Identity, Violence, and the Landscape
In the exhibit, Material and Imagined Worlds: Landscapes from the Collection of Davidson College, curator Sarah Willoughby steers the audience through a historical progression of landscape art, starting with the early pioneers of romantic landscape at the Barbizon and Boston schools and continuing into more contemporary takes on the style. Willoughby presents landscapes, both real and imagined, as constructions of the artist– raising questions of how pieces reflect identity, take on political issues and violence, and make statements about who gets to belong and where. Willoughby acknowledges the universalizing nature of landscape– all people exist in many– while asking the audience to consider how the construction of an imagined landscape can capture identity, compel reflection, and call others to action.
The exhibit begins with a collection of early landscapes from the Barbizon school of France. Barbizon painters like Théodore Rousseau, Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Pena, Henri-Joseph Harpignies, and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot worshipped the natural landscape of France, painting outdoors, or en plain air. Their paintings, like Corot’s Un Chemin Montant, depict a romantic and idealized version of the French countryside, often without the presence of human figures. As American artists, especially from the Boston School, were inspired by the Barbizon artists, they turned away from the en plain air technique and towards more abstract depictions of landscape which allowed for the expression of identity and political statements. Willoughby highlights the contemporary work of Kay Walkingstick, an American artist and citizen of the Cherokee nation. Her work, Positive Field, depicts an abstract representation of her ancestral lands and recalls the violence of white American intrusion and violence toward her land and people. Walkingstick constructed Positive Field by applying thick layers of paint with her hands, then slashing through the layers to produce marks reminiscent of gashes in the piece. In Translatio Imperii: Afghanistan, Liên Trương utilizes the romantic techniques of the Barbizon and Boston schools in a depiction of a tranquil Afghan countryside. Yet, the depiction is surrounded by and interrupted with a black border. This creates a lashed, wounded picture of a beautiful landscape ravaged by war and violence– a response to Western imperialism after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
From early Barbizon landscapes depicting the French countryside to more contemporary takes, Willoughby’s exhibit showcases the power of landscape, even when devoid of human figures, as a medium to express identity and make political statements. I enjoyed the opportunity to consider landscapes in this light, having had little exposure to or appreciation for the significance of landscape art. Thinking of the power of landscape, I was reminded of Robert Cover’s discussion of world-building through legal interpretation in “Violence in the Word.” The law is constructed from the imaginative world of those with the power to write it as much as a piece of artwork is by the artist. The law is also digested by the general populace as art is by the audience. When Cover famously states that “legal interpretation takes place in a field of pain and death,” he points to the inherent violence of the law’s power to take freedom, property, or even life away from another person (1601). An actor’s interpretation and application of the law has the power to commit extraordinary violence, while at the same time retaining a systemic quality which strips blame from individuals complicit in the carrying out of such violence. Landscape art, in its depiction of land, serves as the perfect medium to interrogate violence directed toward the land– such as in the case of Walkingstick and Trương. Artists build worlds of their own to critique the violence of worlds created through law. The power of world-building expands toward my theme of “archive,” as archives themselves take up the same power of world-building to those who engage with them by constructing and storing narratives which inform the world-building of individuals. The power of world-building is in the hands of artists, the word of the law, and the physical or proverbial space of the archive.
Bibliography
Cover, Robert M. “Violence and the Word.” Yale Law Journal, vol. 95, 1986, pp. 1601–29.
Material and Imaginative Worlds. 13 Feb. – 13 Mar. 2025, Van Every/Smith Galleries, Davidson College.
