What Have We Made of the Landscape? Author(s): Rackstraw Downes Reviewed work(s): Source: Art Journal, Vol.

51, No. 2, Art and Ecology (Summer, 1992), pp. 16-19 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777385 . Accessed: 08/05/2012 15:45
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less real? Its foreignness-that is, its nativeness. But eggs, like beef, are for Europeansan importantsymbol of abundance, of the Good Life, and Americanshavebeen willing to turn overvast resources to the industriesthat producesuch "goods." Let me continuewith this silliness just a bit longer:as Americans become more "health conscious"they eat less beef and fewereggs. They eat morewheat. Pasta made from wheatis good. Corncannotpossibly be the staff of life, only wheat. While manypeoplenowsee the nonviability of reducing entire continents to cattle ranches, the ecological destructioncaused by the overabundance of "amberwaves of that is still too grain"-grain Europeanto be ecologically soundin the "NewWorld"-can be seen as simplya glitch in a system that is "goodness." The "Americans," the European settlers, have yet to arrivein their "NewWorld." Todo so wouldmean to actually live here, instead of living on imported "goods."That, in turn, wouldentail lookingat the victims in the "wilderness." It is also dangerous,of course; who knowswhatpoison ivy really looks like? Better to live safely in "new"Jersey, "new"York,or underthe protectionof the Britishcrown, in or "Georgia." The Americanstates "Virginia,""Carolina," are political entities. Their boundarieshave no geography (exceptrivers, in some cases). They may be seen on a map only. Withoutroad signs howmight you knowwesternTexas fromeastern New Mexico?By the governor. Whereare we? Weare in the EuropeanCity.The U.S. is a political/culturalconstruction against the Americancontinent; the U.S. is an un-Americanactivity. It promotesand enforcesits un-Americannessby "appreciation" of America. Therehas neverbeen a culturethatso lovedthe "outdoors" as does the U.S., norone thathas so insulateditselffromnature. The civilized concept of the "wilderness" as land without humansalreadysets humansapartfrom"nature." Although one must continue to eat nature, and "inhabit"a part of nature(the body), one maydo so guiltily, in expectationof a betterworldachieved throughdenial. If WaltDisneydid notexist we wouldhaveto inventhim. Themeparksare the metaphor forthe U.S. ConeyIsland, the first theme park, is an extensionof BrightonBeach, where
the old Punch-and-Judy shows brought the beach and the ocean itself into the city. Now mountains may be skied down, rapids may be rafted down as nature's roller coaster. The wilderness is thrilling. Our gear and our park rangers provide just the right amount of protection to allow bravery into the thrills-just like taking a fast drive on the open road in the Cherokee Chief. A problem for civilization, however, is that Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty holds true for any system. How beautiful when something unofficial happens. Remember when you were young and a wild animal strayed into town? It caused the same shock as would seeing someone walking naked in the city. It is nature where there should be no
SUMMER1992

nature. I expect it is no longer true, but when I was young townsstill had edges, no-man'slands, that were not yet the surroundingfarms. This was where the city's refuse was casuallydumped, so thatthe edge of townwas nota "natural" place. There lived raccoons, opossums, rats, snakes, bobcats, skunks, hobos who were in fact outlaws(not homeless street people), families of Afro-Americansand displaced Indians. All of us, shunned by the city, used the city's surplus. I so loved the dumps, where one could find the of civilizationelegantly,surrealisticallyjuxtaposed products with pieces of wood, magic rocks, bones, and wild flowers, that they have remained the metaphorby which I define myself. The city could notsee us, could notadmitourexistence, could not controlus. We used it. There is a painting by Goya of a proudand princely youngman in his castle with his large mastifflying behind him. The dog is tied with an ironchain, but he has bittenthe chain to pieces and gazes at the man unfaithfully.Do I just imagine that the dog resembles Goyahimself? We know the world and communicatewith the world Civilizabasically throughmetaphor. Languageis metaphor. tion sells the idea that its truth, its narrative,is literal and real-not metaphoric.Hence it needs to control and deny But the metaphors of visual arts are complexand metaphor. sociable, not controllable. Coyote says, "Aha, this is my naturalhabitat."

WhatHave We Made of the Landscape?

RACKSTRAW DOWNES

t is hard now to speak, with awe and confidence as Shakespearedid, of "greatcreating nature."Natureis dirtied, depleted, hemmed in, and everywhereunder siege by people. We exhibit a contemptfor the mud from which we sprung, and an astonishinganthropocentrism that of measure all we are not the things, mayyet provesuicidal; but part of them. When Turnerpainted Rain, Steam, and the IndustrialRevolution withprofundity, Speedhe portrayed as a forcetaking its place amongthe forcesof nature.By now it's a runaway force, and our effortsto contain it seem feeble and not honest:in an expandingconsumeristeconomythere movement. cannotbe a wholeheartedconservation In the 1960s the Soil AssociationJournalregrettedthat factoryfarmerswere imitatingindustry.They suggested instead that industry emulate farming; that is to say, that nothingbe producedthat could not be absorbedwithoutrisk back into the biosphere. WhenI was growingup, I learnedto lookat naturemore or less throughthe medium of English romanticpoetry, as

Rackstraw x 84% at Belfast,Maine,Seen fromthe Frozen FoodsPlant,1989, oil on canvas,363/8 inches.Courtesy Downes,TheMouthof the Passagassawaukeag Hirschl &AdlerModern,New York. 17

somethinginspirationalbut apart. Later,I started spending summersin an old Maine farmhouse.When I first arrived there, I measuredthe waterin the well; it was two feet deep, whereas I intended to stay till Labor Day. This was as immediatean encounterwith the issue of naturalresources as one could wish for. Such immediacynecessarily fosters a it contrastswiththe collaborative attitudeto the environment; of remote,abstractquality the city dweller'sfunctionaldealings with nature, mediated as they are by the municipal bureaucracy. In Maine I started painting landscapes, not of the scenic beauties of the coast or mountains,but of dairy and poultryfarmingand the woods after they had been cut offworkadaystuff. The subject was how people live on, and make a living from, the land. I read RuralRides by William Cobbett, the farmerturned political activist, who saw the landscape in terms of its economyand agricultureand from the point of view of farmersand laborers. An influx of young people soon arrivedwho wanted to live a "homemade" life and notharmthe land. Somegotas far as composting their outhouse product;most practiced orvalue, but ganic gardening-good not only forits nutritional because it leaves the soil in as good orbetterconditionthan it was to startwith: the paradigmfora sustainableagriculture. In their rejection of urbanism and industrializationthey foundthings to learn fromthe local population,whose lives preservedsometraitsof the nineteenthcentury.Fora moment or it was hardto tell whetherthe clock was runningbackward forward. One issue of the Soil AssociationJournalshowedon its cover a team of horses plowing, with the caption "The Shape of Things to Come?" One day in the 1960s I was returning by train from Philadelphiato New Yorkwith the filmmakerRudy Burckhardt. We passed through rural south Jersey and entered

industrialElizabeth, in the Cancer Corridor. "Ah, now the real landscape begins," Rudy said. I answered,"Your aesthetic and moralsenses are divorcedfromeach other." But, while we surely all love a clear-cutmoralissue, is theresuch a thing? The rurallife I liked was not in fact so disentangled fromurbanismand industrialization; in "environmentalism" one noticed hypocrisy and Greener-than-Thouism; the images I worked with were mostly rural, but I spent three fourthsof the yearin the city, whose differentvalues I was not about to give up. I looked, and did notthink of things as goodorbad, but as present. Garbage and sewage and industrialeffluent are characteristics of a landscapewe all help to make. Structures in the New are to U.S. industrial rusting JerseyMeadowlands as tombs the and of are to the the might aqueducts Campagna Romanempire. Abandonedland and trashscapesmaybe the wildest spots we have left, since wild land is all protected. I see life as mostlypolyvalent,and I am most interested in art when it's the same way. I dislike the politicizationof issues; it makes themthinner,shriller,polarized, and finally reduces them to the question, "Whose Side Are You On?" This is a good call to action, but notto contemplation. WhenI workI ask, "What,in termsof the specific situation,HaveWe Madeof the Landscape?What Is Here?"Forme a site is to exploreand to learn from; my initial attitudeto it is one of brief interest. This is replaced, I hope, by a growingfeeling for its subtleties, complexities, contradictions,and incongruities. Paintthe thing, modifiedonly by those feelings that you cannot help or are not aware of. To be 100 percent receptive and observantit is necessary to be agnostic.

OVER

LEAF :

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