How Art Made the World

by Nigel Spivey

  Naturists are humans who like to take off their clothes and have nothing between themselves and the world: what is natural in this sense implies whatever is spontaneous, unchecked or removed from human tampering.Yet beyond geology and oceans there is precious little upon the Earth’s surface that can be described as natural in this way. Certainly not the tropical rainforests: the Amazon, for instance, is densely clustered with species of fruit, nut and edible palm trees planted there by humans several thousands of years ago. To enter a modern nature reserve is usually to trespass upon some kind of former human occupation, however ancient.

  To study what nature reveals is not, therefore, a very clear command. Nonetheless, we have learned what to expect from an artist whose subjects derive from the natural world: tree stumps, not skyscrapers.

  55 Constable’s Study of the Trunk of an Elm Tree, c.1821. As one of his friends observed, the sight of a fine tree caused Constable to go into ‘an ecstasy of delight’.

  ‘A picture representing natural inland scenery.’That is how The Oxford English Dictionary defines a landscape.This is the ‘civilized’,Western understanding of an aesthetic environment.We take ‘land’ to constitute the surface of the world, while ‘landscape’ is something apart. Landscape is the effect of that surface upon us. Landscape is our viewing of land, what we perceive of land, and something else besides. In historian Simon Schama’s definition, ‘landscapes are culture before they are nature’. Our view is shaped by the way in which see, and by what we were expecting to see; and then our view may be further shaped, by what we wish to represent.

  The active principle here is confirmed by the fact that English usage also deploys ‘landscape’ as a verb.To landscape is to create a particular environment, a prospect; anyone tending a garden is acting as a landscape gardener, and by the same token there is no such thing as a ‘natural’ garden, only a plot overrun with weeds.

  So if land equates to property, which some call ‘real estate’, perhaps we should think of landscape as being ‘ideal estate’, permeated as it is by moods, dreams and wistful thinking. As the nineteenth-century American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson decreed, ‘in landscapes, the painter should give the suggestion of a fairer creation than we know’. A chorus of similar voices could be cited from colonizing, industrialized Europe. In the words of Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), who typically shunned city life for the reflective calm of the south of France, ‘painting after Nature is not copying the objective; it is realizing one’s sensations’. For John Ruskin, the dominant art critic (and advocate) in Victorian Britain, a zealous love for the pertinent geology and botany of the landscape was part of the landscape painter’s vocation. ‘Make intimate friends with all the brooks in your neighbourhood,’ he urged novices of drawing, ‘and study them ripple by ripple.’ Ruskin volubly deplored the tendency to invest ‘inanimate Nature’ with feelings and temper: to say that a hillside looked ‘forbidding’, or a rainfall came ‘kindly’, was foolishly to suppose an emotional capacity in such objective matters, a weakness that he condemned as ‘pathetic fallacy’. But in his fantasies about ‘mountain gloom’ and ‘mountain glory’, Ruskin could not help surrendering to an essentially romantic vision of the countryside. It was a Western tradition much older than he realized.

  ARCADIA: THE CLASSICAL VIEW OF LANDSCAPE

  Arcadia was a fabled site of ancient Greece and Rome – a place of tranquility, where people could be at one with the spirits of the place. In the art of Egypt, Greece and the ancient Near East there is nothing that properly equates to our modern understanding of a pictorial landscape. Elements of flora and topography, if they appear at all, supply a basic setting – no more.The professional painters of stage sets for the Classical Greek theatre, whose work was in demand from around the mid-fifth century BC onwards, are presumed to have experimented with large backdrops in receding perspective, but this is only supposition.The first recorded notice of an artist specializing in landscapes is made by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder.

  Pliny’s fame rests with the compilation of a Natural History. Dedicated to the Roman emperor Titus c. 79 AD, the multi-volume project may be considered as a sort of inventory of the Roman Empire – a survey and stocklist, of everything in the world that the Romans possessed or thought worth possessing. So we find that the Western concept of landscape is linked, right from the start, with realities of territorial expansion.

  Pliny names one Studius (also transcribed as ‘Ludius’) as the pioneer of painting walls with ‘most agreeable scenes’ of villas and porticoes set in manicured gardens; along with ‘groves, woods, hills, fishponds, canals, rivers, coasts – whatever could be wished – with people strolling about … ’ (Natural History 35, 116–17). It is clear from Pliny’s phrasing that this Studius based his pictures very much upon a countryside that had itself been ornamentally landscaped, and then served as much for retreat and recreation as for the rural economy. Pliny locates the artist as working during the rule of Augustus (31 BC–AD 14), a period in which the consolations of rustic escape were hymned by poets close to the emperor, such as Horace and Virgil. Studius probably worked for patrons imbued with that poetic dream of pastoral ease. And Pliny specifically tells us that the artist did it with a whimsical sense of humour.Whether the people incorporated into these landscapes by Studius were amorously wandering, goading donkeys, stalking wildfowl or harvesting grapes, no one here was over-exerted.The purpose of such painting was to conjure the perfect locus amoenus (pleasant place).

  Nothing survives on ancient Roman walls that is actually signed by Studius. However, from the time when he is reported as making his name, the manner of Studius can be deduced from other Roman frescoes and mosaics. Before his day, in fact, a certain taste for panoramic vistas was already part of Roman interior decoration. At its most expansive, this pretended to encompass, on the space of a single wall or floor, the entire valley of the River Nile (Fig. 56). In the foreground of the best-known of such Nilotic views there are urban structures that seem to stand for civilization.Temples, shrines, kiosks and groves host various pursuits, including picnics and fishing parties, as our gaze travels upstream from the busy delta.The seasonal event that is celebrated here is the Nile's annual breaching of its banks (see page). Priests, bureaucrats and punting marsh-dwellers are among the local people shown greeting the September inundation, with its promise of burgeoning crops. But the synopsis is sprinkled with details of local flora and fauna; as the river is followed to its first cataract and beyond, so its gentler features (such as lizards, ducks and water-borne lotus blossoms) give way to more peculiar or threatening sights. Crocodiles, wart-hogs, hippopotamuses wander the riverbank, while farther off, where the terrain turns rocky, giraffes, big cats and Nubian tribesmen stalk antelope and cranes.

  56 Nilotic mosaic from Palestrina, east of Rome, c.120–10 BC.

  This mosaic, with its instructive scatter of labels (in Greek) is a form of geography – literally ‘description of the world’ in Greek. In the later history of European colonization, as we have seen, connections would develop between landscape art, the making of maps, and the proprietorial laying of claims to land. (Perhaps the Roman viewers of this piece already had inklings that Egypt would come under Roman control, as it did after the death of Cleopatra in the year 30 BC.) But it seems that the work of Studius and others was not directed towards justifying imperialism, nor giving lessons in the fauna of the Upper Nile.What their genre supplied was essentially idyllic.

  ‘Idyll’ derives from the Greek word eidyllion, meaning ‘little image’. In antiquity the term was annexed for a type of versifying that evoked life in the countryside, in particular life as viewed through the eyes of those whose task was keeping the flocks. As it happened, the port metropolis of Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile, was where the literary fashion for such pastoral evocations developed. Some of the learned mock-goatherds at Alexandria, notably Sicilian-born Theocritus (c. 300–260 BC), would become canonical favourites in Western literature. In dire
ct homage to the Idylls composed by Theocritus, Virgil supplied his Latin audience with a sequence of Eclogues, so fostering the taste for landscape staffed by idling pipers. Like Theocritus,Virgil allowed rough and illiterate rustics to sing exquisitely, even the mythical one-eyed monster-herdsman Polyphemus (see page), who is imagined lovesick for a sea nymph, Galatea:

  ‘Come hither, Galatea …

  Here Spring purples; here, by the brooks,

  Earth doles her bounty of flowers;

  Here the white poplar bows over the cave,

  And coiling vines weave dens of shade.’

  (Eclogues 9, 39–43)

  The terms of seduction offered by Polyphemus are those of Roman landscape painting at this time: indeed, one wall-painting in a villa not far from Pompeii (and, like Pompeii, caught in the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius in the year AD 79) shows Galatea keeping a coy distance amid the waves as Polyphemus sings to her of his leafy retreat and buckets of milk. A generic name grew attached to this idealized place – Arcadia. It was taken from an area of central Greece whose inhabitants legendarily enjoyed their music and dancing, undisturbed by war and toil. Only later did European writers and painters add the warning, sometimes inscribed upon a human skull: Et in Arcadia ego (I belong to Arcadia, too), meaning that death was not absent from this seemingly carefree pastoral habitat of shepherds and nymphs.

  So while Studius remains a shadowy figure at the beginnings of landscape art, the ideals of the genre as it formed in the West are clear enough.These ideals should not be regarded as entirely whimsical: many Romans took their gardening seriously, and the poet Virgil wrote authentically about how to keep bees, spread manure and prune hedgerows. But this was an art that not only presented a fairer creation than was known, but rendered it sacrosanct. Many landscapes painted around the time of Augustus have been referred to as ‘sacral-idyllic’ precisely because they contain, amid the slopes and sheep-pens, tokens of rural piety: altars and shrines, not neglected, but freshly decked with garlands. Arcadia is not merely the green refuge from urban stress. It preserves the age-old rapport between people and their deities – the ‘spirits of the place’.

  So in Arcadia everything is at one with everything else; and that is a supernatural state.

  Livia, the wife of Augustus, must have had something like Arcadia in mind when she commissioned someone like Studius to paint the dining room of her villa outside Rome (Fig. 57). It is, as we instantly understand, a natural, or at least horticultural, scheme. It would seem ironically so, given that it belongs to Livia's villa, not to her residence in the capital.Why did the empress need pictorial reminders of birdlife, fruit and flowers when they were there, as it were, on her doorstep? But if we look closer at what Livia’s painters devised, we see that it is much more than a record of some garden at its prime. It is not nature, but nature ‘improved’ – nature rendered impossibly perfect.

  57 Wall painting of ‘improved’ nature from the Villa of Livia, at Prima Porta, near Rome.The entire room is now on display in the Palazzo Massimo, Rome.

  Two low boundaries set the distance for our view.Trained close to the further balustrade are flowers and shrubs: roses, chrysanthemums, periwinkles and poppies. Beyond is a tangle of laurel, oleander, myrtle and assorted fruit trees; and beyond that is a thicket of oak, pine and cypress.To the casual glance, this simply collects a profusion of growth – the sort of unbridled abundance that Livia might have wanted as symbolic of the gilded peace promoted by her husband’s steady rule. But it is more than that. Not only is everything in blossom and ripely laden, but the quince and the pomegranate, which bear fruit in late autumn, are there with blue periwinkles that flower in early spring. Close by are the lavender poppies of early summer.

  Birds alight amid these breeze-bent bushes: what can be spotted of their variety includes quail, thrushes, orioles and nightingales.Their jostling is odd, but comprehensible. Just as this is a year depicted without seasons, so it takes no count of migratory needs. All can happen at once.This is the pictorial enchantment of Livia’s dining room: a rendition of nature gathered into the imperial embrace; nature made subject to the beneficial regulations of Augustan control.

  PARADISE: THE ORIENTAL VIEW OF LANDSCAPE

  Although it originates from the East, the idea of paradise has been adopted by Christianity as the destination of souls eternally blessed. But first of all it was the pairidaeza of Persian royalty: an enclosed orchard, pleasure ground and hunting park delectably reserved for the king and his close associates. Persian kings, like others before them and after, used dominion over lions as symbolic of their right to rule. A paradise was where they could rehearse the actuality of shooting down big cats (very like their Assyrian predecessors – see page).

  Paradise could be made - on Earth and out of earth. Although nothing of them survives beyond hearsay, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, laid out by King Nebuchadnezzar II in the early sixth century BC, and counted in Classical antiquity as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, probably influenced the Persian tradition of paradise parklands. Further east, the fabled pleasure-dome of Kubla Khan in Xanadu belongs to a similarly long-established prerogative of a ruler to annex his own recreational space; complete with specially engineered lakes, mountains and waterfalls. Records of the Han dynasty in China (206 BC–AD 221) not only tell of such full-scale imperial landscaping, but also attest a miniature, though no less significant, version: the practice of making model scenery, using diminutive, bonsai-style trees.These models, tiny but three-dimensional, would be mounted on trays, and incense burnt at the base served to generate the illusion of cloud-swathed summits.

  So the Oriental construction of a paradise landscape was substantial enough. And it provides the background to a history of landscape painting, in China and neighbouring countries, that runs continuously from at least the period of the T’ang dynasty (618–907), when most of China – south of the Yellow River – was organized under a central administration.The precepts of contemplative retreat issued by both Confucian and Taoist philosophers underpin this history: many paintings produced in its course indicate particular or ideal sites of worship, perhaps permitting us to use the term ‘sacral-idyllic’ here, too (Fig. 58).The arcane skills of interpreting space for habitation – the geomantic science known in Chinese as feng shui (wind and water) – were also pertinent, especially if we bear in mind that the Chinese word corresponding to the English ‘landscape’ is shan shui, literally ‘mountain water’.

  Above all, this was an art form with its own closely associated literature. Accounts of Chinese landscape painting are often sprinkled with lines and stanzas of poetry, because citations or distillations of poetic sentiment, done in calligraphic flourishes, were integral to the painting. Moreover, it was not unusual for esteemed exponents of this art to divulge the secrets of their accomplishment and lay down the laws of success. Even at a distance, it becomes clear – largely thanks to the intense complicity of writing and painting – how finely nuanced these landscapes could be in form, style and function.

  Poets of the T’ang period include those still venerated as absolute doyens of Chinese verse, such as Li Po and Tu Fu. However, it was their contemporary Wang Wei (699–761) who earned the greater reputation for both poetry and painting together. Of his paintings we have no direct proof, and his poetry is stripped of its calligraphic grace as soon as it goes into translation. Nonetheless,Wang Wei’s lyrical address to his friends, his surroundings and his own solitude helps us to measure, if roughly, the significance of landscape in marking shared sensibilities.

  58 17th-century Chinese landscape painting.Verses hymn the delight of ‘living like an immortal’ among the pines and streams of Huang-shan, where the artist, Jiang Zhu, lived as a monastic recluse.

  The man of the mountains – wants to go home

  Clouds dark dark – rain driving down

  Waters surging – green rushes swaying

  White egrets suddenly – wheeling about

  My friend yo
u must not – hitch up your clothes

  Mountains many layered – all one cloud

  Heaven and earth confused – indistinguishable

  Trees dim and dark – air heavy

  Monkeys not seen – only heard

  Suddenly west of mountains – evening light

  We see among eastern fields – a hundred miles clear

  I am sad – thinking of you

  (‘Song for a Friend Going Home to the Mountains’)

  Typically, a poem is prompted by what can be seen: a curl of smoke from a woodcutter’s lodge; cassia flowers in bloom; rain thrashing the willows and hills.Typically, this view causes a pang of sentiment, mainly melancholic: regrets of old age and loneliness, though like other T’ang poets,Wang Wei overtly took solace in wine. But throughout there is the steady projection of self reconciled with the world and its jagged contours.The poet, the painter, the scholar, the government official - all alike find themselves sealed into a scenery that at the same time inspires and mocks their efforts to be wise.

  Wang Wei bequeathed nuggets of advice on his art. ‘When one paints landscape,’ he ruled, ‘concept precedes brushwork.’A title might give more guidance than a view, for there was an ordained hierarchy of mountains, and rules existed for the correct arrangement of fishing skiffs along a strait. Such principles were elaborated in an essay On the Secrets of Landscape Painting by Li Cheng, a practitioner in the tenth century. He dictated on matters of mood and tone in representing a prospect. ‘The atmosphere of the mountain in spring is clear and charming; the trees in summer are thick and luxuriant; the autumnal forest is forlorn and solemn; and the winter trees are resigned and deathlike.’A little later, Kuo Hsi, a painter whose work we possess, urged his apprentices to empathize all the same with what they were depicting. ‘A mountain has water as blood, foliage as hair, haze and clouds as its spirit and character,’ he wrote. He also advocated the therapeutic utility of a painted landscape. For those not subject to dutiful postings in faraway districts, the landscape on a scroll made a substitute retreat. ‘Without leaving your room,’ Kuo Hsi explained, ‘you may sit to your heart’s content among streams and valleys.The voices of apes and the calls of birds will fall on your ears faintly.The glow of the mountain and the colour of the waters will dazzle your eyes … ’