Landscape Variations: Landscape Archeology in Artistic Creation

Abstract

This article is a review of landscape studies and their relationship with the plastic arts. For this reason, a brief historical account is made of the ways in which the landscape has been understood in this field; as a result, archaeological tools will be used in the sense given to this term by Michel Foucault. Having as a starting point the studies of different authors such as Kenneth Clark, Jean-Marc Besse, Nicolás Gómez, and Adolfo León Grisales, it is possible to contrast their different classifications and propose four variations: similarity landscapes referring to symbolic images of natural elements of Antiquity; the landscapes in the distance that, thanks to the developments of the modern perspective, refer to images where large extensions are represented on the horizon; the landscapes of sensations where the romantic image uses the impressions of the artist and his expressive needs; and, finally, the landscapes of the meetings where we can find proposals by contemporary artists who stop thinking of the landscape as an object and understand it as a complex field of relationships where they are found. Subsequently, there is a discussion about the conclusions that scholars such as Javier Maderuelo and Alain Roger have drawn from history and the “origin” of the concept of landscape in the West, which indicates the urgency of questioning, even for a brief instant, the statements that associate the landscape with contemplation, the anthropocentric gaze and the aestheticization of nature.