Edited by Steve Bamlett, Sunday, 24 June 2018, 19:23
A844 - Preparatory Reading
Book:
Schama, S. (2004) Landscape and
Memory London, Harper Perrenial
How does it reflect on A843 themes?
In a book so wide, it reflects on all, much more than its title
suggests – this is about so much more than the meaning of ‘landscape’
(defined etymologically 10) in painting, sculpture, architecture and land
planning (urban, rural or suburban). To me it is best read as a book about
myths and mythology (575) that define, delimit and understand the nature of ‘space’
and ‘spaces’ as concepts, phenomena (in art and experience) and life (gardens
and homes widely understood such that it includes Thoreau’s Walden).
Pressed, I’d name two: the nature of ‘place’ as an encultured space
(geography and institutions), and iconography.
1. Starting
with iconography, for me it is important that no art historian is given more
total credence as a teller of explanatory stories than any other kind of sage.
I was fascinated by the treatment of Warburg, for instance, since it locates
his thought biographically – in his experience of mental ill-health- as well
as socially and historically - and yet uses it purposefully and well (17f.
210). The same goes for others from other disciplines – Fraser (208f.), Schlegel,
236 and perhaps less sympathetically Jung (209 – I also find it difficult to
explain away the latter’s collaboration with the Nazis and his undoubted anti-Semitism).
Iconography in Schama cannot be explained, as it is so often, solely according to Neo-Platonic
models and their medieval inheritors (these are after all often iconologies used
to justify absolutism and/or elitism – the superior intellection and
understanding of an initiated person, class or clerisy (300) ). Meanings
shift with history and the reflection of power dynamics in ideas and meanings
– this includes the Neo-Platonists but not exclusively as in some uses of
iconology to determine final and authoritative meanings of works of art.
2. There
is too much to say about places as enculturated spaces (spaces designed into
the ideas and terminologies of privileged or sacral spaces) – it runs
throughout the book whether in explicating Kew Gardens, Versailles, a Bernini
fountain (302c.), the ’origin’ of architecture in the Gothic (228ff) or other
‘sacral space’ (7ff.) where sacral is understood in the widest sense as a
place imbued with meaning and the sources of emotive attachment – forests,
rivers or mountains, or groves of sequoia (189).
How do I predict that it might foreshadow A844 themes?
I can’t see it as having a role as a source of ‘theory’ as such since
Schama is so pragmatic in his interpretative methodologies. The connection of
the idea of ‘sacral space’ to culturally shaped and re-shaped ‘memory’ (of
persons or nations) will be invaluable in Block 1 & 2. However, it might
help in understanding how issues of conservation and heritage are understood
and critiqued (Block 1), as well as the nature of myths of national origin or
teleology. It will very much allow for work on how images and ‘narratives’
intersect and interact, whether in the analysis of Anselm Kiefer, Turner (359ff,
461) or suburban spatial planning (c. 573). Of course the key role will be in
Block 3 together with Benedict Anderson & Mumford – but here on ‘landscape
design’
What are the books key themes and narratives?
It claims its meaning is about the ways in which the boundaries of
internal cognition and external shaped and to-be-shaped forms interact (574)
but I haven’t got my head round that yet.
For me, it will be useful as a book about the importance of ‘awareness-of-mythologies’
as a means of understanding ideas that animate form, content and their
interaction in art or place-making / space-shaping, whether on canvas or in other
worlds where tangible phenomena matter (institutions, architecture, land interventions
and so on).
The key metaphors are:
1. Appropriations
of wood and trees in spatial definitions, and conceptions of form and design –
the idea of roots and links even perhaps (working on that). The acculturation
of wildness and wildernesses in gardens, landscapes, painting etc.
2. Appropriation
of fluid metamorphoses between water, blood, creation and destruction (257ff)
into mythologies of ‘circulation’ (258) in, for instance, church liturgy
(baptism 264), searching origins (275) and fluid connections (275, 338 –
Baroque). As a model of personal development & historical progression –
flow 365, 359-362 – wonderful on Turner.
3. The
importance of heights, depths (profundity in culture 450) and the idea of the
sublime before (Salvator Rosa 453) and after Burke. Appropriation of the idea
of chasms to understand the relationship between effects of visual arts and psychology
– 424, Leonardo, 474ff Cozens, 508
Ruskin)
How does the book relate to the analysis of art and architecture?
Schama does not separate art from other expressions and articulations
of the human story and so this may here be an empty question. Of course, it
is such a huge book it has ideas applicable to individual artists or groups
of artists or motifs in art (Arminius, Hannibal). For me it was most useful
in understanding broad differentiations of art between cultures (Chinese
mountain painting & space 408, pagan v. Christian 215), the changing
perception of landscape through mythologies even in one artist – Sandby drawing
Rannoch moor c. 467. The Catholic nature of the understanding of artist is a
delight so that acknowledge ‘masters’
are mixed with ones less acknowledge – merely because the tell a story
about a motif differently (Cozens again – whom I want to know more about
474-7)
Any other points!
This book is very wide in its scope and perhaps neither consistently
pursues one thesis nor sustains the full coherence outlined at its conclusion
(574,577). There are sections it is possible to pass-over quickly that don’t
feel totally ‘necessary’ (at least for the moment of reading) and that makes
it feel like a looser rag-bag than a sustained intellectual achievement (such
as you feel in Mumford). Nevertheless with that there are parts that sweep
you along both in terms of their narrative and their intellectual
fruitfulness and promise. For me this illustrates what I believe to be Schama’s
characteristic belief in history as a set of human stories in which we are
shaped and which we shape that no one grand theory will ever e4xplain
satisfactorily, whether the explanation be Neo-Platonic (272, 274-8, 300) , Hebraic
or Christian redemptive, or Marxist (260f). As I see it, the most stimulating
discussion is in the first section (on Forests) where its true intellectual
heart lies – in its opposition to myths that set out to be all-explaining, whether
from the perspective of religion, ‘science’ (as contemporaneously understood
at different points in history), folklore or world-theory and that covers in
particular ‘myths of origin’ or SOURCE (81, 85, 267, 275, 288) as well as any
allied teleological theories. All
theories are welcome and additive to the narratives that form history in
Schama (whether at the level of myth, biography or national destiny – most frighteningly
in Hitler’s ‘vengeance’ against the Jews).
PS. I understand why Schama is sometimes called perverse. He allows
camp humour to overcome him into sharing anti-gay jokes (as always – should go
down well on this course – about Walpole), a Whig who liked to have, ‘a
silk-eared sycophantic “Tory” in his lap.’ 448 (Tory was Walpole’s little
dog). Feminine men always get the slap!
A844 Preparatory Reading Notes - Schama 'Landscape & Memory'
A844 - Preparatory Reading
Book:
Schama, S. (2004) Landscape and Memory London, Harper Perrenial
How does it reflect on A843 themes?
In a book so wide, it reflects on all, much more than its title suggests – this is about so much more than the meaning of ‘landscape’ (defined etymologically 10) in painting, sculpture, architecture and land planning (urban, rural or suburban). To me it is best read as a book about myths and mythology (575) that define, delimit and understand the nature of ‘space’ and ‘spaces’ as concepts, phenomena (in art and experience) and life (gardens and homes widely understood such that it includes Thoreau’s Walden).
Pressed, I’d name two: the nature of ‘place’ as an encultured space (geography and institutions), and iconography.
1. Starting with iconography, for me it is important that no art historian is given more total credence as a teller of explanatory stories than any other kind of sage. I was fascinated by the treatment of Warburg, for instance, since it locates his thought biographically – in his experience of mental ill-health- as well as socially and historically - and yet uses it purposefully and well (17f. 210). The same goes for others from other disciplines – Fraser (208f.), Schlegel, 236 and perhaps less sympathetically Jung (209 – I also find it difficult to explain away the latter’s collaboration with the Nazis and his undoubted anti-Semitism). Iconography in Schama cannot be explained, as it is so often, solely according to Neo-Platonic models and their medieval inheritors (these are after all often iconologies used to justify absolutism and/or elitism – the superior intellection and understanding of an initiated person, class or clerisy (300) ). Meanings shift with history and the reflection of power dynamics in ideas and meanings – this includes the Neo-Platonists but not exclusively as in some uses of iconology to determine final and authoritative meanings of works of art.
2. There is too much to say about places as enculturated spaces (spaces designed into the ideas and terminologies of privileged or sacral spaces) – it runs throughout the book whether in explicating Kew Gardens, Versailles, a Bernini fountain (302c.), the ’origin’ of architecture in the Gothic (228ff) or other ‘sacral space’ (7ff.) where sacral is understood in the widest sense as a place imbued with meaning and the sources of emotive attachment – forests, rivers or mountains, or groves of sequoia (189).
How do I predict that it might foreshadow A844 themes?
I can’t see it as having a role as a source of ‘theory’ as such since Schama is so pragmatic in his interpretative methodologies. The connection of the idea of ‘sacral space’ to culturally shaped and re-shaped ‘memory’ (of persons or nations) will be invaluable in Block 1 & 2. However, it might help in understanding how issues of conservation and heritage are understood and critiqued (Block 1), as well as the nature of myths of national origin or teleology. It will very much allow for work on how images and ‘narratives’ intersect and interact, whether in the analysis of Anselm Kiefer, Turner (359ff, 461) or suburban spatial planning (c. 573). Of course the key role will be in Block 3 together with Benedict Anderson & Mumford – but here on ‘landscape design’
What are the books key themes and narratives?
It claims its meaning is about the ways in which the boundaries of internal cognition and external shaped and to-be-shaped forms interact (574) but I haven’t got my head round that yet.
For me, it will be useful as a book about the importance of ‘awareness-of-mythologies’ as a means of understanding ideas that animate form, content and their interaction in art or place-making / space-shaping, whether on canvas or in other worlds where tangible phenomena matter (institutions, architecture, land interventions and so on).
The key metaphors are:
1. Appropriations of wood and trees in spatial definitions, and conceptions of form and design – the idea of roots and links even perhaps (working on that). The acculturation of wildness and wildernesses in gardens, landscapes, painting etc.
2. Appropriation of fluid metamorphoses between water, blood, creation and destruction (257ff) into mythologies of ‘circulation’ (258) in, for instance, church liturgy (baptism 264), searching origins (275) and fluid connections (275, 338 – Baroque). As a model of personal development & historical progression – flow 365, 359-362 – wonderful on Turner.
3. The importance of heights, depths (profundity in culture 450) and the idea of the sublime before (Salvator Rosa 453) and after Burke. Appropriation of the idea of chasms to understand the relationship between effects of visual arts and psychology – 424, Leonardo, 474ff Cozens, 508 Ruskin)
How does the book relate to the analysis of art and architecture?
Schama does not separate art from other expressions and articulations of the human story and so this may here be an empty question. Of course, it is such a huge book it has ideas applicable to individual artists or groups of artists or motifs in art (Arminius, Hannibal). For me it was most useful in understanding broad differentiations of art between cultures (Chinese mountain painting & space 408, pagan v. Christian 215), the changing perception of landscape through mythologies even in one artist – Sandby drawing Rannoch moor c. 467. The Catholic nature of the understanding of artist is a delight so that acknowledge ‘masters’ are mixed with ones less acknowledge – merely because the tell a story about a motif differently (Cozens again – whom I want to know more about 474-7)
Any other points!
This book is very wide in its scope and perhaps neither consistently pursues one thesis nor sustains the full coherence outlined at its conclusion (574,577). There are sections it is possible to pass-over quickly that don’t feel totally ‘necessary’ (at least for the moment of reading) and that makes it feel like a looser rag-bag than a sustained intellectual achievement (such as you feel in Mumford). Nevertheless with that there are parts that sweep you along both in terms of their narrative and their intellectual fruitfulness and promise. For me this illustrates what I believe to be Schama’s characteristic belief in history as a set of human stories in which we are shaped and which we shape that no one grand theory will ever e4xplain satisfactorily, whether the explanation be Neo-Platonic (272, 274-8, 300) , Hebraic or Christian redemptive, or Marxist (260f). As I see it, the most stimulating discussion is in the first section (on Forests) where its true intellectual heart lies – in its opposition to myths that set out to be all-explaining, whether from the perspective of religion, ‘science’ (as contemporaneously understood at different points in history), folklore or world-theory and that covers in particular ‘myths of origin’ or SOURCE (81, 85, 267, 275, 288) as well as any allied teleological theories. All theories are welcome and additive to the narratives that form history in Schama (whether at the level of myth, biography or national destiny – most frighteningly in Hitler’s ‘vengeance’ against the Jews).
PS. I understand why Schama is sometimes called perverse. He allows camp humour to overcome him into sharing anti-gay jokes (as always – should go down well on this course – about Walpole), a Whig who liked to have, ‘a silk-eared sycophantic “Tory” in his lap.’ 448 (Tory was Walpole’s little dog). Feminine men always get the slap!
Benedict Anderson Imagined Communities (click to see in new window)
Lewis Mumford The City in History (click to see in new window)
Conway & Roenisch Understanding Architecture (click to see in new window)
Elkins & Naef (Eds.) What is an Image? (click to see in new window)
Moxey, K. (2013) Visual Time: The Image in History (click to see in new window)
Aynsley & Grant (Eds.) Imagined Interiors (click to see in new window)Boswell & Evans (eds.) Representing the Nation (click to see in new window)