Module Information

This core module provides a broad survey of the development of Western landscape art from its origins to the present day. It also introduces students to ways of thinking and writing about art and visual culture.

A series of lectures examines artistic modes and movements in a variety of media (painting, photography, cartography and land art) and explores them in their historical contexts. The lectures are arranged chronologically so as to chart changing attitudes and approaches to land, nature and the environment in art practice and theory.

The lectures are followed up by seminars that are designed not only to debate points raised in the lectures but also to build practical skills essential to all art history modules and thus to prepare students for their undergraduate coursework. Such skills include: observation and description, definition and classification, expanding an active and academically sound vocabulary, interpretation, contextualization and argumentation, along with researching, quoting and paraphrasing and the documentation of sources.

1. Lecture 1—Origins and Meanings: Landscape in Western Visual Culture
2. Follow-up seminar 1—Definition: Topics and Terminology

3. Lecture 2—Nature and Culture: Seventeenth-century Dutch Townscapes and Cartography
4. Follow-up seminar 2—Classification: The Canon and the Hierarchy of Genres

5. Lecture 3—Soil and Spirit: Nineteenth-century German, British and US American Landscape Painting
6. Follow-up seminar 3—Contextualisation: Art, Politics and National Identity

7. Lecture 4—Illusionism and Abstraction: Cubist Landscapes, Futurist Cityscapes and Surrealist Dreamscapes
8. Follow-up seminar 4—Research: Twentieth-century Styles and Movements

9. Lecture 5—Habitat and Environment: Contemporary Responses to Nature
10. Follow-up seminar 5—Theory: Aesthetics, Activism and Reception