Pinboard: bookmarks for jannon tagged 'picturesque'

CONSTABLE : impressions of land, sea and sky | John CONSTABLE | The Glebe Farm

"The glebe was traditionally land farmed to support the living of the church, but the farm in this picture was not in fact on glebe land. Michael Rosenthal has noted that in depicting a cottage landscape in a woodland Constable was working in the Picturesque tradition of Hobbema and Gainsborough (Rosenthal 1983, p. 180). He was moreover painting a ‘landscape of memory’ – the rural world he depicted had since changed as a result of reforms, and had been replaced by something with which Constable was less comfortable (ibid., p. 213). However, the changes in agricultural approach, the division of the Common lands and other such ‘advances’ would have had little direct impact on this particular scene."

1830 1830s 19th.century agriculture anglican art british change christianity church church.of.england delicious-export enclosure faith farming farms gainsborough glebe.land history hobbema industrialization john.constable landscape landscape.of.memory langham painting paintings picturesque political.economy reform religion rurality tradition uk windmill
september 2010 by jannon

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k-punk: 'Everything is impossible now ...' (2009)

"In 'The Hay Wain,' English culture and history become a repeating labyrinth where the rebels are always on the run from the forces of power and privilege. Fleeing Peterloo, Jack Frake eventually stumbles into the Suffolk scene Constable is painting; meanwhile, in 1990, a Poll Tax rioter takes refuge in the National Gallery and 'notices what he has never noticed before on biscuit tins or calendars, or plastic trays on the walls of his aunt's flat in Bradford, those tiny figures bending in the field beyond.' Sharp replaces the dominant pastoral image of the English countryside, not with a deflated quotidian realism, but with a different kind of lyricism, one coloured by revolt: fields and ditches become hiding places or battlegrounds; landscapes that on the surface seem tranquil still reverberate with the unavenged spectral rage of murdered working class martyrs. It is not the sunlit English afternoon that is 'timeless,' but the ability of the agents of reaction to escape justice."

1989 1990 2009 a.span.of.twenty.years another.world another.world.is.necessary another.world.is.possible avatar blood change colonialism constable country countryside delicious-export eclipse enclosure escape foreclosure hauntology historiography history images imaginary imagination jameson k-punk martyrs massacre national.gallery.of.art other painting paintings pastoral peterloo picturesque places police politics poll.tax poll.tax.riot rurality space suffolk the.hay.wain the.picturesque theory time times utopia violence
february 2010 by jannon

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Blackdown: The man who cycles through glass walls (2008)

"When the people with money to burn arrived in areas like Whitechapel and Bethnal Green they were force-fed words like 'vibrant' and 'diverse', a showcase model of how London came to be the melting pot that it is, but it's these suburban areas that are seeing the process being repeated now: Walthamstow, Woolwich, Barking, Thornton Heath, Edmonton, and it's like nobody is noticing. And it's worth doing so, because sometimes it isn't a pretty sight – friction between old and new communities, sometimes within the new communities, issues of the sort that the BNP jumps on in Barking & Dagenham, does its scaremongering and gets council seats out of it. But there's something worth celebrating in there too – above all, the fact that the diversity of these areas hasn't had a price tag slapped on it yet by estate agents. Yet. And that's why I like to go and see these places as they are now before it happens, because I think eventually it will." (via danched; discussion of tourism in comments)

architecture art beautiful belonging blackdown blog cities class community council.housing culture delicious-export diversity documentary documents economy emptiness fantastic flickr gaze gentrification housing identity journalism london membership music nico.hogg participation photography photos picturesque places race representation social.housing society space suburbs the.picturesque urban zone.3 zone.4
october 2009 by jannon

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Death to the picturesque! | open Democracy News Analysis

meades on the picturesque as willful denial of the realities of rural work by the fastidious inhabitants of subtopia (aka suburbia). very much in agreement. also furthers my sense that this cultural moment is one that falls for / seems to want an aesthetic of the post-industrial picturesque. (via danched)

architecture city country delicious-export domestic economics england fastidiousness framed imagination landscape meades meat nostalgia pictures picturesque romanticism rural rurality subtopia suburbia transformation uk via:danched view work world
august 2009 by jannon

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Recession Lessons Road Trip Part IV: Cairo Illinois | Unemploymentality

pretty perfect encapsulation of the post-industrial picturesque aesthetic: "I’m just like every other guy he’s seen roll through town to take a picture of what has come to symbolize the pain that is his town’s history. To him and everyone else in the rust belt, there’s nothing beautiful about empty buildings and the jobs that were abandoned along with them. But the guys like me . . . keep driving in from nearby St. Louis or Chicago because we’re looking for something historic and romantic on our cross-country road trips . . . People who hear about these ghost towns from the internet and come to see for themselves that which is strangely beautiful so they too can have their own pictures to post . . . But [they] never spend a dollar . . . [n]ot a dollar at the car wash or the thrift store, or even at the lemonade stand run by the industrious little girls and their mangy dog. Instead they just get out to snap a quick pic of something ugly and drive on to greener pastures."

1960s 1970s 2009 action aesthetics boycott cairo.illinois commerce delicious-export economics ethics history illinois image jobs labor picturesque places poverty race recession refusal romanticism small.towns social.exclusion tourism towns usa value
july 2009 by jannon

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