CADI blog 2012: Landscape and the Sublime

Monolake 2, California (1999) Richard misrach

1. Define the Enlightenment, including its context (time and place).

The Enlightenment was taking place during the 18th century yet the true start and end point is unknown it was a gradual happening Yet it still played a major role in the visual community, Centred mostly in France but spread through the western cultures. The idea of the Enlightenment was moving on from Religious ideals and starting to understand a more scientific understanding based on human beliefs rather than the sense of belief by the authority i.e. the church. It was when reason was the ultimate truth and experience was the evidence for it. It was the idea of progress into bigger understandings of the things we simply based ‘because it was god’s will’ too. The enlightenment may have ended in the late 20th century called the “Post-Enlightenment” but todays thought, ideas and opinions have been based around this movement. Without this movement we would be still stuck in the idealism of god, whereas the Enlightenment has given us the freedom to explore in both and even more without it being deemed blasphemy against god and his will.

2. Define the concept of the Sublime.

The Sublime in art is something that provokes many emotions and feelings, the overwhelming idea of this ‘thing’ being in front of us right now. It’s hat feeling of being in awe or even terrified of what is in front of you whether it be a great landscape or an oversized building. It is usually something of an epic scale in comparison to the other subject/s which causes this reaction. It allowed the sense of experience to provoke the imagination into dangerous scenarios without having to really experience it.

3. Explain how the concept of the Sublime came out of Enlightenment thought.

The Enlightenment had moved through and continued with the idea of progress. The progress of te importance of the “Hierarchy” of the painting world. The ever growing interest in the back dropped landscapes which were frowned upon previously had come about, because of this “Romantic” idea of how the attention to the detail of the landscape can emphasise largely on the subject, especially in the playful mythological paintings where being immersed in the habitat made them seem more real and you experience their being. With the appreciation of the landscape growing, the landscape became more surreal more open and wide, became never ending to create this sense of illusion for us the viewers, the development of romanticising a subject had moved and the detail onto the landscape was now the main idea. The over powering infinite, enormity or obscurity of the painting was to send the spectators into imagination and relieve certain tensions , it began to undermine the Enlightenment idea of control, knowledge and being able to reason with the world.

4. Discuss the subject matter, and aesthetic (look) of Misrach's work to identify the Sublime in his work. Include some quotes from art critics and other writers who have written about his work.

“Richard Misrach is among the most influential, prolific, and internationally recognized photographers working today. Best known for his epic ongoing project, Desert Cantos--an extensive and unique photographic exploration of place--Misrach consistently addresses political and social issues through the adaptation of different photographic strategies, even as he expands notions of traditional landscape practice, and builds a complex and poignant document of American culture. His subjects have included manmade floods and fires, military bombing ranges, mass graves of dead animals, sublime night skies, and details of paintings housed in the museums of the Southwest. In one recent series, On the Beach--which was inspired by Nevil Shute's postapocalyptic novel of the 1950s--Misrach's color photographs deal with the human figure seen at a distance on an unspecified beach or in the water, observed from an unsettling and difficult-to-identify point of view located high above. Misrach's newest publication, Chronologies is a compelling study of the photographer's process over the past 30 years. Stripped of their original context, the photographs--presented in chronological order--illuminate how the photographer thinks and works. Through fits and starts, reiterations and detours, the work evolves and matures, weaving in and out of the series for which Misrach has become known. Side-by-side, classic images and never-before-seen pictures flesh out the photographer's logic and complicate it at the same time. Ultimately, Chronologies is about time: The span of thirty years, the importance of time in each photograph, the chronology of a life within its time, and the book itself as a timepiece. [Misrach] offers a totally convincing sense of place--the Mohave, the California inlands, the Nevada deserts, over which he has roamed repeatedly. His moment of perception is always the present, gritted in by sand ochres and limned by sage green, mauve, and blond hues often emerging into an exquisite bleached depth, though sometimes reddened by dusk or fires. Misrach lives such moments to their sensory brim without standing on any ceremony. He gives us the feeling that what happens out there in the nominal wild happens for him and to him quite in advance of being filtered through any memory of art.[1] “

His works deal with the three ideas of The Sublime; enormity, obscurity and infinity. By using these vast and some notably recognisable areas we know how large and broad the subjects are. We can obviously see the grand scale of the subjects and the overwhelming feeling they create He largely emphasise the landscape and he puts many things into perspective whether it be scale or importance.

Pyrimad lake (at night)(2004) Richard misrach

5. Add 2 new images of his work to your blog.

Richard Misrach: Untitled, 2007, pigment print on Dibond, 59 by 787⁄8 inches; at PaceWildenstein

Outdoor Dining, Richard Misrach

6. Describe how does Misrach's photography makes you feel. How does it appeal to your imagination?

I find his work amazing, it’s capturing, and it really draws me in. It gives me the sense of adventure it gives me the sense of release as well; my imagination runs wild with all the physical and spiritual ideas. In a physical sense, it’s as if I can feel the snow, or the cold crisp breeze while silently watching the world evolve with me just watching and in the spiritual sense that it is like a release of emotions, takes away or even brings on fear to the over powering notion of the subjects, how it puts us into perspective on how little and insignificant we are compared to nature on its grand scale and how we can easily be drowned out but such things really does make you re-evaluate a situation and wonder if it really is as bad as you think.

7. Identify some other artists or designers that work with ideas around the Sublime, from the Enlightenment era as well as contemporary artists.