European and Czech landscape
tradition and experience
ECES
ERASMUS
Students interested in the subject
Krajina - landscape
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“Krajina” in Czech community is not a neutral term
Homeland
Tradition
Heritage of ancestors, fathers…
Beauty
Fertility…source of life
Safeness
Nature
Culture
Work of rural generation
People
History
Religion
War
…..
Krajina in Czech context….
 National revival …
1) 1771 - 1813
2) 1813 - 1830
3) 1830 - 1848
….substitution of political freedom …national
identity…strong social and cultural cohesive
function of landscape
Pilgrimages, processions, mass meetings,
holy places
The evidence of (cultural, social, mental,
psychological, narrative, scientific, etc.) landscape
perception is landscape paintings
Cranach Lucas
older, *1472 – †16.10.1553, German, the leading representative of German
reformation, near friend of Martin Luther – romantic landscape painting of Danube school.
VENUS
Cranach L. Junior, Na vinici Páně
Vineyard of the Lord
(the main story between clergy and secular)
L. Cranach older, The Rest on the Escape to the Egypt
(holy family supported by angels, Herodias king – killed every new born boys, to eliminate prophesy, but…birch tree, spruce)
L. Cranach, Portrait
L. Cranach St. Margarita
Claude Lorraine
Landscape with Cephalus, Procris, and Diana, 1635/6
Claude Lorraine Landscape with Apollo and Mercury
(1645).
Claude Lorraine 1600 – 1682, Campagna
Peter Breughel older
Netherlandish Proverbs
Peter Breughel older tower-of-babel
Peter Breughel older - The harvesters 1565
(emancipation of landscape, l. no more in background)
Caspar David Friedrich Tetchenský oltář 1806
Tetchen Altar
(Against academic tradition)
Landscape in paintings
(until 16th – even 18th )
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Scenery
Environment
Background
Infill – filling
Edging
Landscape under the Theory of Sublime
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Object of the sublime
Experience of divinity
Experience of eternality
Harmony of Nature
Awe and fear
WORD HISTORY
• It would seem that in the word landscape we have an
example of nature imitating art, at least insofar as sense
development is concerned.
• Landscape, first recorded in 1598, was borrowed as a
painters' term from Dutch during the 16th century, when
Dutch artists were on the verge of becoming masters of
the landscape genre. The Dutch word landschap had
earlier meant simply “region, tract of land” but had
acquired the artistic sense, which it brought over into
English, of “a picture depicting scenery on land.”
Interestingly, 34 years pass after the first recorded use of
landscape in English before the word is used of a view or
vista of natural scenery.
• This delay suggests that people were first introduced to
landscapes in paintings and then saw landscapes in real
life.
History
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(landschap, land, „land, soil…země, půda“
and schap, ; in English landskip, land and skip
– ship, „ loď“ also schaft, shape
„composition, form, face…složení, tvar,
forma, podoba“); contemporary English
landscape
Land-Scape - (tangible form/intangible perception)
Terra …..Latin …..just area
Landscape (in European/American meaning)
Refers to the layout in terms of a land area and to its visual
representation, particularly as portrayed by members of the
painting community.
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1. A portion of land or territory which the eye can
comprehend in a single view.
2. A picture representing a scene by land or sea,
actual or fancied, the chief subject being the general
aspect of nature, as fields, hills, forests, water etc.
3. In general - demarcated area (in medicine)
Land---Scape construction
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Scenery……land/scape
Ownership, government….land/shaft, krajina
Some methodological problems have their
roots in the landscape construction
- Landscape in your native language?
Terms:
 Pre- scientific
 no logical relationships between each other, but
contains experiences, people can understand and
imagine what is behind the term – sharing
experiences.
 empirical, based on sharing experiences expression
of the world.
Terms..
 Scientific
 no sharing experiences, but logical analytical
relationships to each other. Analytical, formalized
description of the world.
Landscape belong to....term?
Founded scientific definition
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Alexander von Humboldt…the last man who
looks on the nature as a one unit, holistic entity
Landscape is “Totalcharakter” the total-nature
of the Earth's surface (1806)
Landscape as a unique nature culture continuum emerged
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Totalcharakter“ of A. von Humboldt…
Landschaft ..“Das Total Character einer
Erdgegend“
„the total-nature of the Earth's surface“ (1806)
The total character of a piece of the earth.
The system at the earth surface of biotic and abiotic forces that visually can be recognize
Landscape as a tangible ecosystem
Scientific definitions of landscape in Landscape Ecology
N-C-Continuum
The total character of a region
Alexander von Humboldt cca 1806
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A heterogeneous land area composed of a cluster of interacting ecosystems
that is repeat in similar form throughout
Forman, Godron, 1986
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Landscapes dealt with in their totality as physical, ecological and geographical
entities, integrating all natural and human (cause) patterns and processes
Z. Naveh 1987
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A particular configuration of topography, vegetation cover, land-use, and
settlement pattern which delimits some coherence of natural and cultural
processes and activities
Green, 1996
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A highly complex system …where abiotic, biotic and anthropogenic
components and their interrelations form the structure and functioning of a
generic entity
Lesser 1997
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European Landscape Convention
Florence, 20.X.2000
Article 1 – Definitions
For the purposes of the Convention:
a "Landscape" means an area, as perceived by
people, whose character is the result of the
action and interaction of natural and/or human
fators;
Landscape / Inscape
 External landscape – internal landscape
“Landscape painting is about the changes in the human
inscape from prehistoric to modern times”.
 Internal landscape, mental map – inscape:
Pierre Dansereau, 1975. Inscape and Landscape. Columbia
University Press, New York, London, 118p.
 Inscape may also change, independently of the physical
context, under the influence of socio-cultural factors.
These changes may have their impacts on the external
landscape – land/use, planning, landscape
design…leading to further action…
Landscape – macrospace – landscape scale
R.T.T.Forman Land Mosaics, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977
Our terms
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Landscape……in theoretical, philosophical
Landscapes …..in real, ecological
Inscape……….in sociological, psychological,
also knowledge system point of view
??
Next student oral presentation:
• Is there any landscape painting in prehistoric period?
• Beyond the landscape painting –
landscape photographs.
Land as the art (Land – art)