This course will explore the evolving significance of landscape representation within American culture from the 1820s to the present. This is a looking as well as reading- and writing-intensive course. During class we will examine various types of landscapes and discuss how the natural world has been comprehended--as frontier, settlement, environment, and view--as inexhaustible resource or fragile ecosystem--by such artists and designers as Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frederick Law Olmsted, William Henry Jackson, Ansel Adams, Robert Smithson, and Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison. |