Date of Award

4-2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts

Department

Art

First Advisor

Grant Hargate

Second Advisor

James Hutson

Third Advisor

John Troy

Abstract

Is it possible to create "classical'' landscape pictures of today? The genre of drawing and painting landscapes is the subject for this thesis. For comparing for relevancy, the binary topic is two aesthetic terms, the Sublime and the Picturesque. I will show what the art critics and artists say about those terms with several historical and contemporary artists a<; examples. I will explain what I did with some of my drawings and paintings in relation to the terms within the "classical" composition format.

The challenge for my work is to compose the contemporary landscape using the classical composing principles used by Old Masters. A contemporary German artist has succeeded very well in composing the '·classical·' landscapes of today with modern cultural attributes, but they are fictional digital composites. Her approach to classical composing today's landscape is innovative. It is a "rehash" concept- that is, re-use of an old idea yet new. It is like re-contextualizing.

By applying my mental "template" of one of the classical compositions to drawing and painting, I compose an actual landscape with minor modifications because I want to see how different the picture of today is from the ones of the "classical" period from the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century which did not have modern trappings, such as telephone poles, cars, highways.

I seek for either the Sublime or the Picturesque or both-more or less--in the actual landscape. I will continue composing the landscapes classically. Mastering a repertoire of pictorial techniques is my constant objective.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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