Landscape painting was often captured with the landowner, celebrating their status and wealth in owning the land or people working on the land.
Thomas Gainsborough society painter
Painting of people who owned the land
You had to be significant to be painted.
Rich people were pale as they did not work in the sun. This changed via Coco Chanel and the arrival of the little black dress when the suntan became fashionable.
The painting was as much about the rich landowners as it was about the landscape.
The landscapes were often staged to reflect this. Our relationship with the natural is unnatural. The historic art landscape intervenes with the landscape where you change the narrative.
The artist Christo works with the land, interrupting the space by bringing something to the land material.
Conceptual landscape is bringing an idea to the space. This may be abstract utilising materials that are not authentic to the space, sculpting it to disturb the space and communicating something that makes you absorb the space and see it through different eyes. This is opposed to the traditional landscape that brings a person into view with the space. Although you can appreciate the view it is about the person’s status showing the land that they have access to or own thereby portraying them as wealthy and high status.
Ugo Rondinone is a Swiss artist who works in various mediums and is well known for creating colourful landscapes. ‘Tiled seven
Magic mountains’ stands in the Nevada desert and is a beautiful neutral earthy space with organic shaped rocks adding the bursts of colour and working on large scale they can be seen from a the distance. It gives childlike delightful feelings such as wanting to eat sweets, or climb, or to stand and to simply take it in. It makes me want to do something loud and adventurous.
Flint Castle is a painting by J.M.W Turner . When looking at this piece it draws you in with the hopeful sun. Turner’s emotional style of painting echoes some religious art with his use of golds and blues within the space of everyday life.
All three of these landscapes are about the land in different ways. Gainsbrough’s work is about the power and status of landowning. Rondinone’s landscape adds to the natural landscape bringing bright bursts of colour in a celebratory manner. The Turner painting feels like there is a higher purpose to being part of the land
