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Exhibition Archives Winter/Spring 2004 Forum 54: Terrain Vague: What is to be done with these enormous voids, with their imprecise limits and vague definition? Art's reaction . . . is to preserve these alternative, strange spaces. . . . Architecture's destiny [by contrast] has always been colonization, the imposing of limits, order, and form, the introduction into strange space of the elements of identity necessary to make it recognizable, identical, universal.In this exhibition, nine photographers and one filmmaker invite us to contemplate the subtle qualities of terrain vague in America. Martha Rosler, Catherine Opie, and Philip-Lorca di Corcia critically ponder the transitional spaces of transportation, such as airports, freeways, subways, and even sidewalks. The starkly lit compositions of Todd Hido and David Deutsch re-present the domestic realm in studies of solitude and surveillance. Similarly, the documentary images of Andy Anderson and Bill Owens reveal the ironies of suburban life. Edward Burtynsky transforms active and abandoned industrial sites into sublime renditions of nature, while images of industrial parks and corporate plazas by Lewis Baltz and Doug Muir bid us to reconsider the commercially developed spaces in our own urban environment. Terrain Vague challenges us to rethink our reactions to these often forgotten, interstitial spaces rather than to regard them as areas to be reordered, transformed, and homogenized. The viewer is asked to consider the ways in which the urban fabric might be developed without unraveling its ties to history and memory. America the Beautiful: Hudson River School:
Masterworks from the Eloquent
Vistas: The Art of 19th-Century American Landscape Photography From
the George Eastman House Collection Eloquent Vistas: The Art of 19th-Century American
Landscape Photography From the George Eastman House Colletion has been organized by George Eastman
House International Museum of Photography and Film. Generous support
has been provided by The William Talbott Hillman Foundation, Inc.
and the W.P. Snyder III Charitable Fund. From the very beginning the American wilderness – felt to be an unspoiled Eden with a heady mixture of freedom, opportunity, and danger – seemed to physically embody the American ethos. By the 19th-century that wilderness had become the American frontier, always shifting westward and filled with landscapes of such extraordinary dimensions that they fostered a sense of special favor and pride within the American citizenry. Throughout the century these lands were explored and described by dozens of survey expeditions sponsored by both the government and by private capital. These expeditionary parties had to be self-sufficient for months on end. Despite the difficulties inherent in early travel and the cumbersome nature of early photographic equipment, many artists and photographers were so attracted to the western landscape that they braved considerable hardship and danger in order to depict the continent's magnificent scenery. This exhibition will include photographs by many of the great figures of American 19th-Century landscape photography, including: Timothy O'Sullivan, Alexander Gardner, William Henry Jackson, and Carleton Watkins, among many others, offering a bird's-eye tour of the exploration of America while it was actually happening. The Romantic Print in Britain The Romantic period was, in the words of the English radical Tom Paine, "an age of Revolutions, in which everything may be looked for." During this time of turbulent change and limitless opportunity, the cultural, political, social, and emotional landscape of Europe was irrevocably transformed. Printmaking flourished in Britain, providing an ideal vehicle for visual artists who were constantly exploring new means of personal expression. Many painters turned to graphic media, either working independently or collaborating closely with professional engravers to create some of the most compelling and immediate artistic statements of the period — enduring testimonies to this extraordinary explosion of creativity. This exhibition,organized by the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, is drawn from the Paul Mellon collection of British prints. The Romantic movement was marked by a passionate aesthetic, spiritual, and emotional engagement with landscape. The exhibition maps the evolution of the Romantic preoccupation with the natural and man-made worlds, tracing its origin in the late 18th Century, and its blossoming in the 19th-Century. The issues relating to landscape, which concerned Turner, Constable and their generation – man's relationship with his environment, technological change, and national identity – are still highly relevant. The exhibition will also investigate themes,
such as the engraved portrait and how prints contributed to
the creation of the celebrity status of their subjects, as
well as the romantic obsession with both contemporary and historical
events, showing how prints played a crucial role in shaping
a sense of national identity in Britain. Britain was the pre-eminent
colonial power during this period. Her position as the ruler
of some 150 million people of many cultures brought to the
fore issues of liberty and "the rights of man," often
at odds with the expansionist goals of the empire. The exhibition
will feature works that explore some of these conflicts in
prints related to the American War of Independence, The French
Revolution, the British imperial presence in India, the South
Seas and the Caribbean, the slave trade, and native American
culture. The era's preoccupation with the public sphere was
paralleled by an intense exploration of the life of the mind,
and the exhibition includes images which vividly mine the depths
of the complex and often tortured Romantic psyche.
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