Sites Unseen: Landscape and Vision 9780822973201, 0822973200

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Part I: Landscape In Sight
1. Landscape and Vision // Dianne Harris and D. Fairchild Ruggles
Part II: Charting Vision
2. Landscape and Invisibility: Gilo's Wall and Christo's Gates // W. J. T. Mitchell
3. No State of Grace: Violence in the Garden // Martin Jay
4. Moving the Eye // Marc Treib
5. Landscape and Global Vision // Denis Cosgrove
Part III: Envisioning Place
6. Ancient Rome through the Veil of Sight // Diane Favro
7. Making Vision Manifest: Frame, Screen, and View in Islamic Culture // D. Fairchild Ruggles
8. Landscapes within Buildings in Late Eighteenth-Century France // David L. Hays
9. Sites of Power and the Power of Sight: Vision in the California Mission Landscapes // Elizabeth Kryder-Reid
10. Four Views, Three of Them through Glass // Sandy Isenstadt
11. Clean and Bright and Everyone White: Seeing the Postwar Domestic Environment in the United States // Dianne Harris
Notes
List of Contributors
Index

Citation preview

SITES UNSEEN

SITES UNSEEN

LANDSCAPE AND VISION

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS

Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Pittsburgh PA 15260 Copyright © 2007. University of Pittsburgh Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 10987654321

Frontispiece: Markus Ratz. Binocular View. 200 I. Color photogravure 22 I h x 27 '/. in .. edition 60. Published by Crown Point Press. Reproduced courtesy of Markus Ratz and ProUtteris.

Ubrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sites unseen: landscape and vision / edited by Dianne Harris and D. Fairchild Ruggles. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-4308-2 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-IO: 0-8229-4308-5 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-I 3: 978-0-8229-5959-5 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN-IO: 0-8229-5959-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) I. Landscape architecture--History. 2. Landscape design--History. I. Harris. Dianne Suzette. II. Ruggles. D. Fairchild. S8470.5.558 2007 712.09--

-i

Figure 6.2: Roman Forum in late antiquity, virtual model

113

;0

Figure 6.3: Late Republican fresco, Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale

115

0

Figure 6.4: Wall painting of coastal cities, detail, Stabia, 55-79 CE

117

U>

Figure 6.5: Dea Roma, Peutinger map

119

~ Z

Figure 6.6: DraWing of recreational facilities and temple from Puteoli, Odemira glass flask, detail, third-century CE

120

Figure 6.7: Taddeo Zuccaro, Triumphal Procession of Roman Soldiers Carrying a Model of a City, drawing, c.1548

122

Figure 6.8: Column of T rajan, relief sculpture, detail, c. I 12 CE, Rome

122

Figure 6.9: Hadrianic relief, detail, I 17-1 18 CE, Curia, Rome

127

Figure 6.10: Tomb of the Haterii, relief sculpture, detail, early second century CE, Museo Laterano, Vatican

128

Figure 7.1: Glazed ceramic plate, tenth century CE, Iran

135

Figure 7.2: Qur'an page, thirteenth century CE, Egypt

135

Figure 7.3: Dome of the Rock, jerusalem

137

Figure 7.4:

Maqamat page, 1237 CE

Figure 7.5: Perspective construction of Masaccio's

138

Trinity. Santa Maria

Novella, Florence, 1426-1428 Figure 7.6:

Haft Awrang. Iran, 1556-1565

139 141

Figure 7.7: Window screen, exterior view, Sidi Sa'id Mosque, Ahmadabad

144

Figure 7.8: Window screen, interior view, Sidi Sa'id Mosque, Ahmadabad

145

Figure 7.9: Bangia-roofed pavilion, Agra Fort, Agra, c.1660

147

Figure 7.10: Raja's court, Amber Fort, jaipur, c.1600

148

Figure 7.11: View from Raja's courtyard, Amber Fort, jaipur, c. I 600

149

Figure 7.12: Maunbari garden, Amber Fort, jaipur, c.1600

150

Figure 7.13: Courtyard, jaigarh Fort, jaipur, c.1600

151

ix

Figure 7.14: View through screen, Jaigarh Fort, Jaipur, c. I 600

153

Figure 7.15: Salim Chisti Tomb, Fatehpur-Sikri, 1571-1580

154

Figure 7.16:ja/i screen, tomb of Gaus Muhammad, Gwalior, c. I 600

155

Figure 8.1 : J. Merigot, plan, Chantilly, from

Promenades ou Itineraires des jardins

de Chantilly. 1791 Figure 8.2: Plan. jardin

158

anglais. Chantilly, from Cham be. Album du comte du Nord.

1784

159

Figure 8.3: Plans, sections, and elevations of the salon and dining hall in the hamlet at Chantilly. from Cham be,

Album du comte du Nord. 1784

Figure 8.4: Plan and sections of the theater at Chantilly. from Cham be,

161

Album

du comte du Nord. 1784

163

Figure 8.5: Charles-Frant;ois Ribart, section of the Elephant Triomphal, from

Architecture Singu/iere. 1758

164

Feast Given by the Prince de Conti for Prince Charles-Guillaume-Ferdinand of Brunswick-Liineborg in the Woods at Cassan in 1766. 1766

170

Figure 8.6: Workshop of Michel-Barthelemy Ollivier,

Figure 8.7: J. Merigot, view of La Table. from

Promenades ou Itineraires des

jardins de Chantilly. 1791

171

Figure 8.8: The Royal Hunting Domain of La Halatte

176

Figure 8.9: Alexandre-Theodore Brongniart, Project for the Mountain in the Cathedral at Bordeaux, Fete de la Raison. 1793

180

Figure 9.1: Father O'Sullivan's garden, Mission San Juan Capistrano, c. 1923

182

Figure 9.2: Jasper Johns,

The Critic Sees. 1979

184

Figure 9.3: Courtyard. Mission Santa Ines, 1993

188

Figure 9.4: Interior courtyard. Mission San Luis Rey. 1993

190

Figure 9.5:

Three Stages of Civilization. from The Annals of San Francisco by

Frank Soule, John H. Gihon, M.D., and James Nisbet, 1855 Figure 9.6: Fr. Jose Cardero.

Mission Carmel. 1791-1792

x

ILLUSTRATIONS

194

1786 Reception of jean-Frant;ois de La Perouse at 195

Figure 9.7: James P. Ford, interior courtyard, Mission Santa Clara, daguerreotype, c. 1854

r r

198

cVl -l

7l

Figure 9.8: Mission San Juan Capistrano, from William Henry Jackson,

Ancient Missions and Churches of America, 1894

206

Figure 9.9: Courtyard garden, Mission Santa Barbara, 1992

209

~

0

z

Vl

Figure 9.10: Joaqun Robles Whiteoak and Nashun Hoate, Chumash dwelling, reconstruction, Mission Santa Barbara parking lot, 1997

211

Figure 10.1: "Case for the Wider Lot," from House and Home, January 1952

214

Figure 10.2: Home of Dr. and Mrs. Robert Stockton, Gates Mills, Ohio

215

Figure 10.3: Henry Hudson Holly, Modern Dwellings in Town and Country

217

Figure 10.4: "Look Out, Not In," from E. C. Gardner, Homes and How to

Make Them, 1874

218

Figure 10.5: "This Picture," Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1919; "This View,"

Los Angeles Times, May I I, 1919

222

Figure 10.6: "How to Enjoy Land You Don't Own," from Thomas Church,

Gardens Are for People, 1955

224

Figure 10.7: Marcel Breuer, Clark House, Orange, Connecticut, 1949

227

Figure 10.8: "Three Views," House and Home, September 1954

233

Figure 10.9: "Efficient Luxury of Modern Dining," House and Garden, August-September 1952

237

Figure 10.10: "Beauty at Your Side," Plate Glass Manufacturers of America, 1937

238

Figure 11.1: "A Cautious Pace-Setter," House Beautiful, September 1950

245

Figure I 1.2: "A Fine Outdoor Sitting Area," House Beautiful, July 1950

247

Figure I 1.3: Drawing for three-bedroom, two-bath Greenbriar custom-line home, National Homes Corporation, 1955

249

Figure I 1.4: "A Builder's House with the Looks, Comfort, and Amenities of an Estate... ," House Beautiful, July 1950

250

xi

Figure I 1.5: "Indoors and Outdoors Are Planned as One," House Beautiful, May 1946

251

Figure 11.6: "A Window Overlooking a Play Area from Kitchen," Window

Planning Principles, Small Homes Council, September 1954

253

Figure I 1.7: "Ever Really Look at Your Place?" Better Homes and Gardens

Gardening Guide, c. 1950s

254

Figure I I .8: Sambo Lawn Sprinkler, Hillsdale Barn Antiques, Hillsdale, N.Y., 1936

257

Figure 11.9: Arne Kartwold, "Design for a Suburban House," c. 1950s

260

xii

ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

IN RECENT YEARS, LANDSCAPE HISTORY HAS GAINED WIDE RECOGNITION FOR ITS many contributions to discussions of nature and the natural, now at the forefront of contemporary analysis. But it remains a discipline still in the process of defining its scope and aims. At this stage in its development, any attempt at a comprehensive volume on landscape and vision would be premature. Conspicuous in their absence from this volume are essays examining South America and Mrica. These lacunae are regrettable but not surprising given the current state of the field: only a few landscape historians are at present studying those geographic areas. Thus, as a collection, the book presents a series of case studies linked, not by chronology or geography, but rather by a common investigation of the perception and reception of landscape. Although advancing the literature on visual theory was not the primary goal for contributors, they inevitably shed new light on some imperative issues as they brought visual theory to bear on the three-dimensional ~patial context, especially at the huge scale oflandscape. There is, for example, a considerable difference between analyzing a spatial context where landscape is both the medium and the object of representation, and in mimetic representation in painting where "there is no there there." It is precisely the spatiality of the experience that separates these studies from those that

xiii

focus on two-dimensional representations. Our goal in these chapters is not to revisit familiar ground with the same intellectual apparatus that has served us well in the past in which the landscape is a stable entity, but instead to explore and advance new ways of understanding the landscape as embodied experience in which the eye operates in collaboration with the other senses in a dynamic corporeal system. The chapters in this book should be read not as a monographic argument, but rather as case studies that approach the landscape from a range of perspectives. Although each chapter can stand alone, as a group they offer a coherent set of lessons about the central importance of landscape as a precisely crafted means for understanding the world. The contribution by Martin Jay-an acclaimed scholar of visual theory as well as European intellectual history-shows how the control of vision leads to the control of landscape, and how both belong to the larger problematic project of modernity. Zygmunt Bauman's startling "condemnation of the gardening impulse as a motor of modern totalitarian violence" serves as Jay's point of departure for an incisive analysis of the production of "scenic wonders" through violence to the land or to those working on it. With these disturbing questions of power, Jay provides a framework for subsequent chapters that pursue questions about the control of landscape and vision for political and sometimes violent purposes (see Mitchell, Cosgrove, Harris, Kryder-Reid, and Ruggles). Such texts treat walls, gates, windows, churchyards, architectural drawings, and territorial maps as literal and metaphoric framing devices for personal and institutional ideologies absorbed through the visual perception oflandscapes. Other chapters, in particular those by Favro, Isenstadt, and Treib, discuss vision's relationship to corporeal experience when both are mediated by gardens, houses, and city. These authors contend that as movement is framed and organized into sequences, it becomes central to the creation of a staged experience that may carry an aesthetic experience or a sociopolitical agenda. If societies reveal their changing character most clearly in the ways that they address the "nahual" world, then it behooves us to attend in ever more precise ways to the eye's share of that address. What we know-or believe that we know-about landscape is predicated upon certain physical, psychological, and cultural conditions that govern the eye and our knowledge systems. Our ability to observe or to represent any landscape is conditioned by a social contract in which we agree to participate in a mu-

xiv

PREFACE

tually understood visual (and verbal) language of form and signs. This requires a sensitive negotiation of empirical and theoretical ways of thinking about landscape. We intend the chapters in this volume to serve as a road map pointing to such possible fu-

"U

;;0

m

"Tl

»

Ii m

hue avenues of research. No book emerges at once, wholly formed. The seed for this volume was planted at the "Landscape and Vision" symposium held in

2002

at the University of Illinois,

Urbana-Champaign. We would like to acknowledge the excellent contributions of all who participated in the presentations and discussions. The symposium, organized by Dianne Harris, was funded by the Brenton and Jean Wadsworth Endowment, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and supported by the Department of Landscape Architecture and the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. We are thankful for their support, as well as that of the many individuals who made this publication possible. Although their papers do not appear here, we would like to acknowledge Mirka Benes and Kathryn Gleason for their participation in the symposium. Robert Riley's contribution was a particularly important one, since he was among the authors of the documents that resulted in the evenhIaI implementation of the doctoral program at the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, which the symposium celebrated. We are grateful for his inspiring efforts over the past thirty years. We also wish to thank Gloria Kury formerly of the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her vision has made this printed discourse on vision possible. We also extend our gratitude to the anonymous readers for the press, as well as others who read and generously provided helpful comments on the manuscript, especially John Tagg.

As ever, our thanks to our families: Madeleine and Lawrence Hamlin; Isabel and Oscar Vazquez.

xv

SITES UNSEEN

r---_L AND 5 CAP E INS I G H T

Wayne Thiebaud, Beach Glasses, 1994.

Art © Wayne Thiebaud/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

LANDSCAPE AND VISION

Dianne Harris and D. Fairchild Ruggles

LANDSCAPE HISTORIANS AND THEORISTS CAN BENEFIT FROM THE RICH

developments that the field of visual theory has experienced in recent decades. These perspectives challenge existential beliefs about the world and our place within it, and thus it is a difficult task-and ultimately an unfinished one. Some historians of the built environment have been resistant to these new approaches, which they regard as intellectually elitist because highly technical language is often employed in the questioning of basic philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality, subjectivity, and authorship. The demand for meticulous and highly specialized reading in such fields as psychoanalysis and semiotics can be alienating, and yet, these same perspectives can be immensely productive for those who choose to engage with them.

5

How do we know landscape? For most human beings, the primary way of knowing the material world is through vision, the simple act of opening the eyes and looking at an object, a scene, a horizon. The physiological processes engaged when the lid retracts from the eye are, when not impeded by pathologies, universal among hu: mans. Because vision is an embodied experience, it is altered by the infinite range of the possibilities presented by corporeal performance. The body moves in spacequickly or slowly, the head still or moving side to side, up or down - the eyes view a scene, and a cognitive process begins in which particles oflight are assembled by the brain to create an ordered image. As W.

J. T. Mitchell points out, this dimension of

vision as a sensory mechanism "operates in animal organisms all the way from the flea to the elephant."l But the act oflooking is nevertheless far from simple. It results from a complex array of physical, psychological, and cultural conditions and is studied by scholars in an equally wide spectrum of disciplines. The landscape is similarly produced by physical and cultural conditions and exists on such a large scale that it can rarely be known or discerned through a single, simple glance but is instead perceived by an accumulation of observations in which not only optics but also memory come into play. These two complex phenomena-landscape and vision-are deeply connected since, as Denis Cosgrove has noted, "landscape is a way of seeing."2 The etymological link between landscape and vision is ancient; the second part of the word "landscape" derives from the Greek verb skopein, which means "to behold, contemplate, examine, or inspect."3 Visual theory has ancient origins beginning at least as early as the fourth century BCE with Plato and his story of the cave, but in art and architectural history the interest in vision (as distinct from structure and form) is generally attributed to the fourteenth century when architects such as Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and Alberti (14°4-1472) began to analyze three-dimensional space perspectivally. Later, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, architects and stage designers constructed not only built form but also the spaces between and beyond the buildings, especially in theaters and piazzas. They worked to control and manipulate visual axes and perception through the use of the stage niche, the scenery, and the organization of seating of the audience, and questioned how spatial illusions could enhance the perception of space without actually changing its dimensions. Moreover, designers experimented with axes of vision to articulate the social relations of the members of the audience, so that the most elite patron knew that s/he enjoyed 6

DIANNE HARRIS AND D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES

the most complete view of the stage and actors. In the built environment, the ques-

r

tion of representation, in the sense of a picture that substitutes for or depicts a missing

z o Vl

object, became less important than these articulations of positions in space and the perception of space by a human viewer. The new emphasis on the object-viewer relationship occurred when art historians began to critique the term "art history" and to replace it with the more inclusive term "visual culture" in order to signal the shift in emphasis from the work of art to the humans that produced, received and interpreted it. But critical visual theory -like

»

()

.» "U

m

»

z o < Vl

o z

the "new art history" - is hardly new. The application of visual theory dates to classics like Erwin Panofsky's Perspective as Symbolic Form (1927) and Ernst Gombrich's Art

and Illusion (1956). Even Norman Bryson's influential Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze of 1983 is nearly a quarter of a century old; Martin Jay published his early works on visuality (such as "Scopic Regimes of Modernity") in the 1980s; and Hubert Damisch's The Origin of Perspective first appeared in France in 1987. These works dealt with pictorial space, mimetic representation, art objects, and viewers. But the role of actual three-dimensional space and its representation and perception has remained comparatively unexamined. Scholars of visual culture interpreted the meaning of art differently too: it was understood not to reside uniquely in the work itself but rather to emerge from a complex range of cultural, political, and economic conditions. As a consequence, some historians rejected the producer/product model that had formerly kept the roles of artist, audience, and art distinct and asserted the autonomous existence of the object or image; they instead began to emphasize reception. Because the art object was no longer necessarily central to visual analysis, these scholars opened a door to admit many other kinds of received representations and objects, such as gardens, landscape, and space itself. Moreover when Derrida and others argued that there is no chronological or spatial causality between text and "context" -the very word is problematic - and that the frame that purportedly defines a field is as much a product of the field as of the space external to it, landscape and its attendant concepts of space suddenly became essential to the debate. 4 This kind of scholarship presented an important opportunity to reconsider landscape as neither an object nor a contextual field but as always simultaneously both. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, art historians and scholars of 7

visual culture and media developed the themes of vision and visuality to sophisticated levels. Studies in visual culture changed significantly when scholars began to read the philosophy, literary theory, and semiotic analysis of French theorists such as Merleau Ponty, Lefebvre, Barthes, Foucault, de Certeau, and Derrida. Such influences prompted visual culture scholars to establish and debate new terms that demanded the deconstruction of the visual field and the analysis of it as a discursive system. 5 According to the new theory, representation could not be regarded as a fixed and neutral relationship among artist, audience, and work of art: instead, those roles became defined as positions, all aspects of which were unstable, interdependent, and articulating political power. In the field of visual culture, the new theory primarily focused on representation and signage. However, to study the history of vision one must trace two paths: one in the pictorial field where representations and iconography are central, and the other in three-dimensional space where the distinction between fictive, created representations and real or natural entities can be hard to distinguish, even before one considers the deconstruction of those definitions and why they matter. With the appearance of numerous texts during the 1980s and 1990S that focused on theories of vision and visuality, scholars in a range of fields began to question the notion that sight is simply a physiologically determined phenomenon and the world homogeneously perceived. 6 One group of visual culture scholars treated vision as a cultural construction in which perception and reception are configured by aspects of the world that are culturally privileged by specific social groups at moments in time. From this perspective, vision is not innately given or innocent but must be learned, based on the assimilation and use of what Elizabeth Kryder-Reid calls "a visual vocabulary of perception" that may be used as a tool for seeing in a specific manner. According to this assessment, vision is culturally determined and serves as a device for creating connections between sight, space, and social order. 7 Scholars of poststructuralist theory, in contrast, did not rely on contextual explanations but rather pursued the structure of discourse itself, regarding vision as a discursive system (like language). They examined the ways that discursive systems could produce the positions of image and frame, object and subject, and text and author, all of which are pertinent to the framing of the visual field. They showed that the positions are not fixed, but rather mutually constitutive, emerging from the play of dif-

8

DIANNE HARRIS AND D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES

ference in discourse. Although these positions seem to emerge naturally, to be already in place, as the existence of a building implies the prior existence of its architect,

r

» z

o Vl

poststructuralist theory posits that every element of the discursive field is produced by

()

the discursive system itself. Hence, instead of a socially contextualized vision, we can

m

identify a discourse of vision. The immediate impact of both forms of this poststructuralist turn was more profound in the study of painting, prints, and photography than in the study of the built environment. Vision and representation became the subject of serious inquiry

»"lJ » z

o < Vl

o Z

in fields such as art history, geography, cinema, feminist studies, psychology, and, to a lesser degree, architecture. As a means for apprehending space, visual theory should also serve as a productive tool of analysis within the field oflandscape studies, and yet it has been virtually ignored. 8 This is surprising considering the existence of such well-known mediating devices for vision as the Claude Glass (a handheld framed glass, sometimes tinted) and the stereoscope. Dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, respectively, these devices were intended to manipulate vision in order to generate a specific experience for the viewer. The Claude Glass was produced for viewing landscape, creating both a frame and an atmosphere for particular landscape settings that could be manipulated by the individual holding the device. The stereoscope facilitated views of a range of subjects (including pornography, a practice which may have been responsible for the devaluation of the stereoscope) but made landscape views into arresting experiences for observers who would frequently jump back from the mechanism after a first glance revealed a startling depth of perspective. It blinded the viewer's peripheral vision and controlled perspective in order to create dramatic illusions of a landscape that appeared real. 9 Implicit in the use of both instruments was the assumption that landscapes require or are improved by mediation for visual comprehension. In each case, devices guide the eye to see in a culturally privileged manner. Much like the twentieth-century mirror projects of the environmental artist Robert Smithson, these devices made the viewer aware that visual experiences such as retinal fusion are the result of prior conditioning. lO Mechanisms such as the Claude Glass and stereoscope can be understood to perform the task that

w. J. T. Mitchell has called "showing seeing ... they make seeing show itself, put it on display, and make it accessible to analysis."ll

9

In vernacular landscape studies, there is a strong tradition of careful observation -the method advocated and most skillfully practiced by John Brinkerhoff Jackson. But historical research based on the use and application of critical visual theory remains scarce. Although reading the landscape is a useful analytical tool, it is an essentially descriptive technique that often reveals only partial and even misleading information. 12 Furthermore, such readings ignore the fact that all looking is motivated from the outset by intellectual or political investments. Just as the idea of the sightseer assumes that a location will be consumed in a uniform manner (by any viewer or tourist, since most tourism is predicated on this assumption), so too this method assumes that all readers will view and understand a landscape in the same way. But such readings are undermined by a fundamental flaw because both location and viewer are contingent upon each other. Vision is neither universal nor neutral in its motivations and operations. Some scholars, such as Jay Appleton, have used studies of specific types of vision as a foundation for their research into environment and behavior. Appleton's prospectrefuge theory is based on the notion that landscape aesthetic preferences stem from universally held and evolutionarily determined desires for sites that provide an unobstructed view over surrounding territory (to search for prey or observe a predator's approach) while simultaneously fulfilling the desire to retreat into a protected realm. 13 More recently, landscape architects and environmental planners have used computer simulations and human focus groups in visual assessment studies that predict the aesthetic impact of environmental change in specific regions. Environmental psychophysiologists use landscape representations (paintings and photographs) to measure human physiological responses to images of specific settings. Both of these modes of scholarship link landscape and optics. But they treat landscapes as primarily a visual and therefore aesthetic entity, and they regard vision as a physiological and universal phenomenon. Their methods therefore turn a blind eye to cultural conditioning and political motivation. Vision is a powerful sense. Humans have the ability to control vision and therefore feel empowered in ways that are less available with the other senses. Sounds and smells can, for example, pervade spaces in uncontrollable manners, crossing architectural boundaries in ways that images cannot. To avoid a scent or noise in a room,

10

DIANNE HARRIS AND D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES

one leaves the space, but to avoid a view, one can simply close one's eyes. If Views can

r

»

and this ease privileges the eye as an organ for analysis since we "own" it more con-

z o n

sciously than we do our other senses.

m

be created, controlled, manipulated, and even eliminated with the blink of an eye,

IK

'Prtlul.1I1 Va/mlm,'s Annual Report

In

Thll Illu.

appeared in color on the cover of ten editions in 1923, and his pencil sketches appeared throughout 1926. Although his subjects were conventionally picturesque, the theme was mobility through technology. Whether Owens depicted an old Spanish mission, native Washingtonia palms, Joshua trees, Death Valley, or a lone pine on the California coast, an automobile was always placed strategically within the scene. For the March 1923 issue of Touring Topics, Owens painted the auto club's new headquarters building, a Spanish Revival block in downtown Los Angeles (fig. 5.6). Automobile use in those pre-Depression years was more closely associated with glamour and leisure than work, and car trips had turned California's coasts, mountains, and 102

DENIS COSGROVE

deserts into scenery, landscapes for visual consumption, a mode of vision encouraged by Touring Topics: "The term [scenery] is appropriate here, not only because it ap-

r

» z

o

Ul

pears so frequently in the tourist literature of the day but also because of its associa-

n

tions with two other loci of urban visual consumption, theater and film. 'Scenic'

m

implies seriality and movement from one visual setting to another, unlike the static

»

connotations of the picturesque."22

o

Owens's engagement with mobility and seriality in landscape was reinforced by his direct involvement with the movie industry. In 1929 he produced a series of sketches to illustrate motion picture studios for the Ladies Home Journal, which he later exhibited at Stanford University. By the time he came to illustrate global war, Owens had developed a range of pictorial techniques to suggest synopsis, seriality, and

»-u

z

C)

r

oCP »

r

< Ul

o z

motion. The unique character of the war landscapes he produced each week depended upon their combination within the limits set by the newspaper page. An immediately striking feature is their use of color, virtually unknown in newspapers at that time. While the palate is unsubtle and color is used principally to differentiate territories, color dramatically enhances the impact of the images in relation to familiar news maps of the period. Each work is a combination of text, map, and illustration (fig. 5.7). Text comprises the headline (oriented portrait, although the main image was often landscape), toponymy, and inserted narrative blocks, with occasional statistical information. These maps did not illustrate written articles; they were standalone news items. The cartography is highly pictorial, created by adopting a similar high-angle oblique perspective to Harrison's, but here even more dramatically foreshortened. Each image emphasizes globality through a curving horizon at the top. This earth curvature is consistent regardless of the spatial scale shown: from the entire Pacific to tiny islands and atolls such as New Britain or Truk. On the horizon we see distant strategic goals-the next islands to be captured, the coast of Asia or Japan itself, viewed in low profile as if emerging into view from an advancing cockpit (fig. 5.8). Arrows and other directional devices reinforce this sense of forward movement across physical space. The third element in the images is the "sky space" over the global horizon. This is occupied either by place icons for "exotic" locations being mapped (Sphinx for the Egyptian campaign, Colosseum for Rome, Eiffel Tower for Paris, London 103

III

0.

....,C c o

'"i

E :)

...

to-

CP

~

...

Q..




n

» -u m

» z

o Cl

r

oOJ »

r




o z

Figure 5. 10. Charles Hamilton Owens, "U.s. Warplanes Bombing Tokyo," from Los Angeles Times, December I I, 1944. Detail of war map of France and Iberia showing Gibraltar air battle sketch. Courtesy: UCLA Library.

macroscope of global landscape, both Ortelius and Owens seek to reveal scenes invisible to the unaided eye. But at the global scale, too, the landscape vision is duplicitous: at once cosmopolitan in its embrace of a harmonious unity of earth and humanity, and violent in its projection of a partial and singular perspective. These images remind us that spatial art and spatial science have always worked closely together in producing and mobilizing the landscape vision . The atlas's participation in the discourse oflandscape reminds us that landscape can never be restricted to a static picture of achieved spatial relations, but involves kinetic and serial experience as we move through space. The best landscapists have always recognized this and developed varied techniques to enhance it, above all through the manipulation of scale. The global scale oflandscape is not a contemporary phenomenon; it has a long, complex pedigree.

107

ENVISIONING PLACE

Wayne Thiebaud, Eyeglasses, 1994. Art © Wayne Thiebaud/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

ANCIENT ROME THROUGH

THE VEIL OF SIGHT

Diane Eavro

ANCIENT ROME IS IRRESISTIBLE. OVER THE CENTURIES, INNUMERABLE ARTISTS HAVE

attempted to capture the original appearance of the great capital city in paintings, etchings, reliefs, models, and films (fig. 6.1).1Today, digital modelers exploit new media to fashion images of the great capital city as it appeared in antiquity (fig. 6.2).2 The challenge is daunting. While extensive archaeological research has been done on select monuments, buildings, or even certain urban areas, vast portions of the ancient city have not been excavated. The lack of data hampers full-bodied reconstructions of the cityscape. Scholars ponder how (or even whether) to represent undocumented urban infill, unevaluated original topography, unpreserved skylines, and unrecorded street patterns, among other aspects essential for the depiction of an expansive

III

Figure 6.1. Rome in the early fourth century CEo plaster model created during the Fascist era, Museo della Civilta Romana, Rome . Photo: D. Favro.

urban panorama. Such debates deflect attention from the consideration of how to view the ancient city. In the last twenty years research has been conducted on the gaze in antiquity, exploring how power, identity, and gender impact the reception of art. 3 Studies have considered how Roman residential architecture was shaped by viewplanning, and how visual alignments impacted the siting of specific structures. 4 Far less attention has focused on how the ancients looked at Rome.5 While numerous ancient images recorded the appearance of Roman urban environments, the cityscape of Rome is conspicuous by its absence in the pictorial record.

112

DIANE FAVRO

Figure 6.2. Roman Forum in late antiquity. virtual model. Reproduced with permission of the UCLA Cultural VR Lab.

The term "cityscape" appeared in the mid-nineteenth century as an urban counterpoint to landscape. The term implies a totalizing view of a city in a pictorial rather than sociological or experiential sense. 6 Thus the focus is on the potent exchange between the observer and the broad urban vista, not on urban planning, smaller urban visual vignettes, architecture, or city life. The cityscape in antiquity was impressionistic in both the literal and artistic sense. The ancients had few opportunities to observe urban environments from above. As a result, their ideas about the cityscape derived either from actual vistas seen from relatively low sites, or from imagined aerial perspectives. In contrast to a map, a cityscape attempts a more realistic three-dimensional presentation. The famous geographer Ptolemy, in the second century CE, carefully distinguished between mapping and pictorial representations. He defined geography as encompassing carefully measured depictions of the world. In contrast, he described chorography as localized, noting it concentrates "more on the quality of places than on their quantity or scale, aware that it should use all means to sketch the true form or likeness of places and not so much their correspondence, measure or disposition among themselves or with the heavens or with the whole of the world."7 This more pictorial, more interpretive, more portrait-like chorographic approach approximates the modern definition of cityscape, whether seen directly or represented in images. The differences in visual methods, interpretations, and capabilities between antiquity and today are staggering. Viewing is not just physiological, but culturally constituted. In the 1970s, art historian Norman Bryson coined the term "visuality" to describe seeing as mediated by culture. 8 Unfortunately, we can never see clearly through Roman eyes. Not only did the ancients lack optical enhancements such as glasses, but their modes of seeing drew upon shared experiences and ways of thinking that are difficult to reconstruct. The challenge is to consider the "period eye" for antiquity-how cultural mores influenced the interpretation of images, and upon what visual repertoire ancient viewers drew. 9 Invaluable attempts to reconstruct ancient visuality have been taken with studies of artworks, buildings, and viewsheds in broader rural contexts. 10 Yet what did Romans "see" when they looked at a city? The Romans enjoyed expansive views. Architectural design, legal provisions, ancient texts, and pictorial representations all affirm a love of broad panoramas. The

114

DIANE FAVRO

built fabric provides the most tangible evidence. The architectural vocabulary of Roman cities included public plazas and unobstructed augural platforms on highpoints, as well as towering public structures with ample places for viewing such as the Colosseum with open arcades at every level. I I Residential architecture boasted broad windows, jutting balconies, porticos, terraces, roof gardens, and other forms ideal for urban viewing (fig. 6.3).12 In antiquity, as today, the upper classes preferred elevated hilltop sites; such locations were safer and more airy, and indicated wealth since the owner had to have sufficient slaves to carry water up the slopes. Once urban density increased in major cities such as Rome, urban construction frequently blocked residential views. In response, urban neighbors entered into legal private agreements or servitudes to protect prospects. I, Ulpian , in the early third century, recorded, "in the case of the prospect, the dominant owner has this particular advantage, that nothing may be constructed so as to prevent his having a pleasing and unimpeded view."14 Other decisions stipulated that shrubs on a roof be removed if they grew large enough to block the view, or that the sight of a specific public building should be maintained. I I Shrewd city dwellers in Rome also exploited an expansive law guaranteeing city dwellers the right to sufficient light to conduct daily activities. 16 By protecting access to light, property owners often, though not always, preserved views as well. Remarkably, such architectural and legal evidence for the pleasure taken by Romans in urban views is not bolstered by literary sources. Overt admission of enjoyment in panorama centered almost exclusively outside the city. Figure 6.3. Late Republican fresco. Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale. Courtesy:The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rogers Fund, 1903, 03. 14.1 3a-g.

The Romans considered viewing a pleasurable activity best indulged in the proper context, by the proper class of people. The most extensive evidence centers on villa life where wealthy Romans enjoyed a life ofleisure (otium). Villa literature is filled with effusive descriptions of broad vistas encompassing hills, the sea, woods, other villas, and the coast. For example, Pliny the Younger recorded how his villas were laid out to frame optimal views of nature; he described the vistas from the dining couch in his rural residence at Laurentum, "at your feet you have the sea, behind are the villas, and from the head (of the couch) are (seen) the woods."I? In a few instances, villa owners commissioned frescos that apparently mirrored the actual views of distant cities from the site. 18 City dwellers attempted to approximate villa environments in their residences. Throughout Pompeii, owners emulated villa decorative programs with faux painted vistas and landscape vignettes. 19 Significantly, such views rarely included cities as the primary subject, perhaps because urban environments were traditionally characterized as the place of work (negotium). The exceptions are notable; paintings of coastal cities such as those surrounding the Bay of Naples may have appeared because these vacation centers were known as much for otium as ne-

gotium (fig. 6,4).20 Most frequently, cityscapes occurred in pictorial narratives, tourist art, and state propaganda. Urban images above all identify place. In numerous ancient visual narratives, the inclusion of a cityscape succinctly located the action of a story. Since not many Roman observers had mental libraries filled with images of distant cities, realism was largely unnecessary. Not only could few viewers recognize actual cityscapes, but the environments shown were either mythic (Troy), or much transformed from the time of the narrative (Dido's Carthage). Identification depended on the overall context within the narrative storyline. Thus, a viewer familiar with the myth of Daedalus and his son Icarus would assume that the representation of a generic cityscape in conjunction with a youth wearing wings should be identified as Knossos, where the fatal flight took place. Simply, observers relied upon their familiarity with the stories to identify cityscapes, rather than on specific knowledge of how a city actually looked. Cityscapes were also frequently reduced to schematic representations of known urban types: the walled city, the port city, etc. In other instances, a prominent building or statue stood as an icon for the urban whole; for example, the lighthouse at Alexandria (just as the Eiffel Tower for Paris) was an effective urban sign.21 Specific urban portraits 116

DIANE FAVRO

» z

n m

Z

-l 7J

o ~

m -l

I

7J

o C Cl

I -l

I

m