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“Inevitable Grottoes”: Modern Paintings and Wasted Space
- Author(s):
- Maura Coughlin (see profile)
- Date:
- 2009
- Subject(s):
- Painting, Landscapes, France, Area studies, Ecology
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- Van Gogh, Cezanne, Smithson, Quarries, Ruins, Landscape, French studies
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6QC26
- Abstract:
- An abandoned rock quarry is a ruined, emptied landscape. Although bearing witness to strenuous work, as a subject of representation it cannot summon the sort of national pride invested in fertile agricultural landscapes, industrious windmills and aqueducts; quarried land is an intervention better off forgotten. When depleted, it is typically abandoned; its remaining void remaining then fills with refuse and run off waters that “rise into ruin,” breeding miasma and social panic. Open quarries on the edge of Paris (whose material had built the city) became embarrassing eyesores and were often filled in and tidied up. The best known case is the wildly spectacular Buttes-Chaumont park, landscaped for the 1867 Universal Exposition to hide the former lime quarries, squatters’ camps and waste dumping grounds. Robert Smithson, in his infamous essay “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic” (Artforum, 1967) suggests that the notion of what constitutes a “monument” is constructed by the spectator who alone determines its cultural value. This paper proposes to read paintings of quarries in the Paris region and in Provence that Van Gogh and Cézanne repeatedly painted through Smithson’s notion of the “entropic ruin”.
- Notes:
- https://uiowa.edu/ijcs/%E2%80%9Cinevitable-grottoes%E2%80%9D-modern-paintings-and-wasted-space
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 6 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
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