Definitions

Alexander Keirinx; 1600-1652: Richmond, Yorkshire

When we ask why the term 'landscape' has become so beguiling we have to concede that the terms 'place' and 'environment' cannot be endowed with the necessary richness that humanity demands of its surroundings. A measure of this mental richness is that landscape as an area for academic study has treated scenery from two standpoints: as visual images, e.g. Landschaftsbild, and as 3-dimensional space. As practical methods of landscape evaluation, psychological approaches were introduced in the first stage, followed by socio-economic approaches. The former aimed to explore values of landscapes by translating visual perception into physical quantities while the latter aimed to explore the relation between physical characteristics of landscapes with scales of values recognized by human beings.The problem in using 'landscape' to encompass a multidisciplinary mindmap is that the term originated in the 17th century to classify a new kind of painting representing an expanse of scenery that can be seen in a single view. It was then applied to other vastly different situations:

the branch of art dealing with the representation of natural scenery.
the aspect of the land characteristic of a particular region: '...a bleak New England winter landscape'.
grounds that have been landscaped: '...liked the house especially for its landscape'.
an extensive mental view; an interior prospect: "They occupy the whole landscape of my thought" (James Thurber).
the consideration of heterogeneous spatial units as an entity without disintegrating them into smaller constituents: 'scientific'

More definitions....

Hendrick Dankerts; 1625-90: View of Falmout

Perhaps some of the difficulties in definition arise because landscapes are treated as objects whereas they are really snapshots in time of local socioeconomic processes, and as such are provisional products of culture. Furthermore, each landscape is a construct of the imagination of an individual who decodes the view by identifying certain cultural elements and provides an appropriate textual system to incorporate the scene into the viwer's personal body of knowledge. In a similar way, an artist creates a landscape picture by reversing this process of creativity.

John Piper (1977) Shadwell Park. Screen print

The above print is one of a portfolio of 8 screen prints sometimes known as Victorian Dream Palaces and other buildings in landscape.

John Piper the artist says: An American journalist visiting an English country hoiuse in the middle of the nineteenth century wrote:

"With the whold visible horizon fenced in for the enjoyment of a household of which I was a temporary portion, and no enemy, except time and the gout, I felt as if I had been spirited into some castle of felicity and had not come by the royal state coach at all".

These 'castles of felicity' or 'dream palaces' , whether they were inhabited by Fairy Princes or Princesses presiding with benevolence over the neighbouirhood or by Wicked Ogres produced by the Industrial Revolution, reached the peak period of their construction in the 1870's. The peak period of their destruction is probably the 1970's, and this destruction was documented in a big exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum a couple of years ago. Those that I have visited and drawn still exist.

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