Please post your research paper below. You may also insert images/videos although additional media is not required.

Artist List (each student will research a different artist or collective):

• Andy Goldsworthy (Lauren Mease)
• The Arts Catalyst (Inez Coquereau)
• Peter Goin (Siobhan White)
• Michael Light (Dennis Davidson)
• JR (Brian Mohler)

• Rebecca Solnit, “Every Corner is Alive: Eliot Porter as an Environmentalist and an Artist,” Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, University of California Press, 2003, pp. 225-253. (available on Blackboard)
• Rebecca Solnit, “Unsettling the West: Contemporary American Landscape Photography/Look the Other Way: New Western Landscapes,” As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art, University of Georgia Press, 2001, pp. 90-108.
• Lucy R. Lippard, “The Grass on the Other Side of the Fence,” Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, The New Press, 1997, pp. 225-241.
• Lucy R. Lippard, “Parking Places,” On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art, and Place, The New Press, 1999, pp. 135-152.
• New Topographics Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Topographics

Discussion:

1. Solnit states that Eliot Porter’s photography gave “the wilderness idea a face” that taught the public how to perceive natural spaces and what to look for when we visit these places.  She comments on page 226, “The greater success is more paradoxical: the work becomes so compelling that it eventually becomes how we see and imagine, rather than what we look at.” How can these types of mediated images limit our experience of nature?
2. With the popularity and commercial successes of Porter’s photographic body of work with the Sierra Club, much of the contemporary nature photography produced today mimics Porter’s work directly in style, color, and subject.  How does this ubiquitous style of photography, which, at times, seems to focus on wilderness devoid of a human presence perpetuate a romantic view of nature and complicate or devalue human “symbiotic relationships with the land?” Give some examples that Solnit provides.
3. On page 243 of the Porter reading, Solnit posits, “Landscape photography generally depicts open space, usually defined by a horizon line, with the camera looking forward, much as a standing or striding human being might. It depicts, most often, anthropomorphic space—anthropomorphic because its central subject is space, space that can be entered at least in the imagination.” What does she mean by anthropomorphic space? Why does most of Porter’s photographic work not fit within the anthropomorphic space convention she suggests?
4. In an earlier reading (Out of the Picture Window) Lippard comments how, “conventional landscape photography tends to overwhelm place with image. It is usually presented in fragments rather than in grounded sequences. Once wrenched from its context, the image, no matter how well intentioned or well researched, floats off into artland.” Why does she feel that it is important for contemporary artists dealing with a particular place or community as subject to offer multilayered vignettes place rather than singular images?
5. Both authors contend that aesthetic beauty can be a very powerful conveyor of difficult and complex ideas. Why is it problematic when artists, especially photographers, aestheticize scenes of environmental devastation in their work? How can beauty be an impetus that motivates us to examine ecological destruction? What examples does each author provide?
6. Both authors discuss the problems photographers face when documenting sites of environmental devastation or ones where human injustices took place. Both authors contend that “invisible landscapes” are difficult to represent and require complex tactics to address the issues they pose. What are some ways that artists can represent this type of site in their work? Please provide some examples presented by each author.
7. In William Jenkins Introduction from the New Topographics catalog, he comments about the veracity of the photograph. What does he mean by this? How can documentary photographs imply fact or a perceived reality when in actuality they can be completely false and misleading? How does the advent of manipulation of the photographic image through digital means further blur whether a photograph is fact or fiction?
8. A commonality of the photographs included in the 1975 New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape exhibit is the absent of visual or pictorial style (to the point of being completely boring) that is associated with earlier examples of landscape photography such as the work of Ansel Adams. “The pictures were stripped of any artistic frills and reduced to an essentially topographic state, conveying substantial amounts of visual information but eschewing entirely the aspects of beauty, emotion and opinion.” [Wikipedia: New Topographics] Why was it important for this group of photographers to negate stylistic conventions generally held in the representation of landscape in photography and art? What was their collective goal in doing so?
9. Briefly characterize and outline Lippard’s overview of suburbia in her essay, “The Grass on the Other Side of the Fence.”
10. In addition, please provide a list of questions for this week’s discussion.

• Michael Lailach, Land Art, Taschen, 2007. PLEASE READ: Introduction, Christo and Jeanne Claude: Wrapped Coast & Valley Curtain; Walter De Maria: The New York Earth Room & The Lighting Field; Michael Heizer: Double Negative & Effigy Tumuli; Nancy Holt: Sun Tunnels & Hydra’s Head; Dennis Oppenheim: Circle x Branded Mountain/Anthrax/Diphtheria & Whirlpool-Eye of the Storm; Robert Smithson: Nonsite, Oberhausen, Germany & Spiral Jetty; James Turrell: Roden Crater.
• Jack Flam (editor), “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey,” Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, University of California Press, 1967, pp. 68-74.
• Lucy R. Lippard, “Peripheral Visions,” essay from Land Arts of the American West, edited by Bill Gilbert and Chris Taylor, University of Texas Press, 2009. http://www.nyfa.org/nyfa_current_detail.asp?id=17&fid=1&curid=725

Discussion:

1. Outline the major works and strategies employed by each of the artists presented in Lailach’s Land Art. What are the common themes—formal or otherwise—explored by these artists and works?  What visual devices do they employ to frame their works? How is this different from traditional museum or art gallery presentations?
2. Land Art evolved out a post WWII period where abstract expressionism, Pop Art, and minimalism were the most important art movements of the time. How did these movements inform Land Art? How did the political environment and burgeoning environmental movement of the 1960s/70s contribute and influence the first generation Land Artists?
3. How did rejection of the capitalistic art market and gallery/museum complex lead to the creation of Land Art movement? Do these works rely on the same cultural/marketing systems they seem to reject? Explain?
4. Why is the artistic process important for these works? How does documentation of site play how we perceive these works and their lasting significance? Explain the concept of Robert Smithson’s Site/Non-Site.
5. Provide some examples of local/regional infrastructure or built systems that could be viewed in a similar vein to the ones presented in Smithson’s, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey.”
6. Explain the idea of entropy in Smithson’s work?
7. Michael Heizer commented that “place presumes the virtual authority of a given site, to which the work must adapt.” What does he mean by this?
8. Which of the first generation Land Arts works seem dated or failed? Do the works feel as vital and compelling today as when these earth works were originally presented? Why have our views of these works changed over time?
9. Lucy R. Lippard’s comments in Peripheral Vision that she has “gone on down the road” (referring to the 1960s Land Art artists she championed during that time) to preferring an art that was “place specific” rather than “site specific.” What does she mean by this? Provide examples.
10. In addition to the above please provide a series of questions for this week’s discussion.

Visit soundwalk.com for some interesting ways to experience a place through mobile locative audio.

• J.B. Jackson, “The Word Itself,” Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, Yale University Press, 1984, pp. 1-8.
• William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness; or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (W. W. Norton, 1995, 69-90) http://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Trouble_with_Wilderness_Main.html
• Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, Simon & Schuster, 1968, pp. xi-7.
• Lucy R. Lippard, “Out of the Picture Window,” Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, The New Press, 1997, pp. 178-192.

Graduate reading:

• Lucy R. Lippard, Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, The New Press, 1997.

Discussion:

1. Briefly characterize the doctrine of the sublime as defined by Cronon. How did the sense of wilderness as landscape come to embody the idea of the sublime? How has the definition of the sublime changed throughout time as our impression or idea of wilderness has changed with it? Site some examples.
2. Explain Cronon’s argument that wilderness is an invented cultural construct. How does religion, especially Judeo-Christian traditions inform how Americans view and define wilderness? Give some examples that Cronon provides in his essay.
3. Cronon suggests that two differing factions; the Sublime and the Frontier, transformed the American landscape and led to Western expansionism. Explain the conditions of each mindset and how each influenced the American character or identity.
4. What does Cronon mean when he states, “wilderness represents a flight from history.”
5. How does dualism in Western thought inform and affect our contemporary understanding of wilderness. How does this dualistic mindset still prevalent today, suggesting that humans are outside or opposite of nature, undermine environmentalism. How is this way of thinking detrimental to envisioning a sustainable, holistic future for our planet? Cronon suggests that it may become quite problematic for our collective future if we continue to think dualistically about nature and wilderness. Give some of the examples he provides in his essay to support this argument.
6. J.B. Jackson argues that the word landscape should be reserved to define a “concrete—three-dimensional, shared reality” rather than a word referencing abstract thoughts or our private world. He concludes in his essay The Word Itself that the new definition of landscape should be recognized as “a composition of man-made or man-modified spaces to serve as infrastructure or background for our collective existence.” How does he make a case for this definition in his essay?
7. In the last paragraph of his essay, J.B. Jackson states, “…my interest in the topic [landscape] is confined to trying to see how certain organizations of space can be identified with certain social and religious attitudes, especially here in America.” How does Jackson’s interest the study of landscape, especially the vernacular landscape relate to the arguments presented in the Cronon essay? Please give some examples.
8. Edward Abbey has a pretty radical view of wilderness and environmentalism. How does this sit with you personally? What are your personal feelings about wilderness? Do you have any personal experiences or epiphanies you would like to share with the group?
9. On page 6, Abbey states that he’d like to suppress the natural tendency humans have to personify nature and the natural world. Why is it important for him to do so? How do you feel personally about this statement?
10. In the Out of the Picture Window reading, Lippard comments how, “conventional landscape photography tends to overwhelm place with image. It is usually presented in fragments rather than in grounded sequences. Once wrenched from its context, the image, no matter how well intentioned or well researched, floats off into artland.” Why does she feel that it is important for contemporary artists dealing with a particular place or community as subject to offer multilayered vignettes place rather than singular images?
11. Lippard argues that one of the problems with classic earthworks of the 1960s/70s—such as the work of Smithson and Heizer—is that a monumental art object in the landscape derives “much of its power from distance: distance from people, from issues, and even from places. Its site-specific but not place-specific.” Why is this distancing problematic and how can this form of art evolve into something more than “artists indulging their desire for scale and monumental presence on the land?”
12. Lippard brings up the issues artists and photographers face when documenting sites of environmental devastation or ones where grave human injustices took place. She contends that these “invisible landscapes” are difficult to represent and require complex tactics to address them. What are some ways that artists can represent this type of site in their work? Please provide an example.