Art, Landscape and Material: Subject into Media

Abstract

A research investigation that illustrates the development of the European landscape tradition as an unbroken interactive and material movement, through discussion of artists from Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) to Richard Long (1945 –). The contribution of each artist within their respective epoch will be used to propose that the subject of landscape has become an actual creative medium, integral to and consistent with the external Plein-Air technique. Thus, presenting a ‘creative narrative’ from the observed into the articulated that will demonstrate how the examination and representation of actual landscapes have become physically used within creative presentations. The study uses key artworks that have been inspired by landscape to show the shift from documentation into interaction with the reality of the natural world. This entails the chronology of the investigation and commences with the concept of Ideal Landscape, established by Carracci, within the late 16th century, through the development of the Plein-Air tradition and culminating with particular emphasis on European landscape artists’ and movements since 1945 that have interacted with actual sites and natural materials: from the ideal to the actual. Furthermore, the European transfer and diffusion of interactive and material based landscape methods, including drawing and painting outside, the collection of organic items and photography, passed and developed from one generation to the next, informs a body of personal creative work. This is a 50/50 co-dependent strand used to illustrate the practical and creative discourses between practitioner and landscape, involving the articulation of actual land materials, found objects and Plein-Air excursions to the drawing locations of previous practitioners’, sketchbooks and journals. The insights provided, by the personal practice and associated theoretical position, aid the evaluation, analysis and description of the evolution of the creative methods inherent in the development of subject into media, but not presently described in historical accounts, therefore, presenting a Material Chronology and thus the original contribution of knowledge for this investigation.