617. A History of Monumental Landscapes in European and American Art

For much of Western art history, landscape was regarded as a “lesser” genre, ranked below history painting, portraiture, and religious subjects. Yet over time, artists have transformed the depiction of nature into one of the most ambitious and powerful forms of artistic expression. This two-day lecture series traces that remarkable evolution, from the idealized pastoral scenes of seventeenth-century Europe to the sublime visions of the Romantic era and the sweeping panoramas of the American frontier. Through works by Claude Lorrain, J. M. W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich, Thomas Cole, and Albert Bierstadt, participants will explore how landscape painting grew in scale, prestige, and cultural significance, becoming a vehicle for ideas about nationhood, spirituality, exploration, and humanity’s relationship to the natural world. The series will also incorporate contemporary reinterpretations of the monumental landscape by artists such as Anselm Kiefer and Andreas Gursky, whose works demonstrate how artists continue to use landscape to grapple with history, memory, globalization, and environmental change. From a once-marginal genre to a commanding artistic tradition, the landscape emerges as one of the most enduring subjects in the history of art.