 1917 and dividing them into Ignacio Zuloaga in the years of the 'question'
thematic sections, the Azorín of that time - who had already become an ! Zuloaga', when the legitimacy of the representation was hotly discussed
established writer - decided that the first of them would be titled 'Landscapes'. tion of black Spain. Many years later, in the process of rewriting his
And the preliminary note, which is transcribed for us in the almost confidential personal record (with the victors of the civil war in the first place)
italics that I reproduce now, insisted on the semantic function of the landscape Yo plane), Azorín will dedicate chapter XIII to his discovery of the landscape,
that we already saw in the previous text: to advantageously replace other his own and that of other writers like him, in a blatant vindication of the fin-
possible political or moral responses to the historical crisis of the end of the de-siècle spirit, not at all pleasing to the acolytes of Francoism. And he
century. But he added a unique element, which cannot go unnoticed, because, would remind us that "I have been a frequent visitor to the old [Carlos de]
as if he were a painter, Azorín also kept a sort of field notebook where he could Haes room at the Museo Moderno. I meditated there in the pictorial
write down his feelings. It will be observed, however, that the terms of his landscape and gained strength to persevere
metonymic vision of nature are now much more conscious and elaborate.
Yo M)erseverarji perfect myself— in the description of the landscape [.. J. Our
Fragmentation is no longer a consequence of the bulimic and disordered
landscaper was Dario
perception of life around us, but rather an intelligent and sensitive asceticism
from Regoyos. From Regoyos to Baroja, from one landscape to another,
that selects (we know that the painter Zuloaga, so often reputed to be a 'literary
from the pictorial to the literary there is no more ■ that one step"7.
painter', did something similar: his impressions of the countryside were
¡ The conviction that landscaping was a collective conquest of the
expressed in drawings but more usually in written notes). Here, in short, is the
A fin-de-siècle group of friends had provided it for us, twenty-five
text of an Azorín turned landscaper:

"How many little notebooks I have filled with notes in the past! Notes for painting landscapes,
6 Selected Pages (1917), study by M. TO. Lozano, tribute from M. Vargas Llosa, Aitana, Altea,
types. Is this too much? A good learning experience it is. The writer gets used to observing 1995, P- 57- , .
reality, to adjusting to reality. The Will, Antonio Azorín, The towns are written according to the 7 Madrid, in Selected Works, ed. Miguel Ángel Lozano Marco, Espasa-Calpe, Madrid, 1998, IIP
meticulous and exact notation -I think exact- of my little notebooks. When much has been Theatre. Stories. Memoirs. Correspondence, pp. 959s- ...............-.....-....- ---------------

written, when something has been experienced, then we disdain the multiplicity of details. We
want a single detail to give the feeling of the . thing: the discarding of the accessory, the
122 ' LANDSCAPE AND ART j 5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 123

landscape and art.................................................................................1 VlDA, PAINTING AND LITERATURE

AN...................................................................................................1 The turn-of-the-century writers frequented museums and, in this way, put
q •..........................................................................................................40 into practice, sometimes somewhat pedantically, the consequences of what I
have called above the brotherhood of the arts.8 9 Without this direct
CENTHA LIBRARY,............................................................84 experience of great painting, it would be difficult to understand the
CENTRAL LIBRARY,.........................................................183 abundance of modernist poems inspired by notable paintings, among which
those of Manuel Machado in the second section of his volume Alma still -
LIBRARY............................................................................134 stand out. Aluseo, The Songs, which years later he emancipated and
ABADA PUBLISHERS......................................................134 expanded in the book Apollo (Teatropictórico). The study of an intellectual
in 1900 had to have paintings. And one of these studies is described in
Three centuries ago, a poet contemplated the landscape and described it impersonally; that is, his spirit - bored Antonio Azorín, the 1903 novel with which the writer (who still signed with
or distressed - remained outside the contemplated panorama; the feelings that overflowed from his spirit were his civil name, Martínez Ruiz was left) followed in the footsteps of the
expressed by the poet separately. Now, no: landscape and feelings -modality protagonist of La voluntad. When reading it, it is worth checking, from the
. psychological—are one and the same thing; the poet moves to the described object, and start, his asceticism (<
1
In the way of describing it, it gives us its own spirit. It has been said that "every landscape «On the first wall, on either side of the door, there are two large -
is a state of soul" and this objectification of the lyrical is alluded to in this phrase. Antonio photographs in their polished walnut frames: one is the divine
Machado reaches the highest degree of objectification in i 8 Marchioness of Leganés, by Van Dyck; the other, carefully
one of his poems" . illuminated, is Las Meninas, by Velázquez. On the second wall,
corresponding to the balcony, hangs a photograph of Mariana of
Austria, by Velázquez, with her enormous infantry vest and her
batiste scarf. Above this photograph, rising from the frame and
leaning over the portrait, a fine, golden peacock feather rises; and
this feather is like a symbol of that haughty, disdainful woman, with
her eternal gesture of indifference that Velázquez perpetuated, that
Carreño perpetuated, that Del Mazo perpetuated. The second
painting is a French lithograph. It is called Music; it depicts a
woman playing a harp [...]. Next to it is the bust portrait of Philip
IV, by Velázquez. The Austrian king has a broad face

9 On the scope of this concept, see. Two of my recent and, in a certain way, complementary works:
"The Brotherhood of the Arts (Literature and Painting in the Time of Viladrich)", Vilailrich.
Primitive and durable, eds. Concita Lomba and ChusTudelilla, Fraga Town Council-Generalitat of
Catalonia-Government of Aragon-lbercaja, Zaragoza, 2007, pp. II-4I, and «Notes for a frame
(with Bagaría inside)», Barría in 'El Sol'. Polilioaj humor in the crisis of the Restoration,
MAPFRE Foundation Culture Institute, Madrid, 2007, pp. 85-11 ................................................ .
 5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 12,5
r24 LANDSCAPE AND ART

with a jutting chin; his moustache rises, greased, over his flabby cheeks; the
light casts a faint reflection on his abundant mane that falls over his erect ruff.
And his distracted, lazy eyes seem to stupidly look at the irremediable
decadence of a town. On the third wall—where the bedroom door opens—
there are three paintings. The first is a photograph entitled Guadalajara: view
of the road through the cliffs of the Tajo [...]. The second is an oil landscape
by an unknown but highly worthy painter: Adelardo Parrilla. It's a small
board. In the background, a wild, green foliage closes the horizon; four or six
slender poplars have separated themselves from the undergrowth and stand
looking at each other across a wide, clear stream; the sky is a pale, tenuous
violet [...]. Next to this landscape there is a photograph entitled Salamanca:
view of the Seminary from the Irish [...] On the third wall - on which the work
table is attached - there are three other lithographs from the same collection as
the last one: they are entitled Sculpture, Poetry and Painting. Between the first
and second there is hanging an authentic little shoe belonging to an 18th
century lady [...]. Below, enclosed in a slippery gilded frame, hanging from an
old faded strip, there is a drawing by Ramón Gasas. It is one of those 2. AuRELIANO de Beruete, View of Toledo, I9IT.
meditative and perverse female heads in which the artist has managed to put
all the contemporary feminine soul. In front of the desk, in a simple
mahogany frame, is a photograph of El Greco's Self-Portrait. The white patch Antonio Azorín's opinions are largely in favour of Velázquez. No less than
of his bald head and the traces of his white ruff stand out against the three paintings are reproduced on its walls and two of them are They are described
blackness; his cheeks are dry and wrinkled, and his eyes, set in wide, round with manifest empathy. It becomes evident that the character
slits, look with melancholy at the man who, standing in front of him, is j participates in the revaluation of the Spanish realism of Velasquez that
squeezing words into the pages of paper. consecrated
| Garljusti's pioneering book, in the late eighties, and which ended
The reader must bear in mind that Azorín was here persevering in a descriptive : baba to revalidate his admired Aureliano de Beruete in a monograph
tradition that had been widely developed in nineteenth-century narrative: halfway l from 1898. Its presence is not accidental, and even less so is that of the self-
between the intimate and the symbolic, these interiors populated with personal Yo I deal with El Greco, which is also described with intensity and where
references convey to us the consecration of the modern artist, and constitute one of It includes the new national reading of Cretan that was promoted by the
those topics that Mihail Bakhtin so aptly called "chronotopes." Artistic preferences- Festes 1 Modernistes by Santiago Rusiñol, the general fetishization of environments
j Toledans (Toledo was the ville monte par excellence at the end of the
10 Antonio Azorín, in Selected Works, ed. Miguel Angel Lozano Marco, Espasa-Calpe, Madrid, 1998, 1. Spanish century)
Complete novel, pp. 409-412. ¡ ñol) and, although it is somewhat later than our book, the publication of the
II Mikhail Bakhtin defines it as "the essential connection of temporal and spatial relations artistically assimilated in
literature [... into an intelligible and concrete whole. Time is condensed here, compressed, made artistically
| fundamental monograph by Manuel Bartolomé Cossío. On the page
visible, and space in turn is intensified, penetrating the movement of time, plot and history.

:
«The forms of time and chronotope in the novel», in Aesthetic Theory of the Novel.
Research papers, Taurus, Madrid, 1989, pp. 398s.). These are, therefore, symbolic condensations
that are expressed in detailed descriptions: if the main chronotope of Qiiijote is the roadside inn, a meeting place for
social classes and an element that provokes adventures, the reception room would be—as Bakhtin observes—the
essential chronotope of the bourgeois novel: of the 19th century, while these studies we are talking about will have
to be the characteristic chronotope
1 of the artists' novel or the intellectual novel.
YO [ ....................................................................................................................................................... ------------------
 126 LANDSCAPE AND ART 5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE127

Next, the alcove where his character rests also offers us "four photographs Azorín) paved the way for pictorialist photography that, around the same time, José
of Goya's tapestries. The slender figures play, dance, frolic, and chat while Ortiz Echagüe was starting and that was so identified with Spanish aesthetic nationalism.
sitting on a parapet of white ashlars; the sky is blue; in the distance, the
crest of the Guadarrama fades»: it is obvious that the Goya identification
cannot be alien to the revision of values that sponsored the panoramic TEACHING HOW TO DESCRIBE THE LANDSCAPE
exhibition in Madrid in 1900. .
But let us not lose sight of the presence of a portrait by Anton Van Dyck We have already pointed out that Antonio Azorín, whose study we have just
that not only confirms an aesthetic, very modern vision of Habsburg Spain; read, came as a character from a previous novel, La voluntad, published in
the portraits of the Antwerp artist set the standard for the elegant portraiture 1902. A largely failed story (sometimes due to pedantry, other times due to
cultivated by all the painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We excess of intentions), The Will is presented to us as a sort of dress rehearsal
are therefore faced with descriptive mentions that function as with everything (that's what theatre people call the test that precedes the
bibliographical notes about the intellectual personality of the owner. And, performance) of the new aesthetic trends that were emerging at the end of
for that reason, the only two originals - a Ramón Gasas and an Adelardo the century. It is a novel that rejects the plot and its anecdotes, typical of
Parrilla - could not be more explicit about certain tastes and professional nineteenth-century narrative, and which, in this order of things, manifestly
friendships: Gasas represents the modernity of the moment and his small prefers dispersion, descriptive statism and the psychological portrait. And it
painting addresses a largely suggestive theme (the disturbing ambiguity of is constructed as such a novel without losing sight of its relationship with
the "contemporary feminine soul"; a lexical find), while the little-known political-moral reflection: its very title makes us think of a treatise on
Parrilla embodies, of course, the importance that small-format landscape philosophical psychology rather than a story.
painting has been acquiring in Levantine art since the 1980s. Next to them, We know that his aim is to establish the x-ray of a vital failure in three
the lithographs from the beginning of the 19th century are described times that, in turn, are embodied in the three scenarios of the disastrous
(although we have omitted the corresponding paragraphs here) with a Spanish existence of 1900: the slow vegetating of provincial life, where the
meticulous objectivity that is not without something of pious irony: as if the characters come from; the memory of the feverish days of youth in Madrid -
modern artist contemplated, from the aesthetic vantage point provided by the capital -, no less disappointing in the long run, for its emptiness, and,
the new spiritual brotherhood of the arts, that which was his indisputable finally, the return of the prodigal, no longer so young, to rural life, where he
origin, the personification of the different artistic languages. Lithographs will believe he will find a new telluric vitality and will find nothing but
and photographs were, on the other hand, two powerful means of artistic domesticity and resignation. This function of generational exemplarity was
reproduction that brought works of art into the domestic interior of the very conscious on the part of its author. And, in this sense, this story is not
middle class. But photography also had another function that is made clear only the exposition of a model case of the downfall of an intellectual lacking
here: the dissemination of landscapes and, consequently, the formation of spiritual strength; it also turns out to be a practical lesson on the practical
that spring of sensitivity that captured an adjective of romantic origin and ways of writing it. It is, to use a term very common in philological studies, a
long vitality, the picturesque'2. The series of the French photographer meta-literary novel that, very often, reflects on itself. And such is the
Laurent, made in the middle of the century (already to function of chapter XIV of the first part, where the protagonist, our Antonio
Azorín, and his teacher, the disillusioned Yuste, reflect on the function of
the landscape in modern literature and, as a bonus, offer us a couple of very
12 About the adjective "picturesque" (which would appear on the title of an emblematic magazine,
opportune text comments on descriptive strategies:
Semanario Pintoresco Español) and other related words, see my work "From localism to the
picturesque, passing through the romantic (brief notes on an aesthetic nomenclature)", in « Yuste sejiaraj takes a book from the shelf. He then adds: "What gives the measure of an
Localism, costumbrismo and popular literature in Aragon, V Course on language and literature
artist is his feeling for nature, for the landscape..." A writer will be more of an artist the better
in Aragon, ecclesiastical. J. Ma Enguita and J.-C. Mainer, Fernando el Católico Institution,
Zaragoza, 1999 > PP- 7-18. They probably belong to the two plates by Antonio he is able to interpret the emotion of the landscape... It is a completely, almost completely
modern emotion. For me, the landscape is the highest degree of literary art... And how few
128 LANDSCAPE AND ART

5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 129

people stink about it!... Look at this book; I chose it because its author has been praised as a Martínez Ruiz conceals the authorship of the reproduced texts, but their -
superb descriptionist... And now you will see, practically, in this lesson of literary technique identification is obvious: the first corresponds to a novel by Vicente Blasco
what are the quiet subterfuges I was talking to you about before... First of all, that Ibáez, Entre naranjos (1900); the second, to a dialogued story (or stage
comparison! more of them. Buying to avoid the difficulty... It is something primitive, childish... novel) by Pío Baroja, La casa de Aizgorri (1901). They are, therefore, two
a trick that no artist should use... Here is the page: "In the immense valley, the orange groves rigorous literary novelties, at the time of La voluntad, and two authors of
like a velvety wave; the fences and hedges of less dark vegetation, cutting the crimson earth similar age and register, although today they seem very different to us.
into geometric shapes; the groups of palm trees waving their feathery sprays, like jets of leaves Blasco, whom Azorín had known in his university youth, was already the
that wanted to touch the sky, then falling with languid swoon; blue and rose-colored villas, idol of the petty bourgeoisie and the republican minstrelsy of Valencia who
among flowerbeds; white farmhouses hidden behind the green bustle of a small wood; the tall recognized themselves as Blasquistas (one of the most singular political
chimneys of the irrigation machines, yellowed like candles with scorched tips; Alcira, with its movements in Spain), and throughout the country he was a reference for
houses crowded on the island, overflowing over the opposite shore, all of it a dull egg color, narrative naturalism; Pío Baroja, whom Azorín had met recently, but with
riddled with little windows, as if eaten away by a smallpox of black holes. Beyond, whom he would maintain a permanent friendship, was a novice writer but
Carcagente, the rival city, enveloped in the belt of its leafy orchards; on the sea side, the who had already deserved the praise of the exquisite Juan Valera and the -
angular, cornered mountains, with edges that from a distance resemble the fantastic castles attention of Galdós. And one should not think that there was an aesthetic
imagined by Doré, and at the opposite end the towns of the Ribera Alta floating among the abyss between them: Among Orange Trees is a good anti-caciquil political
emeralds of its orchards, the distant violet-hued mountains, the sun that was beginning to - novel that, through its main female character, pays a fervent homage to
descend like a golden hedgehog, slipping between the gauze formed by the evaporation of the Wagnerism, and few things were as current and controversial. It will also be
insistent fire. The master takes out his silver box and continues: —In one page, in one short noted that Blasco's chromatic palette, as abusive as Yuste points out, sought
page, the author resorts no less than six times to the trick of comparison... that is, six times he luminosities and contrasts that, beyond the impressionist, approached the
tries to produce an unknown sensation or appeals to a known one... which is the same as if I frankly fauve: they corresponded, in effect, to a writer who was a close
couldn't tell a thing and called the neighbor to tell it for me... He observes, and this is the most friend of Joaquín Sorolla and as interested in the world of new artists and
serious thing, that on that page, despite the effort to express color, there is nothing plastic, intellectuals as reflected in his novels La horda (1905) - about the
tangible... besides that a landscape is movement, noise, as much as color, and on that page the underworld of newspaper editorial offices -, La maja desnuda (1906) - about
author has only worried about painting... There is nothing plastic on that page, none of those the life of painters - and La voluntad de vivir (written in 1907 but only
small suggestive details, which arouse a whole state of consciousness... One of those details reprinted from 1953), whose relationship with La voluntad azoriniana is
that, by themselves, give the total sensation... and that are only found instinctively, by artistic quite obvious. The great difference lay, possibly, in the nature of their
instinct, not through work, nor by reading the masters, with nothing. .. Fuste walks over to the careers —Blasco's political-literary and tribunician; Baroja's aesthetic and
shelf and picks up another book. —Now you will see —he continues— another page... it is solitary— and the very different conception of their writing: Blasco
from a young novelist, perhaps... and perhaps not, among all young people the most original approached novels of a more
and the one with the deepest aesthetic emotion... And the teacher recites slowly: "A few hours -
later; in Don Lucio's room. The fire is burning down in the brazier; a spark shines in the
darkness, above the ashes, like the bloodshot eye of a wild beast. It's getting dark, and 13 The Will, in Selected Works, ed. cit., I, pp. 271-273. ................ . . ... ________
shadows have taken over the corners of the room. A candle, placed on the chest of drawers,
dimly illuminates the room. You can hear the Angelus bells fall and sink into the silence of
twilight. From the window one can hear, or in the distance, confused murmurs of a sweet and
country symphony, the ringing of the bells of the flocks returning to the village, the murmur of
the river, which tells the Hoche its eternal and monotonous complaint, and the melancholic
note that a toad modulates on its flute, a crystalline note that crosses the silent air and
disappears like a wandering star. In the sky, of an intense black blue, Jupiter shines with its
white light»1,1.
130 LANDSCAPE AND ART 5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE131

Zolesco and Baroja seemed to take pleasure in short stories and prints, in a the modern novel, we must understand the numerous descriptions that
hybrid genre like the dialogical one and, ultimately, constructed punctuate the rest of the 1902 story. We must not understand them as a
pugilism between the author and his contemporary models and counter-
disaggregated novels, threads of impressions and episodes that seemed to models but as the exhibition of a collective conquest and a sign of -
renounce the vigorous articulation of the traditional novel. recognition. I have chosen two outstanding texts to conclude this exposition;
the first is the delayed vision of a sunrise in the countryside of Yecla (which
That is why the fight is so unequal – and so unfair – with Blasco Ibáñez.
is prior to the chapter just commented and which has a clear function as an
The chosen fragment does not have the greatest defect of incurring in
overture to the First Part of The Will; I transcribe only its beginning) and the
comparisons (there are also comparisons in Baroja's prose, as the reader will
second, already in the final pages of the novel, the lively approach to an
see); its weak point, if compared with the other, lies in the excessive
urban landscape of Madrid, which I do not transcribe in full either. Here are
panoramic ambition of the landscape, where everything is recorded and
both texts:
must be recognizable as a geographical reality. And this excess nullifies it as
an artistic product, based on the selection of elements. But this laborious and
[YO]
comprehensive thoroughness was what the reader of 19th century novels «In the distance, a bell rings slowly, calmly, melancholically. The fog spreads in long white
demanded, where the narrative rubbed shoulders with history, geography, brushstrokes over the countryside. And in a clamorous concert of high, low, squeaky, metallic,
sociology and even jurisprudence; the data supplied by Blasco were confused, imperceptible, sonorous voices, all the roosters in the city crow. In the depths, the
perfectly articulated in a story that attempted to explain the failure of a town fades away at the foot of the hill in an uncertain spot. Two, four, six white fleeces that
provincial chieftain, who had inherited this mission from his father, and the sprout from the blackness, grow, widen, spread out, in faint veils. The persistent clearing of a
disappointment and flight of his lover, a refined woman who had been the cough rips through the air: the spaced blows of a esparto grass club resound slowly. Little by
most applauded Wagnerian soprano in Europe. In La casa de Ai^orri, little, the milky light of the horizon turns pale green. The motley cluster of houses slowly
greatly influenced by Ibsen's El enemigos del pueblo, Baroja had not emerges from the darkness. Long, wide, narrow, long, winding whitish veins crisscross the
intended to do as much; he had limited himself to shedding light—almost wide blackish patch. The roosters crow persistently; a dog barks with a long, mournful bark.
always indoors—on the crisis of a family and a town, which seem
mysteriously condemned to decline, although, in the end, a savior emerges. [II]
The few Barojian comparisons (the injected eye of a wild beast, a wandering «Azorín is located opposite the Rastro. The picturesque market's advances begin on Calle de
star) are strongly evocative in their apparent loss, while Blasco's are semi- los Estudios. People come and go in a hurry, vendors shout, electric trams jingle. At the edge
cultural pedantries (Gustave Doré's engravings), ineffective sensorial of the sidewalk there are stalls selling clothes, oilcloths, frames, glassware, and books. Next to
appeals (golden hedgehog) or precisions so determined and impertinent that the door of the Institute, leaning against the wall, a shoelace vendor reads aloud from a
they almost cancel out the image of what is evoked (black holes of newspaper. "Ah, I'll stop him from hiding!" said the
smallpox, candles with scorched tips). Very deliberately, Azorín does not
comment on Baroja's text, which begins by having the advantage of its
highly effective laconicism: it is composed of nominal phrases, as, on the
other hand, is normal in what was to be a theatrical stage direction for a
fundamentally dialogued text, as has been recalled. And he gives up the
panoramic view to stick to those 'few sensations' that Azorín called for. And
to recreate the effects that appeal, without interruption, to the auditory as
well as the visual, to the tiny and concrete as well as the vague and ambient.
REHEARSING LANDSCAPES

It is clear that, in the light of this meta-literary lesson about the landscape in 14 Ibid., pp. 219s.
 5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE133
132 LANDSCAPE AND ART

duke with a voice..." Then he yells: Five laces on a little bitch, five laces on a little bitch! A its contradictions, but rather the very limits of the big city, where urban
stagecoach rattles past, clattering with rust and broken springs. The red, blue, green and ingredients and those that flowed incessantly from the suburban periphery
yellow fabrics of the stalls stand out; the glasses, cups, vases, goblets and flower pots shine; and, even further, from that rural world that the metropolis sucked in,
the street is filled with the sound of shouts, coughs and the shuffling of feet. And the cries intersected. El Rastro - which was only a few years away from becoming a
suddenly jump out, long, plaintive; Armenian paper to perfume the rooms with big dog!... fetish of Ramón Gómez de la Serna's aesthetic theory: his book, El Postro,
They are made of velvet and stuffed animal!... And the one for four and six reales, real!... A is from 1915 - constitutes the best metaphor for the capital as a gigantic
date seller walks silently, wrapped in a wide brown cloak, with a fur cap on his head; sitting physiological organism in permanent activity. In 1873, Emile Zola had
on the ledge of a low window, a blind woman extends her hand. The lace reads: "... The child made the gigantic wholesale market of Les Halles the great stomach of the
overcome by terror...”. And then; Five laces on a little bitch, five laces on a little bitch! A gigantic city, Le ventre de Paris, and in 1883 he had turned his attention to
woman with a large bag approaches the blind woman. They say: "...to tell you that your the department stores, centres of display of wealth but also a sign of ruin for
husband is going to make mattresses on Monday..." Carts, cars, trams pass by"5. traditional commerce; the novel Au Bonheur des Dames reflects, in this
sense, the exhibitionist and self-satisfied dimension of the capitalist
Nothing in the first of the texts contradicts what we have been observing machinery, as Le ventre de Paris had captured its brutal physiology. It
and what has become evident in the lesson of Master Yuste. We are faced should be noted, however, that in this premonitory text, many years after
with the double perception of the effects of the changing light of a dawn Zola's exploration, Martínez Ruiz captures (as his friend Pío Baroja did
(often very daring in chromaticity) and the sounds that correspond to those when he focused on urban garbage dumps and their servants in Vidas
hours (human and animal noises, but also those church bells that, apart from sombrías) the dramatic end of the economic process of capitalism: the very
their melancholic and reserved nuance, remind us - we are in a politically moment when goods have already lost their exchange value and are piled
radical novel - of the surveillance of the Catholic Church over national up, like pathetic defeats of life, next to the products of dying crafts, cheap
destinies). And it will be noted that the sequence of impressions does not imitations, or cheap superstitions, on the very edges of urban life.
shrink from the lack of definition, which is so perceptible in the search for El Rastro is evidence of the cruelty of capitalism but also a grim
the precise adjective - pursued through long strings of them - or in the premonition of its original instability... Galdós's sensitivity had been a
inclusion of open appeals to the sensorial uncertainty in which the writer pioneer in noticing those stigmas of misery that proliferated at the very
delights - confusing, uncertain. It is not a rational or logical construction of a doors of the placid and wasteful bourgeois life, of those illuminated and
testimony but rather the tense immediacy of sensations that are constantly tempting passages that are traveled by the flaneurs (to use the basic
changing, as when the mists “grow, widen, spread out” (a sequence that has concepts of Walter Benjamin): first there was Xaiarín (1895), the novel that
something of a progressive quality to it, but which is presented to us in a opens with the splendid description of an unhealthy Madrid corridor house
disorderly simultaneity) and, very shortly before, we do not even know for and then gets lost in the interior of a hallucinated Castile; then there was
sure whether those whitish fleeces that are changing are “two, four, or six” Misericordia (1897), the narration that, beyond the moving story of love and
(throughout La voluntad, this numerical indefiniteness becomes a systematic fidelity of Benina and Almudena (the self-sacrificing maid and the
expressive feature, as revealing of a tendency as the grouping of adjectives Moroccan beggar), explored the abysses of economic fragility that were a
in pairs, trios, and even quartets). As it happened to Lord Chandos, in the consequence of the ruthless speculation that came to Spain with the
Confiscation of Church Property. And he approached, for the first time, the
physical landscape of that moral ruin that concerned us all: the houses of
15 Tbid., pp. 347 s. prose
of the future Azorín emotion and intensity can only be sleep in the districts of La Inclusa and La Latina, the world of huts
expressed cumulatively. populated by beggars that extended to the other side of the Manzanares, the
The second text takes us from those bare and almost mystical fields— struggle for survival that was fought between the poor begging and the
which had become a metaphor for the drama of Spain—to a very different guards of the Prevention...
environment: urban life. But it will be noted that this is not the centre of the The truth of this degraded world, made up of scraps and debris of
capital, where political, administrative and economic life took place, with all bourgeois social life, could only be reflected in the form of unconnected,
134 LANDSCAPE AND ART 5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 135
meaningless fragments. Until now we had witnessed a natural landscape that — , «From localism to the picturesque, passing through the romantic (brief
the perception of the modern artist had also reduced to a daring metonymy, notes on an aesthetic nomenclature)», in José María ENGUITA and José
to scattered and vague strokes in search of a moral and historical meaning: Carlos MAINER (eds.), Localism, costumbrismoji popular literature in -
in this case, the dispersion came from the very soul of the artist, a restless Aragon. V Course on Language and Literature in Aragon, Fernando el
inhabitant of a world that he did not accept, and was projected onto nature. Católico Institution, Zaragoza, 1999.
In the case of the prints of the peripheral city, the opposite seems to happen: — , «The brotherhood of the arts (literature and painting in the time of
fragmentation, the only identity of this rubble and detritus of urban life, Viladrich)», in: Concha LOMBA and Chus TUDELILLA (eds.),
seems to dictate to the artist his own compositional law. The waterfalls of Viladrich. Primitivoji enduring, Fraga City Council/Generalitat of -
heterogeneous objects offered for sale coexist by mere superposition with a Catalonia/Government of Aragon/Ibercaja, Zaragoza, 2007.
messenger from the archaic rural world - that stagecoach that arrives so MARCHESE, Angelo and FORRADELLAS, Joaquín, Dictionary of rhetoric,

noisily - and with the symbol of modern travel, in the form of an electric criticism and literary terminology, Ariel, Barcelona, 1986.
tram (which the city had installed in 1898, to replace the old animal-drawn NÚÑEZ Florencio, Rafael, Trampled bull's skin. From the feeling of nature
vehicles). And in the voices of the characters we hear the alternating to the national construction of the landscape, Ministry of the
expressions that reveal a subaltern life, without possible redemption: there is Environment, Madrid, 2004.
the consolatory subculture that mitigates the hardship of the life of those PENA, María del Carmen (ed.), Centre-periphery in the modernization of
people, which is evident in the halting reading of a cheap serial; also the Spanish painting (1880-1988), Ministry of Culture, Madrid, 1993.
subsistence that a minor haggling of marginal products provides appears in — Landscape painting and ideology. The G8 Generation, Taurus, Madrid,
the cries that the saleswoman alternates reading out loud with; finally, the 1983.
possibility of living by providing poorly paid services appears in the SCHAMA, Simon, Landscape and Mrmoiy, Alfred Knopf, New York, 1995,
message from the woman of the "graa sack" (surely someone who lives by 3I996.
taking advantage of garbage) to a blind beggar whose husband beats the — , A History of Britain. The Fate of Empire l'/p6-3OOO (3 vols.), BBC
wool from the mattresses at home that he must later remake. Books, London, 2000-2003.
LITERATURE

AZORÍN (pseud. by José Martínez Ruiz), Complete Works (9 vols.),

Aguilar, Madrid, 1959.
Selected Works, Miguel Angel Lozano Marco (coord.), Espasa-Calpe,
Madrid, 1998.
BAJTIN, Mijail, Aesthetic theory of the novel. Research papers, Taurus,
Madrid, 1989.
HOFMANNSTHAL, Hugo von, Letter from Lord Chandos, Official College of -

Quantity Surveyors and Technical Architects, Murcia, 1981.

LlTVAK, Lily, The Time of Trains. The Spanish landscape in the art and
literature of realism (1849-1918), Ediciones del Serbal, Barcelona, 1991.
— , Industrial transformation^ literature in Spain, 18g¡j~ipog, Taurus,
Madrid, 1981.
MAINER, José-Carlos, «Notes for a frame (with Bagaría inside)», in
Bagaría in 'El Sol'. Politics and humor in the crisis of the Restoration,
MAPFRE Foundation Culture Institute, Madrid, 2007.
 6. MEANINGS OF LANDSCAPE IN MODERN SPAIN
MARIA DOLORES JIMENEZ-BLANGO

It is already a historiographical topic to refer to the landscape as a subjective

genre. At first glance it could be said that the landscape describes a
fragment of the natural scene, and therefore should be considered as a mere
exercise in objective mimesis. But a second, more detailed analysis will
allow us to reach the conclusion that, since no view is objective, neither is
the one that selects a fragment of natural reality to give it an artistic
treatment. These are always, more or less consciously, self-serving
selections, with treatments that, in turn, are not neutral either. But there are
different interpretations about the way in which the observer - and therefore
the painter - transforms nature to turn it into what we understand as
landscape.
In his book Landscape into art Sir Kenneth Clark argued that landscape
painting has, from the beginning, had a strong subjective component. The
landscape, Clark said, as nature transformed by the gaze and converted into
a stimulus for an aesthetic emotion, is housed mainly in our imagination and
is fundamentally related to our feelings. For Clark, then, landscape painting
is above all lyrical.

I Kenneth CLARK, The Art of Landscape, Seix Barral, Barcelona, 1971, p. 33 (Spanish version of
Landscape into Art, John Murray, London, 1949).
 I38 LANDSCAPE AND ART 6. MEANINGS OF LANDSCAPE IN MODERN SPAIN 139

More recent authors have proposed other arguments to explain landscape then landscape painting had lacked the official status of historical painting or the
painting, stating that the different ways of understanding it correspond to different portrait genre, academically recognized as 'noble' forms of artistic expression. It is
ways of understanding and using, both individually and collectively, our also true that in the mid-19th century, landscape painting, understood as a painted
relationship with nature, with all the economic and social implications that this - image of nature with minimal or no presence of figures, was already very popular.
entailsLV. In reality, both approaches - one poetic and emotional, the other cultural Within a few decades and in the hands of the Impressionist painters of the
- are not opposed but complementary: the landscape, which ultimately responds to 1870s and 1880s, the landscape would become one of the most appropriate means
the vision of someone who contemplates nature by selecting a certain fragment of of experimentation for artistic innovation: the artist's work enplein air - which had
it, and modifying it only for that reason, is as closely linked to the feelings of the long been an accepted practice for taking notes on atmospheric and lighting effects
artist as to the intellectual history of his time or to the socio-political circumstances prior to the final realization of the painting, which would always be done in the
that define it. In one way or another we would arrive at the same conclusion: studio - now became a way of working, as the painters themselves say, "in direct
throughout the history of art, the landscape can therefore be understood as a communion with natureLVIII."
"metaphor for existenceLVILVII itself." But this is where the question that matters most to us for the topic we are going
Although Francesco Petrarca's letter recounting his ascent of Mont Ventoux in to discuss arises: with what nature? Because there is no generic nature, applicable
1336* is often cited as the first express formulation of that aesthetic emotion in the to any time and circumstance. On the contrary, there are very marked differences
face of nature that we consider the origin and raison d'être of landscape painting, it between some places and others, between some civilizations and others. As a
must be remembered that this genre only achieved autonomous development in result, there are obvious differences between some forms of landscape and others.
contemporary times. Of course, images of nature appear earlier in the paintings in There is a great distance, not only geographical, between the Nordic landscape,
the 'distance'. Exceptions such as the disturbing and enigmatic Patinir in the 16th sung from sublime parameters in romanticism, and the softer landscape of central
century, or the more classical Poussin and the Carracci in the 17th century, speak and southern Europe, approached by painters with a different tone, sometimes
to us of a growing interest in the subject of landscape in a Europe that did not close to the picturesque, at other times with a classicist lyricism.
discover this genre in all its intensity until the 18th century.
This fact is important because it confirms the connection between landscape
5 Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, The Modern Vision, 188o -192 0, The Museum of Modern Art, New York,
painting and inseparable phenomena of the contemporary age, such as the sense of
1999, p- IL
national identity or the process of urbanization and industrialization that was
causing irreversible changes in the European way of life. It is well known that until

LV In this regard, it is worth highlighting the analysis carried out by Simon SCHAMA, Landscape and
Memory, Random House, New York, 1995; as well as the works: Mark ROSKILL, The languages of
landscape, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997; WJT MITCHELL (ed.), Landscape and pouter, I
he University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1994; Joachim RITTER, Pciysage. English: Function
of Aesthetics in Modern Satisfaction, Les Editions de l'imprimeur, Besançon, 1997; Malcolm ANDREWS,
Landscape and Western Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999, also the works of Javier Maderuelo,
among which stand out The Landscape, Provincial Council of Huesca, Huesca, 1997; and Landscape^
Thought, Abada/CDAN, Madrid, 2006, with collaborations by Simon Marchan, Antonio Gomez Sal,
Raffaele Milani, Nicolas Ortega Cantero, Jean Marc Besse, Eduardo Martinez de Pisón, Anne Cauquelin,
Augustin Berque, Miguel Aguilo and Javier Maderuelo himself.
Regarding the landscape genre in Spain and its specific implications, the following references are also
essential: Carmen PENA, Landscape painting and ideology. The Generation of '98, Taurus, Madrid, 1983;
Carlos REYERO and Mireia FREIXA, "The Realistic Landscape" and "Modernization in Landscape
Painting," in Painting and Sculpture in Spain. l800-tgi0, Cátedra, Madrid, 1999; and Eugenio CARMONA,
«Materials creating a landscape. Benjamín Palencia», Alberto Sánchez and the aesthetic recognition of
agricultural nature. 1930-1933», in Surrealism in Spain, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía,
Madrid, 1994.
LVI Dore ASHTON, «Ghost Landscapes in 20th Century Art», in Los Paisajes del Prado, Nerea and Friends of LVIIIand professor of sacred scripture, on some of his own concerns», contained in Fainiliarum Rerum
the Prado Museum Foundation, Madrid, 1993, p. 367. Libri and recently reproduced in Francesco Petrarca. The ascent of Mont Ventoux. April 23, 1336, Artium,
LVII Francesco PETRARCA, «Letter to Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro, of the Order of Saint Augustine Vitoria, 2002.
 i4o LANDSCAPE AND ART
6. MEANINGS OF LANDSCAPE IN MODERN SPAIN I4I

2. John Constable, The Hat Wain, 1821.

1. JMW Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed-The Great Western Railway, 1844.

But there are also other differences that do not depend so much on the the irreversible changes that train travel was causing in the vision of nature.
peculiarities dictated by geographical or climatic factors, that is, by nature itself, Everything had become more dizzying, losing the definition it had always had and
but are the product of human action. I am referring, of course, to the differences fading before the speed of the steam locomotive that monopolizes the image's
produced by the various degrees of socio-economic development existing between prominence.
the countries of Europe, which will also determine very diverse positions regarding In these and other countries, where industrialization and the urbanization that it
the landscape and its pictorial image. entailed put pressure on nature to the point of robbing it of its presence in man's
In the French case, the landscapes of the painters of the Barbizon School in the life, the countryside began to take on the character of a refuge, a place of Arcadian
middle years of the 19th century or of the Impressionists in the 1870s and 1880s, retreat, where the purity of an ideal society capable of living in harmony with an
made it clear that nature was being altered. The landscape would thus become a ever-friendly land was still preserved intact. This is the other side of the coin,
field of discussion for controversial social changes, which were sometimes not which we can see reflected in such well-known works as The Hay Wain, painted
entirely desirable. by Constable in 1821.
Something similar happens in the most emblematic country of the Industrial
Revolution, England. This is demonstrated by the rise of landscape, with very
diverse formulations but with a very constant presence, from Constable to Turner.
It can be said that his paintings trace the rapid progress of an industrialization that
was substantially changing the traditional configuration of the English countryside.
Something that provoked mixed feelings in the population, and also in the artists
who are part of it, moving between nostalgia and expectation. It is enough to
mention Turner's famous painting entitled Rain, Steam and Speed (1844) to realise
 142 LANDSCAPE AND ART
A part of the European landscape painting of this period must be seen, in this
sense, as a reflection of a conservative vision, largely linked to a sense of roots and
exaltation of one's own land related to nationalism.
In the Spanish case, one cannot speak of an industrialization process similar to
that of France or England. Only in the second half of the 19th century did scenes of
trains crossing the landscape comparable to those in English and FrenchLIX painting
occur here. The first of them, by Jenaro Pérez Villaamil, was painted in 1854 and
represents the inauguration of the Sama-Langreo railway. But perhaps it was Darío
de Regoyos, a little later, who best represented this theme, constructing images
with great symbolic charge. This is the case of Good Friday in Castile, from 1896,
which dramatically contrasts the passage of the train with the processions of
sombre penitents, as a brutal contrast between the new and old Spain.
However, these images were far from common in nineteenth-century Spanish
landscape painting, as the country did not respond to the same socio-economic
parameters as its European neighbours. It is therefore not surprising that the history
of landscape painting in the modern age in our country is somewhat different from
that of other European countries. Let us remember that in the central decades of the
19th century, and under the influence of romanticism, the spell of a picturesque
country was fostered, capable of attracting foreign artists and writers precisely
because of its backward and exotic character, with an atmosphere much closer to
3. CARLOS DE HAES, View of the Guadarrama from the Maliciosa.
that of the tales of the Thousand and One Nights than to that of any place in -
modern Europe.
But the second half of the century brought important changes in the conception
of the image of the country and, consequently, of its landscape. Under the banner main promoters of the new approach to science in Spain LX, as well as scientists
of realism, some landscape artists such as Carlos de Haes, of Belgian origin, or the such as Macpherson, or artists such as Aureliano de Beruete.
aforementioned Regoyos, and others such as Martín Rico or Beruete, propose to
delve deeper into an approach to the landscape from a new approach closer to an
7 Giner had published, in 1883, an important essay significantly entitled Landscape, in which he considered the
empirical study of nature. Mountain excursions, the development of geological importance of a "geological painting", based on the scientific study of the soil and its components.
studies and the growing respect for the scientific point of view in the approach to •
nature, together with the growing presence of photography,
In addition to other factors, they led to a true discovery of the landscape as
something unique, distinct, which, far from recreating itself in the bucolic
attractions of green meadows and humid rain-fed banks of European painting,
revealed in all its grandeur a purely peninsular panorama: high cliffs, ochre and
brown plains, and mountain ranges with a palette between blue and grey.
An interest then began to develop in the study of the Madrid mountain range,
which was not alien to the Free Institution of Education, which organized frequent
excursions to it. In 1886, this interest would even crystallize in the founding of the
Society for the Study of Guadarrama, which included Giner de los Ríos, one of the

LIX See Lily LITVAK, The Time of Trains. The Spanish landscape in the aite^ literature of realism (18/g-ig¡8), LXDel Serbal, Barcelona, 1991.
 6. MEANINGS OF LANDSCAPE IN MODERN SPAIN i45
144 LANDSCAPE AND ART

4. Aurellano DE BERVETE, View of Toledo, 1907.

The latter was a disciple of the aforementioned Carlos de Haes, who, while in
5. IGNACIO ZULOAGA, Portrait of Maurice Barres, 1914-
previous decades he had painted solemn landscapes of the mountain ranges of
northern Spain with an approach close to the sublime, around 1890 he began to
paint the Sierra del Guadarrama with a point of view strongly influenced by
Giner's ideas. For his part, Aureliano de Beruete devoted a good part of his To understand this idea, some prior considerations must be made. The
attention to the surroundings of Madrid and other nearby places, such as the landscape must be thought of as a setting and a reflection of what is national, of
Toledo area, recreating the transparent sky of the Meseta, its poor living conditions that peculiarity that distinguishes some peoples from others and that is determined
and its harsh nature, to give rise to images of an unknown nobility in which the as much by history as by geography, that is, by the action of man as much as by
blue mountain range appears again in the distance, now not only as an unavoidable the action of nature. It is therefore not surprising that it was in the second half of
reference to the central landscape of the peninsula, but also as a form of connection the 19th century, coinciding with the rise of nationalism, when landscape painting
with Velazquez's work. acquired a new and definitive importance, becoming a genre of primary
In the case of Beruete, one can sense, therefore, a desire to give a faithful importance not only in Europe, but also in Spain. It is not surprising that it was
image of both nature and its inhabitants. It is not just about being scientifically precisely in Catalonia, rather than in the centre of the peninsula, where this artistic
honest, but also historically, culturally and socially honest. Beruete's painting thus theme was first developed (both in painting and literature). The landscape, as a -
reflected a component that would acquire an essential place in modern Spanish description and inventory of beloved places, took root strongly in the taste of
landscape painting: the moral component, essential to approaching a certain Catalan society and filled the work of a wide range of artists. In Catalonia at the
knowledge of the history and, consequently, of the identity of the place. end of the 19th century, the landscape encompassed the most varied
 14-6 LANDSCAPE AND ART 6. MEANINGS OF LANDSCAPE IN MODERN SPAIN 147

the forms: from the empirical realism of Martí Alsina to the bucolic placidity of
Vayreda, the best representative of the so-called Olot School —a sort of local
Barbizon—. From the melancholic, ascetic twilight landscapes of a symbolist
character by Modest Urgell - a great influence on later artists such as Joan Miró -
to the harsh suburban vision of Nonell's modernist Barcelona. Other artists of great
social prestige at the time, such as Rusiñol and Gasas, reflect in their works the
increasingly cultured and artificial way in which the thriving Catalan bourgeoisie
wants to see nature: domesticated in the form of a garden. All of them make up the
mosaic of visions that shape the idea of a national reality that wishes to affirm
itself through the image of its painted nature.
In the years leading up to the 19th century, the agonizing obsession with
defining a national image through landscape painting spread to various regions of
Spain. The catharsis of the disaster of 1898 only served to revive in the rest of the
country's regions the meditation on national identity, which simultaneously
assumes a centrifugal current, leading to regionalist painting, and another
centripetal current, which finds in Castile the most perfect expression of the
Spanish soul. It was then, around 1900, when the 'regenerationist' positions that we
associate with the intellectual reaction to the political catastrophe of 1998
encouraged thinkers, writers and artists to confront an unflattering reality with
therapeutic intent. And it is at this point where we link with the previous comments
about Beruete. Because it was at this uncertain end-of-the-century moment when,
through his painting and that of other artists, a true aesthetic discovery of the 6. Joaquín Sunyer, Cala Fom, 1917.
Spanish landscape in general and of the inland landscape - and not just Castilian as
the cliché says - in particular took place.
We have already said that, starting in the years surrounding the disaster of Sunyer, do not really carry the argumentative weight of the painting: they are
1998, a good part of both literary and artistic production revolves around rather an accompaniment to the landscape which, changing the traditional
meditation on the 'national being'. And although the landscape is not the only hierarchy, becomes the true protagonist of the story. A story that can take on
means of carrying it out, it will be an essential tool to explain the problems, infinite regional varieties: Romero de Torres in Andalusia, the Zubiaurre, Arteta or
miseries and greatness of Spanish reality. It is true that figures sometimes appear Tellaeche in the Basque Country; Gastelao in Galicia, and Sorolla on the
in the landscapes of Zuloaga or Sunyer. And it is true that these are landscapes that Mediterranean coast, although not only there. A story that, in the end, transcended
seem formally very distant, but on closer inspection they appear to be very close in the local to ascend to a deeper reflection on the national, on the essence of the
terms of their objective, which is none other than to delve into a 'national soul', Spanish.
whether it be from the plateau or the Mediterranean. Well, these figures that appear Much of the landscape painting of the first third of the 20th century in Spain
in these works by both Zuloaga and can be interpreted from these parameters. But there are also important nuances or
exceptions to mention. One of them is Vázquez Díaz, who in his landscapes of
Fuenterrabía assumes the presuppositions of a more cosmopolitan modernity
through a language close to cubism and a colour influenced not only by the humid,
northern countryside, but also by the proximity of the Delaunays, who were
passing through Spain during the parenthesis of the First World War. Another
exception could be the young Miró, who, although he never abandons his loyalty
 148 LANDSCAPE AND ART 6. MEANINGS OF LANDSCAPE IN MODERN SPAIN 149

to his land, be it the countryside of Tarragona or Mallorca, portrays it using

colours and shapes that move away from the traditional to situate themselves in the
current of international modernity, whether of post-impressionist or fauve heritage.
But what is striking is that even in an approach that could be placed within the
conceptual framework of the artistic avant-garde, cosmopolitan by definition,
initiatives such as the Vallecas School emerge that claim the peculiarity of one's
own above any other idea. The Vallecas School proposes an approach to the nature
of the outskirts of Madrid which, despite its indisputable surrealist key, still had
much of the exaltation of the vernacular, with all the grandeur of its poverty and
limitations. Far from any pleasant picturesqueness or the grandiose perspectives
that sublimate the images of Castilian landscapes at the end of the century, the
images of the Vallecas countryside made by Palencia or Alberto Sánchez spoke of
the landscape through the representation of the materiality of the most immediate,
of what only lived, died or petrified on that soil, differentiating itself from any
other place.
In this way, space and matter were identified as ways of approaching nature in
a type of unprecedented landscape painting, with important later consequences.
The Vallecas School, in short, serves to point out both what had changed in the
concept of Spanish landscape painting and what was permanent about it. Because
we can say that the forms and sensitivity towards nature of the work of artists
belonging to this School, such as Alberto Sánchez, Benjamín Palencia or Maruja 7. Alberto Sánchez, Sketch for the central decoration of 'Fuenteovejuna', 1932-1933
Mallo, is very different from that of Zuloaga, Sunyer, Romero de Torres or the
Zubiaurre. But it is also true that they share with them the same obsession with
The civil war (1936-1939) came to violently interrupt the meditation on
reflecting on the idiosyncrasy of the national, and that for this they continue to find
national identity that had occupied Spanish society since the end of the 19th
a very effective tool in the landscape genre.
century. We could look at this question from the opposite angle and say that, in
Other painters close to surrealism or fully included in it, from Oscar
essence, the war became the bloodiest chapter of that same meditation, which
Domínguez to Dalí, also reflect in their paintings the peculiarity of their native
never really ceased. That is why, after that debacle, after 1939, landscape
landscapes. If Domínguez's settings are distinctively Canarian, Dalí's are
painting continued to develop above all, despite the radical change in
quintessentially Empordà, contravening the universalist norm of this movement
circumstances that artistic creation had to face. Although in reality we would
and delving into the concern for the differential typical of landscape painting and
have to say that, rather than simply continuing a path already taken, something
Spanish culture of the time.
very difficult after a trauma of that magnitude, landscape painting had to move,
to modify its objectives to adapt to the new situation.
Some artists, such as the aforementioned Benjamín Palencia, decided to re-edit the
experiences before the war. For this purpose, Palencia created the so-called Second
School of Vallecas, in which he was accompanied by younger painters. Others
grouped together in what came to be called
 150, LANDSCAPE AND ART 6. MEANINGS OF LANDSCAPE IN MODERN SPAIN 151

attempts at modernisation and recovery of the avant-garde memory are of a minor

nature when compared to the activities of Spanish artists incorporated into the
international avant-garde, they are the ones that allowed the subsequent
development of movements of greater significance already in the 1950s, and
therefore have a fundamental character in the development of Spanish modernity
in the second half of the 20th century. And within that timidly renovating
environment, as we have already said, landscape painting stands out with its own
light. Perhaps due to the desire to aesthetically recreate a nature that had physically
suffered the ravages of the conflict, perhaps because it was mistakenly considered
inconsequential, the landscape would become the last refuge of artistic freedom, -
acquiring expressive and formal possibilities that did not exist in other pictorial
genres. This is demonstrated by the comparatively important presence of
landscapes in exhibitions such as those organised in the 1940s and in the private
sphere by Eugenio d'Ors at the Academia Breve de Crítica de Arte, and in the
1950s with all the blessings of official policy at the Hispano-American Biennials.
The landscape was presented as one of the few possibilities of survival that
modernity had left. As Carmen Pena has pointed out, these were landscapes of
8. BENJAMIN PALENCIA, SILURIAN Lands, 1931 "memory and oblivion at the same time": "while part of the exile and emigration
longed to remember their lost land and their ideals in poetry and paintings, inland
Spain paid silent homage to them by singing and painting their landscapes from an
Madrid School, battling in what Moreno Galván called the "domestic line of eclectic and moderate modernity"1'.
SpanishLXI modernity." But ultimately they all found landscape painting to be a Already pointing to this idea, in their catalogue for the exhibition Naturalezas
kind of refuge. Beyond political circumstances or academic demands, landscape Españolas, still today an important reference for approaching this genre, Calvo
was a genre that allowed not only a certain artistic placidity, but also certain Serraller and Vázquez de Parga declared the following: «From the resurrected
possibilities for formal renewal. As if it were forgotten that landscape painting can Valleras School, which brought together a group of young painters around
be an eloquent critical weapon, and as if it were desired to leave behind the Benjamin Palencia, to the later called Madrid School, the best Spanish post-war
indisputable ideological burden that landscape painting had had in Spain at the turn art had as its main theme the landscape, interpreted from a moral perspective -
of the centuryLXIILXIIILXIV, this genre now takes on the character of a neutral field of marked by sobriety and silent self-absorption,^ to which some features are
experimentation, capable of providing both painters and the rare collectors with a incorporated.
last, quiet haven of peace, together with an unusual possibility of aesthetic
innovation. 10 Víctor NlETO Alcaide, «On the art that was made in the fifties: between modernity and the avant-garde», in
Víctor Nieto Alcaide has spoken of the existence of something like a 'substitute From Surrealism to Inj'ormalism. Alie of the 0's in Madrid, Ministry of Culture, Community of Madrid,
Madrid, 1991, pp. 42 ff.
for modernity', referring to the Spanish post-war period and the first initiatives II ■ Carmen PENA, «Landscape and modernity in Spanish painting», in Around the landscape. From Go)^aa
produced with the desire to give continuity to the avant-garde research prior to Barceló. Landscapes from the Argentaria Collection, Argentaria Foundation, Madrid, 1997' P- 32.
1936'0. But the truth is that, as Nieto Alcaide himself points out, although these "formal avant-garde movements of the past before the war, such as Fauvism,
Expressionism, Cubism, Metaphysical Painting, Italian Neoclassicism, etc. »".
LXI José María MORENO GAVÁN, Introduction to Contemporary Spanish Painting, Spanish Publications, Only the still life acquired a development comparable to that of the landscape
Madrid, i960, pp. 45 ff.
LXII Carmen PENA, Landscape painting and ideology: the G8 generation, Lauras, Madrid, 1983. See also in the years immediately after the war. To explain the rise of both genres in those
LXIIIAlso the catalogue of the exhibition Landscape^ Figure of the g8, curated by Javier Tusell and years marked by such adverse circumstances for the normal development of art,
Alvaro
LXIVMartinez Novillo, Central Hispano Foundation, Madrid, 1997.
and coinciding with the aforementioned thesis of Carmen Pena, Calvo Serraller
 152 LANDSCAPE AND ART
t. MEANINGS OF LANDSCAPE IN MODERN SPAIN 153

and Vázquez de Parga have "pointed out that the "anti-rhetorical character" of both objective was never to describe external nature, but to investigate the textures,
the landscape and the still life, "devoid of any political conflict LXVLXVILXVII", could materials and forms that could best translate another nature: that which is only seen
function as an antidote to the grandiloquent rhetoric of the new regime. But there is with the inner eye. This would be a new concept of landscape that fundamentally
an important difference between the two genres, which are ultimately two silent corresponds to the 1950s, and is practiced by a series of artists, in many cases
ways of approaching nature, dead or alive. Paradoxically, the still life, which had linked to informalism, especially concerned with a type of formal experimentation
served as a forum for great formal experiments on the very idea of representation of a subjectivizing nature that includes abstraction. These are landscapes that go
from Cézanne to Cubism, would become one of the fertile fields for the new unnoticed by many, but that a careful look can discover in the visual organization
academicism that ended up becoming the dominant trend. of many works, which evoke horizon lines, stars, infinity. This is what Dore
Unlike the still life, the new landscape proposed something different, which Ashton has called “ghostscapes in twentieth-century art.” We could indeed include
Valeriano Bozal has defined with the following words referring to the genre in in this section some of the paintings by Antoni Tapies, Joan Pon, Luis Feito or
general: "It is characteristic of the landscape to offer in the distance a motive for Manolo Millares, in which there is not only an underlying interest in the material
contemplation that, natural or urban, allows for the reception of figures. The but also, as we said, a composition that refers us to the horizon line. With the trace
landscape practices distance to mark the possibility, fulfilled or not, of an of God lost in nature in an increasingly secularized age, it is not surprising that the
approach. The existence of a virtual subject that contemplates it is a fundamental concept of the transcendent, which since Romanticism had been identified with the
note of the genre and distance is an inherent feature of that contemplation. landscape, now appears in abstract images - whose most important international
Plastically, the horizon line, the atmospheric density (or its absence), the play of epitome is, of course, the case of Rothko15.
light, etc., are components that define it. Of all, space is the most important, since What could be the explanation for this shift, which moves the landscape from
the others depend on it to acquire concrete presence. The space contemplated the outside to the artist's interior? Perhaps we can conceive of these ghost
must be capable of being occupied or must arouse desires for such occupation landscapes as a form of retreat from an outside world that
even if, for whatever reason, it cannot be carried out.
With these words, Bozal seems to be literally describing the way in which a
series of artists approached the painting of landscapes, new and old at the same
14 Dore Ashton, “Ghost Landscapes in Twentieth-Century Art,” op. CD. pp. 367-381.
time, which were now sprouting again despite the desolation, destruction and 15 Amador VEGA, Am, mysticism^abstraction, Trotta, Madrid, 2002. ............ .. ......
death. They are essential landscapes, free of all anecdote, whose fundamental
components are space and the horizon line. These are landscapes that must be
placed in a broader context, which encompasses a large number of artists who
undertook this task from diverse stylistic formulations. From painters already -
considered masters for their belonging to the environment before the civil war,
such as Palencia, Vázquez Díaz or Gossío, to younger ones such as Gregorio del
Olmo, Martínez Novillo, Zabaleta, Montes Iturrioz, Gerardo Delgado, Agustín
Redondela, Genaro Lahuerta, Francisco Lozano or Francisco Arias, there were
many who dedicated a significant part of their careers to the creation of a new -
concept of landscape that could renew Spanish painting from within.
But if we take into account other ways of understanding the landscape, we
could extend the list of names of Spanish landscapers of the 20th century whose

LXV Francisco CALVO SERRALLER and Ana VÁZQUEZ DE PARGA, «Facing Nature (1940-1950)», in
/Spanish Natures (lg4O-ip8^), Ministry of Culture and Agricultural Credit Bank, Madrid, 1987, pp- 66s. See
also AA.VV., The Madrid School. The essence of the landscape. Erancisco Anas. Juan Manuel Coneja,
Alvaro Delgado, Menea Cal, Luis Garcia Odioa, Cirilo Martinec,JNoi>illo, Gregorio del Olmo. Theory
and Practice, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1994.
LXVI Francisco CALVO SERRALLER and Ana VAZQUEZ DE PARGA, «Before nature (1940-1950)» ,
LXVIIop. cit.
 154 LANDSCAPE AND ART 6. MEANINGS OF LANDSCAPE IN MODERN SPAIN 155

Many artists of that generation, traumatized by an exceptional political situation,

found it hostile. If the traditional landscape represented the forms observed in
nature, even if they were lyrically transformed, this new type of landscape does not
want to represent but to evoke a nature that appears through its tiny details: specks
of colour, textures, wrinkled fabrics - it is not about painting the world, but about
remembering the skin of the world, about reconstructing the fabric of what is
closest to us. A language that, while apparently distancing ourselves from nature
understood in its broadest sense, never stops talking about it. It was the response to
a historical moment marked not only by the moral crises produced first by the civil
war and then by the world war, but also by a society in which political repression
and censorship forced people to seek new avenues of expression.
Coinciding chronologically with the informalists, and not without -
contact with them, other artists propose a way of approaching the landscape that
we could call 'just milieu'. I am referring to painters like . .= Caneja, Ortega Muñoz
and Beulas, who approach the transcription of nature in a very peculiar way,
essentializing its forms without becoming abstract, but at the same time using a
vision that is more interior than exterior, more emotional than sensitive. They are
still, to some extent, linked to the idea of reflection on what is different, on a
nature that is our own and that marks, to a large extent, our history. But far from
passing through the filter of the more or less high-sounding rhetoric that, inherited
from the generation of '98, the new regime had wanted to impose in its first years,
9. JUAN MANUEL Díaz-Caneja, Landscape, ca. 1968. -
these artists try to return to direct contact with their impressions, with their feelings
in the face of that narrow nature. As Valeriano Bozal says, "the main landscape
painters were concerned with raising the tone, if they did not dispense with the limes. What Ortega Muñoz creates are timeless images, almost always devoid of
anecdote, they conceived it (plastically) as a category"1. any human presence, in which one can almost hear the silence between the twisted
This is the case of artists such as Godofredo Ortega Muñoz, who after trunks of the vines.
the war created an essentialized image of Spanish rural reality. This is a Juan Manuel Díaz-Caneja, who at the end of the war was arrested and
form of landscape painting that is increasingly refined, with a certain degree imprisoned for his political activity during the Republic, also found in landscape
of deliberate primitivism, an increasingly restricted language and palette, painting an important way to resolve his aesthetic concerns, to the point of
and compositions that firmly dominate the painting through basic structures becoming one of the best interpreters of the Spanish landscape in his later years.
marked by paths, stone fences, and banks. His landscapes are almost always Castilian, with predominantly ochre and mauve
tones and strong horizontal tension: an undoubted reflection of his plastic -
understanding of the landscape of the Palencia fields, where he is originally from.
16 Valeriano BOZAL, «Landscapes after 1940», in Around the Landscape. From Goya to Barceló. A horizontal tension compatible with a marked structural instinct, inherited from
Landscapes from the Argentaria collection, Argentaria Foundation, Madrid, 1997, p. 38. Cubism and the Cézanne lesson. As a renewed vision of that Castilian countryside
that Giner de los Ríos described as 'masculine', Ganeja appears in the panorama of
Spanish painting of the second half of the century as the best example of the
validity of the ideas of ninety-eight, passed through the avant-garde sieve of Valle.
 6. MEANINGS OF LANDSCAPE IN MODERN SPAIN 157
156 LANDSCAPE AND ART

approaching the landscape and interpreting it plastically. Eusebio Sempere, for

example, transforms the image of nature into a highly refined exercise in geometry
that produces, through optical vibrations, a refined illusion of movement. Zóbel,
from Cuenca, produces intense abstractions of great lyricism that combine the
peculiar chromaticism of local nature with his knowledge of international
abstraction. Ráfols-Casamada, for his part, recreates in his well-constructed,
classical compositions all the harmony of the Mediterranean; Antonio López
summons specific places - in some cases, again with Madrid Vallecano as the
centre - with a style that has been deceptively taken as strictly pictorial and
visionary. Already in the eighties, artists such as Gordillo, Guillermo Pérez Villalta
and Alcolea indicated with their works to what extent the landscape of Spain
during the transition was becoming essentially urban, while other artists of more
recent generations, with Barceló as the main media star, pointed to a new vision of
nature that goes beyond our -for hyperrealistic, although it has a lot of
geographical borders, signalling
the end of the cultural and political isolation that had marked Spanish culture in so
many ways in the second half of the twentieth century. Subsequently, other artists
have focused their attention on a nature that is much closer both physically and
spiritually, proposing metaphors or reflections on it that are no longer necessarily
pictorial. I am referring to artists such as Miguel Angel Blanco or Pere-— jaume,
who, with their artistic and literary work, point out a new nostalgia for nature
10. José BEULAS, Desirability of Cuarte, 1989. based on assumptions inseparable from the cultural and social environment of the
late twentieth century. It is a cultured, wise nostalgia that moves away from the
merely sentimental and understands nature in its purest state. For their part, artists
such as Juan José Aquerreta, Juan Carlos Savater and Jesús Mari Lazkano have
case and post-cubism. His are serious and robust landscapes, from which he knows
remained faithful to the pictorial technique in their visions of nature, the first from
how to extract a delicate poetry.
a fundamentally constructive perspective, the second from a transcendent
Also included in this group would be José Beulas (1921), somewhat younger
aestheticism, and the third from a realism understood as an option of modernity.
than those just mentioned. Originally from Santa Coloma de Farnés, Girona, a
Today the image of nature seems to blur and become concrete before our eyes,
town situated in the middle of the pleasant Girona landscape, full of poplars and
which contemplate it in astonishment, no longer in the narrow fields painted by the
streams, gentle hills and changing colours that lend themselves so much to the
artists of the 20th century, but on the screen.
picturesque landscape, Beulas ended up specialising in a very different image of
nature, almost the opposite, I would say, to that of his place of origin. Settling in
Alto Aragón since the late 1950s, his work has been refined, perhaps essentialized
by the continued, stubborn daily contemplation of the rugged, rugged Alto Aragón
landscape. After an education that had taken him to Madrid, Paris and, above all,
Rome, over the years Beulas arrived at a personal understanding of the Huesca
landscape that gradually eliminated everything that could distract him from the
deeper impression of these essential landscapes, marked by a meridian horizon that
determines the horizontal tension of his paintings.
But in the last third of the 20th century we could discover many other ways of
 158 LANDSCAPE AND ART 6. MEANINGS OF LANDSCAPE IN MODERN SPAIN 159

of a computer, whether in a domestic environment or viewed in an exhibition hall. REYERO, Carlos and FrEIXA, Mireia, «The realistic landscape», and
Even so, perhaps this hasty review can help us understand the presence, both «Modernization in landscape painting», in Painting and Sculpture in Spain.
constant and changing, of the image of the landscape in 20th century Spanish art. 18OO- 13IO, Chair, Madrid, 1999.
RITTER, JOACHIM, Landscape. Fonction de I'esthetique dans la societé moderne,
LES EDITIONS DE L'IMPRIMEUR, BESANON, 1997.
ROSKILL, Mark, The languages of landscape, The Pennsylvania State University

Press, 1997.
SCHAMA, SIMON, Landscape and Memory, RANDOM HOUSE, NEW YORK, 1995.
LITERATURE
TUSELL, Javier and MARTÍNEZ NOVILLO, Alvaro (eds.), Landscape and Figure of 98,

Central Hispano Foundation, Madrid, 1997.

AA.W., From Surrealism to Informalism. Art of the 0s in Madrid, Ministry of
VEGA, Amador, Zen, mysticism and abstraction, Trotta, Madrid, 2003-
Culture, Community of Madrid, Madrid, 1991.
AA.W., On the landscape. From Goj/aa Barceló. Landscapes from the Argentaria
Collection, Argentaria Foundation, Madrid, 1997-
AA.W., The Madrid School. The essence of the landscape. Francisco Arias. 1994-
AA.W., Spanish Natures (1Q4.O-Ip8j), Ministry of Culture and Agricultural
Credit Bank, Madrid, 1987.
ANDREWS, Malcolm, Landscape and Western Art, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1999- .
ASHTON, Dore, «Ghost Landscapes in 20th Century Art», in Los Paisajes del
Prado, Nerea and Friends of the Prado Museum Foundation, Madrid, 1993.
CARMONA, Eugenio, «Materials creating a landscape. Benjamín Palencia, Alberto

Sánchez and the aesthetic recognition of agricultural nature. 1930-1933», in

Surrealism in Spain, Reina Sofia National Art Center Museum, Madrid, 1994.
the
CLARK, Kenneth, The Art of Landscape, Seix Barral, Barcelona, 1971 ( ed. (in
English, 1949).
DABROWSKY, Magdalena, French Landscape. The Modern Vision, 1880-1
hlTVAK, Lily, The Time of Trains. The Spanish landscape in the art of realist

literature (1849-1818), Del Serbal, Barcelona, 1991.

MADERUELO, JAVIER (ED.), The Landscape, PROVINCIAL COUNCIL OF HUESCA,
HUESCA, 1997. — (ED.), Landscape and Thought, ABADA/GDAN, MADRID, 2006.

MITCHELL, W.J.T. (ED.), Landscape and power, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

PRESS, CHICAGO AND LONDON, 1994-
MORENO GALVÁN, JOSÉ MARÍA, Introduction to contemporary SPANISH
PAINTING, SPANISH PUBLICATIONS, MADRID, I960.
PENA, Carmen, Landscape painting and ideology. The Generation of '98, Taurus,
Madrid, 1983.
PETRARCA, Francesco, Ventoux mendirako igoaldia. 133^^° April 26th / The

, ascent to Moni Ventoux. April 23, 1336, Arüum, Vitoria, 2002.

 7. OLD NOVELTIES.
REAPPEARANCES OF LANDSCAPE IN VISUAL ARTS
HORACIO FERNANDEZ

In mid-1927, Alexander Rodchenko took a walk through the forest where

his artistic partner Vladimir Mayakovsky spent the summer between a trip
to a recital and another trip under any excuse. The place was “Pushkino,
Mount Akula, Sumyantzev’s dacha, a few miles [from Moscow] by the
Iroslavl Railway,” as the topographically precise subtitle of the 1920 poem
“An Extraordinary Adventure That Happened to Me, Vladimir
Mayakovsky, One Summer at the Dacha” reports.
Extraordinary, indeed. That adventure is hard to top. One July
afternoon, the troublemaker who called himself 'the cloud in trousers',
dazzled by the setting sun and quite annoyed by the heat, challenged the
Sun, invited him to tea, chatted with him and, finally, accepted and shared
his advice to shine, shine always and everywhere.
Apart from the poet, who unfortunately could not maintain his special
"victory over the sun" for much longer, there were plenty of people at
Rumyantzev's dacha in the summer. For example, the critic Ossip Brik and
his wife Lili or the filmmaker Lev Kuleshov and his wife, among many
others who came from time to time, especially on weekends. They went to
chat and have fun, to shoot targets and play mahjongo cards, and also to
eat. Someone was in charge of making sure that from Saturday
 162 LANDSCAPE AND ART 7. REAPPEARANCES OF LANDSCAPE IN VISUAL ARTS 163

By Monday the dining room table was well stocked with forest fruits, as well thinking of the houses in Moscow, also piled up and all different, there is
as sausages and meat pies, which were Anetchka, the cook's speciality. still a lot of work to be doneLXVIII.
Rodchenko rented a room nearby, where he only went to sleep, as he spent Long before Rodchenko set his sights on an anthill and discovered that
the rest of his time at the dacha like everyone else, busy having a good time. urban disorder is just as good as natural chaos, finding in the confusion an
Meanwhile, outside it rained frequently and the sun shone from time to time, unavoidable invitation to put order in the room once and for all, another
but not as much as that memorable afternoon when Mayakovsky had lunch artist had the good fortune to be a privileged witness to some conversations,
with a real star. which he first wrote down and then rewrote in the style of Platonic
Although there are usually no surprising incidents during forest dialogues.
excursions, the walk was important for Rodchenko. To begin with, it was an That artist writer was called Francisco de Holanda, but he was not
exception, a very healthy one at that, to the festive norms of summer Dutch, he had been born in Lisbon in 1518. Twenty years later he was living
vacation. Considered from an even more practical point of view, it could in Rome at the expense of the King of Portugal, who had commissioned him
serve his work. He tried to take advantage of the opportunity to look for to draw the fortifications he found. The military mission was a bit dangerous
motifs worth preserving on his camera film. He didn't have much luck. and on one occasion it almost cost him dearly for drawing something he
In the impressions that Rodchenko recorded as if he were an explorer shouldn't. That would have been unfair, since, to tell the truth, he wasn't
returning from a long and dangerous expedition, the forest was not exactly into espionage. In his drawings, which are kept in the library of El
interesting and neither was nature, as it was too messy. A disappointing Escorial, there are fortresses and walls, but above all antiquities, what
result, which was surely due to the fact that he was not able to look around remained at that time, which was not little, of the architecture and sculpture
him carefully, nor did he bother to try to understand beyond the simple, not of ancient Rome3. Upon returning to Lisbon, he put on paper his memories
to say simple, assimilation of what he had just experienced in the context of of some evenings that can be described as extraordinary without going
what he did daily in the urban environment of his everyday life. However, overboard. It won't be the same as talking to the sun, but having the good
Rodchenko suspected that something unique and even significant had fortune of having talked to Michelangelo Buonarroti is also far from
occurred during the walking experience, which led him to publish his notes ordinary.
in an article in which, among other things that he may have thought of while In the Dialogues of Painting4, finished in 1548 in Lisbon, there will be -
walking, he asserted that photography is no less than ninety percent art, distortions, invented phrases and even exaggerations, as in all
unlike radio, where there is exactly ten percent aesthetics. More than enough
for an artist as optimistic and versatile as he is, a painter, sculptor and 2 Alexandr RODCHENKO, «Zapisnaia knizka Lefa» [Lef's notebook], ^oviilef, n. 6 (June 1927).
draftsman as well as a photographer, designer, interior designer, set designer, Ecritscomplets, og cit., p. 125- .
3 Francisco DE HOLANDA, Os Desenhoa de Antigualhas that Francisco d'Ollanda saw, Portuguese
critic and even a radio amateur or radio artist by discipline, if not by artistic Painter, manuscript of 1539-1540; facsimiles, Madrid, 194° and Lisbon, 1989.
ambition. 4 Francisco DE HOLANDA's treatise Da Pintura antigua, of which the Dialogues of Painting are a
part, was not published until the 19th century. The first complete edition appeared in Porto in 1918
Rodchenko began the article by talking about his own photographic style, and the critical edition, edited by Ángel González García, was published in Lisbon in 1983.
with foreshortened perspectives, that is, from bottom to top or from top to Holanda's work was translated into Spanish in 1563 by the Portuguese painter Manuel Denis. His
bottom, which he advised other photographers to adopt as well. manuscript, preserved at the Academy of San Fernando, was published in Madrid in 1921 with the
title De la pintura antigua by Elias Tormo and F. J. Sánchez Cantón, who also included the
He then wrote down his thoughts on the rather ordinary adventure he Dialogues in the first volume of his Literary Sources for the History of Spanish Art, Madrid, 1923.
experienced in the Pushkino forest.
«I walk and look at nature: here some bushes, there a tree, over there a
hollow, nettles... It's all down to chance, nothing is organized, you don't
know where to start a photo, there's nothing interesting... The pines, to tell
the truth, are not too bad. Very long, very bare, like telegraph poles. And LXVIII Alexandr Rodchenko, 1939 manuscript dealing with his relations with Vladimir Mayakovsky,
then there are ants, which live almost like agents... And I say to myself, Rodchenko family archive, Moscow. There is an edition, with the title "Reflexions apart", in
RODCHENKO, Écrits complets sur/'arí, rarchitecture et la revolution, Paris, 1988, pp. 87-112.
 164 LANDSCAPE AND ART 7. REAPPEARANCES OF LANDSCAPE IN VISUAL ARTS 165

those stories of conversations called interviews in which one person but this does not happen "because of the vigor and goodness of that
talks more than the others. Yet is it not almost fantastic that a narrative painting, but because of the goodness of that devotee." He also admits that
has been preserved which must closely resemble a real conversation with Dutch painting has its audience, but not exactly the one he would like. "It
a vehement and talkative Michelangelo, with all the choleric and grumpy will seem good to women, especially to the very old and very young, and
character that appears in his biographies? also to monks, nuns, and some gentlemen who are not musicians of true
The talks took place in 1538 in the church of San Silvestro, a stone's harmony."
throw from the Quirinal, in the square known as Montecavallo for its ancient After the inconvenience with the deaf gentlemen and the declaration of
statues, right where Nero is said to have witnessed its burning. The misogyny, which the marquise must have let pass with elegance, disdain, or
participants, in addition to Michelangelo and the chronicler, were Vittoria both, since Holland does not take up any protest, Michelangelo assures the
Colonna, an aristocrat who corresponded with the master, and the scholar audience that the painting of Flanders "is rags, masonry, field vegetables,
Lattanzio Tolomei. shadows of trees, and rivers and bridges that they call peyságenes, and
In the first dialogue it is not easy to get people to talk about art LXIX. To many figures towards here, and many towards there and all this, although it
begin with, Francisco de Holanda is also an artist and it may well be that seems good to some eyes, in truth it is done without reason and without art,
Michelangelo did not wish to discuss his trade secrets with a young without symmetry or proportion, without warning to choose and without
colleague capable of exploiting them for his own benefit. But in the end ease and, finally, without any substance or nerve"6.
there is no need for the Netherlands to hide and eavesdrop. Michelangelo, According to Kenneth Clark, Michelangelo was so "steeped in
who feels at ease in the presence of Vittoria Colonna, begins to speak, trying Neoplatonism and in perpetual struggle with an artistic ideal so arduous
to disprove his well-earned reputation for being reserved and misanthropic. and exalted that the mere pleasures of perception seemed to him nothing but
It is false, he says, that painters are "strangers, with unbearable, harsh contempt"7. When there is no order other than that derived from the fact that
conversations." But it is unconvincing. Despite the rather majestic plural, it the appearance seems credible, is not annoying and is acceptable to the
seems that Michelangelo is only talking about himself and surely believes friars8, formal ambition or vital and emotional energy, the terribilitá that
the opposite of what he says, especially when he says that eminent painters Michelangelo points out with his mention of the 'nerve', can have little
do not talk much out of pride, but because there are very few with whom it is importance.
worth talking and one should not "corrupt oneself" in conversations with Michelangelo's teachings also appear in the treatise on painting that
idlers or "lower one's understanding" trying to converse with the important precedes the Dialogues. At the end of this text, Francisco de Holanda
people who are in "continually high imaginings." Even "His Holiness makes included a summary of precepts in which, in two columns, he indicated
me angry and annoyed when he sometimes speaks to me and questions me "what the painter must avoid" and "what he must follow"9. For example, the
so thickly," says the artist who once threw half a scaffold at an overly painter was to flee from "confusion" and follow "the idea or invention,"
curious Pope. which has been interpreted as an express declaration of Neoplatonism. It was
After such an introduction, there was little hope of getting anything also necessary to avoid "what was very customary" and try "the chosen and
useful out of Miguel Angel that day. However, Vittoria Colonna dares to ask old novelties." The oxymoron reappears in the last piece of advice: to flee
him a trick question. He argues that since the Master holds that "great men from “indiscretions” and follow “the new Antiquity,” an elegant way of
are justified without judgment, he will not use [with us] any of the extremes referring to what is generally called the Renaissance.
that he uses with others." Michelangelo compromises, bound by the rules of
courtesy, and the Marchioness of Pescara, somewhat blushing, then asks him
for his opinion on the painting of the flames, which she thinks is more 6 HOLLAND, On ancient painting, p. 153
devotional than that of the Italians. Michelangelo responds, taking his time, 7 Kenneth CLARK, Landscape into Art, London, 1949; The Art of Landscape, Barcelona, 1971, p.
46.
that it is true that Flemish paintings can be more devotional than Italian ones, 8 «They paint in Flanders specifically to deceive the outside eye, or things that make you happy, or
that you cannot say badly about, like that
as Saints and Prophets». HOLLAND, On Ancient Painting, p. 153.
LXIX Francisco DE HOLANDA, On Ancient Painting, Madrid, 1921, pp. 150-153.
 164 LANDSCAPE AND ART 7. REAPPEARANCES OF LANDSCAPE IN VISUAL ARTS 166

9 HOLLAND, On ancient painting, p. 140.

 166 LANDSCAPE AND ART 7. REAPPEARANCES OF LANDSCAPE IN VISUAL ARTS / 167

In this scheme, Flemish painting represents the past, that is, the old, but Between Michelangelo's disdain - or blindfolded eyes - and Rodchenko's
not the antique. For Julius Schlosser it is LXX The interpretation seems incomprehension - or blindness - there is a line, which continues and will
reasonable for early Flemish painting, but it is not useful for thinking about surely continue, of close relations between art and reason. But nature is not
the landscape, which at that time was not exactly 'what was very customary', rational and, consequently, the landscape is not characterized by rational
but rather something new. rules such as order, symmetry, proportion or harmony. ,
For some time there was reason to believe both that Francis von Holland A landscape is an image of nature. An experience of nature in the form
reproduced Michelangelo's teachings "with Eckerman's fidelity to Goethe" of an image. And also the interpretation of that image. It is not exactly what
and that he actually wrote his own opinions "through the mouth of the surrounds us, the environment, a concept that helps to define the limits of the
master," as Schlosser pointed out, apparently admitting both possibilities LXXI. meaning of landscape. Nature is the complete set of things, with their
Since then, the authenticity of what Holland wrote has been lessLXXII energies, properties, processes and products. The landscape is a screen of
disputed. For example, Kenneth Clark must not have had many doubts about nature modified by culture, a sum of nature and culture. On the other hand,
his fidelity to Michelangelo when he drew two conclusions from the the environment is a place perceived by a subject in a complex way, that is,
Dialogues. The first, that "Michelangelo saw very clearly that the landscape not only visually. A place where a series of relationships occur between the
was the enemy of his ideal art." The second, that "he also saw that [the subject, the space and its meanings15. The environment may be natural, but
landscape] was a Flemish invention," that is, a true novelty, in every sense, the landscape is not. For it to exist, the cultural choice of an observer is
an artistic genre that did not come from Antiquity LXXIII. And he could have necessary, determined by his gaze, both with eyes wide open and closed to
drawn another conclusion, that the term landscape was already in common pay attention only to the images of thought. The landscape is not nature or
use among artists in the mid-16th century, although it was not yet found in - the environment, but an image of nature or the environment. A type of
dictionaries. In fact, the description of the Flemish painting fits like a glove representation that has been valid in the West between its invention during
with Joachim Patinir's 'world landscapes', animated with little stories and full the Renaissance and its more or less belligerent omission, forgetfulness or
of details such as those pointed out by Michelangelo: people, clothing and abandonment from a somewhat imprecise moment that art historians have
buildings, vegetation and water, greens and shadows, a combination that, in not tried to clarify, granting absolute prominence in their studies to the so-
other words, can be summed up in the two components of the landscape: called avant-gardes of the 20th century.
culture and nature. From the narrow perspective of the average art historian, the history of
For Michelangelo, the landscape and, in general, the outside world, was landscape in the West (or, what is almost the same, the history of painting)
much less important than the Idea - in the Platonic sense - that the work of begins in the Netherlands and ends after Impressionism. Perhaps in the
art was to translate. Instead of copying nature, it was necessary to correct it French Midi, with the last paintings and drawings of Paul Cézanne, although
so that it would be an invention in which to seek ideal perfection. Francisco it could also be that the landscape reappeared some time later in apotheosis
de Holanda somewhat exaggerated how well he had learned the lesson when in the work of some abstract painters.
he recommended painting with one's eyes closed to prevent the Idea from
fading away. "And if it were possible to do it with the pen or graphite pencil,
14 HOLLAND, On ancient painting, p. 59.
eyes covered, it would be better, so as not to lose that divine fury and image 15 Malcolm ANDREWS, Landscape and Western Alt, Oxford and New York, 1999, pp. 192s. North
that one carries in one's imagination."14 American coughs of the second half of the last century, as Robert
RosemblumLXXIV has argued with rigor.
LXX Julius SCHLOSSER, Die Kunstliteratur, Vienna, 1924; Artistic literature, Madrid, 1976, p. 251.
LXXI SCHLOSSER, Artistic Literature, pp. 250, 251.
In any case, the end of the landscape is not a matter that can be resolved
LXXII Cfr. the numerous publications that Sylvie Deswarte-Rosa has dedicated to Francis of Holland, in a note like this. Besides, it is not that interesting, but rather tedious, to
such as "Idea et le Temple de la Peinture I. Michelangelo Buonarroti and Francis of Holland", Revue de return once again to the question of the death of some aspect of the arts.
l'Art, vol. 92, no. 92 (1991), which cites Robert J. in this regard. CLEMENTS, "The Authenticity of
Francisco de Hollanda", Publications of Modern Language Association, no. 6l, 1946, and Robert
KLEIN, «Francisco de Holland et les secrets de l'art», Colo^uw-Artes n. II, i960. P. LXXIV Robert Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the /Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to
LXXIII CLARK, The Art of Landscape, p. 45. Rothko, New York, 1975.
 168 LANDSCAPE AND ART 7. REAPPEARANCES OF LANDSCAPE IN VISUAL ARTS 169

Apart from the exceptions that there will be, it is also quite likely that there
will be a certain continuity of the landscape in the visual arts, especially if it
is not obligatory to take the part for the whole and one can speak of
something more than the paintings that are dealt with in the accounts of
canonical art history. Photography and cinema, for example. When one
looks at its images, one discovers that, as in Monterroso's story, the
landscape was there. He was not gone, he was not dead, nor was he extinct.
The history of the landscape changes when you don't have to stick to
painting, which also has surprises if you look a little.
In 1921 Wilhelm Worringer visited an exhibition organised by the
magazine Valori Plastid called DasJange Italien, which toured several
German cities since its opening in April at the Kronprinz Palast in Berlin. In
the exhibition there was a painting of a size as discreet as its subject, 11
pine! mare of Cario Garra. His contemplation impressed Worringer and led
him to write an essay of surprising enthusiasm for a work by a philosopher
who did not exactly pay much attention to the art of his contemporaries.
"How laconic this picture is! A solitary pine tree with a bare trunk, a
solitary house with a bare facade, the bare seashore, the same sea whose
dead surface stands out against the bare sky, a grotto covered with sad
dunes and a forgotten wooden easel on which whiteLXXVLXXVI clothes dry.
"Why so many words for such a simple painting?" Worringer then asked
rhetorically, before replying that its simplicity was more complex than it
seemed. It led to a kind of beauty that any observer could appreciate, quite
an achievement in those times when, as usual, art was the almost exclusive
heritage of the initiates who made up the small world of art. Garra's painting
had more to do with experience, with "lived reality," than with artistic Garra had painted Ilpinosuímore that same year, 1921, based on
representations. It was not about art, but about "the fullness of the dimension memories of his stays in Moneglia, on the Ligurian coast, south of Genoa'8.
of existence." In his autobiography he considered it one of the first expressions of the
painting he then 'longed for', the beginning of a new period in his career, in
which, having paid the tax on modernity with its concessions to futurism and
metaphysics, he began to find his own place in painting and its history.
Another example of the 'return to order' of those post-war years, which in the
case of Garra was more of a return to nature and the landscape, which in this
case was both old and could also be new.

18 Cfr. AA.VV., Cario Cmrá: ¡taeso^i, Palazzo Ziino, Palermo, 2003 (cat. exp.), in particular the essay
by Sergio TROISI, «Archetipo e natura: i pae.saggi di Cario Carra».
LXXV Wilhelm WORRINGER, "Cario Carra Pinie am Meer", Wisscn and Leben, 10-[-1925; repr.
inLes
LXXVIPeaceful Center Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1981, pp, 94-98 (cat. exp.).
 i7o LANDSCAPE AND ART 7. REAPPEARANCES OF LANDSCAPE IN VISUAL ARTS 17I

In La mía vita, the autobiography he wrote in 1942 and published the

following year, Garra says that contemplating the landscape caused him
emotional upheaval that was very difficult to reconcile with painting. The
faithful landscape, which he called "perista", seemed insufficient to him,
since he wanted other emotional, expressive and interpretive elements to be
found in his works. I wanted the painting to convey not only the things in
nature that make up a landscape, but also the feelings and experiences of the
painter. The outside world was necessary, but not sufficient. Garra sought to
recreate a 'mythical representation' of nature that had to be a new type of
landscape, more difficult and ambitious than the previous ones, which he
described as "a poem of space and dream, in which natural elements are
accessories"9. In short, nothing more than "quattroparole di natura", but as
long as they were as intense as many of the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti's, as
Roberto Longhi wrote about Garra's painting a few years laterLXXVIILXXVIII.
II pino sul mare is a solitary tree, silent and taciturn in an environment
dominated equally by solitude, silence and melancholy. Carra knew how to
paint it in a dry manner that had cubism behind it as much as Giotto. In the
words of Franz Roh, in Garra's paintings of that time "one relies on
emptiness, which separates things, to realize the outside world in the most
rigorous way."LXXIX Again, according to Roh, Garra had achieved a radical
change, "from a raging storm to an ominousLXXX calm." To take that step, it
was necessary for him to turn his gaze to the outside world, to nature, with a
gaze that included his experience of modernity and his inner emotional and
intellectual world, but also the tradition of painting and landscape.
2. Alexandr Rodchenko, Pine, photograph taken in the Puskino Forest, 1927.
As if following the old advice of Francisco de Holanda, Garra knew how
to avoid the usual and the indiscreet in his poetic painting
to devote oneself to old novelties. He managed to organize what he saw and
overcome the confusion of nature using the procedures of art. He showed
that reviving classicism could also be a way of broadening experience and
LXXVII <I saw the maniere of the mayor of the country's painting. The prize consists of faithfully
rendering the contour and modeling of a group of alberi, monti, acque e di case. This way, we will
producing estrangement. And with this he achieved something that is not far
say verista, non escinde l'ideali^- zazione nello sceglíere la postpone piit caratteristica, que meglio removed, despite such different media and contexts, from what Rodchenko
esprime lora e il tempo. The second way to tell a paesa^io a spazio e di sogno poem, dovegli
would do some time later based on another bare pine.
dementi naturali sono accessori. "Qu laríe é piit difficile, in quanto piü ambitious." Carlo CARRA,
My Life (1943), Milan 2002, p. 223. The article in which Alexander Rodchenko recorded his reflections on
LXXVIII «L'intensitá d'indicazione spadale nella casuccia di sbieco, nell'albero moncherinogia si the Pushkino Forest was published in June 1927. Interestingly, in the next
propagapética in unpaese sen^a present amane visibili ne'suppellettili esoteriche, and ristretto a
quattro parole di natura, scandite e radianti come in una illuminadone poética di Ungaretti. issue of the magazine, in July, there were five photos of trees with his
Roberto LONGII, Cario Carra, Milan, 1937; repr. in Da Cimabue to Morandi. Saggi distoria della signature and the title Pines, Pushkino.
pittura Italiana, Milan 2001, p. 1074.
LXXIX Franz ROH, Nach Expressionismus. Magischer Realism. Problems der neuesten europaischen
Malerei, Leipzig, 1925; Magical realism. Post-expressionism. Problems of the most recent European
painting, Madrid, 1927, p. 33.
LXXX Roí!, Magical Realism, p. 88.
172 LANDSCAPE AND ART 7. REAPPEARANCES OF LANDSCAPE IN VISUAL ARTS 173

Apparently Rodchenko noticed (or someone made sure he did) that his
passing remark in ^íoviiLef's article about the resemblance of trees to
telegraph poles might produce photogenic results, so as soon as he could he
returned to Pushkino with his camera and rediscovered the subject that he
had intuited but had nevertheless avoided a few days earlier.
One of the photos from that session shows the tops of five tall pines, as
scrawny as the one painted by Carlo Carra, seen from below, emerging from
the four corners of the image and converging in its centre like an inverted
well without walls. In other images, the trunk of a pine tree occupies almost
the entire surface, especially in one in which the tree cuts diagonally through
the surface, a photograph that follows the model known since Theo van
Doesburg as countercomposition and is one of his most commented,
exhibited and reproduced images.
Fame means prestige, but it also gives rise to criticism, not always free of
envy when it comes from colleagues. Thus, an article signed by an
anonymous 'photographer' in a magazine that was the organ of Soviet
photographers and was appropriately called Sovetskoe Foto, pointed out the -
suspicious similarity of Rodchenko's diagonal photo of the pine to another
photograph by Albert Renger-Patzsch, from 1924, showing a
factoryLXXXILXXXII chimney. The article also said that Rodchenko was not just
anyone, but a renowned artist who was a professor at Vkhutemas, Moscow's
leading visual arts education centre. Since there were no other academies in
the USSR than government ones at that time, it was not a naive idea to
highlight Rodchenko's recognition. It was probably far from right that an
3. Page from the magazine Sovestskoefoto, No. 4-5 (April 1928). Photographs by Rodchenko compared
imitator (or, worse, a plagiarist) of Western photography should have
with those by Reger-Patzsch and Moholy-Nagy.
educational responsibilities. Despite such a malicious accusation,
Rodchenko responded with an article that was not accepted by the editors of
«The Renger-Patzsch Chimney and my Pine were taken from bottom to top and they look very
Sovetskoefoto and was published in Noviilef, a magazine whose editorial
similar, but how is it that 'the photographer' [who signed the note] and the editorial staff [of Sovetskoe
staff Rodchenko was part of and which he himself designed*.
Foto] did not understand that the similarity is intentional? Painters have been producing trees 'from the
navel' for centuries, and so have photographers. When I present a tree photographed from below as an
industrial object, like a factory chimney, a revolution takes place in the eye of the conformist and the old
landscape enthusiast. In this way, I expand the idea of a familiarLXXXIII object.

25 Rodchenko, art. cyl. in note 24- The photo 'from the navel' is Rodchenko's way of caricaturing the
systematic application in photography of the traditional gaze of painters, with the horizon at the
height of the viewer's gaze. To obtain this result in photo-

LXXXI <lliustrirovannoe pismo v redaktsiiu: ñachi i za granista» [Carta ilustrada a la redacción: en casa y fuera], Sovetskoefolo n. 4-5, April 1928. Christopher PHILLIPS (ed.), Plwtography in the Modern Ero. Enropeon Documenls and
CrilicalWntings, 1913-1940, New York, 1989, pp. 243 s.
LXXXII Alexander RODCHENKO,
LXXXIII[petty meanness?], Noviilef n. 6, June 1928. Chr. PHILLIPS, PlwtOff-aphji in the Modern Era, op. cit. , pp. 245-248.
 174 LANDSCAPE AND ART 7. REAPPEARANCES OF LANDSCAPE IN VISUAL ARTS 175

If Rodchenko was not the only one to realise that the paragraph about environment.
trees and poles in his article was more interesting than it seemed, perhaps it Something similar can be said of Albert Renger-Patzsch's Fireplace, a
was Viktor Sklovsky who made him pay more attention to what he wrote photograph that was then well-known for being part of the plates of a book
and draw the appropriate conclusions. It must be admitted that this published by the Bauhaus three years earlier and about to be published in the
hypothesis contradicts somewhat Rodchenko's opinions on Sklovski, whom USSR, the classic manual of modern art by László Moholy-Nagy Malerei,
he considered a narcissist who spoke only about himself and only listened to Fotografié, Film30. In this book, which was the main source of
what he said'6. Even so, it could well have been that way, as there were plenty Sovetskoefioto's malicious comparisons, the Fireplace illustrates a paragraph
of opportunities. Like Rodchenko, Sklovski was a member of Lef, attending on the secret of photographic foreshortening, which, according to Moholy-
its meetings and writing in its magazines. Nagy, is composed of equal parts technique and gaze. The camera is capable
In any case, whoever was responsible for the insight, one thing is certain: of "reproducing pure optical images, and therefore showing true optical
the change of context described by Rodchenko is a good example of what distortions, deformations, and skews." The eye, "allied with our intellectual
Sklovski called ostranenie, that is, estrangement, defamiliarization or experience, complements the optical phenomena perceived by means of
distancing, a theory that Rodchenko could not have been unaware of, not associations, constructing a conceptual image in form and space" 3.
least because Sklovski had published an article on the subject in Novii lef27 The five illustrations in the previous paragraph have footnotes by
a few months earlier. In fact, the final phrase of the quote from Rodchenko's Moholy-Nagy, who is also the author of two of them. «What was once seen
article (broadening the idea one has of a familiar object) is an apt - as distortion is now an amazing experience! An invitation to reevaluate our
approximation to the concept of 'estrangement', which for Sklovski is the way of seeing. This image can be inverted. "It always produces new views,"
way to overcome the merely receptive gaze that sees only what it recognises, reads the caption of a photo of a girl on the beach. Moholy-Nagy's other
what is already known, and in exchange to obtain another active vision, photograph shows the balconies of the Bauhaus and is accompanied by the
capable of discovering the new'8. When the observer's perception stops - phrase "the optical truth of perspective construction." By the way, this
functioning automatically, the known becomes unknown, the unnoticed image was also reproduced in Sovetskoefioto's complaint, along with an
becomes conscious and experience is resurrected. almost identical photo of Rodchenko. Regarding the Renger-Patzsch
In II pina su! In Garlo Carra's Mare, an apparently banal scene becomes Chimney, the caption reads “effect similar to animal energy in a factory
a landscape renewed by a way of painting (dry, rigorous, primitive, etc.) and chimney.” Another case of estrangement, although in a different sense to
the treatment of the elements that appear in the painting: the nudity that Rodchenko: where one brings the image of the landscape to the urban
made such an impression on Worringer, the sinister calm that Roh found. In environment, the other transposes a figure from the industry into a natural
Rodchenko's Pine, the superficial glance is transformed into a 'new vision' context.
thanks to formal resources (points of view and composition models) 9 that The new photography spread in publications that passed from hand to
make the image disconcerting and remove the tree from its usual hand from here to there. The same models were practiced in

For photography, the camera must be positioned approximately half the height of the subject 1969; El formalismo ruso, Barcelona, 1974.
being photographed. For example, to photograph a person from the full body and avoid 29 «In the late twenties [Rodchenko] used a wide repetitive range of defamiliarizing techniques: extreme
perspective distortions, one would have to place 'the camera on the belly', which is another top and bottom angles, tilted horizons, fragmentary close-ups, multiple-exposure portraits, geometric
phrase repeated by Rodchenko to refer to this issue in his writings, the key to his shapes.» Christopher PHILLIPS, «A vision that resurrects: the new European photography of the
controversies. interwar period», in The New Vision, IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia, 1994' P- 84 (cat. exp.). On
26 RODCHENKO, op. cit., p. 104. the use of ostranenie in photography, see. Simon WATNEY, "Making Strange: The Shattered Mirror", in
27 Novii Lef, n. II-I2, 1927. Victor BURCIN (ed.), Thinking Photography, Houndmills and London, 1982.
28 Viktor Sklovski theorized ostranenie in numerous articles, later collected in his books Hodi 30 László MOHOLY-NACY, Malerei, Photograph, Film, Munich, 1925. The Russian translation, with the
Konia [The Knight's Move], Moscow and Berlin, 1923. Literatura i kmematograf [Literature title fjpovis ili photographer and a foreword by Alexei Fyodorov-Davidov, was published in Moscow in
and Cinema], Berlin, 1923, and 0 teoriiprozi [On the Theory of Prose], Moscow, 1925. For 1929. The publisher was Sovetskoe Foto.
the ostranenie, cf., among many other publications, S. BANN and j. AND. BOWLT (eds.), 31 L. MOHOIY-NACY, Nalerei, Photograph, Film; Fainting, Photograplrp, Film, Cambridge, 1987, p. 28.
Russian Formalism, Edinburgh, 1973, and Viktor ERI ICH, Russian Formalism, The Hague, The photos in illustrations 57-61.
 176 LANDSCAPE AND ART 7. REAPPEARANCES OF LANDSCAPE IN VISUAL ARTS 177

everywhere, especially the foreshortenings, which were exhausted as a form

of estrangement in just five years. What was a cause for confusion in 1925
was already the norm by 1930. In a Parisian magazine, the critic Garlo Rim
humorously described the themes and models that were beginning to
become tedious. «Iron —a symbolic fact— was the first photogenic material
chosen by our image hunters. Not a single bolt of the Eiffel Tower, not a
single chain of the Saint Martin canal has escaped the trigger. All the
gasometers on earth were besieged by these naive artillerymen who, if I
may say so, could not find a crane without immediately lying down beneath
it to photograph it from an unprecedented angle.
Photographing technical products such as bridges, cranes, chimneys,
machines of all kinds or gasometers during the era of new photography was
much more common than photographing nature. Rodchenko's photos of
Pushkino pines are an anomaly in those years of Michelangelo-like disdain
for the landscape. But they are not the only exception, at least there is a
photograph of a pine in diagonal foreshortening contemporary with
Rodchenko's Pine. It was made by a Bauhaus student named Theodor Luke
Feininger, but known as T. Lux Feininger, a very photographic name
change, since it might not be a bad idea to remember that 'Lux' is the same
as 'light'. The place where the photo was taken is the park surrounding the
Bauhaus and the exact date is not known, although according to its author it 4. ALEXANDR Rodchenko, Wood, Vakhtan Sawmill, 1931.

is between 1927 and 1928, that is, a little before or a little after that of
Rodchenko, who knew the Bauhaus's achievements in the same way that
Lux Feininger appreciated the Russian ones. However, there is nothing to ideological sawmill; the products of the Prussian forest that my camera had
indicate that either of them was aware of the existence of the other's photo. captured were, in the coming and going of empires, modest witnesses or
Lux Feininger then photographed people and architecture like other guardians"34.
Bauhaus students. Landscape should have been banned from the school, This comment introduces new questions. To begin with, the ideological
judging by what remains, especially still lifes, which were the subject of sawmill was also real, not just a metaphor. In those years, trees in the Soviet Union
Walter Peterhans' classes, and portraits, many portraits, of those who passed meant only one thing: wood. Exportable material at a time when there was not much
through there. Lux Feininger acknowledged that he had made it as an else to export. Rodchenko himself celebrated the felling in 1931 in a series of photos
exercise, a formal experiment on the representation of height and depth of taken at the Vakhtan sawmill near Nizhny Novgorod, where he went with some
field of his cameraLXXXIVLXXXV. filmmakers who were preparing a documentary entitled Industrial Exploitation of
Over time, T. Lux Feininger interpreted the coincidence with something the Forest, which was never produced. He worked piecemeal, producing more than
more than formalism: "Rodchenko's noble pine was pollarded, destined for 400 images of trees without branches or roots, transformed into piles of planks that
the look like manufactured objects.

34. T. Lux Feininger, "Le pin (suite)", op. et.

LXXXIV Carlo Rim, «Curiosités photographiques. Lesjeux de 1'amour et du hasard», L'Artmuant 15-1-
1930; Dominique BAQUE (ed.), Les docurnaits de la modernité. Anthologie de texlessur la
photogi'a-phie de 1919 1939, Marseille, 1993, p. 72.
LXXXV T. Lux Feininger, “Le pin (suite)”, Phologi-aphiesn. 6,1984, p-120.
 178 LANDSCAPE AND ART 7. REAPPEARANCES OF LANDSCAPE IN VISUAL ARTS 179

5. Boris Ignatovich, Timber plundering, Port of Leningard, 1929. 6. ElLissitzki, Russland cover. DieRekosntruktion dec
Architekturin derSoviet Union, Vienna, 1930.

industrially, sometimes with the corresponding workers, ragged but happy, production of wood at the expense of trees and forests, the destruction of the natural
surely due to the presence of the photographer and the documentary environment in search of economic benefit. One of the most recognized images of
makers3'. The photos of the stacked planks are among his most appreciated
images, as once again Rodchenko took the opportunity to perform his usual
36 The SSSR magazine na sfroike devoted its 8th issue of 1936 to the timber industry and its trade, with design,
formalist exercises, with a profusion of foreshortenings and diagonals, typography and photomontages by Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova, as well as photographs by Rodchenko
without worrying too much about the meaning of the images, which a of the Vakhtan sawmill and others by M. Katzenko and Georgi Petrusov.
37 Margarita TUPYTSIN, Abandoning the Avant-garde: Soviet Imagery under Stalin, in Utopia, Illusion,
viewer will relate to the environment rather than the landscape, with a adaptation. Artesouietieo ¡gsS-ig^^, IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia, 1996, p. 16 (cat. exp.).
complex experience of nature not reduced to the gaze, as he did.
Rodchenko also prepared an issue on the timber industry in 1936 of the
SSSR foreign propaganda magazine na stroike LXXXVILXXXVII, in which he once
again arranged his photographs according to formalist models. Not without
reason, this magazine and other editorial works of Rodchenko from those
years have been described as "attempts to organize dry, predictable and
excessively decorative images with innovative design methods."37
Apart from Rodchenko, there were also other photographers who
dedicated themselves to multiplying in their propaganda images the
LXXXVI Alexander LVRENTIEV, Alexander Rodchenko Phologi-aphy ig24~lg54, Cologne, 1995, pp.
234-237
LXXXVIIand 337-
 180 LANDSCAPE AND ART 7. REAPPEARANCES OF LANDSCAPE IN VISUAL ARTS 181

The modern Soviet photograph is a photo dated 1929 by Boris Ignatovich,

composed in the Rodchenko style, which is part of a report on the export of image that he obtained, as closely linked to his time and the present, as to a
timber made in the port of Leningrad. Along with Rodchenko's Diagonal past full of memory and meaning. Seeing the pines of Carra, Rodchenko and Lux
Pine, it was featured in the Soviet section of the major 1929 Film undFoto Feininger, coming across the planks that were once the forest of Rodchenko, Ignatovich
exhibition, appeared on the cover of a photographic technique manual by and Lissitzki, the viewer cannot help but think or remember other trees, very different
Nicolai Trochin, and was used by El Lissitzky in his book on the new from those that appear in the landscapes that are not seen or thought of except as images.
SovietLXXXVIII architecture. In the photomontage on the cover of this book, El Trees lived and contemplated, of which there are stories that come from long ago,
Lissitzki completely modified the information in the photograph, its starting with the sacred forests. The trees of paradise, of the serpent and temptation, of
documentary content. He turned the woodworker into an anonymous science, of the hanged man, of laws, of the cross, of miracles, apparitions or magic, of
labourer who does not work for a sawmill, nor participate in the destruction freedom, of the town square or the mountain fountain. The witness and guardian trees
of the natural environment, but actively contributes to the actual that are not spared from felling or burning. Although they seemed like small things to
construction of a theoretical construction, the artistic and utopian project Michelangelo, the shadows | of trees are also old novelties.
suggested by El Lissitzki's abstract and architectural Proum on which
Ignatovich'sLXXXIXXC photo is superimposed in transparency.
In these terms, the relationship between the pine and the fireplace takes
on a very different meaning from that indicated by the anonymous
photographer who prepared the Sovetskoefoto page, which cannot be
explained only by arguments of aestheticism. It would be more appropriate
to speak of "lived reality" or "dimension of existence," as Worringer did in
AA.W., Utopia, illusion and adaptation. Soviet art ig28-igp9> IVAM Centre Julio
front of Carra's painting and could have done in front of Rodchenko's
González, Valencia, 1996 (cat. exp.).
photographs, than of formal models or major or minor revolutions in
ANDREWS, Malcolm, Landscape and Western Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
perception. Lux Feininger must have been aware of this when he spoke of
1999-
"Rodchenko's nobleman." Cropped, he said, but noble. A solitary tree,
BANN, STEPHEN, AND BOWLT, JOHN E., (EDS.), Russian Formalism, SCOTTISH -
which, seen as he saw it, is as grand as a chimney, possesses a
ACADEMIC PRESS, EDINBURGH, 1973.
monumentality that leads directly to the symbolic tree that Simon Schama
BAQUE, DOMINIQUE, DENOYELLE FRANOISE, Les Documents de la modernite'. Ant-
has written so much about in an extraordinary book in which he argues to
hologie de textes SUR la photographic de igig D 1939, JACQUELINE CHAMBÓN,
what extent the landscape, once the curtain of art has been drawn back and
the life and common history behind it have been revealed, is “ a tradition MARSEILLE, 1993.
BURGIN, Victor (ed.), Thinking Photography, Macmillan, Houndmills and London,
built from a new repository of myths, relics, and obsessions.”
Perhaps the pine tree was nothing more than an opportunity for 1982.
Rodchenko to test his talent as an innovative artist. But another thing is the CARRA, Carlo, La mia vita (1943), Feltrinelli, Milan, 2002.
LITERATURE CLARK, Kenneth, The Art of Landscape, Seix Barral, Barcelona, 1971 ( the ed. (in
English, 1949).
AA.W., Cario Carra: paesa^i, Palazzo Ziino, Palermo 2003 (cat. exp.).
AA.VV., The New Vision, IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia, 1994
(cat. exp.).
AA.W., LesRéalismes igig-ip39' Center Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1981
(cat. exp.).
LXXXVIII Ute ESKILDSEN and Jan-Christopher Horak, Film undFoto derzuanziger Jahre, Stuttgart,
1979, p, izo.
Nicolai Trochin, Osnovii kom¡)ositsii i/fotografii [The Basics of Photographic Composition],
Moscow, 1929. El Lissitzki, Russia. Die RekonstruktionderArchitektur in tier Soviet Union,
Vienna, 1930.
LXXXIX About this photomontage, see. Horacio FERNANDEZ, «El Lissitzky. Photography and
construction», Kaliasn. 13, 1995.
XC HAMMERSMITH. 1996, p. 14.
182 LANDSCAPE AND ART

CLEMENTS, Robert J., "The Authenticity of Francisco de Hollanda", 8. ART AT THE LIMITS OF THE LANDSCAPE
Publications of Modern Language Association, no. 61, 1946. GILLES A. TIBERGHIEN
THE LISSITZKI, Russia. Die Rekonstruktion der Architektur in der Soviet
Union, A. Schroll, Vienna, 1930.
ERLICH, Victor, Russian formalism, Seix Barral, Barcelona, 1974 (Ia ed.
(in English, 1969).
ESKILDSEN, Ute, and HORAK, Jan-Christopher, Film undFoto
derrjoanzigerjahre, Hatje Cantz, Stuttgart, 1979 (cat. exp.).
FEININGER, T. Lux, “Le pin (suite)”, Photographies 6 (1984).

FERNÁNDEZ, Horacio, «El Lissitzky. Photography and Construction»,

Kalias 13 (I995)-
FRANCISCO DE HOLANDA, On ancient painting. Followed by “The dialogue of
painting”. SPANISH VERSION MANUEL DENIS (1563), VISOR, MADRID,
2003.
—, Os Desenhos de Antigualhas que vid Francisco d'Ollanda, Portuguese
Painter, manuscript of 1539-1540; facsimiles, Madrid, 194°, and Lisbon,
1989.
KLEIN, Robert, «Francis of Holland and the secrets of art», Colloquium-
Arts II (i960). Works made in nature are often considered to belong to landscape art. If this
LAVRENTIEV, Alexander, Alexander Rodchenko Photograph)) 19P4~^954> expression makes sense, then the landscape should be the true subject of art,
Knemann, Cologne, 1995. excluding from the outset a certain number of artistic interventions in nature that
LONGHI, Roberto, Give Cimabue to Morandi. Saggi distoria dellapittura only deal with it in a very accessory way or that even show no interest in it at all.
Italiana, Mondadori, Milan, 2OOI. Without a doubt, the landscape is, from many points of view, a product of art and,
MOHOLY-NAGY, László, Malerei, Photograph, Film; Painting, Photography, more generally, of culture. But it is also a reality that has evolved through the
Film, Cambridge, 1987 (1st ed. in German, 1925). transformations and physical shocks experienced throughout its history, as well as
PHILLIPS, Christopher (ed.), Photogi'apliy in the Modern Era. European through the change of mentality of those who have perceived, represented and
Documents and Critical Writings, 1913-1940, The Metropolitan transformed it.
Museum / Aperture, New York, 1989. As we know, the idea of landscape was formed, roughly speaking, in the West at
RODCHENKO, Alexander, Ecrits completssur l'art, l'architecture et la the end of the 15th century. It designated both the representation and the thing
revolution, Philippe Sers, Paris, 1988. represented, and gradually came to give a name to a pictorial genre. From this
ROH, Franz, Magical Realism. Post-expressionism. Problems of the most 'extension of the country' thus considered, we can extract a few features that
recent European painting, Revista de Occidente, Madrid, 1927. characterize it, namely: the frame, the point of view and the horizon1. Any art whose
ROSENBLUM, Robert, Modern painting in the tradition of Nordic central point is the landscape will play
Romanticism. From Friedrich to Rothko, Alianza, Madrid, 1993 (raed, in
English, 1975).
I Regarding the question of the horizon, it is necessary to refer to the works of Michel Collot. Among others:
SCHAMA, Simon, Landscape and Memory, HarperCollins, Hammersmith, L'horizon Fabuleux, José Corti, Paris, 1988, and Modern Poetry and the Structure of the Horizon, PUF,
1996.
SCHLOSSER, Julius, Artistic literature, Madrid, 1976 (ed. in al., 1924). CENTRAL LIBRARY,
TORMO, Elias, and Sanchez Canton, F. J., Literary sources for the history UNAM
of Spanish art (5 vols.), Madrid, 1923 to 1941.
TROCHIN, NICOLAI, Osnovii kompositsii vfotografii [THE BASICS OF
PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPOSITION], MOSCOW, 1929.
 184 LANDSCAPE AND ART 8. ART AT THE LIMITS OF THE LANDSCAPE

With these elements, which will be integrated in different aspects, and will
do so, taking up the useful distinction proposed by Alain Roger, both in visu
and in situ. Today, art acts in one and with the other at the same time, even
if one continues to paint, even if one photographs landscapes or even if one
ends up painting photographed landscapes. I will limit myself here to artists
who intervene in situ in the landscape.

POINT OF VIEW

If we consider the set of features that characterize a landscape, we see that

the emphasis can fall on one or the other. Thus, Nancy Holt, an artist of the
art world, is essentially interested in the problems of perception and gives a
particular value to the point of view of the spectator, as if vision itself were
a locus that the body could completely occupy in order to be more sensitive
to the variations that affect it. The light, the shape of the clouds, the
temperature change, and although the gaze is identical for each one, since
the occuli are always oriented in the same direction, the point of view is
modified. These are the changes that interest Holt, both in View through a
Sand Dune (1972) and in Sun Tunnels (1973-1976). Just as it is said that a
concept gains in comprehension what it loses in extension, it can be said of
these perceptions that their depth is inversely proportional to their breadth.
1. MaryMiss, sintüulo, Battery Park, 1973-
Richard Long, also associated with land art although he does not accept
it, prefers to play with the space in which his ephemeral works are produced,
which constitute a kind of vector for the gaze, marking at the same time the
point from which the gaze is directed and the point towards which it is separates from the limits of the landscape to make perceptible what can be called
oriented. But even more, as Stephen Bann2 points out, the alignment of interior horizons. Thus, the untitled work from 1973, built in the south of Manhattan,
stones is there to "associate the viewer with the enunciative aspect of the in Battery Park, is made up of a series of palisades 1.67 metres high and 3.60 metres
work", in the same way that the titles with their precise indications manifest wide, separated by approximately 15 metres from each other and each one pierced
"the anchoring of the subjectivity" of the artist in the chosen moment. by a hole that progressively sinks into the ground, producing in the spectator what
A final example, Mary Miss, an American artist who has been working Lucy Lippard calls a "telescopic experience" of the gaze3.
since the early 1970s, reflects on the distance that we

Paris, 1989. Regarding the framing, the communication by Jean-Remy MANTION, «Du cadre des 3 Lucy Lippard, "Mary Miss an extremly clear situation," Art in America (March-April, 1974), p. 76, cited by
paysages>. Le Jardin, aii et lieu de mémoire, Editions de l'Imprimeur, edited by Philippe Nys and Roland J. ONORATO, «Battlefields and Gardens; the illusion Spaces of MaryMiss", Sittings, La Jolla
Monique Mosser, 1995. Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, 1986, p. 74-______________________________________
2 Stephen BANN, “La carte index du réel”, Le Jardin, artel lieu de me'moire, op. cit., p. 451.
 186 LANDSCAPE AND ART 8. ART AT THE LIMITS OF THE LANDSCAPE l87
PLACE and give it a new dimension. In contrast to a long tradition, monumental sculpture is
no longer inscribed in a place – most often by means of a pedestal – but has become
It should also be noted that works on site do not necessarily refer primarily the place.
to the landscape. Inscription in place implies that the work is not perceived
in isolation but in reciprocal relationship with what surrounds it, in such a
way that the place clarifies the work and that the latter cannot be understood SIZE AND SCALE
without it. This is the meaning that Burén gives to the expression in situ to
characterize his work from 1965 onwards. Thus, when Cari Andre talks The opposition between two contemporary artists, always associated when it comes
about 'place', he does not want to dissociate it from his sculpture, because he to land art, Heizer and Smithson, takes place on the one hand around this question of
considers that a place does not have value in itself but in its relationship size. When the first is asked if, when working on works of architectural dimensions,
with the type of space to which it is linked: galleries, museums, public what interests him is the change of scale, he answers: "It is not the scale, it is the
squares, gardens, etcXCI. It is worth noting that, for Andre, sculpture is itself size. The size is real, the scale is an imagined size. You could say that scale is an
the place, something to walk on, and the route an ideal model. aesthetic dimension while size is a real dimension»7.
The place, we could say, is the 'own site' of the work conceived for it Smithson, on the other hand, although he has produced works of impressive
and which becomes visible thanks to it. The American concept of site dimensions, is primarily interested in scale. He writes about Spiral Jetty: “Size
specific could itself summarise this relationship. But is it really operative for determines an object, but scale determines art. You could say that a crack in a wall
the works it is supposed to refer to, such as Smithson's Spiral Jetty or is the Grand Canyon if you perceive it from the point of view of scale and not size
Heizer's Double Negative? I don't think it's very clear. Furthermore, this [...] When you reject the separation of scale and size, you are left with an object or a
concept does not say much about the relationship of these works with the language that presents itself as .true. For me, scale works through uncertainty. To
landscape; in any case, it is not enough to characterize it. If Smithson's be on the scale of Spiral Jetty is to be Outside of it.3
spiral or Walter de Maria's Lightning Field, built in 1977 in New Mexico on Within the size I can judge the proportions of an object, which, however, by
a semi-arid plain, manifest in their articulation with the place an undoubted themselves do not allow me to know its dimensions. To achieve this, I need to use
relationship with the landscape, although this does not mean that they were another object whose measurement is known to me and which I refer to the first
previously conceived for that specific landscape. As for Double Negative, it object.
delves deep into the earth and gives us more of an experience of the geology
or geography of the place than its landscape.
The space thus opened cannot be reduced to the subject's point of view 6 Ibid., p. 38.
7 !bid.lP. 13. ■
and is not conducive to representation. What interests an artist like Heizer is 8 Nancy HOLT (ed.), The Writings of Robert Smithson, New York University Press, New York, 1979, p-112.
what we might call the tectonics of the landscape, not its image or its '
modalities of perception. When asked what the landscape represents to him,
Heizer replies: “I am most interested in the landscape from an artistic point
of view. I think there is American landscape art, but my work has nothing to
do with that, but rather with the materials. I have been to those places for
their materialsXCII.
Hence his interest in the size of the sculptures, which, according to him,
is the only thing that can give meaning to the question of place. " The
gigantic sculptures ultimately create their own environment due to their
sizeXCIII," but they were not created specifically for him. The American
presidents, sculpted on Mount Rushmore by Gutzom Borglum in South
Dakota between 1927 and 1943, could be anywhere else, just as Double
Negative could be. However, once created, these works transform their place
XCI Cfr. Phyllis TUCHMAN, "A interview with Carl André", Artfonim, vol. 7, no. 10, June 1970.
XCII Michael Heizer Sculpture in Reverse, The Museum of contemporary art, Los Angeles, 1984: Julia
XCIIIBROWN and Michael HEIZER, "Interview", p. II.
 188 LANDSCAPE AND ART 8. ART AT THE LIMITS OF THE LANDSCAPE 189

We are in the order of homogeneous magnitudes since, here, according to it, it does not belong to it and is not comparable to it. It is immeasurable and the
the definition given by Euclid, the smallest magnitude multiplied as many landscape that is organized from it belongs to another order. Smithson, in the same
times as necessary will equal or exceed the largest. way that he reformulates the concept of the picturesque based on that of entropy,
The scale, however, implies the passage from one space to another which he adopts from the second principle of thermodynamics via Lévi-Strauss,
space, whether real or mental and following modalities that can be variable, conceives the idea of scale by giving it the Pascalian sense of order, a sense that, in a
as Philippe BoudonXCIVXCVXCVIXCVII has pointed out. certain way, is the transposition of the Euclidean theory of homogeneous
Furthermore, this projection is very characteristic of Smithson's art, magnitudes. Immeasurable, in Spanish, means too big to be measured, and
which sums up the dialectic of Place and Non-place, which in English rests characterizes the impossibility of scaling, while surd, incommensurable, indicates
on a play on words: site/sight and non-site/nonsight. «The field of the irreducibility of one order to another order. Add points to other points as many
convergence between Lugarj No-lngar (Site)/Nonsite) is formed by a times as you like and you will never get a line, just as the sum of the magnitudes of
succession of gaps, writes Smithson, it is a double track made of signs, the flesh will never result in a magnitude of the spirit.
photographsj maps that belong to the two sides of the dialectic at the same
time» °.
Without going into further details, we see that Smithson is situated HORIZON
precisely in a problem of scale in relation to the place, whose significance
far exceeds the traditional one of the location. The space that is projected is Kay Larson writes in the catalogue of the exhibition held in Marseille in 1993: " For
not, however, the space of the project in the sense that architects or Smithson, the American landscape, complaint, went far beyond metaphor, even
landscapers understand it, but rather a much vaster space in which elements beyond simple representation [...]. Like the folds of the landscape he loved so much,
belonging to the various fields of knowledge as well as to those of art and - his art amalgamated the real and imaginary experiences of a lifetime [...]» 3. That
literature meet and collide head-on. A fictional ensemble that makes the is, when he looks at the site where he is going to build Spiral Jetty, Smithson sees a
landscape a complex reality, defying all logic and all representation. Hence landscape being drawn from the horizon as if it constituted the moving construction
the idea, for example, that "in Spiral Jetty, the immeasurable (the surd) line; a landscape that is made at the same time as it is being looked at, neither
guides us and transports us to a world that cannot be expressed by any conceived nor perceived, but both at the same time: "As I looked at the site, it
number or any rationality." The term used, surd, belongs to the reverberated towards the horizon to suggest a motionless cyclone, while the
mathematical vocabulary and means: "that cannot be expressed with a flickering light made the whole landscape seem to tremble."4
rational number" (Webster Dictionary). What is not translated by the term The horizon is, certainly, the limit of the landscape, but it is a mobile limit that
immeasurable, which designates that which is beyond all measure. Well, the walker, the one who travels through the fields or the deserts, moves away.
measurement, as we have seen, is characterized by the relationship of one
magnitude to another magnitude of the same nature. But an irrational
13 Robert Smithson. A retrospective. Le paysage entropique, Musées de Marseille-Réunion des musées
number cannot be written in the form of a ratio of two other numbers, and nationaux, Marseille-Paris, 1994, p- 39
"the geometric equivalent of the irrationality of a number is the 14 Robert Smithson, “SpiralJetty,” op. cit., p. UI.

incommensurability of two straight line segments." It is the famous

Pythagorean theorem: in a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is
equal to the sum of the squares of the legs. And this theorem is linked to the
demonstration of the irrationality of the square root of 2, which deeply
moved Greek science, since it gave way to the idea of infinity (because it is
infinitely divisible).
Smithson takes the logic of scale to the extreme by making his work -
heterogeneous with respect to its place. It matters little that it is inscribed in
XCIV Philippe BOUDON, Sur resfyace architectural. Essai d'epístemolo^ie de Tarchitecture, Dunod,
Paris, 1971, chap. VI.
XCV Robert Smithson, "Spiral Jetty", The Writing of Robert Smithson, of cit., p. 115.
XCVI Robert SMITHSON, "Spiral Jetty", ibid., p. 113
XCVII Cfr. André PlCHOT, La Haissance de la science, 2, Gréceprésocratitjue, Gallimard, Paris,
1991, p. 150.
 8. ART AT THE LIMITS OF THE LANDSCAPE 191

like every object, to appropriation - some real estate developers claim that some of
these views are 'unconquerable' except precisely for their lucky owners. That is why
the Baxters ironically took up this idea with other similar interventions in which
panels installed in various places announced: You are in the middle of a JT.E.
landscape. Thing.
Christo's Punning Fence (1972-1976) is a classic example of in situ intervention
in the landscape: a way of highlighting its complex morphology and simultaneously
revealing its internal structure, which is usually hidden by distance and the sun. This
5.50-metre-high, 40-kilometre-long barrier made its way through Sonoma and Marin
counties and remained in place for a fortnight after four years of negotiations with
property owners and environmentalists. The barrier 'ran' with the person moving it,
giving the impression of climbing the relief of Nappa Valley.
Serra's work Schifi operates in this dimension of otherness, as the artist states
that, composed of 2 series of 3 cement walls placed at intervals on uneven ground, it
was built at the end of a five-day march with the artist Joan Jonas, his partner at the
time, and that its limits were defined by the maximum distance at which two people
indefinitely. Hamish Fulton intends a march from one horizon to another
can stand without losing sight of each other. "The horizon line of the work was
(Horizon to Horizon, 1983), drawing his route on the front and back of a
determined by the possibility of maintaining this mutual vision," he writes in an
fold-out that forms a book within two covers; on the inside of the covers are
article that appeared in Arts Magazine in April 1973. The set of walls crosses two
noted the elements that make up the landscape: a day view, on the left, or a
hills 457 metres apart. «When one stands at both extremes, one always perceives the
night view, on the right, with the moon above clouds that, on the other side,
totality of the work. The elevations have been placed on the terrain as a whole at the
darken the sky until they cover the sun. This type of march thus finds its
junction of the plane of the eyes. Serra
metaphorical translation in the making and use of a book that literally
unfolds the landscape'5.

17 The full title is,- Running Fence, Sonnoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972-1976.
18 This experience is not exactly the same as that along a railway track, where close-ups are blurred by speed and
MEDIATION where the viewer only sees the landscape if he looks towards the horizon. Filmmaker Robert Breer makes this
clear in his film Fuji (1974), which plays with the relationships between background and foreground as they
can be seen from a train—here on the Tokyo-Osaka route. ■
In 1969, Canadian artist Lain Baxter and his wife Ingrid created an artistic 19 Reproduced in Écrits et entretiens, 1970-1989, Daniel Lelong, Paris, 1990, trans., French. Gilles Courtois, p.
company called N'.E. Thing Compagnj also known by the acronym NETCO, 20. This is the edition we will refer to from now on.

whose aim was to redefine artistic activity artistic act the same importance
as the art object» 16. Among the numerous activities of this company, many
have been related to the landscape and its qualification from the observer's
point of view, although also through the social signs that organize it. In

15 Cfr. Anne MOEGIIN-DELCROIX, Esthétiquedu livre d'artiste, Jean-Michel Place, Paris, 1997, p. 2.23.
16 Christophe DOMINO, Géographiques, Frac Corse, 1997, p. 38. NE Thing, pronounced ai¡fthing,
in English: anything. In other words, everything can be declared artistic. There is also a game of
misunderstandings with letters and cardinal points.
In A Quarter-Mile Landscape (1968), first made for an exhibition in
California and subsequently made several more times, the Baxters install
three panels on the highway: “You will soon enter a quarter-mile -
landscape,” “Start looking,” “Look no more.” The landscape, which is
essentially a relationship or a reference, has become an object, susceptible,
 192 LANDSCAPE AND ART

8. ART AT THE LIMITS OF THE LANDSCAPE 193

illegible without reference to the realities of the geographical combination"2.

By insisting too much on the artistic aspect of its origin, the geomorphological
and socioeconomic components are forgotten, as well as the symbolic and political,
and, without a doubt, historical components that determine it. The landscape is also,
even if it cannot be reduced to that, a physical and social reality. This is another of
its limits, which is difficult to stop if one considers that the material acquires a -
landscape value proportional to the mental disturbance it causes and that this is only
possible because the spirit that considers it is already predisposed to it. Quarries,
abandoned mines, 'post-industrial' places, as these decommissioned factories and
their entrances are called, 'vague lands' are the limits of the landscape that our gaze
rejects by means of their artistic requalification.

THE THEATRE OF THE WORLD

The landscape is also a reflection of human activity, the traces of which it preserves.
It is the result of the work and organization of societies, proof of which are the re-
parcelling, property boundaries, the layout of road networks, large works, dams,
viaducts, tunnels, nuclear power plants, etc. In the 17th century, as John
Brinckerhoff Jackson points out, the metaphor of theatre was widely used for
gardens such as Theatrum Botannicum22, but also for landscapes understood as a
spectacle of the world. The theatre, says Jackson, was "a useful and exact metaphor,
but above all it had the advantage of giving a perfect three-dimensional form to all
3. Christo, RunningFence, 1972-1976. the choreological, aesthetic and philosophical theories that redefined man and the
world. In retrospect, it is not surprising that drama was the dominant art at one
time.
He also adds that each vertical plane establishes "a kind of horizon line,"
and that they all represent as many steps and function as "orthogonal lines
in a perspective system." But he adds: "The spatial system of the 2 I Armand Frémont, «Les profondeurs des paysages géographiques>, in Alain ROGER (ed.), La Tliéoiiedu
Renaissance depends on fixed and immutable measures; here the steps are Paysage en France, 1974-1994, Champ Vallen, Seyssel, 1995, p. 36.
22 See John Dixon HUNT, “Le jardin comme théátre de la mémoire,” in Le Jardin art et lieu de mémoire, op.
referred to a horizon that is continuously in motion; like the measures, they
concerned with space, visibility, and the classical image of humanity.
cit., 1995-
are entirely transitive."
Serra insists on the fact that it is an "idea of experience" and not an abstract And he concludes: "The theatrical metaphor was the most effective of those that
idea, that it is about volume and not about plane or drawing and that the man could mobilize to consider his space as a work of art and thus establish his
center is everywhere and nowhere, depending on our movements, since the own identity" 23. .
work is conceived as a "barometer of the landscapeXCVIII." However, what This metaphor, even though it does not entirely correspond to the way we see our
precisely gives the 'temperature' to this landscape is The gaze of the other. world, and however unsatisfactory it may be in many respects, is embodied in a
The point of view, like the horizon, are two limits of the landscape, - work such as Jeanne Claude and Christo's Valley Curtain (1970-1972) created in
dialectical and supportive, and the artists we have talked about so far are Riffle, Colorado, by sixty-four people, mainly art school students. It was installed on
examples of exploration of these limits. But we have seen that working in Highway 325 for 28 hours. Made of a gigantic orange nylon fabric and 417 m long,
nature does not necessarily imply a particular reference to the landscape—at it was suspended 100 m high in its centre. The team had to dismantle it more quickly
least as an object that is only perceived and represented. Because, as the than planned due to a gust of wind blowing at 100 km per hour.
geographer Armand Frémont says, "the aesthetics of landscapes seems Here the landscape is really brought to life through art. Christo, who knows what
a set is, having painted them along the railway line in Bulgaria when he was a
XCVIII «Entertains cit., ibid., p. 22. student of Fine Arts, plays with the idea of the curtain opening towards nature like
 194 LANDSCAPE AND ART 8. ART AT THE LIMITS OF THE LANDSCAPE 195

the main actor in a play whose world, free from the elements, writes the plot UPPER AND LOWER LIMITS
without any directing plan.
When Robert Morris rehabilitated a mine in King County, near Seattle, Some artists intervene minimally on the surface of the landscape, crossing it without
in 1979, he returned to the terraced structure of an open-air pit, invariably hardly touching it, like Hamish Fulton or David Tremlett, who take samples of the
evoking an amphitheater or one of those terraced gardens like those in views, sometimes moving some objects, like Richard Long or Chris Drury who
Moray, Peru, above the Urumbamba Valley, where the Incas transplanted - raises mounds at the edge of the roads, steles that mark the passage of man. These
plant species to high altitudes in order to acclimatize them. This paradigm of gestures can also be understood as a tribute to a nature that has become an object of
theatre, as old as it is, should not, however, make us forget that under the contemplation. Chris Drury, walking with Fulton, built improvised shelters while
same name new practices could have been given rise and that, in the sixties, they were camping together at night in 1974. Later, he alone made some more as
Michael Fried denounced theatricality as an art of mixture, but above all as sculptures. In some he made a hole at the vertex through which the image of the sky
an art whose autonomy was compromised by its environment. Without is projected onto the ground. In Cloud Chambers, which began to be built from
going any further in the analysis of this notion, we return to the idea that the 1990, with the body in
landscape is a reference, a mediation or a mediance, as Augustin Berque
would say* and that therefore the metaphor of the theatre can be usefully
revisited as it is stated negatively.

23 John Brinckeroff JACKSON, De la Nécéssite des ruines et autres suhets, Editions du Linteau,
Paris, 2005, p. 113.
24 Cfr. Augustin BERQUE, Le Sauvage et ¡'artifice. Lesjaponaisdevant ¡a nature, Gallimard, Paris,
1986, pp. 153 ff. - See also Les Raison du paysage de la Chine antique aux environncments de
synthese, Hazan, Paris, 1995' where these concepts are taken up again in a more general context.

4. Robert Morris, Untitled (Reclamation Project Johnson Bulk Pit), 1979.

modernist criticism, giving it a new paradigmatic form to qualify the

landscape.
 196 LANDSCAPE AND ART 8. ART AT THE LIMITS OF THE LANDSCAPE 197

swallowed up, almost converted into a piece of nature. But spheres or spirals with
leaves recompose an artistic geometry that constitutes a kind of base of the visible,
an evidence of some physical properties to which we usually do not pay attention or
that we only consider as dispersed objects. This infra-landscape is only designated
by these organized forms that indicate its possibility, while Spiral Jetty, with its
geological crust outcropping and henceforth buried, rolls the landscape up on itself
in a nebula that is both mental and telluric.
When Smithson, who had a fondness for 'entropic' landscapes and who drew a
number of them, sometimes inspired by the architecture of Piranesi, returned to the
suburbs of Passaic to revisit the places of his childhood, he made a parody of the
picturesque walks, in a text that has become famous. The suburb, "literally meaning
'city below'," Smithson writes, "is a circular abyss between town and country, a
place where buildings seem to fade from view, to dissolve into babels or rampant
limbos." Here, "the landscape is erased under astronomical expansions and
contractions"26. Smithson encloses the views he takes with an 'instamatic' in the
industrial elements that drag the landscape into a process of corruption and
degradation that the idea of the picturesque already contained within itself. The
Passaic 'monuments' commemorate, by a curious inversion, a landscape of the
future, 'ruins in reverse' according to the artist's expression27.

25 I would like to refer here to my text “The March, Emergency and the End of the Work.” A century of ardent
penteur. Les figures de la marche, Musée Picasso d'Antibes, Reunion, des Musées Nationaux, Antibes/Paris,
5. CHRIS DRURY, Cloud Chambers, Tielt, 1990. 2000.
26 Robert SMITHSON, "A Tour of the Memorial of Passaic", The Writings of Liobeii Smithson, op. cit. See
Sébastien MAROT's use of the idea of suburbia in an article in which, citing this text, he develops a reflection
on territory and memory: «L art de la mémoire, le territoire et l'architecture>. Le Visiteur, no. 4 (summer
1999).
27 Cfr. the text of Jean Pierre CRIQUI, «Ruins in Envers. Introduction á la visita des monuments de Passaic par
resting, lying in the darkness, one becomes aware of the fragility and Robert Smithson», Les Cahiers du musée national d'ari moderne, n° 43, spring 1993. Cfr. also the text of
ephemeral nature of things when observing the passing of the clouds on the Anne-Franoise PEDERS when she visits Passaic following in Smithson's footsteps: «Passais aprs Smithson.
Mes monuments», Recherches Poietiques, n° 5, winter 1996-1997, Presses Universitaires de Valence.
ground, the reflection of the sky as "the moving image of eternity", to return
to the definition that Plato gives to time in the Timnaeus.
These artists thus place themselves at the limits of representation, which
is generally no more than a substitute for their art, since the latter resides
essentially in the march, its rhythm, its own duration, the experience of the
body on the surface of the earth, and whose lines, or Long's circles, installed
in the galleries, Tremlett's drawings, for example, are only plastic
equivalents. Like ha'lkus, these notes preserve the trace of a moment, the
barking of a dog heard at night in a hotel in India, the passage of a flock of
migratory birds in the sky, etc. The landscape has become a mental and
physical reality recomposed in the mind of the walker23.
On the contrary, we can say of other artists that they explore the -
landscape towards its lower limits, bringing to light the superficial
components of its soil, its changing envelope made of stones, branches, bark
or leaves, like Nils-Udo or Andy Godsworthy, a suffocated landscape,
 198 LANDSCAPE AND ART
8. ART AT THE LIMITS OF THE LANDSCAPE 199

appreciation that we can have of it, seems to me more in keeping with its complex
reality. .

LITERATURE

AA.W., Michael Heizer Sculpture in Reverse, The Museum of contemporary art,

Los Angeles, 1984 (cat. exp.).
AA.W., RohertSmithson. A retrospective. Lepassageentropique, Musées de -
Marseille-Reunion des musées nationaux, Marseille/Paris, 1994 (cat. exp.).
AA.W., First Arpenter. Les figures de la marche, Musée Picasso d'Antibes, Réunion
des Musées Nationaux, Antibes/Paris, 2000 (cat. exp.).
BERQUE, Augustin, Le Sauvage it artifice. Les japonais devant la nature.
Gallimard, Paris, 1986.
6. Michael Heizer, ComplexOne/Citv, 1972-76.
—, Les Raisons du Passage de la Chine antique aux environnements de ynthése,
Hazan, Paris, 1995.
BOUDON, Philippe, Sur I'espace architectural. Essai d'epistémologie de
On the other hand, Heizer's lack of interest in the landscape, working in ¡'architecture, Dunod, Paris, 1971.
the depths of the earth to produce what he claims to be more his own, COLLOT, Michel, L'horizon Fabuleux, José Corti, Paris, 1988.
negative sculptures, does not mean that his art is totally alien to it. The —, Lapoe'sie moderne et la structure d'horizon, PUF, Paris, 1989.
landscape that seemed to have been lost from sight is, in a certain way, DAVIES, Hugh and Onorato, Roland J., Siting, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary
rediscovered or invented, in the archaeological sense of the term. It is a Art, Lajolla (Cal.), 1986 (cat. exp.).
landscape through excavation and internal differentiation. A landscape of DOMINO, Christophe, Géog'áphiques, Frac Corse, 1997 (cat. exp.).
memory as well, in the sense that the stratification of the soils, the HOLT, Nancy (ed.), The Writings of Robert Smithson, New York University Press,
displacement of some of its components, bring to light the history of its New York, 1979.
formation. And in another sense too, because when we get to the heart of JACKSON, John Brinckeroff, De la Nécéssité des ruines et other suhets, Editions du
Complex City, for example, it is true that we no longer see the landscape, but Linteau, Paris, 2005.
we remember it: we have in our memory the desert expanses that we have MOEGLIN-DELGROIX, Anne, Esthétique du livre d'artiste, Jean-Michel Place,
crossed to get here. Now the landscape is no longer in front but behind. Paris, 1997- ....
If art in nature concerns the landscape, we have seen that it is most often
by playing with its limits: internal, if we can say so when it comes to its own
constituents, in particular with regard to the point of view and the horizon;
also external, that is, on the one hand its symbolic and imaginary
recomposition and, on the other, its material constitution, its geographical
and geomorphological substratum, social transformations. By privileging
material over form, a whole trend in contemporary art has made us more
sensitive to process, to the experience of duration, allowing us to better
understand the internal mobility of the landscape, the historical movement
that has led to its formation. This combination of elements, taken from the
most diverse fields of knowledge and which contribute to the aesthetic -
200 LANDSCAPE AND ART

landscape and art..............................................................................1 9. RECYCLED LANDSCAPES.

MORPHOLOGICAL SYSTEMS FOR THE POSTMODERN CONDITION
AN................................................................................................1
JOSEP MARIA MONTANER
q •.......................................................................................................40
CENTHA LIBRARY,.........................................................84
CENTRAL LIBRARY,......................................................183
LIBRARY.........................................................................134
ABADA PUBLISHERS...................................................134

SERRA, Richard, Écrits et entretiens, 1970-1989, Daniel Lelong, Paris, 1990.

The French architect and philosopher Paul Virilio argued in his interview-book
Cyberworld. The politics of the worst, which The rural landscape that we have lost
with the abandonment of farming was a landscape of experiences...». While the
territory is being consumed and impoverished, reconstruction and revitalization projects
are emerging. However, tools such as Google Earth or GPS, although they make the
world more accessible, simplify and flatten it, making everything visible and
homogeneous, eliminating the values and variety of the landscape.
At the same time, in our time we live in a gap between images that we consider
representative of our countries and the complexity of their reality. A critical update of
the emblematic images of each place is therefore necessary; we must rethink and
discover what the contemporary collective references are, proposing new landscapes
with which society can identify. Beyond the mythical and sentimental landscapes, and
together with the places that we still mark with their name, their toponym, what
increasingly dominates in our territories are the manifestations of global and generic
phenomena, what we could call, for example, if we are inspired by texts by Dolores
Hayden, Rem Koolhaas or Zaida Muxí, suburb explosion, urban storage rooms,
automobile planet, asphalt nation, islands, borders, etc.
 202 LANDSCAPE AND ART 9. RECYCLED LANDSCAPES 203

Our present is situated in the transition from industrial society, based on morphological criteria that will show us different positions for thinking
development, territorial consumption and continuous substitution, to post- about and designing object systems. The project is the tool from which the
industrial society and the postmodern condition. A new era threatened by multidisciplinary question of the landscape is addressed in this text; the
global warming, pollution and the depletion of resources, which should be project is therefore understood as reflective, creative and technical thinking
based on a complete transformation that takes into account ecological that acts within the complexity of the existing reality. And following Paul
precautions and urban recycling. Virilio's premise, we are going to deal with event landscapes, that is, not
To deal with this change of mentality we have inherited a conceptual - examples designed for passive spectators or for the consumption of images,
difficulty from modernity: the inability to relate new architectural but rather emphasis will be placed on those examples that are most based on
interventions with existing strata; the protean impulse to only know how to experience and that most encourage the creation of collective meanings.
build by destroying. However, throughout history, from the Renaissance to There is a clear awareness of our artificial nature and an understanding
Neoclassicism and Eclecticism, there had been a natural relationship that the essential reference for all action must be ecological systems. We
between new interventions and respect for pre-existing elements. start from the great social possibilities that both artistic currents and the
Therefore, nowadays, recycling obsolete infrastructure has a double polytechnic disciplines of architecture and engineering have to renew
meaning: the functional meaning of reuse and the symbolic meaning of environments in harmony with the landscape; from a holistic vision of the
revaluing the memory of the community. And to carry this out it has been world that tries to demonstrate that the horizon and hope of sustainability
necessary to create a new culture of intervention in existing landscapes. can cohabit with development and well-being, fair and equitable;
The contemporary condition should be based on the application of the
necessary rethinking of conventional processes and dualities such as
object/context, natural/artificial, field/city, as proposed by the theory of 1. ECOTOPES
science, philosophy, sociology and other human sciences, especially authors
such as Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Edgar Morin and Niklas Luhmann.
When there are projects that, due to their scale and objectives, intervene by
It would be a matter of deconstructing the antagonism between nature and
recovering and making visible ecological structures, we find that the first
artifice, which was created by the industrial revolution in Western
major reference is the ecotopes; that is, the forms of ecosystems, the
landscapes, but which is not part of either Eastern cultures or the evolution
structure of ecotopes or biotopes, the delimitable, relatively interlocked and
of Western thought from Greek philosophy to the science of the Baroque
coherent spatial system in which the life of organisms, of the biocenosis,
period.
develops. This was what the Brazilian landscaper Roberto Burle Marx began
It can be shown that a new conception of landscaping is emerging,
in his parks, which were pictorially inspired by the finger-shaped ecological
related to respect for pre-existing elements, the search for new
structure of the Amazon. A finger morphology derived from ecotopes that
environmental balances and the desire to recreate memory; a new conception
also appears in Christopher Alexander's patterns. ■
that takes into account industrial architecture, river axes, transport
We find contemporary examples in the restructuring of green rings in the
infrastructure lines, ports, quarries and other pre-existing elements of the
metropolitan regions of cities such as Rome, Vitoria or Barcelona, where
disused industrial society that survive.
each city tries to recompose ecosystems by revitalizing natural parks,
And it is no coincidence that this rebirth and this confluence occur in the
remaking forest fragments, linking parks and promoting ecological corridors.
territory of the landscape. The great characteristic of the subject of landscape
is its interdisciplinary nature, since it constitutes an interpretive and creative
activity that is not subject to a homogeneous field, but its essential
condition is, precisely, transversality.
In this text, based on emblematic examples, we will conceptualize the
diversity of interventions in degraded and changing landscapes, following
 204 LANDSCAPE AND ART
9. RECYCLED LANDSCAPES 205

2. AGRICULTURAL PLOTS: RURAL LANDSCAPES

In addition to the forms of ecotopes, there is another reference, a bridge

between the natural world and the world of culture: the grid order that
humans introduced centuries ago for productive purposes on the flat
landscape, creating agricultural plots, and the stepped order with which they
have transformed the sloping landscape into terraces to make them fertile
with agriculture. These are the shapes that come from the orthogonal scheme
invented to create crop fields, based on the right angle and its ease of
calculating and distributing areas. If the reference is agricultural plots, these
would be interventions that attempt to recover old agrarian systems, that is,
the grid of cultivated fields. In fact, Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadcare City
(1932-1958) was a proposal for a city based on an agrarian structure.
In countries such as France, Germany, Portugal and Italy, there is a
growing awareness that the roots of the European landscape are in the
survival of agricultural networks, which must be protected and revitalised,
from territorial plans to specific projects. In the project by Claire and Michel
Gorajoud, located in the fields and walls of peach trees in Montreuil (1998-
2001), the medieval traces of the walls are preserved to propose developable
areas structured by the survival of a large part of these fields. That is to say,
the project is based on interpreting the medieval and Renaissance
morphologies of cultivated fields (orchards, herbalists, fruit fields),
1. ARANDA, La Pedra Tosca, Les Presses, 1998-2004.
subdivided into rectangles within walled cities, in monasteries or in the
Renaissance countryside. All of this is linked to a growing awareness of the
loss of an agricultural world that has defined the morphology of Europe for
The idea of green rings comes from the Green Belt proposal in the centuries and which is now being attempted to be maintained, even with
Greater London plan (1944) by Leslie Patrick Abercrombie inspired by the subsidies, in order to preserve the European landscape.
crown system proposed by Ebenezer Howard in his idea of the Garden City In the Malagueira neighbourhood in Evora, Alvaro Siza Vieira, in
and by Patrick Geddes' proposal for a living city. This ecotopic urbanism collaboration with landscapers Joao Gomes da Silva and Inés Norton,
was also reflected in the Plan for Copenhagen (1947), which took the form created a gradation between the rural and the urban between 1985 and 1991,
of five giant fingers to define the structure of controlled growth and using water as a narrative and articulating thread. In this way, the public
decentralization, while respecting the landscape environment. space, which recreates a rural origin, is situated as an interstice.
Taking into account natural ecosystems and landscapes historically
transformed by humans is one of the principles of the new landscaping of the
early 21st century. This is what was intended in the minimal intervention in
access and in the routes to revalue the old crop fields in a geography of
volcanoes, La Pedra Tosca in Les Presses, near Olot (1998-2004), by Rafael
Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta; a place where the morphologies
of ecotopes and agricultural networks converge.
 206 LANDSCAPE AND ART 9. RECYCLED LANDSCAPES 207

units, water and dirt roads, is the matrix of the project. .

3. QUARRIES .

As a place strongly rooted in the land and as a space defined by its character
of emptiness excavated in the rocks, with forms made of absence, there are
many cases of old quarries that have been recovered and converted into
parks and public spaces.
The city of Curitiba, Brazil, a model for its thirty years of uninterrupted
dedication to being an ecological city, has adopted the conversion of quarries
into parks as one of the central elements of its sustainable city policy, also
managing to strengthen key points necessary for the drainage of the urban
fabric.
In Catalonia we have examples such as the Fossar de la Pedrera (1983-
1986), designed by the architect Beth Galí, one of the most exciting and
2. Claire and Michel Corajoud, Montreuil, 1998-2001. intense works in Barcelona; the Parc de la Creueta del Coll, also in
Barcelona (1981-1987), by Martorell-Bohigas-Mackay, in an old quarry and
with a pond-pool at the end of which a sculpture by Eduardo Chillida is
as a qualified and structuring void. The urban is understood as a space of suspended; or the landscape restoration of the old quarries and rubbish dump
continuity with the landscape, establishing a new relationship of conciliation of the Valí d'en Joan in Begues (2003) by Joan Roig, Enric Batlle and Teresa
between the great void that is the fields and the nature around the city. The
Galí-Izard, are all emblematic examples.
design goes from the large scale of the concept and the void to the small
scale in which the contacts with the countryside, the itineraries, unevenness, In Menorca, the S'Hostal quarry, near Ciutadella, according to the project
walls and stairs, the inclusion of the pre-existing farms, the consolidation of of the Lithica collective (1996) formed by María Isabel Bennasar, Virginia
the gap caused by the passage of the river as a space for social use and the Pallares, Joan Enric Vilardell and Laeticia Sauleau, has managed to become
project of different platforms that allow coexistence between the people of a public monument with minimal intervention, promoting routes that
each neighborhood are resolved.
highlight the two groups: the old and modern quarries.
There are many land art works that are situated in this position, which is
The place from which the natural mass was extracted to transform it into
inspired by ecotopes, such as 'II Grande Gretto', in the part of the ancient
construction thus becomes the wonder that shows the emptiness in the stone,
Gibellina, on the island of Sicily, a city that was destroyed by an earthquake
in 1968. This magnificent piece of land art, created in the 1980s by Italian the immense sculptures, between nature and artifice. Ultimately, this
artist Alberto Burri, is a reminder of the absent and marginalized city, an wounded land, which had become inhospitable, is now hospitable.
immense tomb made up of streets and solid blocks of white cement 1.7
meters high; a kind of undulating and solidified fields in the shape of a city
between which grass infiltrates.
In Barcelona, the ParcAgrari del Baix Llobregat project aims to remake
and restructure the old agricultural fabric of the Delta, a privileged place in
the metropolitan region with a transcendental role in the search for
ecological balance. The old field structure, with its grid, its agricultural
 208 LANDSCAPE AND ART 9. RECYCLED LANDSCAPES 209

3. LrTHica, S'Hostal Quarry, Giutadella, 1996.

4. LINEAR PARKS: STATIONS AND TRANSPORT HUBS 4. María Isabel Bennasar, Riera Caiyadó, Badalona, 1997-1999.

Old urban and territorial structures, which had previously been lines of
separation and borders, can now be converted, through the project, into parks
that help to suture fabrics and landscapes. We are referring to infrastructures, the viaduct elevated 8 metres above the street that has been renovated,
torrents or ravines that become linear parks. reusing the spaces under the vaults to create the Viaduct of the Arts and to
Linear parks, such as Riera Canyadó in Badalona (1997-1999), by María install artisans and artists; on embankments; at ground level and in tunnels or
Isabel Bennasar, which is made up of a series of curved strips, trenches. Where necessary, the axis has been rebuilt with new bridges,
polychromatic from the natural soils and vegetation, which are sewn into the walkways, footbridges and stairs, crossing at one end of the route the new
topography, converting what was once the bed of an old stream that residential complex of the Reuilly district. The Paseo Plantado is the work of
separated and gave it a residual character into a beautiful green axis that architect Philippe Mathieux and landscaper Jacques Vergely; the restoration
unites two neighbourhoods and reaches the Ca l'Arnús park. of the viaduct is by architect Patrick Berger.
Also emblematic is the Promenade Planted in Paris (1987-1999), which And also the river banks, which are also very rich ecosystems, converted
runs from Place de la Bastille to the Bois de Vincennes, running for four into river parks such as those of the Ter, Segre, Ripoll and Besos rivers. Or
kilometres using the old elevated railway line that has been out of use since places like the Gállego River as it passes through Zuera (1999-2001), which
1969. The intervention has involved recreating a pedestrian axis that along according to a project by Iñaki Alday and Margarita Jover Biboum has
its route passes through different sections: on become a magnificent floodable park when the river rises.
 210 LANDSCAPE AND ART 9. RECYCLED LANDSCAPES 211

The aim is to demonstrate how linear parks have a great capacity to

connect and recover biodiversity, and to cross closed infrastructures that
create islands. To demonstrate that what was once a border, division or wall
can become a link, rather than a passage. Good proof of this is the richness
of the linear ecosystems that live along the rivers.

5. INDUSTRIAL SYSTEMS

Fortunately, there are many cases of industrial heritage, from specific

buildings to large industrial complexes, that have been remodeled. Industrial
complexes, authentic systems of objects, have an enormous capacity to
accept new uses: their open, articulated and growable structure of buildings.
different typologies, its functional and open-plan spaces, its clearly
established or easily transformable communication systems facilitate all
5. PETER LATZ, DUISBURG NORD Park.
kinds of change; its location is strategic, next to communication lines and
energy transport.
A paradigmatic example is the SESC Pompéia Leisure Centre in Sao
to the extent that life and nature can spring forth from the ruins, giving new
Paulo (1977), in which Lina Bo Bardi took advantage of the pre-existing
buildings of a factory in a working-class neighbourhood, respecting the meaning to the fragments.
existing warehouses, placing two new vertical buildings made of exposed
concrete and emphasising the free and public space existing in this system of
6. SEA FRONTS
industrial buildings. This leisure centre, with its pre-existing horizontal
naves and its two new towers, becomes a kind of microcosm, a system of
Another of the most recurrent cases of large obsolete infrastructures are port
objects that synthesizes the typologies of the environment, a place for
facilities, facing rivers and seas. Its pre-existences are defined by the
happiness and freedom.
predominance of a façade or privileged view that must be taken as the
In Europe, the most exemplary operation is the entire major intervention
starting point of the project. In this area, the first were the Cariocas, with the
in EmscherPark in Germany, and in particular Duisburg Park, remodelled
'aterros' or embankments that they created on the seafront of Rio de Janeiro;
by Peter Latz's team, in the former Thyssen steelworks. DuisburgNord Park
large platforms, such as the Aterro do Parque Flamengo, dedicated to green
is an intervention made from a realist logic that respects the ruins of the
spaces designed by Roberto Burle Marx and public facilities such as
industrial landscape, characterized by density and growth, and that lets
museums.
vegetation grow freely, to regenerate an environment that was ruined and
One of the most interesting examples in Catalonia are the sheds of the
contaminated, following a logic similar to rhizomes and moving parks. Each
Port of Tarragona, especially Shed 2 dedicated to art installations. In this
of the projects in the entire IBA complex of the 1990s in Emscher Park was
case, public use, civic and artistic activities, and the preservation of memory
designed to meet the real needs of the citizens and not as a publicity stunt.
have taken precedence over businesses linked to the real estate and leisure
And this and other examples demonstrate what
industries. The Four Tin-
 212 LANDSCAPE AND ART
1. RECYCLED LANDSCAPES 213

that are, at the same time, maritime fronts and military areas.

7. MILITARY AREAS

Very different from the industrial complexes are the large areas for
predominantly military uses, which have fallen into disuse and have the
configuration of a large isolated complex, made up of different buildings and
large warehouses.
Some of these cases, military areas on sea fronts, have been converted
into urban complexes, with car parks, supermarkets, leisure centres and
public spaces, such as the project also by Manuel de Solá-Morales, in Saint-
Nazaire, France (1994-1998), which incorporates what was the marginal
area of a former submarine base, made of gigantic reinforced concrete
structures, within the urban fabric. A war machine has been transformed into
an attractive urban location made up of different strata.
Others have become artistic and research centres such as the Ghinati
Foundation in Marfa, Texas (1971-1993), designed by the artist Donald
6. Manuel de SoLá-Morales, Passeio Atlántico, Porto, 2001-2003. Judd. It takes advantage of the immense hangars of Fort Russell, a former
military factory in Marfa that Judd transformed from its acquisition in 1971
until his death in 1993 to turn it into an immense art center, remodeling
The Tarragona Port's pavilions, designed by the engineer Ramón Gironza buildings, creating large geometric and repetitive shapes to resolve doors
Figueres in 1843, were exemplarily restored by the Tarragona Port Authority and windows, using polished concrete floors, designing all kinds of furniture
between 1991 and 1992 to convert them into spaces for public events and from wood and concrete, and installing series of steel cubes in the interiors
meetings, a restaurant, a maritime station, a school-workshop, an exhibition and concrete cubes on the land he had acquired. Judd gradually began to
hall and an art centre. The most striking intervention is that of Tinglado 2, house works by other artists such as Dan Flavin, Josef Albers, Barnet
prepared as a container to invite an artist or a group to a specific intervention Newman, Carl Andre and Richard Long. This example of an artistic space
in the industrial space, next to the sea, on this coastal dock. Installations by with a spartan configuration and atmosphere is a borderline case of fusion
artists such as Eva Lootz, Anne and Patrick Poirier, Pep Duran and many between artwork, architecture and landscape.
others have been presented. Even a military element of domination such as a wall can become a work
Another example of the remodelling of a seafront designed to establish of art and a public space, as is the case in Gustav Lange's Matterpark (1993-
connections and links at different levels and to favour pedestrian routes is 1994), which recalls the Berlin Wall and, with its games, transforms tragic
the Passeio Atlántico, in Parque de Cidade and Avenida Montevideo, in memory into a playful conquest. Again, as in the case of the lines that were
Porto (2001-2003), by Manuel de Solá-Morales. The Passeio Atlántico barriers, in the
connects various peripheral axes of road and pedestrian traffic with the
seafront, where Porto extends into Matosinhos, from a multi-level
roundabout, through new promenade layouts and with a building of
indefinite use that attempts to bring together the critical mass of the place.
In the following section, dedicated to military zones, we will find cases
214 LANDSCAPE V ART 9. RECYCLED LANDSCAPES 215

7. Insel Hombroich, Neuss, 1987.

The site of the infamous wall is now a playground where children can swing on both sides of what
8. DAVID NASH, Three Sun Vessels for Huesca, 2005, CDAN.
was once the border.
8. ART IN THE LANDSCAPE Foundation in Vejer de la Frontera,
inaugurated in 2001 as a beautiful
All this leads us to discuss the place of sculpture garden.
art in the landscape, both in the various A wonderful example is the artistic
works of land art and in sculpture complex of Insel Hombroich in Neuss
parks, examples that give us clues as to (1987), near Dusseldorf, Germany,
how the landscape is intervened which has two areas, one landscaped,
through artistic action. with pavilions created by Erwin
In the field of sculpture parks that Heerich in a paradisiacal valley, and
have revalued a landscape another in the former NATO military
environment, there are magnificent base, harsh, devastated terrain, a
examples in Spain, such as the Vostell- bastion of the Cold War, converted into
Malpartida museum in Gáceres, an artistic research centre. The museum
founded in 1976 with works by Wolf is located next to agricultural and
Vostell, pop art and the Fluxus group; industrial land, taking advantage of the
the Centro de Arte y Naturaleza large valley of an island within a river
(CDAN), Fundación Beulas in Huesca, and a lush landscape. It is, in fact, a
created in 1995, with series of works of landscape route that gives access to a
art in the landscape; and the NMAC series of autonomous and dispersed
215 LANDSCAPE V ART 9. RECYCLED LANDSCAPES 215

volumes. The author of each room was

the minimalist sculptor Erwin Heerich,
who since the 1950s, as an heir to the
abstraction of the Bauhaus and the Ulm
School, worked on spatial geometries,
creating delicate cardboard volumes
and following conceptual art methods.
In the complex, the scattered cubes and
prisms become rooms with works of art
displayed openly, without surveillance,
using exclusively natural light and in
direct relation to the surrounding
nature. It is a sculpture park located
among minimal architectural forms,
almost hidden among the vegetation,
which unites the experiences of
enjoying the landscape and art; nature
as the mother of the arts; the
demonstration of the privileged
relationship between nature and art.
 216 LANDSCAPE AND ART
9. RECYCLED LANDSCAPES 217

9. RHIZOMES

The great complexity of the postmodern era requires that design methods be
as open as possible, capable of accepting transformation, mutation and the
unforeseen.
This is why the concept of rhizome, as a way of thinking about reality
and as a way of creating, as conceptualized by Gilles Deleuze, is extremely
useful. The idea of rhizome rejects structured interpretations and forms,
whether dual or tree-like, and proposes an open system of thought. But the
philosophical concept of rhizome not only indicates a new way of thinking,
but also new ways of creating forms.
The landscaper and theorist Gilles Clement proposes the idea of moving
gardens (within the theory of the planetary garden), continuing the
spontaneous tradition of the English picturesque garden and the pictorial
landscaping of Roberto Burle Marx, within a holistic vision of the world, of
the general entropy of the universe. Now the garden designer, the gardener,
proposes plant cartographies, projects movement, allows spontaneous
vegetation to grow in the gardens, proposes lines of flight and follows the
flows, which ultimately create rhizomatic forms. As in picturesque art, which
refers to paintings of the Italian countryside, moving gardens refer to a
poetic, magical and mental idea of the garden on earth, which tries to return
to its wild state, which re-emerges in the vacant lot. It is about making
minimal interventions, following and guiding the movement. The proposal is
for a type of gardening that does not specialise in conventional flowers but in
wild plants, which have traditionally been considered weeds, those that grow
along paths, roads, railways and cities, those that repopulate scorched
9. Gilles Clément, Parc André Citroen, Paris, 1989.
landscapes, spread across sea dunes and climb through cracks in rocks and
walls. Among other projects, Gilles Clement has implemented the idea of a
moving garden in part of the Parc André Citroen in Paris (1989), where
masses of trees and bushes grow freely; with paths that visitors determine know, it is at the limits of the strips that remain between the masses of urban
day by day; with clearings in the forest, where low wooden tables are placed life and the fields, in these interstitial territories of the edges between
that, like in a Zen garden, can have different uses. adjacent ecosystems, in these transitional situations, where a more prolific,
There are various emblematic examples of how nature sprouts back with rich, diverse and energetic biological mass is generated.
all its energy, such as the so-called Ecological Reserve in Buenos Aires, next
to the Río de la Plata, in what was once a rubble dump.
during the time of the military dictatorship, or like the Südgelánde Nature
Park in Berlin, which sprang up on the site of the Tempelhof station freight
interchange, abandoned since 1952, gradually converted into a lush forest as
a result of forty-five years of neglect and isolation, and which between 1996
and 2000 was restored and made accessible to visitors. As biologists well
 218 LANDSCAPE AND ART %. RECYCLED LANDSCAPES 219
10. DIAGRAMS complexity of the real world. Without formal values pre-established a priori,
the multiple possibilities are gradually refined in an evolutionary manner to
Finally, we have another reference: the architecture and landscape of - arrive at a proposal that adapts, that is capable of adapting to the environment
diagrams, which aims to model the complexity of the world within geometric in which it is going to act and of including the unforeseen. The Plaza del
frameworks, starting orders that can evolve like seeds or genetic processes. Desierto in Barakaldo adapts to the irregular shape of the free, almost
residual space, highly conditioned by the built residential environment, and
attempts to recreate a synthesis of the very different materials that come from
the memory of the place. .
This example makes explicit this new way of designing with diagrams,
mutant geometric schemes, which are based on the process, on the -
introduction of data, which does not start from formal 'a priori', which are -
crossed, exchanged and evolved, and which through technological advances
in the project try to approach the capacity for optimization, the effectiveness
and adaptability of nature.

CONCLUSIONS

We have grouped together, into ten different morphologies, very diverse

interventions in found landscapes, sometimes urban and sometimes on the
ground, sometimes well-preserved and sometimes degraded places, often on
old infrastructures from the previous stages of industrial society: factories,
military bases, shipyards, port hangars, walls, railway lines, etc. Most of the
examples are signs of optimism, both about the human capacity for creation,
coordination and technique, and about the energy of the planet to regenerate -
obsolete and degraded landscapes; they are signs of hope that there are local,
specific and creative alternatives that counteract the endless destructive
footprint of neoliberal globalization, the dystopia of exploitation to the limit;
they are examples of good practices that demonstrate that the interpretative
and creative capacity of artists, architects, engineers, landscapers,
geographers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, biologists and other
10. Descombes ARCAITECTES, Diagram of the Bijlmermeer Park, Amsterdam, 1997-1998 ■
specialists possess a reserve of knowledge, if directed in the right direction,
inexhaustible if one knows how to interpret it, and extremely creative.
The Barakaldo Desert Plaza (1999-2002), by Eduardo Arroyo, is a good
example of a network of diagrams that attempts to systematize diverse
inputs, such as water, stone, wood, trees, steel, earth, green and gravel, which
are considered emblematic of the place. This work by Eduardo Arroyo is a
faithful expression of his new architectural method, which is based on
hybridization processes designed to be projected based on procedural rules
that are formalized in diagrams that elaborate very diverse data on the
 220 LANDSCAPE AND ART 9. RECYCLED LANDSCAPES 221

LITERATURE Barcelona 1979/2004. From development to the city of quality,

BARCELONA CITY COUNCIL, BARCELONA, 1999.
AA.VV., «Another look at the landscape», in Summa+ n° 25, Buenos Aires VlRILIO, Paul, The Gibbermund. The Politics of the Worst, Cátedra, Madrid,
(June-July 1997). 1997.
AA.VV., Remaking landscapes. Remaking landscapes, Caja de Arquitectos — , A Landscape of Events, Paidós, Buenos Aires/Barcelona/Mexico, 1997-
Foundation, Barcelona, 2000.
AA.VV., Insurgent Gardens. Gardens in arms, Caja de Arquitectos
Foundation, Barcelona, 2002.
AA.VV., Mouvance. Cinquante mots pour le passage, LaVillette, Paris,
1999.
AA.VV., Sculpture parks. Art nature. Guide to Europe, Documenta visual
arts and sciences/NMAC Foundation, Madrid/Cádiz, 2006.
ALEXANDER, Christopher, <4 Pattern Language, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona,
1980.
ADAMS, William Howard, Roberto Burle Marx, The Unnatural Art of the
Garden, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1991.
BERQUE, Augustin, Me'diance de milieux en paysages, Reclus / Editions
Belin, Paris, 2000.
BERTRAN, Jordi,
— ,
CLÉMENT, Gilles, The garden in movement. De la valide au jardin
planetaire, Sens & Tonka, Paris, 2001.
— , Manifesté du tiers paysage, Sujet/Objet, Paris, 2005.
HYDEN, Dolores, Afield Guide to Sprawl, WW Norton & Company, New York,

London, 2004.
HOLDEN, Robert, Move landscape architecture, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2003.

MADERUELO, Javier, The landscape. Genesis of a concept, Abada, Madrid, 2005,

'2006.
(ed.), CORAJ OUD, Michel; CHEMETOFF, Alexandre; LATZ, Peter;
MASBOUNGI, Ariella

PAQUOT, Thierry et al.,

MONTANER, Josep Maria, «The Curitiba model: mobility and green spaces», in

Political Ecology No. 17, Barcelona, 1998.

The forms of the 20th century, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2002.
— Museums for the 21st Century, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2003.
Muxí, Zaida, The Architecture of the Global City, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona,
2004.
NASELLI, CÉSAR, Of landscapes, forms and cities, Arquna/NATIONAL
UNIVERSITY OF ASUNCIÓN, PARAGUAY, 1992.
ROSELL, Quina, After. Remaking landscapes, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona,
2001.
SABATÉ, JOAQUIM, "EL PARC AGRARI DEL BAIX LLOBREGAT", IN AA.VV., -
 10. THOUGHTS THAT CROSS
ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE
• PAOLO L. BÜRGI

Are there boundaries between disciplines that have their roots

in the very realm of human consciousness, such as
architecture, urban planning, engineering, landscape
architecture or art?

What does reinterpretation mean?

What does curiosity mean?

The starting point to begin thinking about a project, but also to perhaps give
up on understanding it, is always in my case a curious and complete
observation through an amusing look at events, at what surrounds us, at the
surprising work of man.
Moving from this assumption, everything can become a stimulus, an
occasion for useful reflection to formulate a creative thought and, in this way,
everything we have observed can leave some mark on a future project
proposal, even far away in time. Often, even when we find this presence, we
do not know how to accurately reconstruct the origin of the traces that mark
our thoughts and our projective actions: it is at this moment that the created
work becomes a true reinterpretation.
A curious and free observation that crosses art, architecture, landscape
architecture, urban planning or engineering will also make us aware of how
difficult it is to find the limits between the different disciplines. We can
observe with different eyes, for example, the work of Luis Barragán, which
goes beyond the confines of the rules of projective composition to become
fantastic scenery, or consider a functional engineering structure as a gigantic
sculpture in the landscape, or even see in an image magnified millions of
times by the microscope
224 LANDSCAPE AND ART 10. THOUGHTS THAT CROSS ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE 2,25

Brancusi has carried out this artistic-aesthetic research by working, for

example, on the image sculpted on a face from which he initially obtained more
figurative features, until creating, over decades, a pure oval, an essential object-
symbol, charged with immense expressive force.

A PAINTING IN A PAINTING, A GARDEN IN A GARDEN, A DOOR IN A DOOR

I copy a creative urban interval or a sometimes even just one is enough; a unique
1. Microphotograph of a gallium-arsenic bridge. riverfront photographed from a satellite. vision to give rise to an unexpected and rich
These types of observations will project idea.
become more daring as we bring curious This is the result that we are led to by the
observation closer to a playful and fun investigation of the essential and of simplicity,
approach, through a look with which we a process that is articulated continuously over
manage to see a work and smile. time, that develops intensely and that progresses
in parallel with the ability to know how to
remove the superfluous and polish matter and
THE INVESTIGATION OF THE ESSENTIAL AND OF thought.
SIMPLICITY
A small, half-open entrance within the wide
Within each project it is not necessary to find a portico of a church has allowed thoughts to
large number of themes: very few themes flow freely, collected in my mind in an image
that projects this theme into the idea of a
contemporary park, leaving unresolved the

3- Door of the Church of San 4. 'Casamatta' in the prison of

2. Constantin Brancusi, Head of a Sleeping Child, 1906 (left), and Beginning of the World, 1924. Martino, Porto Ronco, Ticino. Genoa, Italy.

question of how, with what language - whether

formal or functional and with what materials -
become a strong element of inspiration,
this subject could be expressed today in a
225 LANDSCAPE AND ART 10. THOUGHTS THAT CROSS ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE 2,25

project. It is a thought that sometimes crosses

my mind and that only after it has materialized
in a sketch on paper allows me, probably, to
remember its origin: I do not rework it later
because it may take shape in a project and
because in the meantime other observations
have very quickly already taken its place. One
of these considerations could be the memory of
a surprising presence, in the mountains near
Genoa, of a "crazy house": a house practically
without
no window, surrounded by two high walls, like
a sort of Chinese box, which
226 LANDSCAPE AND ART

5. Bamboo Percorso, private garden, Orselina, Ticino, 2OOO.

It served to protect the immediate context of possible detonations of the of the waterfall, while at a second moment, looking up, one could perceive
explosive material contained inside. its beginning from a very high and distant point. It was an important
I am also reminded of the sense of wonder experienced when finding experience that remained silently engraved in memories and was reborn,
small gardens within a large historic park, which gives rise to the image of after twenty years, in a Bamboo Tour.
a 'garden within a garden' for a private project, Bamboo Paths: this is a path
that begins with the opening of a door, which reveals a path beyond the
bamboo, the end of which cannot be seen. It is natural then to be invited to CAN YOU CONVEY NOT ONLY WHAT YOU SEE, BUT ALSO WHAT YOU FEEL?
continue towards a discovery that will be appeased: in fact, it reaches a tiny
promontory on a corner of nature, a moment of landscape whose existence The desire to convey more what is felt than what is seen is perhaps
would not be known otherwise and whose appearance is anticipated by the something innate, and it makes me think of something that happens to
sound of the water of a stream that runs at the bottom of the valley. many of us during our youth, when a visit to a ruined castle
This time, too, it is a reinterpretation of an experience that occurred
during a trip to the Tropics, on the island of Guadeloupe, where a journey
that led to a waterfall became for me a continuous growth in anticipation,
accompanied by the sound of the water that increased and suggested with
each step the proximity to the goal. Finally, this could only be reached by
passing over a rock formation that first directed the gaze to the lowest point

6. Waterfall on Guadalupe Island, Little Antilla.

7. South facade of Hanover Castle, 1800.
228 LANDSCAPE AND ART 10. THOUGHTS THAT CROSS ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE 229

It means a continuous discovery of spaces, of routes, of crossings, of TIME IN THE PROJECT

windows, of environments in which the partial destruction will become a

stimulus for our fantasy and a moment that generates a world, which is I cannot say what experience I may have had as a child, as a young person
different for each one of us and which, vice versa, no one can transmit to us or even recently, that has left a mark that has been translated into a
or tell us with words. This kind of fantastic experience could also be the conceptual proposal. Surely, you can look at it
basis of a project for the park in Hanover: the idea was to convey the sense
of discovery that one experiences when entering a villa... that has
disappeared. Over time, the house in question had been destroyed during
one of the last actions immediately preceding the withdrawal of the Allies,
and the park had been left without a castle, like a being without a soul.
These thoughts led me to imagine a volumetry that would recall the
spaciousness of the disappeared villa and that could become a place of -
discovery, through which to feel contact again with the strong historical
presence now destroyed, imagining being able to cross it and see it, with
the new eyes of someone entering for the first time, as an exciting
discovery.
Parallel and very high panels are thus crossed by a game of doors,
windows, unexpected points of view, corridors and perspectives; based on
the technical and precise design of elements that clearly demonstrate their
new construction, a metal structure is created which is then swallowed up
by almost uncontrolled vegetation.
9. Views of the access to the Geological Observatory Platform with marble slab.
j again the theme of time in the project, in this case the reflection in history
| history of an eighteenth-century villa and its often modified park and
transformed (previously a Baroque garden, then an English garden, for
example); a villa that had been razed to the ground and then reborn in an
interpretation as close as it is different from its origin and source of
inspiration.
¡
Time in the project is one of the most stimulating and magical topics.
means of transmitting and interpreting, also in a fun way.
Yo The Cardada observatory tells us about geological times, about
Yo tectonic movements that occurred millions of years ago, but also. It also speaks
of a more current time: a small fragment of the
Yo Rocks inserted in the platform are eroding since they are
friable, making evident the presence of a "contemporary Geology"
: "ránea". To underline this concept I thought of making the access to the pla-
Yo shaped with a marble slab; walking under the porticos of the
8. Project model for the Von Alten Garten, Hannover 2002. city of Locarno, until a few years ago, you could see in effect
 230 LANDSCAPE AND ART

11. AN ARCHITECTURE IN THE

LANDSCAPE
GEORGES DESCOMBES

9. Geological Observatory in Cardada, Locarno 1995-2002.

THE PROGRAM OF THE PLACE
how some of the marble striations chose to respond that the ideal is a place that I like enough to take care of it.
had been consumed more by the The HCAK building was not a banal thing, an intriguing work to which I
landscape than by people, wanted to draw attention. I therefore devoted the sum made available to us
compared to the remaining ceramic to restoring a three-step staircase between two exhibition rooms, which was
paving. I imagine that this Cardada in very poor condition.
slab, in a century, will perhaps The intervention was so minimal that it would have gone unnoticed, or
have a more worn appearance, like at least would not have been perceived as a 'work of art', if a photograph of
the marble found in Locarno, and the steps in their previous state had not been hung on the wall. On this
that the act of surpassing this image, I drew some lines of a transformation that would have facilitated the
threshold will have something to relationship between the rooms, but which was not finally carried out. Only
10. Rock erosion process of the
say about the way in which the Geological Observatory. the staircase was proof of this possible improvement. Philip Peters, director
time factor interacts with a project. of HCAK, said of the work that it was a "restoration to a new state." This
paradoxical idea is also found in Peter Handke's phrase: "Something started
I conclude this journey of thoughts leaving perhaps something unexpressed, when it was there," which is emphasized in several of my projects with the
still to be said. The themes highlighted here are not easy for me to define, intention of suggesting a shift of attention towards the place and a reversal
since I now experience them as an integral part of my way of thinking and of the priority that is usually given to a program. However,
acting, rediscovering them clearly at certain moments when I stop to reflect
and when I seem to be able to retain them as they pass through architecture
and landscape.
Invited in 1994 to a demonstration entitled “ideal place” at the Centre for
Contemporary Art in The Hague (the Haags Centrum voorAktuele Kunst), I
232 LANDSCAPE AND ART 11. AN ARCHITECTURE IN THE LANDSCAPE 233

their overly pre-urban connotations and 'pregnant' with possible births. In

today's hypercity, the constitution of the world, its geography, soil
elements, hydrographic networks and plant systems can be the bearers of
unprecedented 'rururban' configurations.

THE PLACE BREATHES BEYOND ITS LIMITS. LANCY PARK

Lancy Park, built between 1980 and 1986 not far from Geneva, illustrates
these two themes, that of place and that of territories in crisis, abandoned by
architects. And another aspect: the place breathes beyond its limits. The
plots on which we intervene are never entirely contained within their
historical or geographical boundaries. The project carries out a transfer
between scales, a percolation through elements that are not completely
watertight. There is, of course, a presence of the place, a resistance
underfoot, but also a breath that goes much further.
1. G. Descombes, Lugarideal, Haags Centrum voorAktuele Kunst, 1994. First of all, it was a road infrastructure project: a pedestrian underpass. Then it
was built by successive insertions of architectural devices: year after year,
we infiltrated an element into the place. There was never an overall plan
Paying attention to what is already there does not mean rejecting all and I believe this is what made it possible for it to come to fruition. I had a
modification and does not imply nostalgia or turning back or, above all, any very clear idea of the structure of the project, and every spring I improvised
integration into the context. a new piece, depending on the budgetary possibilities and the programmatic
This attitude has only a relative and circumstantial value. Relative desires of the municipal authorities and the inhabitants.
because it does not exclude what Kenneth Frampton calls the poetic value The park is located in an environment of heterogeneous buildings:
inscribed in the program, nor that the program can construct the place. remains of single-family homes, towers and blocks of flats, some sports
Circumstantial because it aims to accentuate what has been forgotten for too facilities. It is on the edge of the city's suburban expansion. Where city and
long and to work with it. It is a posture of vigilance, which intensifies countryside seek new forms and find it difficult to recognise each other.
contrasts and aims to show possibilities. He only works with displacements, On the border with the countryside, the Aire plain, before being levelled
which requires clarity between what is found and what is changed, and in the 1930s, devastated and drained by the needs of agriculture, was once
prioritizes the rather brutalist use of geometries and materials. made up of woods, streams, and the undulations of the last folds of the Jura.
As with many other architects, my work has often been developed on Lancy's project is an attempt to 'return' what had been denied: denial of the
the outskirts of cities. With Michel Corajoud and Sábastien Marot, with place, of its history, of the slow sedimentation of traces left by the processes
whom I teach in Geneva in a third cycle, “Architecture and Landscape”, I
realize that the crisis of the city is also that of the countryside, which is why
I find it difficult to recognize myself in the idea of an urban project – it
would be too simple if the urban were still clearly defined.

Expanding the field of action to the whole of the diffuse city, we are
almost immediately faced with the question of places, although freed from
 11. AN ARCHITECTURE IN THE LANDSCAPE 235
234 LANDSCAPE AND ART

Trained as an architect, I entered the landscape for reasons of its -

safeguarding, and I interpreted in Lancy some methodological elements of
the theory of architectural restoration: legible, minimal and reversible
interventions.
The bridge-tunnel, at the origin of the entire project, bears witness to the
philosophies of penetration that have flattened this landscape: instead of
building a bridge above the small valley, the logic of drainage, present
throughout the surrounding plain, led to the conception of a fill and a
channelled stream. The project restores a passage and maintains the dual
component of the site: the bore (tunnel) and the crossing (bridge). It is both
the transformation of an encountered situation and its memory. It tells the
story of the exterior of the place, the plain, the industrialization of
agriculture in the 1930s along the canal that then short-circuited the
meanders of the Aire River. The bridge-tunnel, extending its hundred
meters of metal structure, introduces the great landscape into the interior of
2. G. Descombes, Laruy Park, 1980-86. a public garden.

of formation and transformation of the The fountain, a chain of falls,

place under economic pressure, denial retains and then lets the water flow:
of all relationships between this deconstruction of the water course
architectural objects and the general - expresses forces, weights, gravity,
morphology of their context. fluidity; it makes them more present,
The project therefore aims at more perceptible.
restructuring, restoring and reorienting The use of cement and concrete
an abandoned territory. The platforms, the most basic and poorest
alignments of the walls, their breaks materials, aims to calm the excessive -
and repairs deform and measure the presence of the architectures: the
terrain, revealing the forces that have object does not count in itself. Only its
shaped it, the folds, the slopes, the way of emerging from the ground
streams. remains, the game of assemblies,
All the programmatic demands unions – gaps, negatives, surfaces, the
have been used as opportunities to space between things.
clarify and affirm possibilities of THE RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE.
transformations, of minimal THE AIR REVITALIZATION PROJECT
displacements, but sufficiently
'disturbing/unsettling' to allow a Twenty years after the conception of
different apprehension of the place the Lancy park, we are working again
thanks to the impact of a rediscovered in the Aire. The project to revitalise
sensation, of a renewed emotion. this river, a competition won in 2001,
236 LANDSCAPE AND ART 11. AN ARCHITECTURE IN THE LANDSCAPE 237

provides the framework for the

territorial and landscape
reorganisation of the entire
surrounding plain. The reason for this
competition was a series of ecological
concerns (water quality and biological
richness of natural environments
associated with the water course),
security of agricultural land with
respect to crops and the insertion of air
into urban development. Some crops
are more resistant to flooding -
beetroot, wheat, etc. - but in vegetable
garden areas, which are much more
sensitive, a crop requires two years of
work to rebuild the soil, which is
intolerable for producers. In terms of
ecology, the morphology of the canal
and its concreting do not favour
environmental biodiversity. Finally,
there is a beautiful walk of several
kilometres along the canal.
It was through the course of the
waters that new relationships were
proposed to balance the needs of
agricultural production, urban
development, leisure, and those of
natural spaces.
237 LANDSCAPE AND ART 11. AN ARCHITECTURE IN THE LANDSCAPE 237

3. G. Descombes, revitalization project! Air, 2001. 4. G. Descombes, View of the solution on the Aire
River.

The most anticipated solution was territorial device that puts its
to abolish the canal, which is a way of constituent elements in parallel: a new
saying that this project from the 1930s space for wandering around the river,
was a mistake. However, to make it the transformed canal and the
disappear would be to deny the entire promenade. Its logic is made visible
complexity of the formation of this and sensible by the straight line of the
territory, the constructed, artificial canal: its architecture separates and
character of this nature, and would protects the natural environments in
suppress the clarifying element that is the process of reconstruction and
the canal as a public space. Another continues to guarantee the role it
philosophy: to maintain the channel played in the organisation of the route.
and return the river to its ancient It provides the calm that allows you to
meanders, as if we could re-enact capture all the beauty of the landscape
history, forgetting, in the process, that through all the scales. It is the place of
the operation would destroy the the wind, of birds and of distant
biotopes that have developed on the horizons as well as of a close look at
land abandoned by the river, as flowers, plants, and the whole new
interesting as anything we could think plant mosaic that is developing.
of, recreate... Our project is a As in Lancy Park, the project
238 LANDSCAPE AND ART 11. AN ARCHITECTURE IN THE LANDSCAPE 237

breathes more widely than its limits. It offer a form. A familiar shape:
also includes ditches and shelter between fields, vineyards and houses,
spaces for small mammals and, the Air has traced the landscape. A
starting from the river and the canal, it form that recalls the long work of the
modifies a much larger space and men who came here to fetch water and
influences it. The canal, which will building materials and who, with the
only have water during the harvest problems and means of their time,
season, is being transformed into the organised the relations between the
experimental gardens of the Geneva river and their fields. Today, when we
Botanical Garden. Throughout this have to think about these relationships
large botanical laboratory, visitors again, the river plays an important
witness the changes taking place in - role: in public meetings and in
agricultural production and a new municipal councils, everyone uses it to
relationship with nature. talk about something else - telling how
The canal and the river cross to get to the water, whether people
different administrative entities and will be able to swim in it, what
affect large infrastructures. In these children will do there...
territories in full transformation they
238 LANDSCAPE AND ART
11. AN ARCHITECTURE IN THE LANDSCAPE 239

THE LAND PROJECT. THE LUSTGAUTEN, IN BERLIN

In a Berlin in turmoil, the invitation-only competition for the Lustgarten was an opportunity to
literally work on the foundations of the city, in its original location.
Opposite Schinkel's Altes Museum, the Lustgarten, an esplanade created in the 18th century, had
been transformed by the Nazis into a parade site.

them, a practice perpetuated by the of the sand.

5. G. Descombes, 'Lustgarten' Project, Berlin, 1994.

6. G. Descombes, A growing monument, project drawing.
following regime. The 1994
competition brief was simple: to
provide a garden in which museum PARTICIPATE IN THE PROCESS OF
visitors could relax, without the TRANSFORMATION OF the TERRITORY:
plantings obscuring Schinkel's A GROWING MONUMENT. THE
colonnade. Our proposal: to penetrate BlJLMER MEMORIAL
the ground down to the sand, that
white sand that Wim Wenders, in a In 1992, at 6pm, a Boeing cargo plane
lecture to Japanese architects, said crashed in the town of Bijlmermeer,
was the identity of the city of Berlin, southeast of Amsterdam. Two years
its foundations. A staircase leads from after this tragedy, I was asked to
the esplanade to the monumental design a monument, a memorial.
Schinkel staircase; a series of 5- to 6- Herman Hertzberger immediately
metre-high plane-leaf maples provide joined me.
shade without obscuring the building. This city has been the subject of
And the caisson prevents any future several transformation projects and
parade: it removes the ground on has raised many questions. These ten-
which the boots stepped. To storey buildings, built in 1971, house
rediscover the place was to bring to 100,000 inhabitants from seventy
this artificial pavement of horror a different human groups, ethnicities
question that descends to the origins and cultures. OMA and Yves Brunier
proposed here a kind of axes of
 240 LANDSCAPE AND ART 11. AN ARCHITECTURE IN THE LANDSCAPE 241

intensification – bringing what is

missing – rather than destruction –
removing and immediately adding –
which never works. Despite all this,
demolition is currently underway. We
wanted to use this intensely dramatic
moment of the plane crash to adhere
to the transformation of the city.
The project began around a tree, a
tree that the Boeing had grazed:
survivors and their friends had
spontaneously deposited toys and
photos of the missing next to it... And
they called it "the tree that saw
everything."
The monument was already there.
A real work of mourning was
undertaken around him, which -
allowed many inhabitants to express
themselves, as if he were a
transitional object between them and
us, since their participation has been
decisive in the project.
 241 LANDSCAPE AND ART 11. AN ARCHITECTURE IN THE LANDSCAPE 241

7. G. Descombes, Agi'oioingmonument, the Bijlmer Memorial. 8. G. Descombes, A growing monument, the Bijlmer Memorial.

We started the project two years provisions it brings into play to create
after the accident. Two years during relationships anew.
which reflection with the inhabitants The work on the ground is
made it possible to draw up a concretized in a footprint, a line and
notebook of changes, a programme some slabs. The footprint is that of the
for the memorial. And find a name for destroyed building, dislocatedly -
it: A growing monument. The asymmetrical, which descends in a
beginning of a growth, a process. The gentle slope for about a hundred
tree had to be preserved as the heart meters to the nearby canal. The
of tragedy, of memory, of mourning. variable depth of the retaining wall
But as it moved away, the memorial gradually turns it into a step, a seat, a
was to gradually rediscover the table... On one side, a long bench
structure and qualities of a park. repeats the wall, on the other, a large
Since the building had concrete slab is used as a passageway.
disappeared, destroyed after the It is the edges of this emptiness, the
accident, since these buildings had to contours of this absence, that
be demolished, I chose to work on the welcome the gestures of life.
lack, on the void. This banality is only The line is an avenue: separate
interesting for the way it is from the existing pedestrian network,
constructed, for the multiple it follows the route taken by the
 242 LANDSCAPE AND ART 11. AN ARCHITECTURE IN THE LANDSCAPE 241

rescue teams during the accident. It is

also a line of growth, built with some
elementary structures, which the
project extends throughout the city
and which becomes the prototype and
the support for the new
transformations of public space. It
forms a bundle of parallel devices:
slabs, walls, alignment of trees.
The accident cut off all the roads
that existed around the building: they
have not been rebuilt and three slate
slabs mark each of these interruptions.
Finally, at the exact point of
impact of the plane, at the edge of the
footprint, a fountain, a simple
inflection in a slab on the ground,
whose water retraces the wave of the
impact and flows through the
footprint and the channel.
 12. EPILOGUE OF THE ARTISTS

The artists Alberto Carneiro, sculptor, and Jesús Mari Lazkano, painter, who have made the landscape
a central theme in their plastic work, participated in a round table moderated by Javier Maderuelo who
had previously asked each of them two questions: I. What is landscape for you? and 2. How is the
landscape part of your work? The texts by both artists reproduced below are not a transcription of the
responses they presented to these questions at the round table, but rather reflections they developed
afterwards for this publication.

My body and the landscape

1. My LANDSCAPES

The landscapes are and are my eyes and, through them, my entire body.
When I reflect on the landscape, I discover myself in it, I find myself at its
center as a being that moves and thus apprehends the cultural meanings
through which I come to feel and know what the landscape is.
> . The landscape is a cultural construction felt and made conscious through
the delight of my senses—looking, seeing, listening, hearing, smelling,
tasting, touching: moving in it and simultaneously being it and I with the
awareness of being a single body.
In myself, landscape and nature are entities that can coincide in the
circumstance of seeing myself projected outwards, as a will to (re)cognize
myself inwards, in that fusion and metamorphosis of being another in it.
Facing the sea, in the middle of the countryside or on top of a
mountain, I look around me and establish relationships between the
elements that make up the landscape: the horizon line and, from it, the
mountains, the fields, the trees, the bushes, the shrubs, the stones, the large
ones and the small ones, the paths, the succession of planes, the variations
of light,
 244 LANDSCAPE AND ART 12. EPILOGUE OF THE ARTISTS 245

1. Alberto Carneiro, Artecorpo/Corpoarte, 1976-78. 2. Alberto Carneiro, A mandala da floresta, 1999.

the smells of the earth, the perfume of flowers, the roughness and smoothness involves my being in the corresponding spaces in successive times of
of the different elements and the memory of all the landscapes previously perception of the elements that constitute it, which, juxtaposed and grouped
experienced. by my intelligent gaze, provide me with images that I internalize together
This is how I build my landscapes and integrate them into the cultural with what I have already experienced and thought of as a landscape.
framework of my experiences with the material. The landscape, which is not very substantive, becomes an abstraction and,
But my garden, the one I cultivate and live in daily, is also a succession of strictly speaking, means nothing unless it is associated with a qualifying
small landscapes. Through it I live, feel and think: the senses of a natural adjective in order to understand it and mentally organize it, so that it acquires
beauty, an artifice that allows me to incarnate myself in nature and to be able meaning in a relationship (enumeration) of landscapes.
to delight in that deep and indescribable pleasure of being a tree, flower and Thus, the landscape setting is consonant (consistent); within the rural
fruit and of conceiving myself as a landscape, by the will of my aesthetic landscape there is the bucolic landscape, within the urban landscape there is
gaze. the city landscape, etc., etc. And by stating it in this way, I mean a set of
I look at the landscape as something that is culturally constructed within elements organized spatially, like a horizon, on which I find myself and take
me and leads me to assume that it is therefore a second nature, a conceptual pleasure, according to my needs for intervention and delight.
appropriation that I need to situate myself in the different times perceived in 2. LANDSCAPES IN MY WORK.
mentally constructed spaces.
This landscape can never be completely seen from the outside, since it The landscape is immanent in my work. ’ .
 246 LANDSCAPE AND ART 12. EPILOGUE OF THE ARTISTS 247

About landscapes, those that I find from within and outside of me and
when I travel through them and investigate my possibilities of plastic
realization, I imagine almost all of my creative work.
Living nature in me, the consciousness of my imaginative body
(physical, mental and subtle), I know that I am also nature and I take it to
transform it into artistic material.
The landscape always introduces me to the game of communicating
plastic images and to thought and metaphor through the articulation of its
internal elements; it thus becomes vital energy that expands from the inside
out, occupying all sides of the finite, generating the infinity of all meanings,
Some of my works have been done in and on the landscape.
The landscapes are present in As tres eríensoes da natureza (1968-
1969), in Os quatro elements (1969-1970), in Opera!:aoética em Caldas de
Aregos (1974-1975), in Os sete rites aesthetics sobre umfeixe de vimes napaisagem
(1975), in Trajecto de um carpo (1976-1977), in Meditafao e posse do
espa¡:o/landscape as a work of art (1977), in Percursos na paisagem —
Memoria de um corpo sobre a terra (1983-1984), in Tempo de ver, tempo 3. ALBERTO CARNEIRO, As árvoresflorescemem Huesca, 2006.
de ser drvore e arte (1996 ) and in all my public works, they themselves are
spaces of and in the landscape.
Searching for the specific landscape as a means to carry out these peasant of the land, which imply behavior in the aesthetic sphere, which
works, I traveled through territories until I found the landscape situation provided me with relevant material that I used in writings and works and, in a
that mediates between the intuited and thought-out budgets and the decisive way, in Arte corpo/ Corpo arte (1976-1978). .
possibility of creation. During these trips through the landscape, I investigated forms of peasant
Many and varied were the paths taken until the body stopped and the work that transcended the simple efficiency of cultivation and were already
gaze identified with the place and defined the horizon and on this situated at the limits of artistic creation. In conversations with farmers, I was
understood the elements and found the precise place. It was always a able to verify that for them this went beyond the practical and useful gesture
project of creative process, in the multiple incidences of looking and and involved other elements of aesthetic qualification of a landscape nature.
seeing, that is, in the authentication of what was traveled and lived on the Whenever I travel, physically and mentally, through the territories of my
senses of what was deeply intuited and then captured by intelligence, in the artistic creation, I define, for myself and as a conceptually assumed
assumption of that which could be the work. consequence, some categories, inscribing each work in a plastic spatiality and
From all these investigations of the landscape on the territory I have organization, seeking the elements that, articulated in the field of vision and
discovered various sensations and thoughts about the nature that constructs the consequent movements of the body, can arouse other meanings for the
landscape identities, as a medium and support of mediation for my plastic aesthetic communication of landscapes.
creations.
I could refer to the research I did (1975-1976), on part of the Portuguese ALBERTO CARNEIRO
territory, regarding care activities (management)
 248 LANDSCAPE AND ART 12. EPILOGUE OF THE ARTISTS 249

ECHOES OF MEMORY what there is, the landscape is more in us than in the external physical reality.
The landscape is the Look.
1. The landscape is an intellectual construction. There is a certain distance
between the objective fact of physical reality, orography, geography, and the 2. My work in Painting is an attempt to come closer to understanding
"sense of Landscape." The fundamental component that determines this external reality, to investigate the nature of things and the degree of attention
change in meaning is the LOOK. Between the place and the landscape is the in that observation. Raise the temperature of the place. You just have to put
gaze, there is someone who looks. interest in something to make it interesting. In this sense, the landscape

1. From the Urdaibaí series, acrylic on canvas, 1996. 2. Winter Memory of Villa Medici, acrylic on canvas, 2007.
The meaning of that look depends on each one of us. Faced with the same represents a humanized space over which Time passes and becomes a well of
landscape, the romantic painter will find the experience of the sublime, a history through its transformations, its wounds, its scars and its own
farmer will find work and sweat, the mountaineer will plan a day's excursion, organization.
the botanist will find species to study and the property developer will find But my interest in the landscape has evolved and has gone from being a
business prospects. Understood in this way, the landscape becomes a blank space of confrontation with industrial environments and survival against
canvas, a surface on which to project oneself. urban harassment, to a landscape of Memory, a space in which Time leaves
History itself has been constructing this idea of landscape. It has also its own mark and where transformations occur as a result of the passing of
shaped and defined our view of the landscape, what to see, how, from and time. Currently, there are 'intangible' aspects of the landscape that focus more
where to look, what is the most appropriate moment, etc. The sunset of my attention, such as the idea of EGO, through small but significant
phenomenon, the setting sun, the value of the horizon, the idea of the natural, architectural proposals that, as beacons of modernity, continue to give light
the bucolic, the picturesque, etc. The contemporary view establishes a and emit permanent and subtle echoes. Echoes that tell us about the survival
relationship of USE with the landscape in relation to entertainment, adventure and reinterpretation of projects still loaded with new meanings. RECOVER
tourism, 'escape from the city', the 'green belt', etc. Ultimately, what we see is REALITY, learn to
more than just a space for intervention, as a metamorphosis of the territory, it
250 LANDSCAPE AND ART

look carefully and listen to the echoes of time from contemporaneity. GENERAL
Resonances that speak to us of places and art, of architectures integrated from difference. Echoes that resonate and transport us to a natural BIBLIOGRAPHY
geometry, a latent order that is articulated as soon as the architecture is presented, ordered and squared. Understanding the forest, the environment,
AA.VV., A idea de paisagem, Margens e Confluencias, n° 3,
Guimaraes, 2001.
AA.VV., Landscapes from Brueghel to Kandinsky, Hatje
Cantz, Osfildern-Ruit, 2001 (cat. exp.).
AA.W., Natures. A journey through contemporary art, Museu
d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, 2000.
AA.W., 'Nature's Way' Romantic landscapesjrom Norway,
The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester / Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge, 1993 (cat. exp.).
AA.W., Landscape of landscapes, Collegi d'Arquitectes de la
Comunitat Valenciana, Valencia, 2005.
AA.W., The Landscapes of the Prado, Nerea, Madrid, 1993.
AA.W., Mediterranean Landscape, Electa, Milan, 1992.
3. As when something subtle endures and seems to be reborn different, 130x250.
Acrylic on canvas, 2006. AA.VV., Prix Me'diterranee'n du Paysage. Mediterranean
Country Award..., Department of Public Works and
the air, as concrete forces, as networks susceptible to being Transport, Seville, 2001.
ordered, understood, reasoned, the orthogonality of chaos, of
the organic.
A work that invites us to reflect on time, durability,
memory. If we have no past there is no future and we float -
hanging from a non-existent present. A present often
contaminated by a forgotten, foreign past. We need an ecology
of memory. And I finish with some titles of my latest works:
Like when something subtle endures and seems to be reborn
different, Time makes spaces smaller_and memory shrinks
time or Old palettes hide all the paintings to come.

JESUS MARI Lazcano

AA.W., Artscape Nordland lpp4- Report from Seminarium in

Bodo and Henningsvaer, Artscape Nordland, Bodo, 1994.
AA.VV., Caspar Wolf. Un peintre ala découverte des Alpes,
Musée d'art et d'histoire Geneve, Geneva, 2003 (cat. exp.).
AA.W., Constable. The Great Landscapes, Tate, London,
2006 (cat. exp.).
252 LANDSCAPE AND ART GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 253

AA.W., Remaking landscapes. Architecture of! Landscape in Europe, Caja BÉGUIN, Francois,Lepaysage, Flammarion, Paris, 1995.
de Arquitectos Foundation, sl [Barcelona], 2000 (cat. exp.). BERQUE, Augustin (dir.), Five propositions for a theory of landscape,
AA.W., Revelatory landscapes, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Champ
Francisco (Cal.), 2001. Vallon, Seyssel, 1994
AA.W., Siah Armajani, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, —, Eire humains sur la terre. Principes dethique del ecoumene, Gallimard,
Madrid, 1999 (cat. exp.).
Paris, 1996. Les Raisons du Paysage de la Chine antique aux
AA.W., Only with nature. Catalogue of the III European Landscape
environnements de synthése, Hazan, Paris, 1995.
Biennial. Ill Rosa Barba European Landscape Prize, Coldegi
— etal., LaMouvance. Cinquante mots pour lepaysage, De la Villette, Paris,
d'Arquitectes de Catalunya [Barcelona], 2Oo6.
AA.W., Eerritoriipaisatge. Matura i art, Universitat de Girona/Ajuntament 1999.
de Girona, Gerona, 2002- — (ed.), Mouvance II. Soirante-dix mots pour lepaysage, De la Villette,
AA.W., Trajections. Paisatgesen mutació constant/Geografías expectants, Paris, 2006. BESSE, Jean-Marc, Face au monde. Atlas, jardins, géoramas,
Fundació Espais d'Art Contemporani [Gerona, 2007]. Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 2003.
AW, The Unpainted Landscape, Coracle Press, London, 1987. —, See the earth. Six essais sur le paysage et la geographic, Actes Sud,
AA.W., Viaggio verso le Alpi, Villa dei Cedri/Pagine d'Arte, Bellinzona, Arles, 2000.
1977. BlRKSTED, Jan (ed.), Landscapes of memory and experience, Spon Press,

AA.W., Ulrich Rilckriem. Pyrenees, Huesca, 1995, Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, London, 2001.
1997.
BLÁZQUEZ Mateos, Eduardo, Landscapes in literature and cinema, ed. by
ACCIAIUOLI, M., Leal, J. C. and Maia, M. H. (eds.), Arte & Paisagem,
the author, Ávila, 2002.
IHA/Estudos de Arte Contemporánea, sl [Lisbon], 2006.
AGUILO, MIGUEL, The Constructed Landscape. An approach to the idea of BOETTGER, Suzaan, Earthworks. Art and the Landscape of the sixties,
place, COLLEGE OF CIVIL ENGINEERS, MADRID, 1999. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2002.
— (ed.), Cultural Landscapes, College of Civil Engineers, Madrid, 2005. BUSCH, Werner, Landschafismalerei, Reimer, Berlin, 1997'
ALBERTAZZI, Liliana (ed.), Dijférentes Natures. Visions de l'Art GABANEE, Jean, Pays et paysages de France, Rouergue, Rodez, 2006.
Gontemporain, Lindau, Turin/Paris, 1993 (cat. exp.). CARERI, FRANCESCO, Walkscapes. Walking as an aesthetic practice,
ANDREWS, Malcolm, Landscape and Western Art, Oxford University Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2002.
Press, Oxford, 1999. CAUQUELIN, Anne, Le site et Ie paysage, Quadrige/Presses Universitaires de France,
—, The Search for the Picturesque, Scolar Press, Aidershot, 1989, 21990. Paris, 2002.
BAILLY-HERZBERG, Janine, L'Art du paysage en Prance auXIXesiecle.
—, L'invention du paysage, Quadrige/Presses Universitaires de France,
De l'atelier au plein air, Flammarion, Paris, 2000.
BALCELLS, Conxita and Bru, Josepa, Alongside. Limits, edges and boundaries, Paris, 2000.
Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2002- CHENET, (ed.), Le paysage et ses grilles. Colloque de Cerisy,
Franoise
BARIDON, Michel, The Gardens. Landscapers, Gardeners, Poets: Antiquity-
L'Harmattan, Paris/Montreal, 1996.
Far East, Abada, Madrid, 2004 (the ed. in French, 1998).
CIPRIAN, BARBARA (ED.), 11 paesaggio, memoria e transformazione,
—, The Gardens. Landscapers, Gardeners, Poets: Islam-Middle Ages-
LIBRERIA BONOMO, BOLOGNA, 2006.
Renaissance-Baroque, Abada, Madrid, 2005 (the ed. in French, 1998).
BATEY, MAVIS, Alexander Pope. The Poet and the Landscape, Barn Elms, CLARK, KENNETH, The Art of Landscape, SEIX BARRAL, BARCELONA, 1971
(the ED. (IN ENGLISH, 1949).
London, 1999.
Daniela, Landscape + 100 words to inhabit it, Landscape +
COLAFRANCESCHI,
EARDSLEY, John, Earthworks and Beyond: contemporary art in the
100 words to inhabit it, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2007.
landscape, Abbevilie Press, New York, 1984, 31998.
CONISBEE, Philip and COUTAGNE, Denis (eds.), Cézanne en Provence,
254 LANDSCAPE AND ART GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 255

Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, 2006 (cat. exp.). JACKSON, John Brinckerhoff, A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time, Yale
DAGOGNET, FRANCOIS (ED.), Mort du paysage? Philosophic et University Press, New Haven/London, 1994.
Esthe'tique du paysage, Champ Vallon, Seyssel, 1982. JAKOB, Michael, L emergence du paysage, Infolio, Gollion, 2004.
DAVIES, Peter and KNIPE, Tony (eds.), /I Sense of Place. Sculpture in —, Paysage et temps, Infolio, Gollion, 2007.
Landscape, Ceolfrith Press, Sunderland, 1984. JAUKKURI, Maaretta (ed.), Artscape Nordland, Press Publishing, Bodo
DOMINO, Christophe, A ciel ouveii. L'art contemporain á l'échelle du (Norway), 2001.
paysage, Scala, Paris, 2005. KARDON, JANET, Siah Armajani: bridges, houses, communal spaces,
DRURY, Chris and SYRAT, Kay, Chris Drury. Silent spaces, Thames and dictionary for building, INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART,
Hudson, London, 1998. UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1985 (CAT. EXP.).
FAGONE, VITTORIO (ED.), Arte in Natura, Mazzotta, MILAN, 1996. KASTNER, Jeffrey and WALLIS, Brian (eds.), Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon, London,

FERNÁNDEZ, Horacio (ed.), From the recent landscape [From the image 1998, 22001.
to the territory], ICO Foundation, Madrid, 2006 (cat.exp.). KESSLER, Mathieu, The Landscape in its Shadow, Idea Books, Barcelona,
FLAM, Jack (ed.), Pobert Smithson: the Collected Writings, University of 2000 (first ed. in French, 1999).
California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1996. LAMIRAULT, Thierry, La Nature mise en Perspective dans l'art de la
FORTIÁ, Josep M. (ed.), Intervention in the landscape: keys to a debate / peinture et l'art des jardins, Economica, Paris, 1997.
Intervention in the landscape: keys to a debate, University of Girona, LASSUS, Bernard, Gouleur, lamiere... paysage. Instants dune pedagogic,
Girona, 2000. Monum, Editions du patrimoine, Paris, 2004.
FRIEDMAN, Terry, Wood. Andy Goldsworthy, Viking-Penguin, LE DANTEC, JEAN-PIERRE, Jardins et Paysages. Textes critiques de
Harmondsworth, 1996. I'antiquite' a nos jours, Larousse, Paris, 1996.
FUNDAZIONE GlORGlO ClNI / ZORZI, Renzo (ed.), Ilpaesaggio. LEBLANC, Linda and CoulON, Jacques, Paysages, Le Moniteur, Paris, 1993.
Daliapercepone alia descrizione, Marsilio, Venice, 1999. LlTVAK, Lily, The Time of Trains. The Spanish landscape in the art of -
GALOFARO, LUCA, ART AS an approach to the contemporary landscape, realism literature, Del Serbal, Barcelona, 1991.
Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2003. LONG, Richard, Walking in Circles, Thames & Hudson, London, 1991 (cat.
Cézanne, Manuel, History 16, Madrid, 1993. exp.).
GARCÍA Martin, Pedro, Imagines of Paradise. History of the perception of — , Richard Long from Time to Time, Cantz, Ostfildern, 1977.
landscape in modern Europe, Caja Madrid, Madrid, 2000. MADERUELO, JAVIER (ED.), ArtejNaturaleza, PROVINCIAL COUNCIL OF
GARRAUD, COLETTE, L'idée de nature dans l'art contemporain, HUESCA, HUESCA, 1996.
Flammarion, Paris, 1993. — New visions of the picturesque: jewelry as art, César Manrique
Foundation, Teguise, 1996.
GRANT, Bill and Harris, Paul (eds.), Natural Order. Visual Arts & Crafts
— , Jameos of! Water, César Manrique Foundation, Teguise, 2006.
in Grizedale Forest Park, The Grizedale Society, Ambleside, 1996.
— , The landscape. Genesis of a concept, Abada, Madrid, 2005, 22006.
— (eds.), The Grizedale Experience. Sculpture, Arts Sc Theater in a
— (ed.), Fernando Casas. Aaturgeist, Provincial Council of Huesca,
Lakeland Forest, Canongate Press, Edinburgh, 1991.
Huesca, 1997 (cat. exp.).
HOBBS, Robert etah, Robert Smithson: Sculpture, Cornell University Press,
— (ed.), The Landscape, Provincial Council of Huesca, Huesca, 1997.
Ithaca, New York, 1981.
— (ed.), Landscape and Thought, Abada/CDAN, Madrid, 2006.
HOLT, Nancy (ed.), The Writings of Robert Smithson, New York University
MARTINET, Marie-Madeleine (ed.), Art et Nature en Grande-Bretgne auXVHF
Press, New York, 1979.
siécle, de l'harmonie classique au pittoresque du premier romantisme,
HUNT, John Dixon and WlLLIS, Peter (eds.), The Genius of Place. The

English Landscape Garden 16^0-1820, The MIT Press, London, 1975' Aubier, Paris, 198o.
31993.
 255 LANDSCAPE AND ART GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 255

Raffaele, L'arte delpaesaggio, 11 Mulino, Bologna, 2001.

MlLANI,

— , Ilpaesaggio is an adventure. I invite you to travel and save, Feltrinelli,

Milan, 2005. ■
The Pittoresque. L'evoluzione del Gusto tra classico e romantico,
Laterza, Rome/Bari, 1996.
 256 LANDSCAPE AND ART GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 257

MORLAND, Joanna, Mew Milestones. Sculpture, Community and the Land, SlMON, Jacques, Voyages, Iberian landscapes, Voyages landscapes [Brive],
Common Ground, London, 1988. 1999.
MOTTET, Jean (ed.), L'arbre dans Ie landscape, Champ Vallon, Seyssel, 2002. SONFIST, Alan (ed.), Art in the Land, a critical anthology of
MOURE, Gloria, Richard Long. Spanish stones, Huesca Provincial environmental Art, EP Dutton, New York, 1972. ‘1983.
Council/Polygraph, Huesca/Barcelona, 1999. SORLIE, Nina (ed.), Johan Christian Dahl, Kistefos-Museet/Labyrinth
NICCOLINI, Caterina, Nagasawa. Tra cielo e terra, De Luca, Rome, 1997. Press, Oslo, 2000.
NOGUÉ, Joan (ed.), The social construction of the landscape, Biblioteca SPIRN, Anne Whiston, The Language of Landscape, Yale University Press,
Nueva, Madrid, 2007. New Haven, 1998.
ORTEGA CANTERO, Nicolás (ed.), Studies on the history of the Spanish TAYLOR, Marc C., Double Negative, Sculpture in the Land, Rizzoli, New
landscape, Catarata, Madrid, 2002. York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1991.
— (ed.), Images of the landscape, Dukes of Soria Foundation, Soria, 2006. TlBERGHIEN, Gilles A., LandArt, Garré, Paris, 1993.
—, Land Art traveling, Ecole Régionale des Beaux-Arts, Valence, 1996.
— (ed.), Nature and culture of the landscape, Dukes of Soria Foundation,
—, Nature, Art, Paysage, Actes Sud/École National Supérieure du Paysage/
Soria, 2004.
Center duPaysage, sl [Arles], 2001.
PENA, María del Carmen, Landscape painting and ideology. The —, Motes sur la Nature, la cabane et quelques autres choses, Le Félin,
Generation of '98, Taurus, Madrid, 1998. Paris, 2005.
— (ed.), Centroj periphery in the modernization of Spanish painting (1S8 O VAN BOLHUIS, Peter et al., Het verzonnen land / The Invented Land,
-1 gi 8), Ministry of Culture, Madrid, 1993 (cat. exp.). Uitgeverij Blauwdruk, Wageningen, 2004.
RAQUEJO, Tonia, LandArt, Nerea, Madrid, 1998. VENNING, BARRY, Constable. The Life and Masterworks, BASELINE CO.,
REIGHLER, CLAUDE, La découuerte des Alpes et la question du passage, HO CHI MINH CITY, 2004.
Georg, Geneva/Paris, 2002. VlGNEAU-WlLBERG, Thea, Hollandische Landschaft im 1J. fahrhundert,
RITTER, Joachim, Landscape. Fonction de l'esthétique dans la sociéié Neue Pinakothek Hirmer, Munich, 1996.
moderne. Les Editions de l'Imprimeur, Besanon, 1997. VISING, Silvia, I pittori del Grand Tour, L'Argonauta, Latina, 1994 (cat.
exp.).
ROGER, Alain, Brief Treatise on the Landscape, Biblioteca Nueva, Madrid,
WARNER, Marina, David Nash. Forms into time, Academy, London, 1996.
2007 (the ed. in French, 1997).
WEILACHER, UDO, Between Landscape Architecture and Land Art,
Wildebeests and strawmen. Essai sur la fonction de l'art, Aubier, 1978,
BIRLHAUSER, BASEL, 1998- .
2001. WEGMANN, Peter et al., Caspar David Friedrich to Ferdinand Hodler.- A
— (ed.), La théoriedu Paysage en France (ippp-ipgp), Champ Vallon, Romantic Tradition, Insel Verlage/Oskar Reinhart Foundation,
Seyssel, 1995- ROSELL, Quim, After / Afterwards. Remaking Landscapes, Frankfurt/Winterthur, 1993. .
Gustavo Gilí, Barcelona, 2001. WERKNER, Patrick, LandArt USA, Prestel, Munich, 1992.
ROSENBLUM, Robert, Modern painting (in the tradition of Nordic WIEMANN, Elsbeth eta!., Die EntdeckungderLandschaft.
Romanticism). From Friedrich to Rothko, Alianza, Madrid, 1993 (1st ed. MeisterwerkederNieder- landischen Kunstdes ¡6. und I1/Jahrhunderts,
(in English, 1975). Dumont, Cologne, 200g.
RUIZ DE SAMANIEGO, Alberto, Photographic landscape. Between God and WREDE, Stuart, and ADAMS, William Howard, Denatured Visions.
topography, Alcobendas City Council, Alcobendas, 2007. Landscape and Culture in the Twentieth Century, The Museum of
Modern Art/Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1991.
SCHAMA, Simon, Landscape and Memory, Alfred Knopf, New York, 1995,
*1996.
Paul, The Cultivated Wilderness or, What is Landscape?, The
SHEPHEARD,

MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1977'

F
.

INDEX OF NAMES

ABERCROMBIE, LESLIE PATRICK. ARMAJANI, Siah, 7 II6

204 ARROYO, EDUARDO, 218, 219 BAUMGARTEN, ALEXANDER -
ADAMS, William Howard, 220, 257 ARTETA, AURELIO, 147 GOTTLIEB, 45
ADORNO, THEODOR W., 45 ASHTON, DORE, 138, 153, 158 BaXANDALL, Michael, 18, 35
AGUILó, Miguel, 1^3, 252 AssUNTO, Rosario, 18, 35 BAXTER, IAN, 190, 191
ALBERS, JOSEF, 213 AzORIN (pseud. byJose Martinez BECKETT, SAMUEL, 66
ALBERTI, LEON BATTISTA, 19, Ruiz), 9. 78, 111-134, 135 BELLINI, GENTILE, 22 •
22. 35, 90 BELLINI, Giovanni, 20-22
ALCOLEA, Carlos, 157 BACON DEVERULAM, FRANCIS, BENJAMIN, WALTER, 133
ALDAY, IAKI, 209 117 BENNASAR, Maria Isabel, 207
ALEXANDER, CHRISTOPHER, 203, 220 BAKHTIN, MIHAIL, 124, '35 209
ALYS, FRANCIS, 69 BANN, Stephen. 174, 181, 184 BERGER, PATRICK, 209
AMIEL, HENRI-FRÉDÉRIK, 115 BaQUE, Dominique, 1/6, 181 Bernardo de Quiros, Constancio, 118
ANDRE, CARL, 186, 213 BARCELO,'MIQUEL, 157 BERNARD, ÉMILE, 87, 88, 90, 96, 100,
ANDREWS, Malcolm, 138, 158, 167, BARJAU, Eustace, 75 109
18l, 252 BAROJA, Pio, 115, it8, 122,
BERQUE, Augustin, 13,15, 17, 35,
ANSELMO, Giovanni, 56
129, r30, 133
APOLLINAIRE, GUILLAUME, 99, BARRACAN, LUIS, 223 138,194. ¡99. ^0, 253
106 BARTOLOME Cossio, MANUEL, BERTRAN, JORDI, 220
AQUERRETa, Juan José, 157 125 . BERUETE, Aureliano de, 78, 121,
BTLLE, Enric, 207
ARANDA, RAFAEL, 204. 205 125, 142-144, 146
BAUDELAIRE, CHARLES, 59-61, 71, 72.
ARIAS, Francisco, 153
 260 LANDSCAPE AND ART INDEX OF NAMES 261
BESSE, Jean-Mrc, 138, 253 CARMONA, EUGENIO, 138,158 CRIQUl, Jean Pierre, 197 SANTIAGO, 15, 36 GOMBRICH, ERNST, 90 181
BEULAS, Jose, 154, 156 CARNEIRO, ALBERTO, 7, 9, - FERNANDEZ, HORACIO, 9, 161, GOMES DA SILVA, JOAO, 205 ITURRIOZ, Montes, 153
WHITE, Michelangelo, 157 243245. 247 D'ORS, Eugenio, 151 182, 254 GOMEZ DE L SERNA, RAMON.
BLASCO IBAKEZ, VICENTE,
CARRA, Carlo, 168-170, 172, DABROWSKY, MAGDALENA, FERDINAND III THE SAINT, 114 133 JABS, Edmond, 75
129, 139, 158 GOMEZ SAL, ANTONIO, 138
174,180, t8l FIODOROV-DAVIDOV, ALEXEI, JACKSON, JOHN BRINCKEROFF,
130 GONZALEZ GARCIA, ANGEL,
CARRA, MASSIMO, 100, no DAHL, JOHAN CHRISTIAN, 23 193. 194, 199, 354
BLECHEN, KARL, 83 '75 19.
CARRACCI, HANNIBAL, 139 DALI, Salvador, 148 JANSON, H. W., 88,109 JEANNE-
Bo BARDI, Lina, 210 163
CARRENO MIRANDA, JUAN, DANTE, 18 FLAVIN, DAN, 213 CLAUDE (CHRISTO), 194
BOCCACCIO, GIOVANNI, 18 GORDILLO, LUIS, 157
DARIO, RUBEN, 16, 120 FORRADELLAS, JOAQUIN, 116, JIMENEZ-BLANCO, MARIA
BOHICAS, Oriol, 207 123 GÓYA, FRANCISCO DE, 126
DAVIES, HUGH, 199 135
CARUS, CARL GUSTAV, 23 DOLORES, 9, 137
BORGLUM, Gutzom, 187 FRAMPTON, Kenneth, 232 CrANET, Francois M_, 93
HOUSES, Fernando, 7 DE MARIA, WALTER, 33,186 JONAS, JOAN, 191
BoudOn, Philippe, 188, 189 FRANCIS of Holland, 163 CREENGRASS, Paul, 47
HOUSES, RAMON, 124, 126,146 DEBUSSY, CLAUDE A., 116 JovERBIBOUM, Margarita. 209
BOWLT, JOHN E., 174, 181 166,167, 170.182 GRIMNL, Pierre, 14, 36
CASTELAO, Alfonso Daniel DEL MAZO, JOHN THE BAPTIST JUDD, Donald, 213
MUZZLE, Valerian, 106, 107, BROTHER LUIS DE LEON, 14 GRAY, JOHN, 107
Rodriguez, 147 Martinez, t23 JuSTI, Carl, 125
109,152,154 FREIXA, Mireia, 138, 159 CUATTARI, Felix, 6,/., 76
CATENA, Vincenzo, 22 DELACROIX, EUGENE, 83, 87, 88
BRANCUSI, CONSTANTIN, 224, FRÉMONT, ARMAND, 193
CATTELAN, Mauricio, 66 DELAUNAY, ROBERT, 97,106, KAHNWEILER, Daniel-Henry,
225 FRIED, MICHAEL, 194 HAAC, Richard, 34
CAUQUELIN, Arms, 138, 253 108, 148 99. I08
BRAQUE, GEORGES, 29, 78, 84. FRIEDRICH, CASPAR DAVID, 23 HNES, Carlos de, 121, 142144
CENNINI, Cennino, 18 DELEUZE, GILLES, 59, 63, 64, KANT, IMMANUEL, 44. 45. 56
90, 91, 97-101, 103,106 FRIESZ, OTHON, 99 Hamsun, Knut, 54, 76
CERVANTES, MIGUEL DE, 114 69, 70, 71, 76, 202, 216 82, 83,109
BREER, ROBERT, 191 FULTON, HAMISH, 56, 190, 195 HANDKE, PETER, 60, 75, 231
CEZANNE, PAUL, 9, 54, 55, 58, DELGADO, Gerardo, 153 KATZENKO, M., 179
BRIK, LILI, 161 HAUSER, PHILIP, 118
DENIS, MANUEL, 163 KEROUAC, JACK, 32, 36
BRIK, OSSIP, 161 59,61-64, 70,72,75. CALI, BETH, 207 HAYDEN, DOLORES, 201
DERRIDA, JACQUES, 202 KIERKEGAARD, SEREN, 53
BROWN, JULIA, 186 77-109, no, 152, 167 GALj-IZARD, Teresa, 207 HEERICH, Erwin, 214, 215
DESCOMBES, GEORGES, 9, 34, KLEE, PAUL, 63-66, 72
BRUEGEL, PETER, 13 CHATWIN, Bruce, 53, 56, GAMONEDA, ANTONIO, 56 HEGEL, GEORG W. F., 69 KLEIN, ROBERT, 166,189
231-241 GARCIA GUATAS, MANUEL, 9,
BRUNIER, Yves, 239 71, HEIDEGGER, MARTIN, 74, 76 KLEIN, YVES, 29
DIAZ CanEJA, Juan Manuel, '°. 29. 77. 87. 109,254
BUREN, DANIEL, 186 76 HEIZER, MICHAEL, 32,186, 187, KLEIST, HEINRICH VON, 66, 68.
154.155 GASQUET, Joachim, 58, 63, 198
BURGI, Paolo, 9, 34, 223 CHEMETOFF, Alexandre, 220 69. 71. 72
DIONICI DA BORGO 64. 7». 75. 76. 79. 89 HERACLITUS. 74
BURGIN, VICTOR, 175, 181 CHILLIDA, Eduardo, 207 KNIGHT, RICHARD PAYNE, 27
SAINT SEPULCHRE, 5 GAUGUIN, PAUL, 84, 86, 87
BURKE, EDMUND, 27, 35 HERTZBERGER, HERMAN, 239 KOCH, JOSEPH ANTON, 23
CHRISTO [JARACHEFF], 191,194 DOMINGUEZ, OSCAR, 148 GAUTIER, THÉOPHILE, 116
BURLE MARX, ROBERTO, 203, HESS, WALTER, 89, 100, KOOLHAAS, REM, 201
CLARK, KENNETH, 137,158, GEDDES, PATRICK, 204.
DOMINO, Christophe, 190, 109 KULESHOV, LEV, 161
211, 216 165, 166, 181, 253 GENET, JEAN, 66
199. 254 HOFMANNSTHAL, HUGO VON.
BURRI, ALBERTO, 206 CLEMENT, GILLES, 216, 217, CEUZE, ADRIAN, 34 ,
DORE, Gustave, 128, 130 116, 117. 135 LAHUERTA, Genaro, 153
220 GILPIN, WILLIAM, 26, 27, 31,
DRURY, CHRIS, 195,196, 254 HOGHART, WILLIAM, 113 LANGE, GUSTAV, 213
CARO ASEGUINOLAZA, - 36, 81, 109 HOLDEN, ROBERT, 220
CLEMENTS, ROBERT J., 166,182 DUFY, RAOUL, 99
FERNANDO, 13, 36 GINER DE LOS RIOS, LARSON, KAY, 189
COLLOT, Michel, 183, 199 HOLDERLIN, Johann Christian
DURAN, PEP, 212 LASSUS, BERNARD, 34, 255
CAGE,JOHN, 29 COLONNA, VITTORIA, 164 FRANCISCO, 143.155 Friedrich, 58, 66, 68, 69, 71
LATZ, PETER, 34, 210, 211, 220
CALDERON OF LA BARCA, 114 CONSTABLE, JOHN, 26, M, GIORGIONE (GIORGIO HOLT, NANCY, 184, 187,199,
EL GRECO,13,124,125
CALVO SERRAILER, 140,141 BARBARELLI DA 254
ELISSITZKI, 179-181,182
FRANCISCO, 16. 35. 151, CORAOUD, Claire, 205, 206, ENCUITA, JOSE MARIA, 126,135 CASTELFRANCO), 22, 27 HOOZEE, Robert, 26, 36
152 220, 232 GIOTTO, 8, 18, 170 HORAK, Jan-Christopher, 180,
ERLICH, VIKTOR, 174, 182
CAMOIN, CHARLES, 85 CORAJUD, Michel, 34 GIRONZAFICUERES, Ramon, 182
ESKILDSEN, UTE, 180, 182
CAMPAIGN, MARIO, 61, 76 Cosslo, Pancho, 153 212 HUNT, JOHN DIXON, 193, 254
CANALETO, Antonio Canal, COSTA, JOAQUIN, 115 GLEIZES, Albert, 97, 106. 107
FALCO, VICTORIA, 10 HUSSEY, CHRISTOPHER, 31, 36
13 COTTINGTON, David, 103, GODSWORTHY, Andy, 197 HUYsMANS, Joris-Karl, 77
FEININGER, T. LUX, I08, 176,
CAPPELLI, Rosanna, 16 109 GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang
177,180, 181,182
CARERI, Francesco, 75, 76, COUTACNE, Denis, 93, 109, von, 69, 166 IBSEN, HENRIK JOHAN, 130
FEITO, LUIS, 153
253 GOLDING, JOHN, 97,106,109 IGNATOVICH, BORIS, 178,180,
253 ' FERNANDEZ MOSQUERA,
260 LANDSCAPE AND ART INDEX OF NAMES 262

landscape and art 1

AN............1
q •...................40
CENTHA LIBRARY, 84
CENTRAL LIBRARY, 183
LIBRARY 134
ABADA PUBLISHERS 134

LEONARDO DAVINCI, 19, 36

LESSING, GOTTHOLD E., 45
LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE, 189
LHOTE, André, 106
LEBESKIND, Daniel, 47
LIPPARD, LUCY R., 3L 36, 185
LITVAK, Lily, 114,.135, 142,
¡58, 255
 262 LANDSCAPE AND ART INDEX OF NAMES 263

LLA.MAZ.ARES, July, 79, AZORÍN), OLMO, GREGORIO DEL, 153 THE OLD MAN PUNISHED, 19 53. 256 TIBERGHIEN, Gilles A., 9,
80, log MARTORELL, JOSÉ MARÍA, 207 ONORATO, ROLAND, 185, 199 POE, Edgard Allan, 59 RUSINOL, Santiago, 121, 125, 138, 257
LLANAS ACUL ANIEDO, JOSE MASBOUNGI, ARIELLA, 220 ORTEGA CANTERO, NICOLÁS, POIRIER, ANNEY PATRICK, 212 146 ' TIZIANO VECELLIO, 27
MARIA, 18 MATHIEUX, PHILIPPE, 209 138, 256 PONQ.Joan, 153
TOLOMEI, Lattanzio, 164
LOMBA, CONCHA, 123, 135 MAURA, ANTONIO, 121 ORTEGA MUNOZ, GODOFREDO, PONTIER, AUGUSTE-HENRI, 96 SABBATH. Joaquim, 221
TORMO, ELIAS, 163. 182
LONG, RICHARD, 7, 31. 56-59. MERLEAU-PONRY, MAURICE, 154. 155 POUSSIN, NICOLAS, 22. 23, 64, SACCHETTI, Franco, 18
TREMLETI', DAVID, 195, 196
6?, 73, 184, 195. '96, 213. 6'2. 72, 76 ORTIZ ECHAGUE, JOSE, 127 139 SAFRANSKI, Rudiger, 54, 56.
OSSORIO, Fernando, 118 PRICE, UVEDALE, 27, 31 TrOcHIN, Nicolai, 180, 182
255. METZINGER, JEAN, 106 76
SANCHEZ CANTON, F. J., 16'3. TROISI, Sergio, 169
LONCIII, Roberto, 170, 182 MICHELANGELO 182
PALENCIA, BENJAMIN, 138, 148- RAFOLS-CASAMADA, TucuMaN, Phyllis, 186
Loorz, Eva, 212 (MICHELANGELO
151. 153 Albert, SANCHEZ, ALBERTO, 138.148. TUDELILLA, Chus, 123, 135
LOPEZ GARCIA, ANTONIO, 157 Buonarroti), 164-167, 176,
PALLARTS, Virginia, 207 157 149 dUPYTSIN, Margarita, ¡79
LORRAIN. Claude (Cellée), 181 SAULEAU, Laeticia, 207
PAUAS. MARIA, I ROUND, Agustin, 153 TURNER. WILLIAM, 26, 27, M,
22. 23 MILANI, RAFFAELE, 138. 255 RECOYOS, Darius of, 113,114 SaVATFR, Juan Carlos. 157
PALMA EL VIEJO, 22 SCHAMA, SIMON, 112,135, 138, 140, 141
LOTTO, Lorenzo, 22 MILIARES, MANOLO, 153 MIRÓ, RENCER-PATZSCH, Albert,
PAQuOT, Thierry, 220
159,180, 182, 256 TUSELL Javier, 150, 59
LOZANO, FRANCISCO, 153 JOAN, 146, 148 MISS, MARY, PARKER, Charlie, 47 172, 173, 175
SCHINKEL., Karl Friedrich.
LUESMN, Teresa, 9 184. 185 MITCHELL, W.J.T., P. ARNET, Claire, 70, 76 RENOIR, PIERRE AUGUSTE, 84.
LUHMANN, Niklas, 202 238 UNAMUNO, MIGUEL DE, 115
138, 159 MOECLIS- GRILL, ADELARDO, 124, 126 88
SCHLOSSER, JULIUS. 166,182 UNGARETTI, Giuseppe, 170
DELCROIX, ANNE, PATINIR, Joachim, 8, 139, 166 REWALD, JOHN, 87, 89, 109
MACHADO, ANTONIO, 78, 113, 190. 199 MOHOLy- PENA, Maria del Carmen, REYERO, Carlos, 138, 159 SCHOPENHAUER, ARTHUR, 48, URCELL, MODEST, 146
12 2 NaCY, László, 173, 175.182 135, 138, 15O. 151, CATHOLIC MONARCHS, 114 5B78
MACKAY, DAVID, 207 SEEL, MARTIN, 9. 37, 38.41, VALENCIENNES, PIERRE-HENRI
MONET, CLAUDE, 27, 28. 8385. 152, I5<), 256 RICHARDSON, JOHN, 102, 104.
MACPHERSON, JOSEPH, 143 DE,139
88 PENDERS, Anne-Franyoise, '97 105, 109 49.51
MADERUELO, Javier, 5, 7, II, RICO, MARTIN, 112. 142 SEMPERE, Eusebio, 157 VALERA, JOHN, 129
MONTANER, Josep Maria, 9. PEREJAUME, 157 SERRA, RICHARD, 191, 192, VALERY, PAUL, 45, 50, 51
13. 35. 36. SO, 81, «2, 201, 220 PEREZ GALDOS, Benito, 122, RILKE, CLARA, 97. 109
200
129. 133 RILKE, RAINER MARIA, 97, log VALLE-INCLÁN, Ramon del.
109, 138, 158, 220. 243. MONTERROSO, Augusto, 168 SETTIS, SALVATORE. 16, 36
PEREZ VILLAAMIL, Jenaro, RIM, CARLO, 176 120
255 Moreno CNVáN, José Maria, SEURar, Georges-Pierre. 84
142 VALLES-BLED, MAITHÉ, 87,
MAYAKOVSKY, Vladimir. PEREZ VILLALTA, GUILLERMO, RIMBAUD, ARTHUR. 60, 71, 72
150. ¡59 SHEPP, Archie, 47
RITTER, Joachim. 138, 159. 110 VALSECCHI, MARCO.
161, 162 MORIN, EDGAR, 202 MOSSER, 157
256 SHIFF, Richard. 86. 109 100, 110 VAN DOESBURO,
MAINER, JOSÉ CARLOS, 9, 78, MONIQUE, 184, 200 MUXI, PEREZ, ANTONIO, 114
RODCHENKO, ALEXANDR. 9. SIGNAC, PAUL, 84, 97 THEO, 172 VAN DYCK, ANTON,
III, 126, 135 ZAIDA, 201, 220 PESSOA, FERNANDO ANTONIO,
161-163, 167, 171-181. 182 SIMON, GLANS, 44 123, 126 VAN GOGH,
MALLO, MARUJA, 148 68, 71, 72
ROGER, ALAIN, 6. 15, 36. 184, SIMON, JACQUES, 34, 256 VINCENT. 86. 87
MANDELSTAM, OSSIP, 56 NACORE, Obarra, 10 PETERIIANS, WALTER. 176
193. 200. 256 SIZA VIEIRA, ALVARO, 205 VAYREDA, Joaquin, 146
MANTEGNA, ANDREA, 22 * NaSELLI, César, 221 PETERS, PHILIP, 231
ROH, FRANZ, 170, 174,182 SKLOVSKY, Viktor. 174 VAZQUEZ DE PARGA. ANA, 151,
MANTION, Jean-Remy, 184 NASH, DAVID, 7, 33, 34. 215 PETRARCH, FRANCESCO. 5. 6, 8, ROIG, JOAN, 207 SMITHSON, ROBERT, 30, 31, U2
MARCHAN, SIMON, 198 NEWMAN, Barnet, 213 18, 138, 159 ROSEMARY OF TORRES. JULY, 33.75. 186-189.197
MARCHESE, ANGELO, 116, 135 NIETO ALCAIDE, VICTOR, 151 VAZQUEZ DIAZ, DANIEL, 147,
PETRUSOV, Georgi, 179 147. 148 SOLA-MORALES, MANUEL DE,
MARI, ANTONI, 86,109 NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH, 53-56, 153 '
PHILLIPS, CHRISTOPHER, 172, ROSELLE, QUIM, 221, 256 212
MARO-!', SÉBASTIEN, 197. 232 60. 64, 66-73 Nils-Udo, VEGA, AMADOR, 153, 159
OS. 182 ROSEN, CHARLES, 25. 36 SOROLLA, Joaquin, 84. 129,
MARTÍ ALSINA. RAMON, 146 197 Noguchi. Isamu, 29 VELAzQutZ, Diego, 123, 125
PICASSO, PABLO R., 29, 78, 97- ROSENBLUM, ROBERT, 88. 147
MARTINEZ DE PISO, EDUARDO, NONELL., Isidro, 146 Norton, VERGELY, Jacques, 209
99. 101-106 109, STEIN (brothers), 104
Inés, 205 Núñez Florencio. Verlaine. Paul, 71, 116. 119
138 168. 182, 256 STEPANOVA, VARVARA, 179
Rafael, PIcHOT, André. 188, 200
MARTINEZ NOVIL.LO, PICEM, Garme, 205 RosKI, Mark, 138, 13g SLNYER. Joaquin, 146-148 VILALIN, Ramon, 205
ALVARO, 114. 135
PIRANESI, Giovanni Battista, ROTHKO, MARK, 153 VILARDELL, Joan Enrique. 207
NYS, PHILIPPE, 189, 200 TAPIES, ANTONI, 153
150. 159 ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES. 25, Villani, Filippo, 18
MARTINEZ NOVILLO, CIRILO, 197
TELUECHE, JULIAN DE, 147
OLIVIER, FERNANDE, 102. 104, 54, 60 VILLANUEVA, DARIO. 15, 36
153 PISSARRO, CAMILLE, 84, 85, 88 THOREAU, Henry David, 56,
PLATO, IG, 36, RG6 RUCKRIEM, Ulrich. 7 VIOLA, BILL, 47
109
MARTINEZ RUIZ. JOSE (SEE Ruiz de Samaniego, Alberto, 9. 72, 73, 76
264 LANDSCAPE AND ART

VIRGIL, 14. 15. 36 WENDERS, WIM, 238 ZERNER, Henri, 25, 36 INDE
WINGAERDE, Anton van ZOBEL, FERNANDO, 157
ViRILIO, Paul, 201, 203, 221 X
VrrRUVIO, Marco, 19 den, ZOLA. EMILE, 77, 133
VOLLARD, Ambroise, 99 ' 13 ZUBIAURRF, Ramon and
YOULL. Wolf, 211 WOLF, CASPAR, 23 Valen
WORRINGER, Wilhelm, 168,
tin, 14.-7, 148
WALSER, Robert, 57, 60-62. 174., 180
ZULOAGA, Ignacio, 78,
' 66,71,72, 73,76
WRIGHT, Frank Lloyd, 205
113,
WATNEY, Simon, 33 120, 121, 145. 146. 148
YARZN, Carlos, 5
ZWEIG, Stefan, 58, 59, 67,
68, 70, 71, 76

INTRODUCTION: LANDSCAPE AND ART 5 Javier Múdemelo

1. LANDSCAPE: AN ARTISTIC TERM N

Javier Move it to me

2. TIME SPACES OF LANDSCAPE AND ART 37

Martin Seel

3. REVELATION OF THE PLACE. NOTES ON WALKING 53

Alberto Ruiz de Samaniego

4. CÉZANNE AND CUBISM - PREAMBLE AND EPILOGUE OF THE MODERN LANDSCAPE 77 MANUEL GARCÍA GUATAS

5. NATIONAL LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE - ON AZORÍN III

Jose Carlos Mainer

6. MEANINGS OF LANDSCAPE IN MODERN SPAIN 137

Maria Dolores Jimenez-Blanco
266 LANDSCAPE AND ART

7. OLD NEWS.
REAPPEARANCES OF THE LANDSCAPE IN THE VISUAL ARTS
161 HORACIO FEMA'NDEZ

8. ART AT THE LIMITS OF LANDSCAPE

183 GILLES A. TIBERGHIEN

9. RECYCLED LANDSCAPES. MORPHOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

FOR THE POSTMODERN CONDITION 201
Josep Maria Montaner

10. THOUGHTS THAT RUN THROUGH

ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE 223
PAOLO L. BÜRGI

11. AN ARCHITECTURE IN THE

LANDSCAPE 231 GEORGES DESCOMBES

12. ARTISTS' EPILOGUE 243

Alberto Carneiro and Jesús Mari
Lazkano

GENERAL bibliography 251

INDEX OF NAMES 259

 JAVIER MADERUELO (DIR.)
Landscape and thought
Thinking about the landscape 01 [2006]

JAVIER MADERUELO (DIR.)

Landscape and art
Thinking about the landscape 02 [20071 ,

Javier Maderillo
LIBRARY The landscape
Genesis of a concept (22nd edition)
[email protected]
F. BACON / J. ADDISON / A. POPE/
ABADA PUBLISHERS H. WALPOLE / W. CHAMBERS
The spirit of the place
Garden and landscape in modern England

JOHN RUSKIN .
MICHEL BARIDON
The Bible of Amiens
(Preface by MARCEL PROUST] The gardens. Landscapers, gardeners, poets (vol. I -
Antiquity and the Far East)
J. CALATRAVA / JA GLEZ ALCANTUD
MICHEL BARIDON
The city: paradise and conflict
The gardens. Landscapers, gardeners, poets
KENNETH FRAMPTON IvoL II - Islam, Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque]
New York Moon Historical Guide to Manhattan
Architecture] WILLIAM GILPIN
Three essays on picturesque beauty
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Elementary letters on botany LOUIS XIV ETHICAL.
Way to show the gardens
GIULIO CARLO ARGAN of Versailles
Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus
ALVARO SIZA
LE CORBUSIER Imagining the evidence
Aircraft
Charles Delphant
G. DORÉ/B. JERROLD Great history of the city
(from Mesopotamia to the United States)
London. A pilgrimage
[with 180 illustrations by Doré)
Juan Miguel Hernandez Leon
ANTONIO BONET/LUIS ASIN Bridging the gaps
Architecture essays
Obradoiro Square

Jacques Sbriglio VIOLLET-LE-DUC

Le Corbusier. The Villa Savoye Story of a house

GWF HEGEL PEDRO MOLEON

Philosophy of art or Aesthetics Spanish architects in Rome during the 'Grand Tour'
(bilingual edition by Domingo Hernández! (1746-1796)

J. BARJA / J. JIMENEZ HEFFERNAN Daniele Pauly

The Babel hypothesis Le Corbusier. The Ronchamp Chapel
Twenty ways to move a rook (introduction by Arturo
Leyte) JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Jan Assmann ' (bilingual edition by E. Lopez Castellon)
Egypt. History of a sense
Martin Heidegger
CARL J. BURCKHARDT From the experience of thinking
A morning among books (bilingual edition by F. Duke)
(an unusual encounter with Rilke)

1997)-
22 Gilles DELEUZE and Félix GUATTARI, A Thousand Plateaus, Pre-texts, Valencia, 1988, p.
386.
23 Joachim GASQUET, op. cit, p. 15.
24 Ibid., p. 19.
25 Cit. by Joachim Gasquet, op. at., p. 67.
17 The most complete catalogue of Braque's work from the Cubist period, published in Spain,
remains that of Marco VALSECCHI and Massimo CARR, The Complete Pictorial Work of
Braque. On Cubist Decomposition or the Recovery of the Object igoB-igSD, Noguer,
Barcelona/Madrid, 976.
18 Emile Bernard, op. cit. (1925). Cited from Walter HESS, op.cil., p. 27.
8 «The landscape in poetry», in Modern Classics, in Selected Works, ed. Miguel Angel Lozano
Marco, Espasa-Galpe, Madrid, 1998, II. Essays, pp. 888s. The "nationalization of the
landscape" was also part, in any case, of Azorin's own literary project: this is how it is
perceived
in his book The Landscape of Spain as Seen by the Spanish (Renacimiento Library, Madrid,
1917). The prologue is a literal rhapsody of concepts that we will see stated in La noluntad and
that have been repeated in the cited article in Clásicos^ modernos. The texts that make up the
volume come, for the most part, from the series <La amada España» that had been published
throughout the year in La Vanguardia, Barcelona. The most revealing part of the volume is the
"Appendix", "Three Spaniards from Spain: Giner, Galdós, Baroja", which - in a time of
militant reactionism and proximity to the ideals of Action Frunaise - Azorín wanted to
consecrate three prominent liberal nationalists: the recently deceased founder of the Institución
Libre de Enseñanza, the already blind and almost silent Galdós and his friend Baroja. who had
just published his iconoclastic youth, egolatry.