Character in Landscape:- Seeing in Detail
Continued from last Message:-
" The search for character of place invites the sightseer to look beneath a landscape's broad outline to study the particular aspects of scenery. Gordon Cullen calls this process seeing in detail. He believes that that the eye must be trained to this kind of subtle seeing because it does not develop without deliberate effort." (from Jakle, op.cit. pp.80)
Within the context of landscape appreciation, I'd venture to say that the process of appreciating entails largely the search for character in a given landscape, this in turn, entails the process of seeing in detail which, to be effective, requires "a trained eye". This requirement is common to both works of (visual) art and landscapes. As Ian Whyte aptly writes:
While scenery is considered to be something to which everyone can react aesthetically, landscape is something to be examined with a trained eye. . "However and whenever acquired, seeing in detail vastly enhances landscape experience as the sightseer, as observer, comes to savor the nuances of place distinctiveness" (Jakle, op.cit. pp.81)
While contemplating a landscape we usually take-in the scene as a whole while, with variable frequency, focusing in particular regions or slabs within our field of vision. Take for instance the landscape depicted below:
Camille Pissarro, Rye Fields
Oil on Canvas,1877, (Private Collection)
Some details may catch our attention for longer times than others. If the eye lingers exclusively on some particular details ( more on them later on ) we risk not experiencing the landscape as a whole. On the other hand, not paying attention on details might lead to visualizing a somewhat lifeless, inanimate scene. It requires the percipience of a trained eye to attain the proper balance of attention paid to whole and details and it requires cognitive skills to ascertain the relations between particular features and of given features with the scene( composition?) as a whole. As Jakle notes "seeing in detail is a search for mutual dependence between part and whole".
To be continued…
Character in Landscape: Seeing in detail II
Continued from last Post:
Here are some details, slabs, of the Pontoise landscape on which our vision may linger for a while; and may Pissarro (ז"ל ) forgive me for taking so many liberties with his painting:
The distant village on the horizon line, the group of heavy, multicolored, clouds on the far right signaling the approaching storm, a section of the stone fence demarcating differently owned plots… these are just a few of an endless number of details that may "catch our eye" at certain moments.
Are some details more important than others? Certainly! Only that their 'ranking' will vary from one observer to the next one; each of the various rankings being equally correct, unless of course we were to assume the role of arbiters or judges in 'the right way of perceiving a landscape'. This contributes largely to the situation that several persons, placed at the same 'observation point' that Pissarro chose, at the same moment in time, might form different visual images of the same terrain.
Here lies as well an important difference with the appreciation of designed landscapes, be them urban landscapes or garden parks. In them, certain elements or details may have been introduced so as to catch our attention or produce a certain effect. No one placed the village with the intention that it will appear perched, suspended between earth and sky; neither were the stone fences built so as to accentuate the impression of fields gently sloping towards the valley's nadir or incite a certain rhythm. A certain measure of consensus about the fitness of given details may be arrived at within the public of designed landscapes; not such consensus may be achieved regarding the (unpremeditated) landscapes which are our main concern.
To be continued...