tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/landscape-art-33569/articles
Landscape art – The Conversation
2022-05-12T20:00:22Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/179764
2022-05-12T20:00:22Z
2022-05-12T20:00:22Z
From gum trees to cities to sweeping deserts: how 125 years of the Wynne Prize traces Australia’s shifting relationship to our landscape
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459654/original/file-20220426-26-iz63jk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4993%2C3615&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Elioth Gruner (1882–1939), Spring Frost, 1919. Oil on canvas
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Art Gallery of New South Wales </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is fair to say that Richard Wynne, who died in 1895, would not recognise many recent entries in the art prize that he endowed with £1,000 to reward a “landscape painting of Australian scenery”. </p>
<p>Since 1999, when Gloria Tamerre Petyarre was awarded the Wynne Prize for her magical sequence of <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/1999/21225/">Leaves</a>, the Wynne has been dominated by works by Indigenous artists living in communities in central and northern Australia. </p>
<p>Rather than inhibiting artists from different traditions, the presence of such superb art appears to have inspired non-Indigenous artists to also be their best. It is therefore well worth a visit to see the full range of entries in the Art Gallery of NSW’s annual festival of prizes.</p>
<p>Not all appreciate this liberation of landscape. In 2017, the veteran Australian artist John Olsen <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/john-olsen-says-archibald-prize-win-is-the-worst-decision-ive-ever-seen-20170728-gxl4ze.html">attacked</a> the awarding of the Wynne Prize to Betty Kuntiwa Pumani for <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/2021/30364/">Antara</a>, a painting of her mother’s Country. </p>
<p>He claimed the “real” Australian landscape tradition was represented by artists such as <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/gruner-elioth/">Elioth Gruner</a> and <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/whiteley-brett/">Brett Whiteley</a>, while Pumani’s painting was of “a cloud cuckoo land”. </p>
<p>From memory this may have been the year that the gallery changed the design of the exhibition spaces so that the most exciting Wynne entries – almost all by Indigenous artists – filled the large central court.</p>
<p>As a young man in the 1950s, <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/248880479?searchTerm=Art%20students%20protest%20Archibald%20Prize">Olsen had demonstrated</a> against the reactionary conservatism of the Trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW; in his old age he objected to their openness to new ideas. </p>
<p>Both Olsen’s pomposity and the dreariness of an Australian landscape tradition that colonises the land was mocked by Abdul Abdullah in his painting <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/2019/30070/">A Terrible Burden</a>, a Wynne finalist in 2019. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459244/original/file-20220422-18-jv9qcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459244/original/file-20220422-18-jv9qcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459244/original/file-20220422-18-jv9qcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459244/original/file-20220422-18-jv9qcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459244/original/file-20220422-18-jv9qcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459244/original/file-20220422-18-jv9qcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459244/original/file-20220422-18-jv9qcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459244/original/file-20220422-18-jv9qcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Abdul Abdullah, A terrible burden (2019). Oil on linen. 180 x 240.5 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Artist and Yavuz Gallery’</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Abdullah has expressed surprise at Olsen’s strident defence of the conservative tradition of Australian landscape as his own paintings are so abstract, although he tells me “his cultural contribution doesn’t hold a flame to Ken Done, who is very good at painting ‘place’.” </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-think-archie-would-be-pleased-100-years-of-our-most-famous-portrait-prize-and-my-almost-50-years-watching-it-evolve-161575">'I think Archie would be pleased': 100 years of our most famous portrait prize and my almost 50 years watching it evolve</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Origins of the prize</h2>
<p>As with its more famous partner competition, the Archibald Prize, the Wynne is not quite what its benefactor envisaged. </p>
<p>Richard Wynne’s will originally designated the Art Society of NSW as the body to administer the prize, not the Art Gallery of NSW. In 1895, shortly after Wynne’s death, the Art Society experienced an acrimonious split when a number of artists led by <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/roberts-tom/">Tom Roberts</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Ashton">Julian Ashton</a> established a rival body, The Society of Artists. </p>
<p>By the time the prize was first awarded in 1897 the executors, Perpetual Trustees, decided it was more prudent to have it administered by the Art Gallery than a group of squabbling artists.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458503/original/file-20220419-144614-5wo0gn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An oil painting. Gum trees lean in the wind." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458503/original/file-20220419-144614-5wo0gn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458503/original/file-20220419-144614-5wo0gn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458503/original/file-20220419-144614-5wo0gn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458503/original/file-20220419-144614-5wo0gn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458503/original/file-20220419-144614-5wo0gn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458503/original/file-20220419-144614-5wo0gn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458503/original/file-20220419-144614-5wo0gn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The winner of the first Wynne Prize in 1897. Walter Withers, The Storm, 1896.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Art Gallery of New South Wales</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The tensions between artists is perhaps one reason why for many years there was no formal exhibition of entries. <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/1897/">Walter Withers</a> was awarded the first prize in 1897 for a painting that had already been bought by the Art Gallery. As he wrote <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/9783645?searchTerm=Wynne%20Prize#">to the Argus</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was unaware that such a prize existed until I read the telegram in your issue of November 24, announcing the honour that had been done to my work.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A search through both the National Library’s <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/search/category/newspapers?keyword=Wynne%20Prize&l-artType=newspapers">Trove</a> and the Art Gallery of NSW’s <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/">digital archive</a> shows that, as with all art prizes judged by a committee, on many occasions considerations other than merit influenced the judges’ decisions.</p>
<p>In 1898 the Trustees began the practice of both visiting Art Society exhibitions and inviting interested artists to deposit their offerings for consideration. This was also the first year the prize was awarded to <a href="https://www.daao.org.au/bio/william-lister-lister/personal_details/">William Lister Lister</a>, a stalwart of the Art Society (later renamed the <a href="http://www.royalart.com.au">Royal Art Society of NSW</a>). He was awarded the prize a total of seven times. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458504/original/file-20220419-76445-ck9kux.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Oil painting. Gum trees hit by golden sunlight." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458504/original/file-20220419-76445-ck9kux.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458504/original/file-20220419-76445-ck9kux.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458504/original/file-20220419-76445-ck9kux.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458504/original/file-20220419-76445-ck9kux.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458504/original/file-20220419-76445-ck9kux.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458504/original/file-20220419-76445-ck9kux.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458504/original/file-20220419-76445-ck9kux.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The winner of the 1906 Wynne Prize. William Lister Lister, The golden splendour of the bush.
(circa 1906).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Art Gallery of New South Wales</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With the exception of the 1898 award, Lister Lister was a trustee and therefore a judge on each of the other six times he won. He was not alone in this. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/long-sydney/">Sydney Long</a>, a fellow trustee and fellow member of the Royal Art Society, was awarded the Wynne in 1938 and 1940. The only artist to be awarded the Wynne more often than Lister Lister was the South Australian, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Heysen">Hans Heysen</a>, who was awarded the prize eight times. Heysen, from South Australia, exhibited with the Society of Artists.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460700/original/file-20220502-26-pl9qsx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460700/original/file-20220502-26-pl9qsx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460700/original/file-20220502-26-pl9qsx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460700/original/file-20220502-26-pl9qsx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460700/original/file-20220502-26-pl9qsx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460700/original/file-20220502-26-pl9qsx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460700/original/file-20220502-26-pl9qsx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460700/original/file-20220502-26-pl9qsx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hans Heysen, An afternoon in autumn, 1924. Watercolour, 46.8 x 63.3cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© C Heysen</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For many years, it is fair to say many of the decisions governing the Art Gallery of NSW were a fine balance between two competing factions, with each taking it in turn to award the various prizes to their members and supporters. </p>
<p>In 1899, the young <a href="https://www.daao.org.au/bio/george-lambert/personal_details/">George Lambert</a>, associated with the Society of Artists, was awarded the Wynne for his heroic painting of horses ploughing through mud, <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/1899/">Across the Black Soil Plains</a>. He was also awarded the NSW Government’s newly established Travelling Art Scholarship, a recognition of his precocious talent. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458515/original/file-20220419-19-zq3all.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Oil painting, looking down to a valley" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458515/original/file-20220419-19-zq3all.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458515/original/file-20220419-19-zq3all.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458515/original/file-20220419-19-zq3all.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458515/original/file-20220419-19-zq3all.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458515/original/file-20220419-19-zq3all.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458515/original/file-20220419-19-zq3all.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458515/original/file-20220419-19-zq3all.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elioth Gruner, Valley of the Tweed, 1921.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Art Gallery of New South Wales</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The eccentric nature of the management of the prize led to the situation in 1921 when the Trustees commissioned Elioth Gruner to paint <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/1921/20819/">The Valley of the Tweed</a>, with the prize as a part of the commission.</p>
<p>The cosy duopoly of the art societies was challenged in 1943 after William Lister Lister’s sudden death. </p>
<p>Instead of replacing him with another representative of the Royal Art Society, the minister for education, Clive Evatt, appointed his sister-in-law, the collector and painter of modern art, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/evatt-mary-alice-10132">Mary Alice Evatt</a>, to be the first woman trustee in the gallery’s history.</p>
<p>In January 1944, Evatt advocated for <a href="https://www.daao.org.au/bio/william-dobell/personal_details/">William Dobell</a>’s portrait of Joshua Smith to win the Archibald Prize. The following year she voted for the Wynne to go to <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/herman-sali-19482">Sali Herman</a>’s urban landscape, <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/1944/">McElhone Stairs</a>, a painting with a complete absence of gum trees, painted by a Jewish immigrant who exhibited with the Contemporary Art Society.</p>
<p>The Wynne continued to reward interesting paintings when Russell Drysdale won with <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/1947/">Sofala</a> (1947), and Lloyd Rees for <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/1950/">The Harbour from McMahon’s Point</a>(1950). </p>
<h2>A changeable landscape</h2>
<p>By the early 1960s, the old exhibiting societies were less relevant to artists trying to establish a career. But the new dealer galleries understood the value of prizes to their artists’ profiles. </p>
<p>The new superstars of Australian art, John Olsen, Fred Williams and Brett Whiteley, began to be listed as prize winners. </p>
<p>The Wynne was still very much a “boy’s club”, as if the Australian landscape could only be captured by one gender. Lorna Nimmo had won in 1941, but her watercolours did not appeal to the Trustees. </p>
<p>It took until 1971 for Margaret Woodward to be the next woman winner, with her painting, Karri Country. </p>
<p>She was followed in 1994 with Suzanne Archer’s Waratah Wedderburn. </p>
<p>(While the prize is most well known for its landscapes, figurative sculptures can also enter, and <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/380.1986/">Rosemary Madigan</a> had won with her classic stone torso in 1986.)</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458743/original/file-20220420-13790-vevdwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458743/original/file-20220420-13790-vevdwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458743/original/file-20220420-13790-vevdwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458743/original/file-20220420-13790-vevdwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458743/original/file-20220420-13790-vevdwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458743/original/file-20220420-13790-vevdwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458743/original/file-20220420-13790-vevdwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458743/original/file-20220420-13790-vevdwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ann Thomson, Yellow sound. Oil on canvas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ann Thomson was awarded the 1998 prize with her abstract painting, <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/1998/">Yellow Sound</a>, which may have encouraged the Trustees to cast their net wider. For the following year the Wynne Prize was awarded to Gloria Tamerre Petyarre. </p>
<p>This bastion of the Australian landscape tradition was never the same again. </p>
<p>Easily the most memorable painting to be awarded the Wynne in recent years was in 2016, when the Ken family collaborative painted <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/wynne/2016/29796/">Seven Sisters</a>, the grand narrative of protecting country.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458525/original/file-20220419-21-7aed3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sweeping Indigenous landscape painting in reds, greens and purples" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458525/original/file-20220419-21-7aed3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458525/original/file-20220419-21-7aed3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458525/original/file-20220419-21-7aed3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458525/original/file-20220419-21-7aed3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458525/original/file-20220419-21-7aed3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458525/original/file-20220419-21-7aed3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458525/original/file-20220419-21-7aed3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ken Family Collaborative (Tjungkara Ken, Yaritji Young, Maringka Tunkin, Freda Brady, Sandra Ken), Seven Sisters, 2016. Acrylic on linen. 240 x 150 cm (each), 244 x 303.5 cm (overall)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Artists, Tjala Arts and Jan Murphy Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although some non-Aboriginal artists have won this century, Aboriginal art continues to dominate. The gallery now also hosts the Roberts Family prize, specifically for work by Indigenous artists. </p>
<p>What we are seeing here in this oldest, and potentially crustiest of art prizes, is concrete evidence of a whole new tradition of Australian art – or rather evidence that the oldest tradition is using art as a means to reclaim the land.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australians-favourites-show-aboriginal-art-can-transcend-social-divisions-and-art-boundaries-143827">Australians' favourites show Aboriginal art can transcend social divisions and art boundaries</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179764/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn has in the past received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australia Council. </span></em></p>
In 1895 the Wynne Prize was proposed as an award for a ‘landscape painting of Australian scenery’. Today it is more likely to be given to an Indigenous artist’s explanation of Country.
Joanna Mendelssohn, Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/143827
2020-08-24T03:00:46Z
2020-08-24T03:00:46Z
Australians’ favourites show Aboriginal art can transcend social divisions and art boundaries
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353997/original/file-20200821-24-1pv23t4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C0%2C7146%2C5108&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Albert Namatjira's Hermannsburg (c.1951)</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia/Namatjira Legacy Trust</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>New analysis shows landscape art is the most popular visual art genre among Australians, with Aboriginal art coming in second place, followed by portraits and modern art. </p>
<p>But Aboriginal art is more likely to bridge social divides and can dissolve personal prejudices between different kinds of art. </p>
<p>Many Australians are sharply divided as to whether they prefer more traditional genres like landscapes or more contemporary and abstract visual forms. And these divisions relate to differences in age, class and education. But Aboriginal art bucks this trend because it is seen as “telling a story”. </p>
<p>The research is discussed in a new book called <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Fields-Capitals-Habitus-Australian-Culture-Inequalities-and-Social/Bennett-Carter-Gayo-Kelly-Noble/p/book/9781138392304">Fields, Capitals, Habitus: Australian Culture, Social Divisions and Inequalities</a>. </p>
<h2>We know what (and who) we like</h2>
<p>Researchers conducted a <a href="https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/newscentre/news_centre/story_archive/2018/research_shows_social_class_has_a_strong_influence_on_cultural_tastes">national survey of Australians’ cultural tastes</a>, administering surveys to 1,202 Australians. Extra samples to ensure representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, Italian, Lebanese, Chinese, and Indian Australians, brought the overall survey total to 1,461. </p>
<p>Researchers subsequently <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-13/what-your-habits-reveal-about-your-social-class/9610658?nw=0">partnered with the ABC</a> to conduct online surveys on cultural tastes that were compared with research findings. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351708/original/file-20200807-14-nrx18d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover shows title and graffiti of Indigenous child's face on underpass" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351708/original/file-20200807-14-nrx18d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351708/original/file-20200807-14-nrx18d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351708/original/file-20200807-14-nrx18d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351708/original/file-20200807-14-nrx18d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351708/original/file-20200807-14-nrx18d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351708/original/file-20200807-14-nrx18d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351708/original/file-20200807-14-nrx18d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.routledge.com/common/jackets/amazon/978113839/9781138392304.jpg">Routledge</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Aboriginal art was the second most popular genre, liked by 26% of the main sample, behind landscapes (52%) but ahead of portraits (24%) and modern art (17%). </p>
<p>Impressionism and Renaissance art came in at around 15% each, while abstract art, colonial art, Pop art and still lifes ranged, in order, from 13% down to 7%.</p>
<p>Survey respondents were <a href="https://theconversation.com/tom-roberts-anyone-a-national-survey-finds-the-line-in-art-appreciation-51301">given a selection of artists</a> and asked to say whether they had heard of and liked them. Indigenous landscape painter <a href="https://manyhandsart.com.au/about/albert-namatjira/">Albert Namatjira</a> was the third most familiar but, at 63%, he was only narrowly pipped by painter <a href="http://www.sidneynolantrust.org/about/sidney-nolan">Sidney Nolan</a> (67%) and the colourful <a href="https://kendone.com.au/">Ken Done</a> (68%). Indigenous multi-media artist Tracey Moffatt was less well known (14%). But Namatjira was the most popular of all, liked by 49% ahead of both Nolan (42%) and Done (40%).</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were much more enthusiastic about Aboriginal art (67%) and Namatjira (liked by 70%) than the main sample, but not notably so for Moffatt. Indian and Lebanese Australians also showed a marked liking for Aboriginal art at 38% and 36% respectively.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dramatic-and-engaging-new-exhibition-linear-celebrates-the-art-in-indigenous-science-127023">Dramatic and engaging, new exhibition Linear celebrates the art in Indigenous science</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Aboriginal art had a broader cross-class appeal than most genres. It did, however, appeal more strongly to those in intermediate (such self-employed and clerical workers) and professional and managerial occupational classes than to those in skilled or unskilled working-class occupations. </p>
<p>Namatjira was most popular with the older members of Australia’s intermediate classes. Moffatt, by contrast, appealed most to the younger, tertiary educated Australians in professional and managerial occupations.</p>
<p>There were clear correlations between these preferences for particular Indigenous artists and genre tastes. Those who liked Namatjira preferred traditional and largely figurative genres – landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. Those who liked Moffatt favoured genres tending towards abstraction or critical engagements with figurative conventions – modern art, Pop art and abstract art.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353999/original/file-20200821-16-1hz7los.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Colourful houses on a hill" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353999/original/file-20200821-16-1hz7los.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353999/original/file-20200821-16-1hz7los.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353999/original/file-20200821-16-1hz7los.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353999/original/file-20200821-16-1hz7los.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353999/original/file-20200821-16-1hz7los.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353999/original/file-20200821-16-1hz7los.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353999/original/file-20200821-16-1hz7los.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Selling Aluminium Siding 1978 (2008) – a work by Tracey Moffatt in her First Jobs series.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NGA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The great divide … and a bridge</h2>
<p>A key finding of the research was how much those who liked traditional and figurative genres disliked contemporary and abstract genres. The reverse was even more true: those who liked contemporary and abstract art often had a strong aversion to traditional and figurative art. </p>
<p>Yet the category of Aboriginal art often crossed the boundaries between these two groups of genres. </p>
<p>This is not entirely surprising. Aboriginal art has expanded beyond its traditional forms to include acrylic dot art, contemporary urban Aboriginal art practices, rock art, or the kitsch forms of “Aboriginalia” like that collected by Tony Albert.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yPbd808PUiU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Tony Albert says “Aboriginalia” changes dramatically with context.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what is surprising is how frequently, when discussing their art tastes in follow-up interviews, our survey respondents treated Aboriginal art as an exceptional art form. </p>
<p>While most viewed it as a form of abstraction, it was seen as a purposeful abstraction with a story to tell, crossing the boundaries between the abstract and the figurative. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mavis-ngallametta-review-a-bittersweet-collection-of-a-songwomans-stories-of-home-133152">Mavis Ngallametta review - a bittersweet collection of a songwoman's stories of home</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It was on these grounds that Aboriginal art was let off the hook by those who usually disliked non-figurative art. This was pithily summarised by one respondent who, dismissing modern and abstract art as “equivalent to what my daughters would do in kindergarten”, praised the “uniqueness of Aboriginal art and the dots” because “there’s stories behind it – there is the story they are trying to tell”.</p>
<p>This was a recurring theme in appreciations of Namatjira. In a follow up interview, one survey respondent – a professional in a high-level executive role – liked Namatjira’s work for not being “too abstract” in its depiction of “the beauty of the bush and the country”. </p>
<p>For another, a part-time accountant and labourer, Namatjira served as a counter to his dislike of modern and abstract art because his paintings are “real … they just feel like he’s telling a story in his pictures and they’re real”.</p>
<p>And a third, a woman in her 30s from a Sri Lankan background, expressed her appreciation of Namatjira and Moffatt in similar terms. She loved “Tracey’s storytelling” with its “strong style and voice”, emphasising its appeal to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous women, while singling out the “cultural connections” that Namatjira’s work makes.</p>
<p>While, then, different kinds of Aboriginal art appeal to different publics, the category of Aboriginal art is one that recruits a broader interest. We got a strong sense that it is something that non-Indigenous Australians felt they ought to like and know more about because of what it has to say about Indigenous culture, its relations to Country, and its significance for Australian culture and identity. </p>
<p>This registers a significant shift from the terms in which Namatjira was initially appreciated, in the 1950s, as <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/ces/386">an imitative adaptation</a> of pastoral modernism.</p>
<p>It is a shift that registers the work of Indigenous artists, curators and critics in stressing the role that Aboriginal art can play in transforming the relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-politics-of-dancing-and-thinking-about-cultural-values-beyond-dollars-139839">Friday essay: the politics of dancing and thinking about cultural values beyond dollars</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143827/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Australian Cultural Fields: National and Transnational Dynamics project discussed in this article was supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council (DP140101970). We therefore express our appreciation of this support. The grant for this project was awarded to Tony Bennett (Project Director), David Carter, Modesto Gayo, Michelle Kelly (Senior Research Officer and Project Manager), Fred Myers, Greg Noble, David Rowe, Tim Rowse, Deborah Stevenson, Graeme Turner and Emma Waterton.
Tony Bennett is affiliated with the Australian Labor Party.</span></em></p>
Asking Australians about their favourite art and artists reveals divides between those who like traditional versus contemporary forms. But Indigenous art transcends such categories.
Tony Bennett, Research Professor in Social and Cultural Theory, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/122468
2019-09-03T20:04:36Z
2019-09-03T20:04:36Z
Framing the fearful symmetry of nature: the year’s best photos of landscapes and living things
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290443/original/file-20190902-165989-182rpby.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C5%2C955%2C788&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail from Reed Plummer's photograph Surge, in which a breaking wave drops tons of water even as it pulls tons of sand from the sea bed.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">South Australian Museum</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nature. Some see it as beautiful and some as red “<a href="https://interestingliterature.com/2016/01/01/a-short-analysis-of-tennysons-nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw-poem/">in tooth and claw</a>”. Of course nature is dynamic, it changes between both the beautiful and the dangerous as in <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43687/the-tyger">Blake’s famous words</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tyger Tyger, burning bright, <br>
In the forests of the night; <br>
What immortal hand or eye, <br>
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With the support of the <a href="http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/">South Australian Museum</a>, this year’s <a href="https://naturephotographeroftheyear.com.au">Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year</a> competition attracted hundreds of photographers who have attempted to frame the symmetry of nature’s danger and the beauty - both in landscape and living things.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290484/original/file-20190902-175710-110lkn4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290484/original/file-20190902-175710-110lkn4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290484/original/file-20190902-175710-110lkn4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290484/original/file-20190902-175710-110lkn4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290484/original/file-20190902-175710-110lkn4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290484/original/file-20190902-175710-110lkn4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290484/original/file-20190902-175710-110lkn4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290484/original/file-20190902-175710-110lkn4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard Smith’s Small But Mighty captures a crustacean inside a sea squirt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">South Australian Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://naturephotographeroftheyear.com.au/gallery/">finalists</a> no doubt have mastered the photographers’ tools of trade - metering and focus; composition and colour; balance and visual weight. Experts have critiqued the work, <a href="https://naturephotographeroftheyear.com.au/gallery/?year=2019&category=0&iswinneronly=true">announced winners</a>, and awarded their <a href="https://naturephotographeroftheyear.com.au/gallery/?year=2019&category=Overall%20Winner&iswinneronly=true">grand prize</a>. But does this exhibition capture the multiple dimensions of nature? Well, yes.</p>
<p>Nature is based on <a href="http://environment-ecology.com/what-is-ecology/205-what-is-ecology.html">ecology</a> and ecology is about dynamics and flows. Energy and material cycle through a balanced natural system where everything is used and nothing is lost. Sometimes, though, the balance is disrupted and cycles may be broken or forced to reform in novel ways. </p>
<p>The physical dimensions (length, breadth, depth) and the dangerous beauty inherent in a creature like an echidna leap out in a photograph titled “Under the Spikes” by Isaac Wilson. It captures both the fearsome spikes of an echidna and the beauty of shape and form within. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290427/original/file-20190902-166014-1c6pppf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290427/original/file-20190902-166014-1c6pppf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290427/original/file-20190902-166014-1c6pppf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290427/original/file-20190902-166014-1c6pppf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290427/original/file-20190902-166014-1c6pppf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290427/original/file-20190902-166014-1c6pppf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290427/original/file-20190902-166014-1c6pppf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290427/original/file-20190902-166014-1c6pppf.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Under the Spikes by Isaac Wilson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">South Australian Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Likewise, in the “Clash of the Crabs”, the photographer Samuel Horton has captured the spiky drama of the daily dance of solder crabs as they fight for their future. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290438/original/file-20190902-166001-1jhg6wv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290438/original/file-20190902-166001-1jhg6wv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290438/original/file-20190902-166001-1jhg6wv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290438/original/file-20190902-166001-1jhg6wv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290438/original/file-20190902-166001-1jhg6wv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290438/original/file-20190902-166001-1jhg6wv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290438/original/file-20190902-166001-1jhg6wv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clash of the Crabs, by Samuel Horton.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Others see the ecology at wildly different scales, which look alien yet beautiful to our eyes. “New Life in a Far-off World” by Wade Hughes shows what appears, at first, to be destruction by an other-worldly volcano. It turns out to be a sponge’s way of spreading its desire for life as spores across the seas. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290439/original/file-20190902-165985-fulbf9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290439/original/file-20190902-165985-fulbf9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290439/original/file-20190902-165985-fulbf9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290439/original/file-20190902-165985-fulbf9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290439/original/file-20190902-165985-fulbf9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290439/original/file-20190902-165985-fulbf9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290439/original/file-20190902-165985-fulbf9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290439/original/file-20190902-165985-fulbf9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New Life in a Far-off World by Wade Hughes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">South Australian Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And in “Small but Mighty”, Richard Smith captures a steadfast soldier defending his crustacean family despite being small enough to live inside a sea squirt. </p>
<p>The image “Surge” by Reed Plummer returns to human scale, but shows us the awesome, daily power of nature. A breaking wave drops tons of water even as it pulls tons of sand from the sea bed.</p>
<p>“Barron Falls” by Neil Pritchard almost lets you hear the tumultuous violence of flood waters heading to the coast. Yet within this drama, the picture draws your eye to a single, small island of green that has found its space within the natural cycle of flooding noise and peace.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290444/original/file-20190902-175700-y618t6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290444/original/file-20190902-175700-y618t6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290444/original/file-20190902-175700-y618t6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290444/original/file-20190902-175700-y618t6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290444/original/file-20190902-175700-y618t6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290444/original/file-20190902-175700-y618t6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290444/original/file-20190902-175700-y618t6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290444/original/file-20190902-175700-y618t6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Barron Falls by Neil Pritchard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">South Australian Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tim Wrate’s “Above” at first looks like an Aboriginal painting. But, as you draw nearer, the image resolves into a complex maze of mangroves and salt in emerald waterways. You can feel the dynamics of the system and the interplay between life and water. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290434/original/file-20190902-165985-wk7zne.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290434/original/file-20190902-165985-wk7zne.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290434/original/file-20190902-165985-wk7zne.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290434/original/file-20190902-165985-wk7zne.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290434/original/file-20190902-165985-wk7zne.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290434/original/file-20190902-165985-wk7zne.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290434/original/file-20190902-165985-wk7zne.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290434/original/file-20190902-165985-wk7zne.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Above by Tim Wrate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">South Australian Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The jigsaw of cracked clay in “The Watering Hole” by Melissa Williams-Brown again draws the viewer into pattern. But as you follow the cracks out, a single kangaroo carcass reminds us of the cycles of water, with extreme droughts and floods. We disrupt or misinterpret this cycle at everyone’s peril. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290423/original/file-20190902-166014-1gk8q6q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290423/original/file-20190902-166014-1gk8q6q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290423/original/file-20190902-166014-1gk8q6q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290423/original/file-20190902-166014-1gk8q6q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290423/original/file-20190902-166014-1gk8q6q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290423/original/file-20190902-166014-1gk8q6q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290423/original/file-20190902-166014-1gk8q6q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290423/original/file-20190902-166014-1gk8q6q.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Watering Hole by Melissa Williams-Brown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">South Australian Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In nature, death can be beautiful. In “The Ghost of the Forest” (Marcia Riederer) an elusive mushroom, feeding on dead material, illuminates the green with its bioluminescence. Without such decomposers feeding on dead things, the cycling of essential materials would cease - no beauty, no death and no life. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290432/original/file-20190902-166001-n46g6l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290432/original/file-20190902-166001-n46g6l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290432/original/file-20190902-166001-n46g6l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290432/original/file-20190902-166001-n46g6l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290432/original/file-20190902-166001-n46g6l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290432/original/file-20190902-166001-n46g6l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290432/original/file-20190902-166001-n46g6l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290432/original/file-20190902-166001-n46g6l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Ghost of the Forest by Marcia Riederer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">South Australian Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some people hike for days to experience the beauty of these natural bio-lights, others avoid them for fear that the lights are the souls of the departed. In ecological terms, the luminescence attracts insects, which help disperse the mushroom spore and thus the future of this life form. </p>
<p>Other photographers have focused their lenses on points where the ecological cycles are disrupted. The disruption might be relatively small, like the Flying Fox new parent who almost drowns her own child while getting a drink in “Just Hanging On” (Neil Edwards). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290445/original/file-20190902-175668-ox6j8f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290445/original/file-20190902-175668-ox6j8f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290445/original/file-20190902-175668-ox6j8f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290445/original/file-20190902-175668-ox6j8f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290445/original/file-20190902-175668-ox6j8f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290445/original/file-20190902-175668-ox6j8f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290445/original/file-20190902-175668-ox6j8f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290445/original/file-20190902-175668-ox6j8f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Just Hanging On by Neil Edwards.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">South Australian Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Did you know Flying Foxes drink by dipping into water and then licking their wet fur? “Foxes on the Wing” by Paul Huntley catches them doing it just right. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290485/original/file-20190902-175663-1k79w7z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290485/original/file-20190902-175663-1k79w7z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290485/original/file-20190902-175663-1k79w7z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290485/original/file-20190902-175663-1k79w7z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290485/original/file-20190902-175663-1k79w7z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290485/original/file-20190902-175663-1k79w7z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290485/original/file-20190902-175663-1k79w7z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290485/original/file-20190902-175663-1k79w7z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Huntley’s Foxes on the Wing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">South Australian Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Larger disruptions</h2>
<p>In Richard Smith’s “In the Can”, tiny fish, peering out of discarded packaging hint at much larger disruptions caused by human efficiency in taking raw materials. Is there a deliberate irony here that humans efficiently take raw resources but neglect to recycle those that now litter the otherwise barren ocean floor?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290431/original/file-20190902-165989-1hcku9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290431/original/file-20190902-165989-1hcku9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290431/original/file-20190902-165989-1hcku9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290431/original/file-20190902-165989-1hcku9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290431/original/file-20190902-165989-1hcku9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290431/original/file-20190902-165989-1hcku9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290431/original/file-20190902-165989-1hcku9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290431/original/file-20190902-165989-1hcku9j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the Can by Richard Smith.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">South Australian Musem</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other tiny eyes peer from within a roof cavity in “A Possum’s Lookout” (Gary Meredith). These small mammals may be taking advantage of a new preferred habitat created by humans, or they may have been forced out of their usual habitats by other animals or disruptions. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290441/original/file-20190902-165989-1di6h5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290441/original/file-20190902-165989-1di6h5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290441/original/file-20190902-165989-1di6h5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290441/original/file-20190902-165989-1di6h5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290441/original/file-20190902-165989-1di6h5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290441/original/file-20190902-165989-1di6h5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290441/original/file-20190902-165989-1di6h5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290441/original/file-20190902-165989-1di6h5e.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Possum’s Lookout by Gary Meredith.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">South Australian Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, a Satin Bowerbird proudly surrounded by beautiful blue bottle tops adds a new symmetry in “Trash or Treasure” by Matt Wright.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290426/original/file-20190902-166009-w2b1hq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290426/original/file-20190902-166009-w2b1hq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290426/original/file-20190902-166009-w2b1hq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290426/original/file-20190902-166009-w2b1hq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290426/original/file-20190902-166009-w2b1hq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290426/original/file-20190902-166009-w2b1hq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290426/original/file-20190902-166009-w2b1hq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290426/original/file-20190902-166009-w2b1hq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trash or Treasure by Matt Wright.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">South Australian Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this show, each photographer has brought a different perspective on nature. Each of these can enhance your <a href="http://cogprints.org/6094/2/Vidal_2008-what-is-a-worldview.pdf">worldview</a> - allowing you to see the dynamics and resilience; the power and quiet; the destruction and rebirth inherent in it.</p>
<p>Next time you step out of your front door and see a tree in the street, really look at it.</p>
<p>See in it the young seedling of the past, its efforts to survive to the present, and the old senescent trunk full of decomposers of the future.</p>
<p>See in it the life of other organisms and how they <a href="https://theconversation.com/trees-are-made-of-human-breath-99368">use even the dead</a> and ugly. See in it the beauty and power of nature “burning bright”.</p>
<p><em>The Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year competition is produced by the South Australian Museum. It can be seen at the <a href="https://maas.museum/powerhouse-museum/">Powerhouse Museum in Sydney</a> in
partnership with the Australian Museum until 20 October and at the South Australian Museum until 10 November.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122468/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cris Brack is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Member of the Institute of Foresters, Australia.
</span></em></p>
The cycles of life, in their fierce glory, are reflected in a stunning exhibition of nature photography.
Cris Brack, Associate professor, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/100093
2018-08-12T20:12:50Z
2018-08-12T20:12:50Z
Why we need some perspective on landscape photography in the Instagram age
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229387/original/file-20180726-106511-kp40cz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bardal, from Norwegian Sublime, Ellen Marie Saethre-McGuirk, 2018</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ellen Marie Saethre-McGuirk</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thanks to the increasing accessibility of technology, many of us will try to capture the grandeur of the natural world with our phone cameras. One of the attractions is sharing images on social media and publicly staking our claim to that experience. </p>
<p>A quick glance at Instagram hashtags reveals over 90 million photos tagged <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/landscape/?hl=en">#landscape</a>, around 50 million <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/sunrise/?hl=en">#sunrise</a> photos and over 180 million tagged <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/sunrise/?hl=en">#sunset</a>. There are 40 million <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/trees/?hl=en">#trees</a>, nearly 90 million <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/clouds/?hl=en">#clouds</a> and about 190 million <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/beach/?hl=en">#beach</a> photos. </p>
<p>But our use of platforms such as Instagram is not only changing our relationship to nature (some people have even died taking selfies in perilous places), it is also changing how we frame and experience nature. </p>
<p>Earlier this year a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-17/albany-the-gap-man-falls-and-dies-at-iconic-lookout/9773018">man died falling off rocks in Western Australia</a> in the pursuit of an image. And in July <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/6/17540102/high-on-life-youtube-waterfall-death-ryker-gamble-alexey-lyakh-megan-scraper">three social media personalities died</a> after falling off a Canadian waterfall. </p>
<p>While such deaths are rare, many travellers and adventure seekers seem to be drawn towards more remote experiences of nature in lieu of the downtrodden tourist track, using Instagram as a source for visually inspiring and enticing sites. <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-31/selfie-police-called-in-at-wedding-cake-rock/10050618">Police warn people</a> to avoid an imminently crumbling cliff in New South Wales, while amateur photographers continue to ignore signs and fences. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-deadly-selfie-game-the-thrill-to-end-all-thrills-59266">The deadly selfie game – the thrill to end all thrills</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Just as nature can harm people, people can harm nature. Two of the social media personalities who died in Canada had <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/two-high-on-life-members-given-jail-time-1.3950447">spent a week in jail</a> for violating US national park regulations. In Tasmania, professional photographers have warned of the <a href="https://google.no/amp/amp.abc.net.au/article/9344444">damage that could be done to the environment</a> by hordes of people chasing views they have seen on social media. And <a href="http://google.no/amp/amp.abc.net.au/article/9345614">in Esperance, Western Australia</a>, people are trying to figure out how to capitalise on an influx of visitors driven by its discovery by Instagram users. </p>
<p>As part of my research, I have looked at how we present experiences of nature through new technology and social media. Most photos share traits we might describe as “a social media aesthetic”. Think of leafy paths, mountain vistas, sunrises and sunsets – often with filters or the same kinds of photo composition. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231440/original/file-20180810-30464-ch1y33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231440/original/file-20180810-30464-ch1y33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231440/original/file-20180810-30464-ch1y33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231440/original/file-20180810-30464-ch1y33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231440/original/file-20180810-30464-ch1y33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231440/original/file-20180810-30464-ch1y33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231440/original/file-20180810-30464-ch1y33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231440/original/file-20180810-30464-ch1y33.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Svalbard, from Norwegian Sublime, Ellen Marie Saethre-McGuirk, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ellen Marie Saethre-McGuirk</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In my <a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Saethre-McGuirk,_Ellen.html">art-as-research project</a>, the exhibition Norwegian Sublime, I used these “Instagram standards” to take photos at different locations in Norway, both well-known places such as Svalbard and less famous islands like Tomma of the Helgeland archipelago. Although they seem remote and difficult to get to, I deliberately chose places that were frequently visited and where tourism was controlled, as well as places that were literally right next to main thoroughfares, showing how the perfect picture of untouched mountain solitude can be at anyone’s fingertips. In fact, those less exotic sites around you might actually hide some of the most striking nature.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231436/original/file-20180810-30473-19mvp4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231436/original/file-20180810-30473-19mvp4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231436/original/file-20180810-30473-19mvp4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231436/original/file-20180810-30473-19mvp4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231436/original/file-20180810-30473-19mvp4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231436/original/file-20180810-30473-19mvp4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231436/original/file-20180810-30473-19mvp4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231436/original/file-20180810-30473-19mvp4u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">No location, from Norwegian Sublime, Ellen Marie Saethre-McGuirk, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ellen Marie Saethre-McGuirk</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Together, the images link up art photography and the history of photography with diminutive tell-tale signs typical of iPhone and social media photography. I framed clouds with Instagram squares, referencing art photography and weather studies from the early 1900s. I gave aerial photography a contemporary twist by taking photos from the window of today’s commercial flights, forever shuttling tourists back and forth. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231437/original/file-20180810-30476-cm1an5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231437/original/file-20180810-30476-cm1an5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231437/original/file-20180810-30476-cm1an5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231437/original/file-20180810-30476-cm1an5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231437/original/file-20180810-30476-cm1an5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231437/original/file-20180810-30476-cm1an5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231437/original/file-20180810-30476-cm1an5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231437/original/file-20180810-30476-cm1an5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">No location, from Norwegian Sublime, Ellen Marie Saethre-McGuirk, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ellen Marie Saethre-McGuirk</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In other photos, I left those patches of surfaces that are difficult to photograph with a phone, such as reflective, wet leaves and shiny rocks, washed out and bleak. And even in the seemingly romantically remote locations I intentionally left speckled signs of people in the frame. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231438/original/file-20180810-30464-gzfu8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231438/original/file-20180810-30464-gzfu8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231438/original/file-20180810-30464-gzfu8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231438/original/file-20180810-30464-gzfu8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231438/original/file-20180810-30464-gzfu8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231438/original/file-20180810-30464-gzfu8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231438/original/file-20180810-30464-gzfu8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231438/original/file-20180810-30464-gzfu8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Voksenkollen, from Norwegian Sublime, Ellen Marie Saethre-McGuirk, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ellen Marie Saethre-McGuirk</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Landscape photography is a diverse genre, encompassing a wide range of contemporary practice. Yet, for many, iconic figures such as American photographer <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams">Ansel Adams</a> embody what landscape photography is. His technically advanced images of the grandeur of nature are perfectly framed snapshots of near-other-worldly, untouched environments.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229945/original/file-20180731-176698-127p54d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229945/original/file-20180731-176698-127p54d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229945/original/file-20180731-176698-127p54d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229945/original/file-20180731-176698-127p54d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229945/original/file-20180731-176698-127p54d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229945/original/file-20180731-176698-127p54d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229945/original/file-20180731-176698-127p54d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229945/original/file-20180731-176698-127p54d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Tetons and the Snake River, Ansel Adams, 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adams_The_Tetons_and_the_Snake_River.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a similar way, when we share landscape photos on Instagram, we often seek to show the beautiful, the staged, or the perfectly composed. We applaud these images, through liking and sharing them. And, conceivably, we increasingly picture nature as a similarly idealised aesthetic experience. We end up with very little visual diversity in how we present – and chose to experience – nature. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231435/original/file-20180810-30458-1ltnruy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231435/original/file-20180810-30458-1ltnruy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231435/original/file-20180810-30458-1ltnruy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231435/original/file-20180810-30458-1ltnruy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231435/original/file-20180810-30458-1ltnruy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231435/original/file-20180810-30458-1ltnruy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231435/original/file-20180810-30458-1ltnruy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231435/original/file-20180810-30458-1ltnruy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tomma, from Norwegian Sublime, Ellen Marie Saethre-McGuirk, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ellen Marie Saethre-McGuirk</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instagram ultimately boils down to two people – the one who took the picture and the viewer. Perhaps it’s time for us as Instagram photographers to think a bit more deeply about the less exotic, but no less enchanting, places around us. We should challenge what we take photos of, and how we present nature. Nature, after all, is more than #trees and #clouds. </p>
<p>And, as Instagram viewers, we should think carefully about how we encourage different experiences of nature. Should we “like” the images and follow people and groups who clearly are pushing limits to both their own safety and the environment? Instagram is a fantastic social media tool to share the world – but it’s clear we need some perspective in using it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100093/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ellen Marie Saethre-McGuirk has received partial support from Nord University, Norway, for her Visiting Fellow period at the Design Lab, Queensland University of Technology, in 2018.</span></em></p>
Our use of social media platforms such as Instagram is changing our relationship to nature, and – at least for now – not necessarily for the better.
Ellen Marie Saethre-McGuirk, Visiting Fellow (Assoc. Prof. Nord Univeristy), Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75223
2017-05-21T20:10:46Z
2017-05-21T20:10:46Z
Decoding the music masterpieces: Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164230/original/image-20170406-16614-1kes7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Composing a symphonic landscape: Caspar David Friedrich's 1818 oil painting, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragic plays and tragic reality”, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/293954-he-who-climbs-upon-the-highest-mountains-laughs-at-all">said</a> the prophetic protagonist in the German philosopher Nietzsche’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51893.Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra">Thus Spoke Zarathustra</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165828/original/image-20170419-6367-18xmzae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165828/original/image-20170419-6367-18xmzae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165828/original/image-20170419-6367-18xmzae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165828/original/image-20170419-6367-18xmzae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165828/original/image-20170419-6367-18xmzae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1187&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165828/original/image-20170419-6367-18xmzae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1187&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165828/original/image-20170419-6367-18xmzae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1187&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard Strauss in 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Richard Strauss, who had already produced an orchestral work inspired by that book, seemingly took this injunction to heart when composing An Alpine Symphony (1915), which despite the title is better considered as the last of his “tone poems”. </p>
<p>The eight earlier tone poems, single-movement orchestral pieces with titles and prefaces linking the music to literature or other subject matter, had made Strauss one of the most celebrated (and controversial) composers of his day. However, although he continued composing until his death in 1949, he concentrated thereafter on opera rather than orchestral music. </p>
<p>Consequently, An Alpine Symphony marks the end of an era, both for the composer and for German symphonic music more generally, because after the First World War big romantic works like this went severely out of fashion. Though this tone poem was completed while the horrors of war dominated the news, it does not suggest any awareness of its larger political or historical situation. Rather, An Alpine Symphony remained focused on the representation of a landscape through music.</p>
<h2>Tragic inspirations</h2>
<p>Strauss first began working on what would become An Alpine Symphony in 1900, under the title “Tragedy of an artist” - a reference to the suicide of Swiss-born painter <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/ARTstauffer.htm">Karl Stauffer-Bern</a>. In the following decade he set the project aside and seemingly swapped orchestral composition for opera, achieving enormous success on stage with the scandalous <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViLcRFqtTpk">Salome</a>, and the still darker <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqWbxitsIvM">Elektra</a>, before he turned back to more accessible musical fare with the waltz-filled <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi810zB3L04">Rosenkavalier</a>. </p>
<p>The immediate impulse for Strauss’s return to An Alpine Symphony was the premature death in 1911 of his friend, the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler. Mahler too had bid farewell to the German symphonic tradition in his Ninth Symphony, which expires exquisitely into nothingness at the end of the fourth movement. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.9.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even when Strauss took up work on the project again, its name was still in flux. He envisaged calling it “The Antichrist” (after <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18304.The_Anti_Christ">Nietzsche’s book</a> of the same title), since it “represents moral purification through one’s own strength, liberation through work, [and] worship of eternal, magnificent nature”, as Strauss wrote on <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ijEp8a7FawEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA93#v=onepage&q&f=false">his diary</a> in May 1911. But when this title was dropped in favour of An Alpine Symphony, the link to Nietzsche was obscured. </p>
<h2>Man vs. wild</h2>
<p>On the surface then, the final form of An Alpine Symphony is a sonic portrait of an unidentified protagonist successfully conquering a mountain. By this point in his career, Strauss was living at least part of the year in the southern Bavarian town of Garmisch (today Garmisch-Partenkirchen), within sight of Zugspitze, Germany’s highest peak. Strauss loved to go rambling in the alps. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165020/original/image-20170412-25894-g798yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165020/original/image-20170412-25894-g798yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165020/original/image-20170412-25894-g798yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165020/original/image-20170412-25894-g798yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165020/original/image-20170412-25894-g798yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165020/original/image-20170412-25894-g798yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165020/original/image-20170412-25894-g798yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Strauss in Garmisch, Germany in 1938.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Strauss_1938.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The unbroken 50 minute tone poem contains 22 parts describing a variety of landscape features on the route to and from the mountain summit: the climber passes through the woods, by a stream, near a waterfall, across flowery meadows and pastureland, through thickets, and onto the glacier before reaching the top, each of these suggested by some sonic analogue. </p>
<p>Nature’s temporal and climatic changes are also prominent: the events of the day are bordered by sunrise and sunset, and the hiker encounters mist and a storm. </p>
<p>The composer’s customary skill at representing non-musical entities through music is on full display here: the waterfall is a particular highlight in its imaginative rendition of the water’s spray.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DJYMdiB6fME?wmode=transparent&start=806" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<p>To suggest the sound of Bavarian mountain pastures, Strauss used cowbells – an instrument which had been memorably featured by Gustav Mahler in his Sixth Symphony.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DJYMdiB6fME?wmode=transparent&start=920" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<p>Beethoven’s Symphony no. 6 (known as the Pastoral symphony) is in some ways a precedent for Strauss’s work. Both compositions feature a brook, and later a violent storm followed by a beatific calm. <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_Music_and_Musicians/Pastoral_Symphony,_The_(Beethoven)">Beethoven</a>, however, claimed that his Symphony contained “more expression of feeling than painting”, and the title of his first movement (“Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country”) bears out its focus on the emotional journey of experiencing the landscape, rather than on painting the landscape itself. </p>
<p>Strauss, on the other hand, wanted to represent nature in sound, but also to show the human protagonist who experiences it. In this sense, he goes beyond Beethoven in the boldness of his depictions.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165024/original/image-20170412-25898-1exw4sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165024/original/image-20170412-25898-1exw4sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165024/original/image-20170412-25898-1exw4sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165024/original/image-20170412-25898-1exw4sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165024/original/image-20170412-25898-1exw4sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165024/original/image-20170412-25898-1exw4sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165024/original/image-20170412-25898-1exw4sk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Strauss conducting in 1917.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_orchestra_and_its_instruments_(1917)_(14780185164).jpg">Esther Singleton, Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The climber is introduced in the third section in a bold striding theme, which confidently traces a jagged ascending course – until it pulls up briefly a few bars later, as the climber runs out of breath. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DJYMdiB6fME?wmode=transparent&start=290" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<p>This theme was actually modelled on an idea from the finale of Beethoven’s <a href="https://youtu.be/hsuwwzthcA8?t=9m22s">Fifth Symphony</a>, although scholars only discovered this much later. Ingeniously, Strauss later flips his theme upside down as the mountaineer descends in haste through the storm.</p>
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</figure>
<p><br></p>
<p>In between, the climber manages to <a href="https://youtu.be/DJYMdiB6fME?t=23m0s">attain the summit</a>. Here Strauss swaps landscape painting for evoking feelings of triumph that he himself would have experienced many times in his mountain wanderings. </p>
<p>Yet again, the opening of this new theme is a borrowing, this time from the <a href="https://youtu.be/RxJJYdG1_E8?t=6m30s">second movement</a> of German composer Max Bruch’s beloved Violin Concerto no. 1. Strauss freely reshapes this idea into a passage of sublime magnificence – symphonic music at its most monumental.</p>
<h2>Playing with history</h2>
<p>There are other, looser connections to earlier music. The opening of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJYMdiB6fME">Strauss’s tone poem</a> recalls the Prelude of Richard Wagner’s opera, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1zsSaLiD7Q">Das Rheingold</a>, the opening drama of his <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-ring-cycle-7999">four-part Ring Cycle</a>. </p>
<p>Both works start out from a place of quiet stillness, from which the music gradually grows in loudness and liveliness. The two composers were trying to represent nature in its most primal form, and the burgeoning of life that arises from it. Interestingly, when a teenage Strauss was caught out a storm in the mountains, he channelled the experience into an improvised piano composition: “naturally huge tone painting and smarminess à la Wagner”, the precocious 15-year-old wrote, being no fan of Wagner’s music at the time. </p>
<p>But by the time he wrote An Alpine Symphony, Strauss had been a card-carrying Wagnerian for many years. It is likely that this was a deliberate homage to the effect Wagner created – although the actual themes in both passages are quite different.</p>
<p>Yet another sort of allusion is found in the <a href="https://youtu.be/DJYMdiB6fME?t=14m39s">flowery meadows passage</a>, where the accompanying plucked strings (“pizzicato”) and mellifluous string writing strongly recall a texture typical of German composer Johannes Brahms. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture conducted by American composer Leonard Bernstein.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even Strauss’s earlier works are revisited: the explosion into life at the “<a href="https://youtu.be/DJYMdiB6fME?t=3m12s">Sunrise</a>” in An Alpine Symphony is akin to one of his previous, and more famous, openings: the start of <a href="https://youtu.be/ETveS23djXM?t=56s">Also Sprach Zarathustra</a> – where the prophet greets the sun. This passage has become iconic, thanks to its use in Stanley Kubrick’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/">2001: A Space Odyssey</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra makes for a memorable intro in 2001: A Space Odyssey.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And finally, the opening of An Alpine Symphony, with its slow descending scales, directly quotes from the start of Strauss’s much earlier <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO22oE7jZ4c">F minor Symphony</a>. Here, Strauss returns to his beginnings for what turned out to be his last major orchestral tone poem.</p>
<h2>Down to earth</h2>
<p>So what do all these borrowings and allusions signify? First, they cement the picture of Strauss as heir to the German music traditions. Before he decisively transferred his allegiance to Wagner, Strauss had undergone a brief Brahms infatuation, and this, too, had left its mark. Nonetheless, Strauss did not reproduce earlier ideas in a passive fashion in his Alpine Symphony. Rather, he transformed and reworked a wide range of source materials. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165026/original/image-20170412-25894-y2r0hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165026/original/image-20170412-25894-y2r0hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165026/original/image-20170412-25894-y2r0hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165026/original/image-20170412-25894-y2r0hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165026/original/image-20170412-25894-y2r0hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165026/original/image-20170412-25894-y2r0hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165026/original/image-20170412-25894-y2r0hj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Strauss in 1922.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ferdinand_Schmutzer_-_Richard_Strauss,_1922.jpg">Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More radical still was Strauss’s larger agenda, where he parts company from his symphonic precursors. Since at least the time of Beethoven, the symphony had been treated as a semi-sacred genre. It was perceived to have metaphysical significance. The writer and <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=UmYZzMF1oiUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA96#v=onepage&q&f=false">critic E.T.A. Hoffmann</a> expressed it thus in a famous review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in 1810: “Music reveals to man an unknown realm, a world quite separate from the outer sensual world surrounding him.”</p>
<p>In recent decades, musicologists such as <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=21904">Charles Youmans have recognised</a> that Strauss’s agenda in his orchestral compositions was deliberately at odds with this. He rejected these metaphysical pretensions, and his explicit tone-painting in works like An Alpine Symphony expresses a more grounded, earthly agenda. Nietzsche <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/563547-i-beseech-you-my-brothers-remain-faithful-to-the-earth">called in Also sprach Zarathustra</a> for mankind to “remain true to the earth; do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes”. In nature, Strauss had found an earthly object that was worthy of worship. </p>
<p>A few decades later, Strauss envisaged writing one more tone poem called Der Donau (the Danube), a tribute to the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. But he never got further than the preliminary sketches. </p>
<p>An Alpine Symphony therefore remains his last substantial output within this arena. There are many ways to approach this work: we can rejoice in the sonic gorgeousness of its surface, or admire how cleverly Strauss has re-imagined of nature in musical terms, or hear in it a farewell to a tradition Strauss himself had subtly subverted. </p>
<p>It’s a more complex composition than it appears to be. And as it fades away enigmatically into <a href="https://youtu.be/DJYMdiB6fME?t=47m2s">nocturnal darkness</a>, so too did a glorious chapter in German symphonic music pass with this work into history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Larkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
With An Alpine Symphony, Richard Strauss achieved something remarkable: the painting of the German alps, complete with cow meadows and waterfalls, in sound.
David Larkin, Senior Lecturer in Musicology, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/68599
2016-11-27T10:13:08Z
2016-11-27T10:13:08Z
Black smoke rising: Under the influence of … Berni Searle’s video ‘Lull’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147546/original/image-20161125-32049-17dnhnd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Water’s Edge II (2009) - a print related to the 'Black Smoke Rising' series.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://bernisearle.com/">from http://bernisearle.com/</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our regular series, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/under-the-influence-31577">Under the influence</a>”, we ask experts to share what they believe are the most influential works of art or artists in their field. Here academic and artist Sharlene Khan, explains why she finds Berni Searle’s video “Lull”, a hugely influential work.</em></p>
<p>The video “Lull” (2009), from the “<a href="http://bernisearle.com/videos/">Black Smoke Rising</a>” series, opens up with a “garden scene”. In the middle of the frame, a person with her back to us – presumably the artist <a href="http://bernisearle.com/">Berni Searle</a>, herself – quietly and gently swings on a cut tyre that has been strung up for such a purpose.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OrRW9sLlNqg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Lull’ from Berni Searle’s ‘Black Smoke Rising’ series.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She faces the trees and body of water in front of her, humming, lulling us into the serenity that is on offer to our gaze. Words such as “idyllic” and “picturesque” come to mind, as does <a href="http://www.artble.com/artists/jean-honore_fragonard">Jean-Honoré Fragonard</a>’s 1767 painting entitled <a href="http://www.artble.com/artists/jean-honore_fragonard/paintings/the_swing">“The Swing”</a>, which exemplifies the frivolity of the <a href="https://news.artnet.com/market/a-brief-history-of-rococo-art-32790">Rococo art movement</a>. </p>
<p>In it we see a young rosy-cheeked maiden being pushed high into the air on a swing by an older gentleman. The setting is a beautiful garden with statues of cherubs. The woman’s excitement is uncontainable. It leads to an abandon of proper conduct as there is a suggestion that we could get a little peek under her ample dress and petticoat. As does the young gentleman lurking in the garden below, and we can perhaps guess that it is not so much the swing that has set her aflush as the little peekaboo game she and her lover are playing.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147150/original/image-20161123-19712-1qsgma9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147150/original/image-20161123-19712-1qsgma9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147150/original/image-20161123-19712-1qsgma9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147150/original/image-20161123-19712-1qsgma9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147150/original/image-20161123-19712-1qsgma9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147150/original/image-20161123-19712-1qsgma9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147150/original/image-20161123-19712-1qsgma9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s ‘The Swing’, 1767.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Searle’s video, however, has none of this romance. A minute into the video the artist disappears from the swing, her humming eerily continues for a short while after she has gone, and reappears at the water’s edge to the left of the screen as if she is now part of the picturesque.</p>
<p>Moments later, her empty seat – what use is a swing if it’s not doing that? – fades away only to be replaced by the violent swinging into frame of a full tyre on fire. What was initially a scene of quiet contemplation, as we visually consumed both Searle and nature, has turned into a setting of seemingly unprovoked violence.</p>
<p>The buzz of insects, the call of geese and the endless noises we associate with the quiet of nature is overcome by the crackling of the fire emanating black smoke. The artist continues to stand apart from this violence, seemingly unaware, unaffected, back still to the threat behind her. </p>
<p>For the rest of the video, the tyre rests in the middle of frame being consumed by the flames. Curiously, even though the tyre eventually falls out of frame, clouds of black smoke emanate from somewhere outside the frame of our vision, the mechanised eye of the camera is shaken and we become aware that like Searle, there is a fire threatening us from behind while we’ve been watching this scene.</p>
<h2>Landscape art as veneers of violence</h2>
<p>The picturesque and the idyllic as represented in landscape art, as art historian <a href="https://sfaiph304.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/landscapeandpower.pdf">W.J.T. Mitchell</a> and cultural geographer <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24396679?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">John Wylie</a> remind us, are veneers which hide scenes of grotesque violence and inequalities. Both theorists posit the concept that “landscape” is not just simply a physical entity “out there”, but is a construction of gazing and consuming that human beings have developed in relation to “nature”.</p>
<p>It is as an ideological construct of power which frames nature in very particular ways and for specific reasons. As people dependent for our survival on land, our cosmologies and spiritual practices teem with ways in which to appease the land to our favour. As we became industrialised, we could hide our anxieties of not being in complete control of nature by, in fact, seeming to control nature through borders we erect, through pretty gardens, through landscaping. Western fine art, as well as Chinese and Japanese landscape art, is filled with scenes in which “man” escapes from the hassles of his society back into nature, that one finds oneself in relation to/within nature.</p>
<p>As European nations developed their modern sense of nationalist pride, they did this against their colonial exploitation of lands in other spaces – scenes of a quiet pastoral England, Italy, Belgium or France were set against the primitive or exotic “elsewhere” where natives and nature where in harmony (and available for conquest). That is unless said natives were shown naughtily killing each other awaiting colonial rule to restore order to their chaos.</p>
<p>Nature was chaotic, as were those deemed closest to them: natives, women, homosexuals. When nature was unruly in Europe, it was only to fulfil the need for the sublime – the excess of Self – that always lurked within the reasoning man, that frightened and enchanted him and made his pulse run, so that he was always in search of it, even as he sought to dominate it. </p>
<p>Gardens have a long history in many cultures. They could be places of contemplation and self-reflection. Gardens could have streams which meant when one crossed over them, one was cleansed spiritually. They were sites of prestige in which the wild could be shown to be controllable; in smaller households they were a sign of stature, of a rising class level. Colonial gardens abroad were a sign of their administrative order and cultural values. </p>
<p>Hidden underneath painting codes are the violence and bloodshed of colonial exploitation done in the names of foreign kings and queens. Like a family album and photos of tourist trips, where everyone smiles and nobody can tell the irritations, abuse and pathologies that may lurk behind the photographic surface.</p>
<h2>Why is Searle’s work still relevant?</h2>
<p>Searle’s work is a daunting reminder of this. She violates the image through the burning tyre. For South Africans, the burning tyre is a strong reminder of a very recent past. A past that is always threatening to engulf the country: the burning tyre of the townships shown on the state broadcaster’s, the SAUK’s, news as South Africans were told their defence force was again trying to restore order to townships on fire.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147547/original/image-20161125-32049-gepgcj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147547/original/image-20161125-32049-gepgcj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147547/original/image-20161125-32049-gepgcj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147547/original/image-20161125-32049-gepgcj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147547/original/image-20161125-32049-gepgcj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147547/original/image-20161125-32049-gepgcj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147547/original/image-20161125-32049-gepgcj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Water’s Edge III’ (2009), a print from Berni Searle’s ‘Black Smoke Rising’ series.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">From http://bernisearle.com/</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In more recent years, it is the SABC (what the SAUK has morphed into) telling the country how its police service is trying to bring peace to disgruntled township residents. Amid the pretty rhetoric that is South African tourism and former president Thabo Mbeki’s “African Renaissance” <a href="http://www.soweto.co.za/html/i_iamafrican.htm">speech</a> (“I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land”), there are tyres burning. Their black swirls reaching high into the sky right in front of Rhodes University’s Drama Department in Grahamstown.</p>
<p>Authoritarian backs straighten. The colonial imagination is invoked – if they could do that to a tyre, then they could do that to a white body. The tyre burns until only a ring of blackness marks a scene of signification, of seasons of discontent.</p>
<h2>Arson attacks</h2>
<p>Two weeks ago I arrive to invigilate an exam under stressful circumstances. In ensuring that exams continue regardless of student protests for free higher education, the Academic Registrar has decided that the building which seats 400 students will be locked and surrounded by private security and police in light of three different arson attacks. I make sure the fire exit doors are functioning only to discover that the alley into which both doors lead is closed off by high gates and locked from the outside. </p>
<p>In response to my disbelief against the blatant violation of fire regulations, I am told the guards posted outside the gates will hold keys. I leave the exam in protest and report the matter to the local Fire Chief. When he arrives he has the locks cut off the gates. Despite repeated emails to the university, the Registrar refuses to acknowledge emails calling for proper safety regulations. </p>
<p>I am reminded of the film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0976051/">“The Reader”</a>, where Kate Winslet portrays a Nazi official who is brought to trial many years later for her part in an event where Jews were locked in a building and it burnt down with all the occupants inside. When asked why she had not opened the doors when she realised that the place was burning, Winslet’s character uncomprehendingly answers that there would have been chaos. I am reminded of such Nazi reasoning and illusions of order and rationality when empathy no longer resides in us, when fear rules.</p>
<p>Rhodes is no exception though. It doesn’t take a philosopher to understand that as many liberal ears close to the cries of the majority of people unable to progress in post-apartheid South Africa, our country will burn physically and metaphorically. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/">“Hunger Games”</a> fictional character Katniss Everdeen’s words to dictator President Snow might be worth hearkening to: “Fire is catching! And if we burn, you burn with us.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68599/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharlene Khan receives funding from the National Arts Foundation and the National Research Foundation. </span></em></p>
Hidden underneath painting codes are the violence and bloodshed of colonial exploitation. ‘Lull’ is a daunting reminder of this.
Sharlene Khan, South African visual artist and senior lecturer of Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University, Rhodes University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.