The Languages of Landscape - Review

University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Pres 1997 303 pp; 13 color ills., 80 b/w $6500

Almost at the actual end of his book upon The Languages of Landscape, Mark Roskill rehearses the passage from John Ruskin's new Painters vol. 4 that discusses JMW Turner's 1843 watercolor The Pass of Faido (Pierpont Morgan Library, novel York). Ruskin's dilemma was individual that faces all commentators upon landscape painting: the relation of the image to its origins in the physical place, or the primacy of subdue matter (as perhaps in portraiture) above "matters of invention dependent on the artist" (Ernest Govett, cited p 194)

In Ruskin's case, this dilemma was-exacerbated by means of his long-standing determination to evince that Turner's greatness as a landscape painter be pendented on his accuracy in representing the natural world. Here, in the Faido, Ruskin abruptly realized that the master had significantly altered the facts of the scene; when Ruskin compared a graphic transcription of what lay before him (a "topographical outline") with his hold line drawing after Turner's original research the latter's work seemed considerably remov from the display itself. Ruskin brought himself to terminate that Turner's watercolor was "an arrangement of remembrances" not just of that individual spot but of the whole journey that the artist had undertaken to reach it.

Roskill uses Ruskin's passage to announce (albeit somewhat belatedly in The Languages of Landscape) the character of memory in landscape art. on the contrary crucial as is that topic, it is not the single issue addressed by Ruskin's chapter upon "Turnerian Topography." It alerts us also to the part of the viewer as oppos to that of the artist, privileged in Ruskin's case by means of his personal relationship and discussions with Turner; to the responsibility of an artist vis-a-vis his make subordinate matter on a variety of enumerates - but, especially, as with portraiture, in regard to accuracy or recognizability; to the appeal and significance of land of whatever sort - in this case, wild alpine terrain - for the couple the artist and his possible clients and viewers (that is: for what cause [i]or[/i] reason paint land at all?); above all, what makes land into landscape?(1) This last issue is fundamental, since, as Roskill explains in the conclusion, The Languages of Landscape has argued "from section to section and across time, that landscape art is to be understood as a means of transmitting a certain view or awareness of the natural world" (p 232)

We are faced, then, with central questions about landscape painting. As Roskill stations out the scheme of his inquiry - one as well as the other in the introduction (p. 8) and again in rather different bourns in the conclusion (p. 228) - this involves a first chapter in which representations of outdoor settings are said to "provide, or support, an equivalence to the unfolding of stories"; then a chapter discusses the character of the viewer and the access he or she has to the imagery; the third chapter explores connections between landscape art and "issues of social and political twinkling in which nature and agriculture interact" (p. 8); chapter 4 treats ways in which artistic practice, "the force of social commentary and the worship of spectacle expand upon the meaning of being a landscape artist" (p 8); a fifth chapter addresses "the new loss of faith in the aim of an integrative vision" (p 8); while the conclusion turn backs to the "hypostatized viewer" (p 8)

It is a rich and varied agenda, none of it to be gainsaid, and all of it is of exceptional interest. At almost each point Roskill has useful things to run over us, some unusual examples of landscape art to cull for analysis, or some processs of proceeding that are challenging. However, it must be noted that his argumentation is repeatedly very murky, leaving the impression that perhaps he has rushed upon without working out his ideas sufficiently for himself or that the volume certainly has not been well edited, as the following representative example shows:

This is not to say, then, that similar a landscape of Fragonard [Blindman's broad and full in the National Gallery] courted female viewers, from one side the way in which it exhibits what is taken here as being a powerfully feminine side to his art; on the other hand that nature, in the intimacy and playfulness of the exhibition depicted, defines itself here in opposition to the receptive and bountiful nature that is mastered by means of masculine force, to the point of being implicitly below the control or dominance of the male gaze. In particular, the faculty of perception of a specific time and of a governing viewpoint is displaced by means of the role given to memory; if there is an invitation here to penetrate the landscape, it is not a landscape altered to make it comply with a dream of possession, on the contrary one that is appropriate in its scenic resonances to an idealized intimacy and domesticity. In these ways, in contrast to more constrained dependencies upon an interior, the "feminine" qualifies of Fragonard's park setting take upon a seemingly "natural" signification. (p 35)

It is not that there is nothing useful there; on the other hand readers are disadvantaged who wish to tread in the steps of Roskill's arguments, relate them to paintings (this single is illustrated in both color and black-and-white), and diocese them as having a character to play in the larger intellectual manner of making of the book.