María José Cuenca Muñoz- 202215038
The Landscape art of the americas workshop, in my opinion, was an essential part of this course,
not only because of the opportunity of interacting with exceptional professors with extensive
careers that provided a deep understanding of different topics, but as it allowed the class to
comprehend the relation between American Landscape and American art in a native perspective.
Even if one of the lectures did focus on a Native American perspective, in this case the term
native was used not referring to an indigenous person but to someone originally born in the
United States.
Professor Cao provided a space in which the class was able to comprehend Frédéric Churchs art,
and his and his wives intentions while traveling in South America, specially Jamaica, during the
lecture I couldn’t help but think that this journey was a self reflecting and healing one, because
of this, Church was able to paint his grief and evolution towards it in regards of nature. On the
other hand, the idea of “transplanting the tropics” felt like the Americans had apatological need
of appropriating everything in their path, by utilizing wadian cases they guaranteed a certain
level of respect, as they were indicators of knowledge and power, something only the ones that
could travel and read were able to obtain.
Professor Horton started her lecture in an interesting way, providing a personal situation related
to the topic that was being presented, even if she provided a reasonable explanation for it I was
actually thinking about a “magical” one which closely relates to the Indigenous perspective of
fire, as one of the fires was trying to protect the the house from the other fire, thinking how her
parents were saved by the power of fire. Weaving, in my opinion is just as essential in
indigenous culture as fire is. Weaving is a ritual experience so utilizing fire as a pattern in
baskets is a way of honoring fire. In most indigenous cultures fire is understood as a mean of
purification, utilizing fire was a way of protecting indigenous communities from invation,
because of this it was viewed as a weapon and turned indigenous people were seen as savages.
Stopping indigenous people from utilizing fire is a way of stopping them from their religious
practices, meaning, that we are basically returning to the colonization era, in which white people
were trying to tell them how to act and what to think, erasing a community that has always been
forgotten.
Professor Buik helped understand the idea of landscape as a symbol of power, the idea of “a new
garden of eden” was particularly interesting to me because as it was said in the title of the
lecture it was a representation of the American idea of empire. Professor Buik mentioned that
Landscape is an instrument of power as it is understood that landscape makes us believe that we
all see the same, and because of this share the same ideas, so it is not inly used as a physical
power but as a psychological one, trying to define landscape and its utilization as a tool for
progress.
I found that all reading assignments were engaging and made me aware of issues I wasn’t
familiar with, as they were part of bigger texts I became interested in continuing this process to
further my understanding of the topics presented in the workshop. In the questions and answers
section I found that even if we as a class sometimes think the same ideas we don’t share them in
the same style, and I agreed with most of the points made, I was particularly interest in the fact
that a lot of the issues discussed could be put in the Colombian and Latin American context, the
American need of possessing power beyond need is to this day a pressing issue. During my
participation in the workshop I made the point of history repeating itself with white people
coming to Latin American lands to settle here and paint the idea of the perfect place for them
while worsening the life quality of natives. While I recognize that my participation could have
been better I was paying attention and taking notes the entire time.