re'prlt-sentation; that very exhaustion, however, may signal an enhanced

power at other levels (in mass culture and kitsch, for instance) and a
potential for renewal in other forms, other places.
Notes
1. This approach to landscape aeslhecics is most fully developed in the irUlucn-
tial 1I'0rk of Ernst Gombrich, particularly his essay "The Renaissance Theory of
Arl and rhe Rise of Landscape," in Noml alld Form: Slwiier ill [be .A11 of the
RwrWJUuce (Chicago, 19(6). See also Keonelh Cia rk, J.muumpe l/lW A,1 (Bos[Oo,
1963), which popularizes and universalizes Gombrich's claim.
2. See, for instance, Rmdill..1J Lrmdsmpe: COlmh)'-Cify-Cllpitll/, cd. Simon
Pugh (Manchester, 1990): "This colleCtion ofcssays proposes that landscape and
its representations are a 'text' and ,m:, as such, 'readable' like any other cultural
(orm" (2-3).
ONE
Imperial Landscape
Theses on Landscape
1. Landscape is nOt a genre of an but a medium.
2. Landscape is a medium of exchange between the human and the
namral, the self and tJ1C other. As such, it is like money: good tor nothing
in itsdf, but expressive of a potentially limitless reserve of value.
3. Like money, landscape is a social hieroglyph that conceals the actual
basis of its valuc. Ie does so by namralizing its convemions and conven-
tionalizing its namrc.
4. Landscape is a natural scene mediated by culrure. It is both a repre-
sented and preseored space, both a signifier and a signified, both a frame
and what a frame COntains, both a real place and irs simubcrum, bodl a
package and the commodity inside tht: package.
5. Landscape is a medium fOllnd in all culmrcs.
6. Landscape is a particular histOrical formation associated with Euro-
pean inlperiausm.
7. Theses 5 and 6 do not contradict one anotJler.
8. Landscape is an exhausted medium, nO longer viable as a mode of
artistic expression. Like ufe, landscape is boring; we muS( nm say so.
9. The landscape refcrred co in Thesis 8 is the same as tbat ofThesis 6.
5
7
J W J. T. Mitchell
We are surrounded with things which we have not made and which have a
life and structure different from our own: Irees, flowers, grasses, rivers, hills,
clouds, For centuries they have inspired us with curiosity and awe. They have
been objects of delight. We have recreated them in our imaginations to reflect
our moods. And we have come to think of them as contributing to an idea
which we have called nature. Landscape pamtlng marks the stages in our
conception 01 nature. 115 rise and development since the middle ages is part
of a cycle in which the human spirit attempted once more to creale a harmony
with its environment.
- Kenneth Clark, inro A/'r (1949)
We have come a long way from the innocence of Ken)1eth Clark's opening
senrences to iuta Art. Most notabl}', perhaps, the "we" for
whom Clark speaks WiUl such aSSllrance can nO longer express itself out
side of quotation marks. VVllO is this "we" U1at defines itself by iiS differ-
ence from "trees, flowers, grasses, rivers, hills, c1ollds" and then erases
this difference by re-creating it as a reflection of its own moods and ideas?
Whose history and whose nature is "marked" into "stages" by landscape
paiming? What clisruption required an art thar would restore the "human
spirit" LO "harmon}' with its environmem"?
Recent criticism of landscape aesthetics-a field that goes well beyond
Ule history of painting to include poetry, fiction, tcavel litcrarure, and
landscape gardening-can largely be undt:rsrood as an articulation of a
loss of innocence that transforms aU of Clark's assertions into haunting
questions and even more disquieting answers. ''We'' now know Ulat there
IS no simple, unproblematic "we," corresponding to a universal human
spirit seeking harmony, or even a European "rising" and "developing"
since the Middk Ages. '''''hat we know now is whar critics like John Barrell
have shown us, that there is a "dark side of U1e landscape" and that this
dark side is not merely myulic, nor merely a feamee of ule regressive,
lnstinctuJ.! dnves associated with nonhuman "narure" but a moral, ideo-
logicaJ, and politicaJ darkness that covers itself with precisd)' the sort of
innocent idealism Clark expresses.
l
Contemporary discussions of land-
scapt: are likely fO be contentious and polemical, as Ule recenr controversy
over ule Tate Gallery's exhibition and the monograph on the works of
fuchard 'Vilson suggesc.
1
They are Likely to pl:lce the aesuletic idealization
or landscape alongside "Vulgar" economic and m,m:rial considerations, as
John Barrell and Ann Bermingham do when they put Ule English land-
scape movemenr i.n the conrexr of U1e enclosure of common fields and ehe
dispossession of the English peasantry.3
I might as well say at the Olltset Ula( I am mainly in sympathy with
this darker, skeptical reading of landscape aesthetics and that this essay is
Imperial Landscape
a.n attempt to contribute further to this reading. Our understanding of
"high" art can, in general, bmefit considerably from a critical perspecti\.c
that works through what Philip Fisher has called the "hard facrs" embed.
ded in idealized settings.' My aim in this essa)', however, is not primaril)'
to add TO the stock of hard facts about landscape but to take a harder
look at the framework in which facts about landscape are constinHed-the
way, in panicular, that the narure, hisTOry, and semiOtic or aesthetic char-
acter of landscape is constructed in both its idealist and skeptical interpre-
tations.
As it happens, there is a good deal of com.mon ground in these COIl-
stnlCtions, an UIlderlying agreement on at least three major "facts" abollt
landscape; (1) that it is, in its "pure" fonn, a western European and
modern phenomenon; (2) that ie emerges in the seventeenth cenmry
and re3ches its peak in the nineteenth century; (3) that it is originaUy and
centrally constituted as a genre of painting associated with a new way of
seeing. These a.ssumpcions arc generally accepted by all the parties in
contemporary discussions of English landscape, and ro the extent that
they provide a common granunar and narrative shape for criticism, they
foster a kind of mirror symmetry between the skeptical critique and the
idealist aesthetic it opposes. Clark's opening paragraph, lor instance, may
be read as still trut if onl)' its key terms are understood in an ironic sense:
the "different structUre" of narure is read as a symptom of alienation from
(he land; the "reAective" and imaginary projection of moods into Janel-
scape is rcad as the dreamwork of ideology; rhe "rise and developmenc"
of landscape is read as a symptom of the rise and development of capital-
ism; the "harmoHy" sought in landscape is read as a compensation for
and screening ofr of the acmal violencc perpetratcd chcn:.
The agreement on these three basic "facts"-let LIS call them the ',",Vest-
ern-ness" of la.ndscape, irs moderniry, and itS visual/picrorial essence-
rna)' well be a sign of jllst how weU founded they are. If critics of radically
persuasions take these things for granted, di trering mainl)' in
their explanations of them, then there is a strong preswnption that they
are true. The modernity of European lmdscape painting, for instance, is
one of the firSt lessons landscape historians pass on ro their smdents. Ernst
Gombrich's classic essay "The Renaissance Theory of AIT and the Rise of
Landscape" (1953), with its story or the "reVOlutionary" emergence of a
new genre caUcd landscape in sixtcemh-ccnnuy European painting, is still
the basic reference point for art-hiStorical treauncnrs of this ropic
s
Kenneth Clark expresses the lesson in its most general form: "People
who have given the matter no thollght arc apt to assume that the apprecia-
tion of natllral beauty and the painting of landscape is a normal and
enduring part of our spiritual activity. But the Inlth is that in tin1es when
3 W_ J_ T. Mitchell
the hllman spirit seems ro have burned most brightly the painting of
landscape for its own sake did not exist and was \lllthinkabJc.,,6 Marxist art
hiscorims replicate this "truth" in the narrower field of English landscape
aesthetics, substituting the notion of ideology for Clark's "spiritual aeriv-
ity." Thus Ann Bermingham proposes "that there is an ideology of land-
scape and that in the eighteenth and nineteend1 cenmries a class view of
landscape embodied a set of socially and, finally, economicallj' determined
values to which the paimed image gave cultural expression."7 Neil:her
Bermingham nor BarreU makes the explicit claim for world-historical
llniqlleness that Clark they coniine their attention quite narrowly
to the English landscape tradition, and ro even more specific movements
within it. Bm in the absence of an>' larger perspective, or any challenge
to Clark's larger claims, the basic asswllption of historical tUliqueness
remains in place, subject only to differences of interpretation.
A similar point might be made about the visual/pictorial constitution
of landscape as an aesthetic object. Bermingham regards landscape as an
ideological "class vie\\?' [D which "the painted image" gives "culmral ex-
pression." Clark says that "the appreciation of natural beaury and the
painting of landscape is" (emphasis mine) a hisrorically unique phenome-
non. Both writers elide the distinction between viewing and paiming,
perception and representation-Bermingham by treating paintmg as the
"expression" of a "view," Clark by means of the singular verb "is" that
collapses the appreciatioll of naolre into its represen-tation by painting.
Clark goes on [D reinforce the eguation of painting with seeing by citing
with approval Ruskin's claim in AlodeiIJ Painters that "mankind acquired
a new sense" along with the invemion of landscape painting. Not only
landscape painting, bur landscape perception is "invented" at some moment
of history; the only question is whether this invention has a spiritual or
a marerial basis.
8
There are tWO problems with these fundamental assumptions about the
aesd1etics of la.ndscape: first, they are highly questionable; second, they
are almost never brought inro question, and thc very ambiguity of the
word "landscape" as denotmg a place or a painting encourages this failure
co ask questions. But the blurring of d1e distinction between the viewing
and the representation of landscape seems, on me face of it, deeply prob-
lematic. Are we really {Q believe, as Clark putS ie, that "the appreciation
of narural beautY' begins only with the invention of landscape painting?
Certainly the testimony of poets from Hesiod to Homc:r to Dante suggests
that human beings did nOt, as Ruskin thoughe, acquire a "new sense"
sometime after me Middle Ages that made them "utterly different from
all the great races tholt have ex.isted before."9 Even the mare restricted
claim t1);lt landscape pai1ltillg (as distinct from perception) has a uniquely
Impenal landscape
\Vestern and modern identity seems fraught with problems. The historical
claim that landscape is a "postmedieval" development rtms counter to
the evidence (presented, but explained away as merely "decorative" and
"digressive" in Clark's rext) that Hellenistic and Roman painters "evolved
a school of landscape painting."IO And the geographic claim that landscape
is a uniquely western Emopean art falls ro pieces in the face of the over"
whelming richness, complexity, and antiquity of Chincse landscape paint-
i.ng.
ll
The Chinese trad.ition has a double imporrance in this context. Not
only does it subvert any clain1s for the uniquely modern or Western lin-
eage of landscape, the fact is d1ac Chinese landscape played a cmcial role
in the elaboration of English landscape aeSthetics in the eighteenth cen"
nlry, so much so that Ie jllrain flllg!o-cbjnois became a common European
label for the English garden. n
The intrusion of Chinese traditions into the landscape discourse I have
been describing is worth pondering furdlcr, for it raises fundamental C)ues-
tions abour the Eurocemric bias of that discourse and its myths of origin.
Two taCts about Chinese landscape bear special emphasis: one is mat it
flourished most notably at the height of Chinese imperi:al power and
began to decline in the eighteenth cenmry as China becamc itself the
object of English fascination and appropriation at the moment when En-
gland was beginning to experience itself as an imperial poweL
I3
Is it
possible that landscape, understood as the historical "invention" of a ncw
visual/pictorial medium, is integrally connectcd with in1perialism? Cer-
tainly t11e roU call of major "originating" movemems in landscape paint-
ing-China, Japan, Rome, sevcnreend1-century HoUand and France,
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain-makes the question hard to
avoid. At a minimum we need to explore d1e possibility that the represen-
tarion of landscape is not only a maner of internal politics and national
Or class ideology but also an international, global phenomenon, intimately
bound up with (he discourses of imperialism.
This hypothesis needs to be accompanied by a whole set of stipulations
and qualifications. Imperialism is dearly nor a simple, single, or homoge-
neous phenomenon bur the name of a complex system of culmraJ, pohti-
cal, and economic expansion and domination that \'aries with the specific-
ity of places, peoples, and historical momems.
14
It is not a "one-way"
phenomenon but a complicatcd process of exchange, mUnlal
rion, and ambivalence. IS It is a process conducted simultaneously at con-
crcre levels of violence, expropriation, collaboration, and coercion, and at
a variery of symbolic or represcmationallcveJs whose rclarion to dIe COIl-
crete is rarely mimetic Or transparent. Landscape, understood as concept
or representational practice, does not declare its relation to imperi-
alism in a.ny direct way; it is not to be understood, in my "icw, as a mere
11
11)
W. J. T. Mitchell
tool of ncfaJiotls imperial designs, nor as uniquely caused by imperialism.
Dutch landscape, for instance, which is often credited with being the
European origin of both the d.iscourse and the piccorial practice of land-
scape, must be seen at least in part as an anti-imperial arid nationalistic
cultural gesrure; the transformation of the Netherlands from a rebellious
colony into a maritime empire in the second half of Ihe seventeenth cen-
tury indicates at the very least how quickly and drastically the political
environment of a cultural practice can change, and it suggests the possibil-
ity of hybrid landscape lormations Ulat might be characterized simulta-
neousl>' as imperial and anticolonial.
16
La.ndscape might be seen more profitably as something like the
"dreamwork" of imperialism, untalding its own movement in time and
space from a central point of origin and folding back on itself to disclose
both utopian fantasies of the perfected imperial prospect and fracmrcd
images of unresolved ambi\'alencc and unsuppressed resistance. In short,
the posing of a relation bel'\veen imperialism and landscape is not offered
here as a deductive model that can settle the mea.ning of either term, but
as a provocation 1'0 an inquiry. If Kennem Clark is right to say that
"landscape painting was the chief artiStic creation of the nineteenth cen-
mry,,,17 we need at least ro explore the rdation of mis ellirural fact TO the
omer "chief creation" of the nineteenth century-the sys1'em of glohal
domination known as European imperialism.
The "Rise" of Landscape
Man had not only reconquered his rights, but he had reentered upon his
possession 01 nature. Several 01 these writings testily to the emotion which
those poor people felt on beholding theIr country for the first time. Strange
to relate! those rivers. mountains, and noble landscapes, where they were
constantly passing, were discovered by them on Ihal day: they had never seen
them before.
-Michelet, HirtlJl'Y FmJdJ R(l'oltlr;OII (1846)
Thence up he flew. and on the Tree of Life,
The middle tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a cormorant: ...
... nor on the virtue thought
Of that life-giving plant. but only used
For prospect, What, well used, had been the pledge
01 immortality....
-/\'liJron, PlIrndise Lost
rv: 194-96; 198-20l
Imperial Landscape
\Vhen does Ia.ndscape first begin to be perceived? Everything depends, of
course, on how one defines the "proper" or "pure" experience of land-
scape. Thus, Kenneth Clark dismisses the landscape paintings that
adorned Roman villas as "backgrounds" and "digressions," not representa-
tions of namral scenery in and tor itself. Landscape perception "proper"
is possible only to "modem consciousness," a phenomenon that caJ) be
dated with some precision. "Petrarch," Clark teUs us, "appears in all the
history books as the first modern man," and so it is no surprise that he is
"probably the first man to express the emotion on which the existence of
landscape painting so largely depends; the desire to escape from rhe mr-
moil of cities into the peace of the countryside." Clark might admit that
some version of this emotion appears rather frequently in the ancient
genre of me pastoral, bur he wouJd probably insist that the enjoyment
of the view "for its own sake" is nOt quite achicved prior to "modern
consciousness." Petrarch doesn't jl1st flee the city in good pastoral fashion
for the comforts of the country; he seeks out the discomforts of nature.
"He was, as e\'eryone knows, the first man to climb a mountain for its
own sake, and to enjoy me view from the rop."18
A fact that "everyone knows" hardly requires an argtunent, hut Clark
goes on to give one anyway. The unique historical placement ofPerrarcn's
perception oflandscape at the originary, transitional moment from ancient
to modem is "proved" by showing that Perrarch himself lives in both
worlds, is both a modern humanist and a medieval Thus, Clark
notes that at the very momenr Petrarch is enjoying the view, "it occurred
to him to open at random his copy of St. Augustine's to a
passage that denounces the contemplation of namre: "And men go ahout
to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the
sea, and cllC wide sweep of tivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the
revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.,,19 Properly
abashed by this pious reminder, Pcn'arch concludes mat he has "seen
enough of the mow)tain" a.nd rurns his "inward eye" upon himself. Vlhat
Clark's "historical" narrative of the development of laJ'dscape ignores is
thac St. Augustine's admonition is itself testimony to the antiquity of
the contemplation of nature. Long before Petrarch and long before Sf.
Augustine, people had succumbed to the temptarion of looking at natural
wonders "for their own sake."
Numerous other "originaf)' moments" in the viewing of landscape
might be adduced, from Jehovah's looking upon his creation and finding
it good, to Michclet's French peasants nmning alit of doors to perceive
the beallties of their narural envirolUnent for the first time. The account
of landscape contemplation that probably had the strongest influence on
English painting, gardening, and pact>' in The eighteenth century was
1\'1ilton's dcscription of Paradise, a viewi.ng, we should recall, that is
fl-amcd by the consciousness of Satan, who "onl)' used for prospect" his
vantage point on the Tree of Life. The "dark side" of landscape [hat
Marxist historians have uncovered is anticipated in the myths of landscape
by a recllrrenr sCllSe of ambivalence. Perrarch fears the landscape as a
secular, sensuous rcmpt:uion; J'v[icheJet treats it as a momentary revelation
of beamy and freedom bracketed by blindness and slavery; Milton presents
it as the voyeuristic object for a gaze (hat waverS between aesthetic delight
and maliciO\ls intent, melting "pit)'" and "Honor and cmpire with revenge
enlarged" (iv. 374; 390).
This ambivalence, moreover, is temporalized and narrativized. I[ is
almost as if there is something buik inm the grammar and logic of the
landscape concept that requires the elaboration of a pseudohistory, com-
plete with a prehistory, an originaring moment that issues in progressive
historical development, and (often) a final decline and fall. The analogy
with rypical narratives of the "rise and faU" of empires bcom.;s even more
striking when we notice tbat the rise and fall of landscape painting is
typically represented as a threefold process of emancipation, natllraliza-
tion, and unification. The article "Landscape Painting" in The Oxford
Comprmiol1 to Art provides a handy compendium of these narratives, com-
plete with "origins" in Rome and the Holy Roman Empire of the SLX-
teenth century and "endings" in twenrieth-cenrury Sunday painting.
Landscape painting is routinely desnibed as emancipating itself from sub-
ordinate roles like literary illustration, religious edificarion, and decoration
to achieve an independent srams in which nature is seen "tor its own
sake." Chinese hmdscape is prehisroric, prior to the emergence of nature
"enjo)led for its own sake." "In China, all the other hand, the de,/e1opmenr
of landscape painting is bound up with ... mystical reverence for the
powers of nature.,,10
The "other hand" of landscape, whether it is the Oriem, the MidcUe
Ages, Eg)lpt, or Byzantium, is preemancipatory, prior to the perception
of l1amre as such. Thus, the emancipation of landscape as a genre of
painting is also a 11 attl ralizatiOlJ , a freeing of nature from the bonds of
convention. Formerly, nature waS represented in "highly conventional-
ized" or "symbolic" forms; latterly, it appears in "naturalistic transcripts
of nature," the product of a "long evolution in which the vocabulary of
rcndering llamral scenery gained shape side by side with the power to see
nature as scenery." This "evolution" from subordination to emancipation,
convention to nature has as its ultimate goal the Jlllificatioll of narure in
the perception and representation of landscape: It Seems that until fairly
recent times men looked ar namrc as an assemblage of isolated objects,
witham connecting trees, rivers, mountains, roads, rocks, and forest inro
a unlfied scene. "11
Each of these transitions or developments in the articulation of land-
scape presents itself as a historical shift, whether abrupt or gradual, from
ancient fO modern, from classical to Romantic, from Christian to secular.
Thus, the history of landscape painting is oftcn described as a quest, l10t
JUSt for pure, transparent representation of nature, but as a qllest for pure
pn.i"ti".!J, li:eed of literary concerns and ref'resenrarion. As Clark purs ir,
"The painring of landscape cannot be considered independenrJy or the
trend away from imitation as the rniioJl d'itre of arr."n One end to
the srory of landscape is thus abstracr painting. At rhe other extreme, the
history of landscape painting may be descrihed as a movement from "con
vemional formulas" to "namralisric transcripts of namre.,,23 Both stOries
are grail-quests for purity. On the one hand, the goal is nonrepresenta-
tional painting, freed of reference, language, and subject matter; on the
Other hand, pure hyperrepresentational painting, a superlikeness that pro-
duces "namral representations of nature."
As a pseudohisrorical myth, then, the discourse of landscape is a crucial
means fot enlisting "NaNre" in the legirimation of modernity, the claim
thac "we moderns" are somehow different from and esscnriaJly superior
to everything that preceded us, free of superstition and convention, mas-
ters ofa unified, nanlfal language epitomized by landscape painting. Bene-
dict Anderson notes that empires have traditionally relied on "sacred silent
languages" like the "ideogran1s of Chinese, Latin, or Arabic" to imagine
the unity of a "global community,"24 Be suggests that the efl'ecciveness
of these languages is based in [he supposed nonarbitrarincss of rheir sibT'flS,
their status as "emanations of reality," not "fabricated representations of
it." Anderson thinks of the nonarbitrary sign as "an idea largely foreign
to the conremporary Western mind," but it is, as we have seen, certainly
. not foreign to Western ideas of landscape painting. Is landscape painting
the "sacred silent language" of\Vestern imperialism, the medium ill which
it emancipates," "nanlralizes," and "tmifies" the world for its own pur-
poses?15 Before we can even pose this gllestion, much less anSWer it, we
need to take a closer look at what ir means [0 think of landscape as a
medium, a vast nenvork of cultural codes, rather than as a specialized
genre of painting.
The Sacred Silent Language
The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of
some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns thls field. Locke that, and Manning
14 W J. T. Mitchell
the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a prop-
erly in lhe horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the
parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of all these men's farms, yel to
this their land-deeds give them no tille.
-Emerson, Nntllre (1836)
I have been assuming throughout these pages that landscape is best under-
l'-roCia' med! of cuItural expression, not a genre 'of painting' or fine
,an. It is now rime to expLiin exactly what this means, There certaln..ly is
a genre of painring known as landscape, defined very loosely b}' a cerrain
emphasis on nanua! objects as subject maner. Wbar we tend to forget,
however, is that this "subject mantr" is not simply raw material to be
represented in paint but is always already a symbolic form in irs own
right. The familiar categories that divide the genre of landscape painting
into subgcnres-notions such as the Ideal, the Heroic, the Pastoral, the
Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque-are all distinctions based,
not in ways of purring paint on canvas, but in the kinds of objects and
visuaJ spaces that ma)' be represeotecl by paintY'
Landscape painting is best lmderswod, then, not as the uniquely centraJ
medium that gives us access to ways of seeing landscape, bur as a represen-
ration of something that is already a representation ill Its'O\\'o-rightY
Landscape may be represented by painting, drawing, or engraving; by
photography, film, and theatrical scener)'; by writing, speech, and presum-
ably even music and other "sound images," Before all these secondary
"representations, however, landscape is itself a physical and multisensory
medium (earth, stone, vegetation, water, sky,sound and silence, light and
darkness, etc.) in which culturaJ meanings and values are .encoded,
whether they are put there by the physical transformation of a place in
landscape gardening and architecture, or Jinl1ld in a place formed, as we
say, "by nature." The simplest way to summarize this point is to note
tllat it makes Kenneth Clark's title, Lmuumpe into A1T, quite redlUldam:
bndscape is already artifice in the moment of irs beholding, long before
it becomes the subject of pictoriaJ representation.
Landscape is a medium in the fullest sense of the word. It is a material
"means" (to borrow A!istotk's terminology) like language or paint, em-
bedded in a tradirion of cultural signification and communication, a body
of symbolic forms capable of being invoked and reshaped to express mean"
ings and values. As a medium for expressing value, it has a semiotic
StruChlre ratller like that of money, functioning as a special son of com
modiry thar plays a unique symbolic role in the system of exchange-value.
Like money, landscape is good for nothing as a use-value, while serving
as a theoretically limitless symbol of value at somt: other level. At rhe mOst
---'
'\ Imperial Landscape IS
\.!J
basic, vulgar level, the value of landscape expresses itself in a specific price:
me' added 'cost of a bcautifW view in real estate value; the price of a plane
"ticket to the Rockies, Hawaii, the Alps, or New Zealand, Landscape is a
marketable commodiry to be presented and re-presented in "packaged
tours," an object to be purchased, consumed, and even brought home in
the form of souvenirs such as postcards and photo albums. In its double
role as commodity and potem cultural symbol, landscape is the objecr of
fetishistic practices involving the limitless repetition of identical photo-
graphs taken on identical spots by tourists with interchangeable emotions.
As a fetishized commodity, landscape is what Marx called a "social
,_'?JJ
hie;oglyph," an emblem of the social relations it conceaJs. At the same
tune that it commands a specific price, landscape represents itself as "be-
yond price," a source of pure, inexhaustible spiritual value. "Landscape,"
says Emerson, "has no owner," and the pure viewing of landscape for
itsdf is spoiled by economic considerations: "you cannot admire a
noble landscape, if laborers arc digging in the field hard by."18 Raymond
Williams notes that "a working country is hardly ever a landscape," and
John BarreU has shown the way laborers are kept in the "dark side" of
English landscape to keep their work from spoiling the philosophiol
contemplation of natural beaUty.29 "Landscape" musr represent itself,
then, as che antithesis of "land," as an "ideal estate" quite independent of
"real estate," as a "poetic" property, in Emerson's phrase, rather rhan a
material one, The land, real property, contains a limited quantity of wealth
in minerals, vegetation, warer, and dweUing space. Dig out all the gold in
a mountainside, and its wealth is exhausted. But how many photographs,
postcards, paintings, and awesCnJck "sightings" of the Grand Canyon wiJl
it take to exhaust its value as landscape? Could we fIJI up Grand Canyon
with its representations? How do we exhaust the valne of a medium Like
landscapd
C, Landscape is a medium not only for expressing vaJue but also for ex
'pressing meaning, for communication between persons-most radicaJl)',
for communicarion between the Human and the non-Human, Landsc:lre
mediates the culrural and the natural, or "Man" and "Nanlre," as eigh-
teentll-century theorists would say. It is nor only a narural scene, and nOt
just a representation of a natural scene, but a 1/tltuml representation of a
natural scene, a [race or icon of nature ;1/ nature itself, as if nature were
imprinting and encoding its essential strucrures on our 'perceptual
tus. Perhaps tlus is why we place a special value on landscapes wirh lakes
or reAecting pools. The reflection exhibits Nature representing itself to
itself, displaying an identity of the Real and the Imaginary that certifies
the reality of our own images.
30
The desire for chis certificace of the Real is clearest in the rhetoric of
17
1-') W J. 1. MllChell
wpog,raphical illustration, with its craving for pure objectivity
and rransparency and the suppression of aesthetic signs of "style" or
"genre." But even the most highly formulaic, conventional, and stylized
landscapes tend ro repn:sent themselves as "rOle" to some sort of namre,
to universal structures of "Jdeal" nature, or co codes that are "wired in"
to the visual cortex and to deeply insrincrual roots of visual pleasure associ-
ated with scopophilia, voyeurism, and the desire to see withom being
seen.
In The Experience oJLflIuiscflpe, Jay Appleton connects landscape fonnu-
las to animal behavior and "habirat theory," specifically to the eye of a
predator who scans the landscape as a strategic field, a network of pros-
pects, refuges, and hazards.
31
The standard picmresgue landscape is espe-
cially pleasing to this eye because it typically places the observer in a
protected, shaded spor (a "refuge"), with screens on either side TO dart
behind or to entice curiosity, and an opening to provide deep access at
the center. Appleton's observer is Hobbes's Natural Man, hiding in the
thicket to pounce on his prey or to avoid a predame The picturesque
stmcrure of this observer's visual field is simply a foregrol\oding of the
scene of "natural representation" itself, "framing" or putting it on a stage.
It hardly maners whether the scene is picmresque in d,e narrow sense;
even if d,e feahlres are sublime, dangerous, and so forth, the frame is
always there as the guarantee thar it is only a pichlre, onl}' piculresque,
and the observer is safe in another place-outside me frarne, behi.nd me
binoculars, the camera, or the eyeball, in the dark refuge of the skuU.
Appleton's ideal spectator of landscape, grounded in the visual field of
violence (hunting, war, surveillance), certainl}' is a cmcial figure in the
aesthetics of the picturesque. The onl)' problem is that Appleton believes
this spectator is universal and "natural." Bm there arc clearly other possi-
bilIties: the observer as woman, gatherer, scientist, poet, interpreter, or
tourist. One could argue that they are never completely free from the
subjectivity of (or subjection to) Appleton's ohserver, in the sense that
the threat of vio lence (like the aesthetics of the snbli me) tends (Q preempt
all other forms of presentation and representation. Applewn's landscape
aesthetic applies not just to the predator but to the unwilling prey as well.
We might think of Appleron's "predatory" view of landscape, d,en, as
one of the strategies by which cerrain conventions of landscape are
nanmtlized. Nature and convention, as we have seen, are both differenti-
ated and identified in the medium of landscape. We say "landscape is
nature, not convention" in the sanle way we say "landscape is ideal, not
real estate," and for the same reason-to erase the signs of our own
constructive activity in the formation of landscape as meaning or value,
to produce an an that conceals its own artifice, to imagine a representation
Imperial Landscape
thJ[ "breaks through" representation inro the realm of the nonhuman.
That is hoI\' we manage to call landscape the "namral medium" in the
same breath dlat we admit that it is nothing but a bag of tricks. a bunch
of conventions and stereotypes. Histories of landscape, 'IS we have seen,
conrinuall)' present it as breaking with convention, with language and
texmality, for a natural view of namre, just as they present landscape as
transcend.ing property and labor. One influenrial account of the European
origins of landscape locates it in the "free spaces" of medieval m3Iluscript
illumination, an "informal space left vacant by the script" in "the margins
and bflS-de-p(lllcs of manuscripts" where the painter could improvisc and
escape from the demands of doctrinal, graphic, and illustrative subordina-
tion to "the severe lines of the Latin text" for a romp with nanlfe and pme
painting.
3l
This double semioric strucmre of landscape-its simultaneous
an..icnlation and d.isarriculation of rJ,c difference betwccn nanlre and con-
vention-is thus' the key dement in the elaboration of its "history" as a
vVhiggish progress from ancient ro modern, from Christi3Il to secular,
from the mixed, subordinate, and "impure" landscape to rJle "pure" land-
scape "seen for from "convention" and "artifice" to the "real" and
the "naturaL"
These semiotic feamres of landscape, and the historical narratives thC}'
generate, arc tailor-made for the discourse of imperialism, which conceives
itself precisely (and simultaneollsly) as an expansion of landscape under-
stood as an inevitable, progressive development in history, an expansion
of "culmre" and "civi.lization" into a "natural" space in a progress that is
itself narrated as "natura\''' Empires move oLln\'ard in space as a wa)' of
mm'ing forward in time; the "prospect" ulat opens lip is nor just a spatial
scene bur a projected furure of "development" and exploitation.
33
And
this movement is not confined to the external, foreign fields toward which
empire directs itself; it is typical.lJ' accompanied b}' a renewed interest in
the re-presentation of rJle home landscape, [he "namre" of the imperial
center.
H
The development of English landscape conventions in tbe eigh-
teenth century illustrates this double movement perfectly. At the same
time as English art 3Ild taste are moving ourward to imporr new landscape
conventions from Europe and China, it moves inward toward a reshaping
and re-presentation of the native land. The Enclosure movement and rhc
accompanying dispossession of d1e English peasantry are an internal colo-
nization of the home country, its transformation from what Blake called
"a green & pleasant land" into a landscape, an emblem of national and
imperi,t1 identity. Pope's "Windsor l;orest)) is one stich emblem, epitomiZ-
ing British poutical and cultural sovereignty ("At once UlC Monarch's and
the Muse's seats"), and its imperial destiny, figured in the "OJks" that
provide rJle material basis tor British cOllUnercial and naval power: "While
13 19 W. J. T. Mitchell
by our Oaks the precious loads arc born, I And reaLns commanded which
[hose Trees adorn" (lincs 31-32).
Decline and Fall
II, indeed, the reader has never suspected that landscape-painting was any-
thing but good, right, and healthy work, I should be sorry to put any doubt of
its being so into his mind.... I should rather be glad, than othelWlse, that he
had formed some suspicion on this matter. ... We have no right to assume,
without a very accurate examination of it. that this change has been an enno-
bling one. The simple fact that we are, in some strange way, different from all
the great races that existed before us, cannot al once be received as the proot
at our own greatness.
-Rw;k.in, "On the NoveLry of Landscape"
The "realms" that proved most dramatically vulnerable to the "Oaks" of
British sea power at the height of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-
cenrury landscape movement were the islands of the Somh Pacific and
the larger continental prize of Australia. Between the first voyage of Cap-
rain Cook in 1768 and the voyage of Darwin's Beagle in 1831, the British
established unrivaled naval supremacy in the South Pacific and planted
colonies that would develop into independent English-speaking nations.
The ease. of this conqueSt makes it of special interest for the understanding
of landscape. Unlike the colonial landscapes of India, China, or the MiddJe
East, the Somh Pacific had no anciem, mbanizcd, imperial civilizatiolls
or military establishments to resist colonization. Unlike Mrica, it pre-
sented few land masses inaccessible to British "Oaks.,,35 Unlike North
An1erica, it did not quickly develop its own independent pretensions to
be an inlperial, metropoli tan cemer. 36 The scattered cultures of Polynesia
were seen, in Marshall Sahlin's phrase, as "islands of history," the last
refuges of prehistoric, precivilized people in a "scate of namre.,,37 The
South Pacific provided, therefore, a kind of tabula rasa for the fantasies
of Ellropean imperialism, a place where European landscape conventions
could work themselves oue vinually w1impeded by "native" resistance,
where the "naturalness" of those conventions could ruld itself confirmed
by a real place undersrood to be in a stare of nature.
Bernard Smith's Em'opeal1 ViJjOJj ill the South Pntific dOClunems dlis
process in encyclopedic detail, noting the way dlat specific places were:
quickly assimilated to the conventions of European landscape, with Tahiti
represented as an arcadian paradise in the style of Claude Lorrain and
New Zealand as a romantic wilderness modded on Salvator Rosa, com-
piece with Maori "banditrl.,,3H Austra..l.ia was a bit more difficult to codify,
Imperial Landscape
not because of any nati"e resistancc (the aborigines were probably subju-
gated and erased from the landscape more quickly than any other people
in the SOlith Pacific), buc because of the ambivalence in England's own
sense of what it wanted to see there-a fearsome, desolate prison for
transponed convicts, or an arrractive pasroral prospect for colonial set.
tkrs.
39
But Smi th's account of the development of the South Pacific land-
scape sllggeStS that ambivalence about the proper forms of representation,
and about the "independence" or "othemess" of the colonized landscape,
is constitutive of its perceived nafilre, Here is Smith's overview of the
story his book will tell:
The opening of the Pacific is ... co be numbered among those factors contributing
to the triumph of romanticism and science in the ninetecmh century world of
values. Whilst it wiU be. shown how the discover), of the Pacific contributed co
the chaJlc:nge [Q neoclassicism in several fields, more particular attention wiU be
given to rhe impact of Pacific exploration upon Lhe theory and practice of land-
scape painting and upon biological thonght. For lhese C\'.'O fields provide COIl\'C-
nicnt and yet distinn grounds in which [Q observe how dle world of the Pacific
stimulated European thought concerning the world of nature as a whole; in UlC
case of the former as lIle ohject of imiration and expression, in the case of the
latter as all objeCt of philosophical speculation.
40
The ambivalence of European vision ("Romantic" versus "scientific,"
"neoclassicism" versus "biological thought," "imitation and expression"
versus "philosophical speculation") is mediated by its absorption inco a
progressive VVhig narrative that overcomes all contradictions in dle con-
quering of the Pacific by science, reason, and nanlralistic representation.
The Cnlcial moments in Sm.ith's aCCounts of landscape painting are typi-
cally found in "fearless attempts to break with neo-classical formulas and
to paine with a namral vision. "41 Smith treats the Pacific as a spatial region
that was there to be "opened," "discovered," and constructed as an object
of scient.i.fic and artistic representation, one that reserves all "challenges"
and historical, temporal movements for the internal unfolding of Euro-
pean thought, its overcoming of its own attachment to artifice and con-
vention. The real subject is not the Somh Pacific bue European imperial
"vision," wlderstood as a dialectical movement toward landscape under-
stood as the nanlralistic representation of nanlre.
Empires have a way of coming to an end, leaving behind their land-
scapes as relics and ruins. Ruskin seems to have scnsed this even as he
celebrated the "novelty" of landscape, guestioning whether "we have a
legitimate subjeer of complacency" in producing a kind of painting (and
its associated feelings) that reveals us 3S "ditlermt trom all the great r:lees
that have existed before L1s.,,n Kenneth Clark sJ.}'s that "landscape paint-
28 W. J T. Mitchell
)ng, like all forms of art, was an act of faith" in a nineteemh-cemUI)'
religion of narure mat seems impossible today;H for Clark, abstract paint-
ing is the successor co landscape, a logical outgrowth of its antUnllnetlc
trndencies. Perhaps abstraction, the international and imperial style of the
twentieth century, is best understood as carrying our d1e task oflandscape
by other means.
H
More likely, the "end" of landscape is just as mythical
,a notion as me "origins" and developmental logic we have been tracing.
But there is no doubt that me classical and romantic genres of landscape
painting evolved during me great age of European imperialism now seem
exhausted, at least tor lhe purposes of seriollS Traditional eigh-
teenth- and nineteemh-ccntury landscape conventions are now pan of the
repertory of kitsch, endlessly reproduced in amateur painting, postcards,
packaged tours, and prefabricated emotions. That doesn't mean that beau-
tiful somel)' has lost its capacity to move great numbers of people; on
me contrary, more people now probably have an appreciation of scenic
beauty, precisely because they are so estranged from it. Landscape is now
more precio\\s than ever-an endangered species that has co be protected
from and by civilization, kept safe in mnseums, parks, and shrinking "wil-
derness areas." Like imperialism landscape is an object of nostalgia
in a postcoloniaJ and postffiodern era, reflecting a time when metropoliTan
culcures could imagine their destiny in an unbounded "prospect" of end-
less appropriation and conquest.
As a conclusion to this essay, I would like to examine two imperial
landscapes that ex.hibit in quite contrary ways this "precious" and "endan-
gered" condition in me rearview mirror of a postcolonial lUlderstanding.
The first is New Zealand, a land that is virnlally synon)'mOus with pristine
natural beamy, a nation whose principal commodity is me presentation
and representation of landscape; the second is me "Hall' Land," the con-
tested territOries of Israel and Palestine. It is hard to imagine two land-
scapes more remote from one another, both in geographic location and
in cultural/political significance. New Zealand is at the periphery ofEuro-
pe.an imperialism, the last and remotest outpost of the British Empire, an
unspoiled paradise where the nineteenth-century fantasies of ideal, pictur-
esque, and romantic landscape would seem to be perfecdy preserved. The
Holy Land has been at the center of imperial struggle throughout its long
history; itS landscape is a palimpsest of scar tissue, a paradise mat has
been "despoiled" by conqllering empires more often than any orher region
on eanh. The juxtaposition of these two landscapes may help to suggest
something about me r-ange of possibilities in colonial landscape-the
poles or antipodes berwetn which rhe global features of imperial landscape
might be mapped in (say) Africa, India, China, the Americas, and the
South Pacific. More important than any global mapping, howevt:r, is the
I(lIpo:lll:ll Lanascape .H
possibility d1at a close reading of specific colonial landscapes mJ)' help us
to see, not just the successful domination of a place by imperial repreSt:nta'
tions, bm the signs of resistance to empire from both within and without.
Like all scenes framed in a rearvicw mirror, these landscapes may be closer
to lIS rhan they appear.
Circmnference and Center
Columbus's voyage on the round rim of the world would lead, he thought,
back to the rocks at its sacred center.
-Stephen Greenblatt, ,Hnn,dolls POSStni011S
New Zealand would seem at first glance to be the site of least possible
resistance to the conventions of European landscape representation. Its
sublime "Soumern Alps," its picturesque seacoasts, lakes, and river valleys,
and its sheep-herding economy make it seem tailor-made for imposition
of European versions of the pastoral. The fact that New Zealand was
originally colonized by missionaries who rapidly converted me Maori
inhabitants to Christianiry redoubles itS identity as a "pastoral" paradise.
If Australia was imagined as a prison-scape for the incarceration of the
British criminal class, New Zealand was thought of as a garden and a
pasnlre in which the best elements of British sociery might grow into an
ideal nation, bringing the savage inhabitants into a state of blessed har-
mony wim dlis ideal namre. It's hardly surprising, then, that landscape
painting has always been the dominant mode in New Zealand art, and
that this painring has consistcndy been bound up wim questions of na
tional identifY, New Zealand represents itself as a nation of backpackers,
mountain climbers, shepherds, and Sunday painters (a glance at any travel
brochure will confirm this), a refuge from the problems of modern civiliza-
tion, a nuclear-free English socialist mopia in the South Pacific.
The hegemony of New Zealand landscape had, however, a contradic-
tion built i.nto it from the very first. How could New Zeala.nd present
itself as a unique place with its own national identity, while at the same
time representing itself wim conventions borrowed from European land-
scape representations? How could it reconciJe its desire for difference with
its equally powerful desire to be the same? An answer was suggested in
tile carly eighties by Francis Pound, a New Zealand art critic who callsed
a storm of controversy by questioning the uniqueness and originality of
New Zealand landscape painting. POlllld shows that the history of this
painting, like that of its European predecessors, has largely been told as
dlC familiar story of the movement from convention to namre, from the
Ideal to the Real, and that this Story underwrites a progression from
2: W J. T. Mllclleli
clllmrJI colonl;llism and dcpendenC)' to national independence. Pound
exposes whJt he calls the "fallacy ... lhar there is a 'real' New Zealand
landscape wirh irs 'real' qua.lities of light :lJ1d atmosphere" and suggests
that this naturalism is no[hll1g b\lt a "critical myth," a "fantasy of the
fl'llth" rh:u was devised for the purpose of "inveming a country."47 Pound
ill$uhs the desire ttl)' dilftrence by contloually discO\'ering the same in
New Zealand paiming, showing [hat no new cOllventions of I.mdscape
were invented ill New Zealand, on the contraq', NelV Zealand paimers
simply imporn::d European conventions and absorbed the alien land into
them. LJndscape painting in New ZeaLmd is thus a derivative, attenuated
sinmbuulll of styles, techniques, and convemions im'enrcd elsewhere.
A good example of this pictorial colonization is John Aknnder Giltll-
bn's Nfltil'c COl/mil o(IVIlI" t] 855), which inserts the "native" Maoris into
the lamdiar landscape cOlwemiorlS of lhe C1alldean picturesque (see fig.
1.1). Howcvtr Illuch we m:l}' <:ldmire thc beauty and the technical skill of
this pJlllting, chere on be no doubt that it is a throwback to an earlier
Strle or lJnJscapc painring, nor rhe (1lScovery of a new style or a new
reaIll'\' . The ckarest evidence of this faet is the placement of the culmral
"orht'fS," The Maori w;)r coullcd, into dle serpentine "line of beauty" that
had been Ill1lkrstood, .It least since Hogarth, as the iconic form oi visual
curiosity, of 3ecess ro the varieties of visual experience.
Pound :llt<lcks d1C nacioll:llisc/naruraliSt claims of traditional New
Zc;llalld 3rt !lisco..y with an inrernarionalist discourse of culmral relarivism
and ':olll'tIHion:llism. The result is a considerable refinement in the under-
standing of that histOry and the \'isual conventions that constitute ir. Bm
his replacement of namralist famasies with historicaJ conventions raises a
new problem that he is quick ro acknowledge:
All the afores,lid m'l)' arouse [he objenion [hat ir is merely a sevenfold classification
of elglm:enth and nineteenth cenrury Imdsc3re into pigeonholes-rhe holes la
belled rhe God in NaC\lrc, [he Tdeal, lhe Sublime, [he topographical, [he pictur-
esque, the skC[(h, and the Jmpress ionisr. It can be answered lI'ith the assenion
that prel'iollsl}' in the cdricll lireraulrc aU New Zeala.nd landscapes wcrc sl1IlTcJ
inro two pigeonholes: d)e true a.nd the unmlt to New Zealand. The presenr text's
classifications IUl'e U'C adl'3mage of otkring concepts used at the: rime of the
painrings, r'lthcr [han those thaI' merely answer the narionaliscic concemS ofcrirics
.J (CIIUlr\, laTer. ~
P0und replaces the binary OpposJtlons of a retrospective nationalist
mJ'th with the historical categories appropriate to the self-understanding
.md self-repreStnt:Hion of New Zealand landscape. The question is
whether this move doesn't simply reins(ate the categories of imperial land-
sClpe conventions without questioning their specific historical function.
.t. ... ;
1"1.... .,"'" Ldlluscape
1.1 ). A. Gilfillan, Nllfil't COllneil ollVar Counts), the Hockcn Library, DunedIn,
New ZcaJan'l.
Pound's anal}/sis of the Gilfillan landscape, for instance, like most of i ~
commentaries, tends to reduce the painting to an itemized list of itS con-
ventional elements with their appropri<ltc emorional epithets-the pichlr-
esguc, dlC sublime, tile beautiful-and u)(; senrimcnrs appropriate to these
conventions arc simply recirculareJ. The discourse of imperial landscape
is reinstated in the name of history, but at the expense of its historical
function in the formation of a colonial and national idcmiry.
A historicaJ, as disruKt ti'om a historicist, understanding ~ this SOrt of
painting would, in my view, not simply retrieve their conventionaliry but
explore the ideological lise of their conventions in a specific place and.
time. Gilfillan, l'ound reUs us, "made precise pencil sketches from tife" of
aU the figllres in this design except two-the "Titianesque" woman and
the seared man beside hn, who serve as "lead in ngtlrcs." These figures
are inserted on the threshold of [he painting, the traJlsition space betwcen
observer .lnd observed. Tht)' "sit in" for the European observcr, reassuring
us thar the Maori sec chillgS as we do, while mai.ntaining their difference:.
The key figme ill mediatillg this difference is the bare-breasted woman,
the Ren:l.lssance Venm who phys the rok of el'e-catcher, a titillating bit
of soft-core colonial pornography, all emblem of native "nature" opening
herself for casy access to the lInperial gaze while her husband's back is
ru rneci (the husband, b)' conrras t, covers his nakedness, holding himsel f
ill) These figures 01 access are the all I)' "invented" elements in the
painring, dle only features thac were not "drawn from life"; they arc also
its most conspicllollsly conventional and derivative fearure, the element
that declares Illost explicitl)' the sameness of colonia) representa-
ti('1I1S of difference. This idyllic absorption of the strange into the familiar
comes to seem all the more l'amJstic when we come to it with the informa-
tion ChJl the paimer's wife a.nd three children had been killed by a Maori
rJiding part)' JUSt eight years before. this painting was finished in the
rdative safery of Ausrralia.
Gilfillan's p.liming allows (understandably perhaps) for no resistance
to C'Olwtntiolls of European lJ.ndscape, except perhaps for the slight indi-
c:Hion of compositional dissonance in the way the oval, canoe-shaped
circle of the !\.!Jon \Var council ems otf che serpentine access route. By
contrast, Augusms Earle's Distrmt Jl iCJl' of the BI1)' of ]s{rwds, in spite of a
titk rluc se.ems to annOllnce norhing more (han another picnuesque scene.,
offers quite pointed, if subtle resistance co European conventions (see fig.
1.2). Francis Pound's commentary emu"crates the specific convemions
evoked by the paiming: "Earle llses the traditional system of planes of
shoclow alternating with plane.s of light; and though the landscape itself
has not allowed him the Jssistance of :lt1y corwenient tree, he has managed
to place an appropriate rcp{)/JSSlJi,. [a picmresqlle side-screen] at the right,"
ill the term of d1C carved tigme.
50
The problem widl this reading is not
j\lst th,lt it immediJrely reduces the paiming to a farniliar code and a
cOll\'emional response ("the effect is of solemn splendor"). The real prob-
lem is that i( doesn't push conventionalism far enough and dmws hack to
all appeal to what narure-"thc: landscape itsclf"-allowed the painter to
do. Bur one of the key prinClpks of the picturesgut tradition was that it
,llk)wcd tbe p<limer to introduce a convenient tree (or to cut i[ down), in
,KcordJ.J1cc with the demands of [he convention. As \Villiarn Gilpin puts
it: "Th<:lllgh the pJintcr has no right to add a magnificent cJstle, he mal'
shovel the earth ..IbOllt him ::IS he pk..lses ... he l11ay pull lip a paling or
th rOw clown;} cottage." S1 Gi lli Il,Ul 's imrodllction of the Ti tianesque Venus
iIlustr'\tes precisely tl,is inventive license.
If EJrJe were simply folloll'lng pictureslJue convenrions, the "landscape
itstlf" would have h:ld nothing to S3)' .about the matter. And if the "UIl-
}
. :;." .
':.' ',,'}
.... ;': .":" .r: _. _
1.2 AllgllS[lli; EJrlc, DirTa'" I'in" oft}" flay of Islmuir, New Ze"I""d (ca. 1827).
WJrcrcolor, 26 )( 44.1 em. O,urrcs)' the Rc:x Nm Kivell Collection, NJrionJI Lihrar)'
of AllSrrJha.
couthl)' carved figure" at the right (to usc Earle's words) is really to be
seen as a stand-in for the picturesq\le side-screen or "lead-in" figure, it is
a singtdarly awkward, ineflectual, and ironic one. It does not, like lhe
traditional provide a dark refuge for the viewer to hide behind,
nor does it provide J convenient stand-in lor the beholder's gaze within
the composition. On the contrary, it is a hazard, an emblem or an alil'll
vision that stares back into the space of [he beholder. The fimetion of the
in Maori culture is to stand over tabooed territory, to
tbe s:lcred, forbidden Llndscape from the territOry surveyed and traversed
by the Ellropean traveler and his /vI aoci companions. S2 The carved figure
may, like the lopped trce trunks thJ[ so often appear in the foregrounds
of early New Zealand landscapes, aUude to the traces and vestiges of the
picturesque side-screen; the figure mJI' "stand in lhe place of" the I'fPOl/J-
soi,', but it does so onl}' to show thJ[ cOl1venrion displaced by something
else.
What is this "something It is (ertainl)' not "the landscJpe iesdr"
or nature bllt (mother colll'C1Jti01J for organizing and perceiving the Jand-
sC<l[1e, one tJlat contends with and the convention that Earle
carries as a picOlrcsqlle trJ\'eler. That convention is the lvlaori experience
27 Imperial Landscape
Lo w. J. 1. Mitchell
and representation of landscape symboli2.ed by the carved figure, who
stands as rigidly erect and still as the halted European traveler, gazing on
a holy land. So far as I know, Pound is correct co say that "the Maori
did nor paint landscape," bur he is seriously mistaken in claiming that
"landscape, the pictorial attitude to the land, stopping still JUSt to look at
it, is purely an imported convcmion.,,53 Earle's picmre suggests a more
complicated situation. The Maori statue indicates at a minimum that
"stopping still just to look" at the land is so important to the Maoris that
erect a Statue to keep surveiUance over a place. Nor is this surveiUance
confined only to me carved figure. The Maori bearer on the left seems to
be hesitating as he walks, turning to the side to scan rhe tabooed rerritory,
while raising his war club slightly to ward off a poteorial threat. The
lvlaori warrior just ahead of the European traveler, moreover, seems co
be joining in the western gaze, looking Ollt roward the opening clouds
and horizon. His musket, upright posture, and European garments sug-
gest that he is the Maori chief in this party and dlat he is able to make
the transition from Maori sense of taboo landscape to a sharing in the
European appreciation of "prospect" about as easily (and perhaps at as
great a cost) as he is able to replace a war club with a musket.
This intermingling of landscape conventions runs deepest, however,
not in d1e explicit iconographical signs but in the odd, somber composi-
tion and coloring. Most notable is the way the picturesque convention of
the serpentine line from foreground to background is cur all' il1 this pic-
tlIre and rurned back on itself. A tiny reminder of d\c serpentine appears
in the middle distance, jusr ro the left of tbe Maori chief, bur it is only a
vestige or trace of the convention, not a fuUillmenr of it-in much the
Sa.lTle way d1e carved figure reminds us of the picturesque side-screen while
eliminating its fUJlClion as refuge. in the place of the serpentine access
roure, the composition deploj's a crescent, canoe-shaped hollow, envel-
oping a procession of eqnally scaled figmes across the shaUow surface of
the painting. Tlus effect, which is reminiscent of the treatment of figures
in a bas-relief, is heightened by the ftattel1ing of dlC perspective by alrer-
llating bands of Light and dark monochrome wash across the painting.
The effect is of an oval or circular procession, advancing up toward us on
the left, retreating away from us on the right, erernally suspended on the
canoe-shaped threshold benyeen two landscapes, the picturesque prospect
of the pnkeha} or European, and the taboo space of the Maori.
55
Both scenes are "arresting" sights that fixate me depicted observers
in complexes of awe, and wonder. Earle does not-he
the visual field of the Maori: d1at is beyond the tj'ame,
our here in the dark with lIS. But he can represent the Maori gaze as a
presence in d1e landscape, as something figured forth in the sculpmral
quality (as well as the sculpted figures) of his composition. Thar qualiry
is underscored by the color scheme. The green and reddish ochre-brown
of earth and wood and the white of bone dominate the palette, as if the
carved figure at the right were emanating its color to the enrire landscape,
tinting the pnkeha vision and decenrering its inlperial gaze.
There is no appeal to "nature" in dlis reading, unless one insists on
the blatandy ideological move of placing the Maori in a "srate of oamre."
(Earle himself regarded the Maoris as a complex, advanced culture; he
admired and copied their art, born me wood carvings and their elaborate
tattoo desigos.)s6 The reading is of the encounter bem'een nvo cOlwen-
fiOllS, an encounter that Iea\'es liS in an odd, djsturbing, liminal space, the
threshold between two cltltures. Yet namre is not left am, whether it is
the demands of a partiCltlar place or persons, or a historical moment, or
deeply engraincd habits of perceptiol1, or recognizable canons of truth,
pleasure, and morality. Ar least one moral of dle picture is guire transpar-
ent. Pnkeha and Maori see eye-to-eye on one thing: the naturalness of a
hierarchical social order in which some do the work while others do the
gazing. Earle had become close enough to Maori culmre to recognize
that it was not simply a passive field for colonization but a viral, expansive
form of life that had its own imperial ambitions, irs own sense of place
and landscape.
The marks of imperial conquest in Israel/Palestine, in conrrast with
New Zealand, would seem to be absolutely unavoidable. The face of the
Holy Landscape is so scarrcd by war, and displacemellt that
nO illusion of innocent, original naOlre can be sustained for a moment.
That doesn't prevent both the picturesque tourist and the resolute senJcr
from trying to put on some sort of blinders to idealize the landscape and
erase all signs of violence. Postcards from Israel frequcntly depict a kind
of "desert pastoral," complete widl a palm tree (suggesring tbe oasis rd:
uge) in the foreground, and a Bedouin on a camcl in the distance, recall ing
a time when the Israelites were merely anodler group of nomads among
the Semitic Tribes of Abraham. Orner versions of the pastoral are more
Tendentious. The first time I delivered this essay publicly, at a conference
on landscape at Bar-IIa.n University in Tel Aviv, I was assmed (1) mat
the ancient terraces cut into the hillsides around Jerusalem were excavated
b)' the ancient Israelites ro catch the rain and "make the desert bloom,"
and (2) that the presence of these terraces consrimtes a prima facie basis
for the legitimacy of Israel's claim to me land, on the t\,.,in growKls of
prior OCCII pation and agriclllmraJ improvemenr.
A more apocal)'ptic "reading" of The la.lldscape was otfered at Masada,
whose sublime prospect from the ancient Roman fortress overlooking the
Dead Sea was called an emblem of modan Israel" by our guide. Land-
scape in Tsrael, as in New Zealand, is central to the national imaginary, a
part of daily life that imprints pUblic, collecrive fantasies on places and
29 Imperial Landscape
.Lu W J I MllctllJll
1,3 1C311 lv!oh" "l>r3d 1979," Reproduced from Aftu Ibe LilSt Sky, Counesy lew Mohr.
scenes. Masac!:l, (he terraced hillsides, and the Arabian pastoral arc all, ill
rheir \Val'S, ,lttempts to unif" the landscape in the franK of bOth pictorial
cOI1\'CnriOllS Jnd ideological cOl1vi..:riol1s: the pastoral expresses nostalgia
for a Self (har is now the colonized Other;S8 the georgic hillsides offer
the prospecr of permanent legnimate settkmem; the sublime vista from
the Roman min invites medir'Hion on collective self-annihilation as an
altern;ltil'e to surrender.
The trllth of the unified Holy Landscape is clearly division anJ conflict.
/can Mohr's phorogrJph of an Israeli condominium in the 'Vest B:lJ1k
simpl\' nukes this bct formall)' explici[ and unavoidable (see fig. 1.3).59
Like Augusrus brlc, l\lol11' depicr5 the collision of two media of spatial
in the IJJ)dscape; this time architecture, not sculpture, mocks
the role of picmresque rep(l/tssnir, or side-screen. The picturesque valley in
the i5 tl-amcd and dominated by the modern condominium, its
windows sighting dowll on the ALlb viUage. Like the eyes of the Maori
carving, they keep the taboo territory under perpemal surveiU:lnce. Unlike
Earle's composition, lvlohr's landscape offers no threshold for the encoun-
ter of conventions, the inrercha.nge of gazes, only a stark confrontation
between traditional organic topographical forms and a crystalline, "cubist"
an::hitecn,lrc.; only the contrast between a passive, observed scene and the
gaze that is fixed upon it. The landscape is conspicuous for its lack of
figures. The Arab village is roo far Jway, and the foreground rduge too
l1l1inl'itll1g CO deby ;lnyom: bm the photographer. No one is 3hou[ [0
mistake Israel tor New ZCJlJnd. Native Jnd pnkelm are at war in the
former, partly over the gllestion of who is the l13ti\'e, who the alien, Jl1d
il would take a massi\'e effort of pichlresquc "screening" and selection of
prospects ro keep the signs of this war out of the landscape. \Vords\\'orth
might hJve calkd this "an ordin;)r)' sight"; certainly it is a d3ih' and un-
avoidable prospect tor the senlcrs who live in the condominiunl. Yt"t it is
also, in r.fohr's stJ!'k composition, a scene of what \VortlsworTh would
h;lve called "vis ion ary c1 n:ariness."
Emerson sal's that "landscape has no owner" except "the po{:t," who
can inregrate its parts. But Mohr's photograph shows the sorr of sight-
and site-that demands a poet capable of asking, "\Vho OWllS this lJnd-
SC3pe?" The coloni.zing settlers who watch from their torrified dwellings?
The inhabitants of the traditional dwellings in the vaUey, 3. space rh:H
must look just as deadly and threatening [0 the coloniaJ gaze, its watch-
towers look to them? The photographer, who has chosen l..his image from
ail those available and presented it to us as a representative landscape of
a conresn:d territory? Till: only ackqllate answers seem at first gbnce
cally contradicrory: no one "owns" this bndscapc in the sense of having
clear, unquestionable tide to it-contestation and stnlggk are inscribed
indelibly on it. Bur everyone "owns" (or ought to own) this landscape in
the sense that everyone must ilckllo11'lcdge or "own up" to some responsibil-
ity for it, some compliciry ill it. This is nm jllSt a martel' of geopolitics :lnd
the question of Israel as the site of big-power imperialist maneuvering; it
is also a matter of a global poetics in which the Holy Land plays a
GI..I and mythic role as the imaginary landscape where EJstern and Western
cultures encounter one another in a struggle lhat rcfuses to confine irself
to the Imaginary.
I realize that this :lnalysis will sound hupelessly evasive, generalized,
and equivocal to those who insist on "owning" this landscape in t.he Ilrst
sense, while refusing to "own" any responsibility tor its fraclllrcd, ago
nized appea ranee. But only an cqui vocal poctry of til is son: wiJl, I suspect,
prove adequate to Emerson's project of "integrating the parts of the land-
scape" into a unity fit tor habitation, much less contemplation. Equi\'o..:a-
tion may also be the key to practical diplom:lCY and to the prospect of a
critical/poetic answer to the qllestion of Palestine. We h3ve known since
Ruskin that the appreciation of landscape as an aeSthetic object cannot be
an occasion for complacency or unrroubkd contemplation; rather, it must
be dle tocus of a historical, political, and. (yes) aesthetic alertness to the
violence and e\'il written on the land, projected there b}' the ga.zing eye.
We have known at least since Turner-perhaps since Milton-that the
violence of this evil eye is inextricably conneeteJ with imperiaJism and
mlt;onalism. \VI13( we know now is that landscape itself is the medium
by whidl this evil is I,tiled mel I1;Hur;llized. Whether this knowledge gives
liS any power IS .1l1other q\lcstion altogelher.
60
Nntes
I. John Barrdl, Tilt' Dm'k Side LmllisUlpe lCambridge, 1980), Sec
,1150 Rrlldr/!...tI Lill/risen!,"- C"lIItI,'-Cuv-Cnp/tnl, ed. Simon Pugh (JVLuH:hester,
1990). The ps\'.:hoanaI)'ti( read mg 0 r landscape as "regressive" symbol has been
best developed ov Ronald Paulson ill l.,re-ml" Lflllrlscnpe: TW1w' (I1lri C01JJtnblr.
l New I-laven, 1982),
2. RldJfmt JI'i1s0}1: Tht Lallrismpe Ilf Relleti1l11 (London, Tare Gallery, 1982).
See T'lhn B,meJl, Tbe P'Jfitioll Theilii' PIIIn til'l,..tI jiWII Re.YlJolriJ ro HIlz,litt (NelV
Haven, 1986),340, tl)r .1 tilscllssl(1n ot d'is control'ers)'.
3, .\nn Bermingham, LmufsCflI'E nlJ Jd(.o!0!lY: -The EILf/lish Rustic TmditilJJl,
Fl0-IS6D (Berkele)', Calif, 19Bb).
..j Fisber dis':l\sses "privileged settings" in ..\mencan hlsrory such as thc wilder-
ness, rhe t'lIlli, ,lnd Ihe ciry in conjunction wid1 slavery, and the macl::et-
pldee. See his Hnrd FflrT$: SeITH!!r fwd Fuml in rhc .t1mtriCilIi NO!'d (Ne\\' York,
1985)
5. GL)n,brirb's essay IS Tcprinred in NOl1n lInd F1J17I1: SllIrlit$ ill the ./111' 0/ (bc
Rr'Jltl/mWrC (Chicago, 1966), 107-21. For J critiqlle of GOO1brich's argument,
see my eSS31' "N'lnll'e fi)r Sale: Gomhrich and rhe Rjsc of L.ll1dscape," in The
COllJWlIl't/(11l o/Culture ill the EIlI'/.y Pel'illd, ed, Ann Bermingham and fobn
Brewer (London, fon:hcoming).
6, Kenneth Clark, LC1IIriJ'ml'( in/Oj!,., (lsc published repr., fiascon, MA:
lkacon Press, 1963), viii. Cf. the artlde "Landscape Jlainring" in The OxFwd
Compfluioll ((I An: "Until fairly rccem rimes men lookcd ar natllre as an assemhlage
of isolared objects, wirhout connecring [Ihem) inro a unified scene.... It was ill
this Euro['ean almosphere of the early 16th cenrury that the lirst 'pure' landscape
was painted."
7. Ikrmlngham, LIlJ1fisCilpr. Ill/d 3,
8 Bermingl13m acknowlccigcs dIe rok of Clark's \\'ork in "llhlmin:lIing Ihe
rornul and per(cpn,al dimensions of landscape representation," providing her
wirh "impofonr ideas to consider jf not alll',1)'5 (0 acccpr" (ibid., 5).
9. Quoted in Clark, Lmllismp,; imo An, viII.
10. Ibid., L
I LOne mlghr ask how the nmion of landscape as a modern or \Vesrcrn
phenomenon C'Ul be sustained III the face of rhe massive Chinese coumercxampJe.
All inSCtllnll'e answer IS suggested by the article "Landscape Painting" in the
OXforr! CUIJJ{'mlioll fO.ll It, which suggests that ChInese landscape painting "is
closely bound up wirh an almost Il,}'snc rel'ercnce for the powers or nantrc," in
conrrasr ro \Vestern (Roman) painting, in which "narure is depicred as unified
scene and enjoyed for irs own sake," (will disCllss the implications of thIs conrrast
b"rween religiOUS (or "symboli,;" or "eollvemionaJ") landscape and "naturalistic"
b.ndscapc lunher ill whar tallows
Imperial Landscape :I \
12. See me dIscussion of Orientalism in the English garden in Tlit' GCllim of
the PIllce: TIle EII.... Jflish Lmuiswpr Gnnim, jti20-1S2V, cd. John Dixon Hunt and
Perer Willis (New York, 1975), 32.
13. For ol'er:lll accounts or Chinese l<llldscape painting, see IvliLhael SlIlIil';lIl,
TJ;r Birrh of LmldsCilpt Pflmtillg in C/;ilJfl (Berkelcv, Calif., 19621; and J;>mes
Cahill, ChiJICIe I'nillri"_,, (Nell' York, 1977). I don't mean to suggest herc dut the
W(lrd "empire" dcnOtcs some \Inif(lIID phenomenon lhilt appears in (he same form
in temh-ccnmfY China Jnd eighteenth-century England. For J good of
the varieties of imperi:ll and nationalislic dlscomsc:s, and meir rclation to "univer
sal" or "nonarbirrar)''' languages, see IknedlCr Anderson, [mflJIl/ud Co"",umiries:
]{ejiei.7l1J}jf 011 the O,.tflill mu{ Sprend oj'NntJo'jfllislJl (London, 1983), 21,
14. The literature on imperialisIll is almost as vast as the phenomenon irself.
My srarring poim tor this inquiry is the recent shift in the critique ot imperialism
from a primary concern widl economic and polirical dominatiOn to a conccrn
wim culture-that is, widl impcriJlism as a complex sct of represenrational Jild
discursive operations. Edward Said's On'mtllli!m (New York, 1978) ami his subse-
quent essays on culrure and imperialism are fundamental to dlis whole sh itt, wllich
is now generating new sehobrly work throughout the humanilies anll sOCl<l1 sci
cnces. Da\'id Blinn's essa\' in lhis I'oillme provides an excellent introduCtion 10
this critical wrn, illuS[rares irs application to a specific historical sice (nineleenth-
ccntury Soud\ Africa), and shows that the mrn to culture and rcprescllr:ltion need
not involve any neglecr of rhe hard f:lns of wlonialism.
15. On imperialism and aml>ivaJence, see Hon\! K. Bhabha, "Signs Taken for
Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority undcr a Tree Outside Delhi,
May 1817," CritifllllJi'luily 12, no. 1 (Aunm1n 1985): 155-65.
lb. I:or:l. discussion oi Dutch bndscape and nationalism, see Ann Adams's
essay in d1is volume and my essay "Nanlrc tor Sak" on the relation betw(en
northern European landscape and the resistance 10 imperialism.
17. Clark, Lilurlsenpe imo Ali, viiI.
18. Ibid., 1, 10.
19. Ihid., 10.
20. The assessment of Chinese landscape as premodern and "llnsciemific" is
sometimes butTresscd by Ihe claim thar t.he Chinese did nOt understand nanlral
(i.e., artificial) perspectivc. See WilliaJll Chambers, Dism7'llti01I 011 O,.illlrni Gm'dm-
illlr (1772), collected in GmillJ of the Pillce, ed. Hum MId Willis.
21. "Landscape Paiming" (Oxjiwd COlJlpJIIlioll).
22. Clark, Lnlldscape into A 11, 2 L
23. "Landscape Paiming" (OxflJrd COIll/,rwi()JI).
24. Anderson, I"lI1... Jfined COIJIJIIllnities, 21.
25. Ibid.
26. Distinctions of styles anJ techniques in paiming (Linear, painterl)', expres-
sionistic, impressionisric, geomeuic, etc) are, in principle, indepcndclll of subject
matTer. Corrtlarions berweeu kinds of painting and kinds of landscape can be
made by argumenrs for certain principles of decorum (e.g., ir might be argued
thai a sublrme landscape is best rtrldered ill an expressionistic, painterl)' Style).
llul Wese correlations arc a secondary marter, a refinement on a generic di\'lsion
dlat is already finnly installed in a prior medium, chat of dlc landscape itself.
33
1
7
. William Chamber.'s discussion of Chinese landscape gardening, fOT exam-
ple, rominely reftrs CO the gMdcn as itself a represemation; see his of
Clmwe Bllt/dill,!}s. FflJ1IirllH, DieHl;, AJlldJims, mul Ute/Hits (1757), in GUli1/! of
t/;e PIau, ed. Hunt and ' ....'ilils 284 -85.
28. Ralph \Valdo Enlerson,Nnturf (1836), inNnt""e,Add"me;, fwd [utlll'e;,
cd. Raben E. SI'i1kr and Alfred Il. Perguson (Cambridge, Mass., 1971}, 39.
29, R'1\,lllolld Wjlhams, The Cmmtl)' (I}//i the City (Lonaon, 1973). l20; Bar
rell, 1)11'-/.. SIde,
3U, J good discussion of rhe specific role played by rdlecrions in Romantic
hndsc'pe representations, see James }-lcfteman, The Rc-CrentuJJI of LfI1lrfscape
(H"nover, N.H., 198H.
31. lay Appleton, The f.,;periwa ufLfJIJdJmpt (London, 1975).
32. Derek Pearsall and Elizabcth Salter, Lal/rlswpt (l1lfi the Srasom of the Jliedl-
tl'lIl II 'odd (Lollllon, 1973), i39. Cf p. 163: "Whatever movement toward real-
ism rhere is rakes place in the borders, where the artist has grcara freedom to
npaimenl ,lIld is less dominatcd by the st)dned ritual of miniature and iniriJJ."
Pc.l.I's.,1J and Salra construct klfld of llwened version of me landscape histOry
I hal'c t>een describing. The t,,1lddlt Ages is prescnted as a period in which the
properl\, natural landscape of the claSSical rradition is replaced by "convenrional"
rqlrescnranons or nanlre, on!\' ro t>e slowly regained as the Renaissance ap'
prl)adles.
33, See I\hry Louise Pratt, "Scratches on the Face of me Countrl'; OT, What
/\Ir. HanoII' Saw in the Land of the Bushmen," in Rnu, IVn'tiILJf, mui Diffil'mrc,
cd. Henry Louis Gatcs (Chicago, 1986), 13S-62. Pratt notes d,e tendency of
u',welnarr;itives in the eighteenth and ninetecnth cenruries to dOll'npla)' "confron-
tations \\'itJi the nam'es" and to concentrate on "dle considerably less exciting
presentation or landscape" (141), intersperscd with "portraits" of the natlves.
"This discursll'c configuration, which centers landscape, separated people from
place, and df:lcCS the spe<lking sdf" (143} of mc traveling observer, prescnt
ing the alld,or "as ,1 kind of collective moving eye which registers" the
"sightfsires" (142) [hat lt enCOllnters in a curious combination of mastery and
passlvc receptivity, "The e)'e 'commands' wha[ falls wirhin ils gaze; the moulHains
'sholl' themselves' or 'prcscnt rhcmsclves'; tJ1C counrq' 'opens up' before me Euro-
pe,HI newcomer, as the llnc!nUleJ indigenous boa}'sea!,e" (143) of [he
n;HII'es.
3-1-. finh Heisinger's analysis of COl1srablc's evolution into a rcpresenrarive
"n,ltional" painter who prcsents scenes of an endangered "deep Ellglalld" l"Con-
srable: Thc tvlakmg of a National Painter," O-itlml llUJiliry 15, no. 2 [Winter
1989J: 253-79) is instrucrivc in regard as an illusrr;)[ion of thc dnve ro
rcmlorce native domcsriCity in the tace of international pressurcs-to keep En-
glJnd Engh.h. The Chmese imperi31 park (and places like Kew Garlkns in LOIl-
ddnl. ill contrast, wcre designed ro bc microcosms of landscape feamrcs from all
regions of the empire and to displ.ly or even to exert a kind of homeoparhic
powcr. The first emperor m the Ch'in DYlusty, for instance, filled his park with
rcplicas of the palaces of fo.:lllhi lords he had and Emperor WlI excavarea
a s,ak model of a major bke in the southern kingdom of Tien a symbolic
Imperial landscape
anticipation of irs colklllest. See LOUlar L.:ddcrose, "The Earthly Paradise: Reli
gious Elr:mellls ill Chinese Landscape ArI," in or the A rts ill Chi,ta, cd.
Susan Bush and Christian Murck l Pnnceton, N.J., 19R 1), 165-83.
35. See D""id Bunn's cssa)' on Somh Africall landscape in this I'olume, which
argues {hat nlncteenth-century rcprescmations of the bndscape are besr under-
stood. in terms of "senler capiralislll," nOt In the fr'lmo.:work of me picruresC]ue
tOur.
36. A fuller account of Nonh American a,hprarions of BritISh imperial bnd-
scape rradiuons would .lIsa have to reckon with the sense of itS o,'erwhelming
and unmapped land mass (see Jod Snyder's essay in this volume for an account of
the \l'a)' photographers confronted rhis isslle). The resistance of NJtive Arnerica.Jls,
moreover, \\'as nm brushed aside 'l"ite so easily as that of Ausr("lian
and the Poh'nesians, and [he "Indian \Vars" became ccnual 0 the melodrama
of westward expansion and landscape representJ,(lon ill the American narional
imaginary. The heavy componellt of landsc.lpc representar;on III ule I\mencan
'Vesrern movie \l'ould repa}' ,Itterltion in rams of this imperial scenario,
37. S'I..hlillS, ]S/fl1J(!s ofHm:ol"Y (Chicago, 1985).
38. Smim, EUI'(J['tml YiJirm hl rlJe Soutb I'ncf{ic, ld cd. (Nell.' HJI'en, 1984).
See p. 69 for discussion of "how T,lhiti bceame id<:nrified with classical I.rndscarc
('Uldj how New Zealand became idcnrilinl . , . with romanric landscape."
39. Sec Rohert Hughes's cxrcnsive discussion of dle double face ot AustraliJn
landscape in The Ffltnf SIlO/'( (New York, 19!17). Hughes noto.:s the dit1icl.1lry CJrI)'
landscape artists like Thomas Watling had in finding the picruresgue: .. 'The IanJ
scape paimcr,' wrote ... Wading, 'may in vaill seek here lor dut bcam\' which
arises [rom hapPY'opposed othcapes' lmcalllIlg the beauty of romantic contrast,
,j In Salvaror Rosa)" (93}. And yet, at the same time, Hughes suggests that [he
first British painrcrs of Ausrrali,m landscape had ditliculty in seeing anything bllt
the picturesque, afcadian stereotype (2-3) wd t.hat thev wae encouraged to
tramfanll rhe "harsh annpodcs" lOW "an fucadlJI1 image OrAllStralia hardty Jistin
guishable from rJ,c Cotsll'olds or a picn.ln:sql.1e park" (339). Sec also Tun Bonv-
hady, ]mnJ!tJ ill OppusitiOll: AUffmliml LmlJlscnpe Pnill/iILJf, 18D1-1890 Uvld-
bourne, 1985); and Bernard Smith's chapter "Colonial lmerpretations of dlt
AllStralian Landscape, 1821-35," in Ellrupmn Vl$ioll.
40. Smith, EJlI'OPtllll Viii01I, 1.
41. Ibid., lIO.
42. John Ruskin, "Tho.: Novelty of Landscape," in TIJe Work ofJo1m RmJ.:iI',
ed. E. T. Cook and A1cX3nder Weddcrbmn (London, 1904), 190. See Heisinger,
Rwkh, mId the Art ofthe BehufJier (Cunbridge, fo.hss., 1982), 2-H-45, on Ruslun
and Turner's pessimism about the war the "English death" figures in European
and biblical landscape.
43. Clark, Lnwismpe illto Art, 230.
+1. For rhe beginnings of an arb'llment along thcse lines, see nw essay" Ur
Piaum TIJtlllin: AhslrJcr l'ainring and thc Repression of Language," Cn/iml 11J-
quil)' 15, nfl. 2 (Winter 1989): 348-71.
45. For a dis(ussj(,n of rhe ambivalent relation l1lotkrnisrn and land
sLape painting, see Ch,'r!es Harrison's eSSJ)' in d,e prcsenr I'olumc.
-/6. See Hamsonl"L Wright, Nell' Zen/and, ]769-1840: Early Yum 0flVntem
COJJfna (CambriJge, .I\[a.l5., 1959).
47. [-ramis Pl)llnd, fmmes 01/ 'he LflllI/: Early Landscape l'nilJtiltl/ j11 Nnl'
Zen!,md (Auckland, 1983), 11, 33, 16, 76.
4ft Ibid., 18.
-t9. Sc:e Ivlakk Alloula, The Ol/ml'-al Hnl"Cln (Minneapolis, 1986), for an analy-
SIS (.1' the II"1\' European fanrasie5 of dlt OtJler are mediated thtough images of
women.
50. Pound, Fmmcs ilIl the Llilld, 40.
51. QlIote,i in Ibid., 22.
52, 1 Jm gratcfid ro Margar.::t OrbeJ of Canterbury University for information
on the traditional signilican.:e of Maon alTit:lcrS.
53. Pound, FmJlw on the Lnud, 12. There is some evidence, however, that
the 1\,[ ami mal' ha\'c wdptcd landscape; rhe conical shapes on the heads of human
figures mOl)' indicate that rhey pasonif)' mountains.
54. See VVnght, Nell' 2m/lind, 1769-1840, tor an aCCOllnt of the devastation
(har guns rrodl1ced among tht: warlikt: lvlaori tribes.
55. Earle was 'l"ltc Jware that [he MaOriS wcrc skilled sculptors, and he made
numerous sken:hes of theIr e1aborarely ornamemeJ canoes. See his Nll1illril" of II
NIll" l)JO/Jrh,-' III Nell' Zcn/aml in 1827 (Chriscchurch, 1909). Earle re-
marked 011 the "great taste and ingenuirr" (231 of /'vlaori carving and omamcnr,
Jnd he parricularly :\ctmired d\e way painting a.nd sculpture were inrcgrattd inro
[he simplest implements of dati!' lift.
56 See ibid., 23,
57, This view, nO[ surprisingl\" was hotly contested by many of rhe Israeli
s(hoLHS at rhe conferencc.
S8. Cf. Rena fO Rosa Ido, "I mperial ist Nostalgi a," Repmf1ltntiolJf 26 (l9fl9):
107-22
59. This phOtograph is reprodllced in After tbe Lmt PIl/'stilljlll1 a
cnll::tbor'Hil'c photogrJ.phic essay by Edward Said and Jean t\'tohr (New York,
1986). For a fuller dIscussion, see my essar "The Ethics of Form in the PhOIO-
graphic Essay," AfflrJnllJ!Jc 16, no. {, (January 1989): 8-13.
60. Thc hrst drafts of (his chapter were wrinen during a research residenl)'
.'s CalHcrbllJ)' VIsiting Fellow at Canterbury Universiry in Christchurch, New
ZcaLmd. 1 am gratehll to many colleagues at Canterbury, but especiallr Denis
Walker and t\'largarrr Grbel, for their heip and advice, The first presemarion of
the ide... s occurrnl ar thc Unil'crsity of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand; I am
indebted ro FranCIS Ponnd .1l1d Jona[!lan Lamb for their critical responses. The
paper was ",rt[[en tor a memorable conference entitJed "Landscape!Artifact!Text"
convencd at Bar-1Ian Unil'ersity In Israel in November of 1987 by Sharon Baris
and Ellen Spolsky. Lanoscapc was nor an eas)' topic to discuss rationally in Israel
in 1987 (the ill/iff/till was in its opening days), but tJlt combination of civility,
passionate engagement with ideas, and intdlecrual openness displayed ar this con-
ference srill gives me some hope that the opumistic ending of this chapter rna}'
be justified.