The Dialectical Landscapes and Robert Smithson's A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic (original) (raw)

The landscape as an artistic topic is not constituted as such until the 19th century, when it sets itself up as the genre par excellence of the epoch. Albeit nature is already present in paintings of previous centuries-from Giotto to Poussin to El Greco-, its role within representation is of secondary importance; its presence is significant just as a contextual element of a scene or main theme. But as an established genre, the landscape refers to a certain extension, in its origins, of nature, that is contemplated and admired by an individual that produces and limits frameworks and references of perception and observation under which such stamp is appreciated. In light of such a contemplative conception of the landscape, as an object seen by a subject who finds delight and aesthetic pleasure, nature acquires an aesthetic character in contrast with previous times in which it was regarded on the basis of subsistence and raw natural resources's exploitation. The landscape, thus, inaugurates a different appreciation of the environment, highly aesthetic, but it also opens up the door to a consciousness of the place. It is in this sense that Smithson's 'abstract geology' is a way to understand the landscape as a cultural construction, a way of looking at and seeing the environment, that transforms and constitutes it into an object of contemplation and representation culturally apprehended. It is a dialectical process combining the earth's surface and thought in a reciprocal mediation, where geological processes and thinking discuss and displace each other.