Land and Landscapes

Five artists intersect in their depiction of the natural world.

THIS FALL, THE ALBUQUERQUE MUSEUM PRESENTS FOUR EXHIBITIONS IN WHICH FIVE DIFFERENT ARTISTS REACT TO THE LAND, ECOLOGY, AND THE CHANGING ENVIRONMENT.

Anchored by Thomas Cole’s Studio: Memory and Inspiration, the exhibition reassembles the paintings that were in the artist’s studio when he died in 1848, exploring in particular the significance of Cole’s late work. The influential artist and architect was key to the development of the Hudson River School and served as a mentor and a force in legitimizing landscape painting.

When Cole built his studio, there was no other place to see his work—the Metropolitan Museum of Art did not yet exist, and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, had only one or two of his paintings. After an early death at 47, Cole’s purpose-built studio in Catskill, New York, became a repository

Thomas Cole, Landscape with Clouds, 1846–1847, oil on canvas, 48 × 72 in., Private Collection

Opposite: Thomas Cole's Studio: Memory and Inspiration Installation View © Peter Aaron OTTO

[The land is] a subject that to every American ought to be of surpassing interest; for whether he beholds the Hudson mingling its waters with the Atlantic, explores the central wilds of this vast continent, or stands on the margin of the distant Pacific, he is still in the midst of American scenery—it is his own land; its beauty, its magnificence, its sublimity, all are his; and how undeserving of such a birthright if he can turn towards it an unobserving eye, an unaffected heart! ʻʻ —THOMAS COLE “Essay on American Scenery” (1841)

and even a shrine. Artists could contact the family and arrange private visits.

In “Essay on American Scenery,” (1841) Cole makes his case for the beauty of the American landscape, and the importance of landscape art in the cultural canon. “Did our limits permit,” he wrote, “I would endeavor more fully to show how necessary to the complete appreciation of fine arts is the study of scenery, and how conducive to our happiness and well-being is that study and those arts…”

A major focus for Cole was the effort to legitimize landscape painting, thought at the time to be less important than history painting. Franklin Kelly, senior curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and curator of this exhibition, says Cole was ambitious and aware that various types of art were ranked higher than landscapes. Cole produced paintings drawn from specific moments, illustrating and celebrating landscape through inclusion of historical elements. “There was complement and conflict, as he made landscape more important than just painting scenery,” says Kelly.

The Thomas Cole National Historic Site rebuilt Cole’s studio, and the artifacts and art in the exhibition reflect both past works and the promise of what would have been had Cole lived longer. Kelly says the most representative of this potential is the unfinished Landscape with Clouds. “I could see that it was empty and almost modern and abstract,” Kelly says of an early encounter with the work. “The painting was like a door opening into his mind and into his creative process. The landscape—it was enigmatic, mysterious,

and beautiful for what it both was and wasn’t.” In the lower left corner are the ghostly presence of an angel and a small child holding a cross. “It gives you a sense of his ambition,” says Kelly.

Cole did indeed have big plans for his future, both in the construction of the studio and in the unfinished works that illustrated and venerated the land surrounding the studio. The 19thcentury Catskills were not the pristine, light-filled and mysterious landscapes Cole presented. The reality was more industrial with tanneries, the railroad, and steel factories. Cole’s body of work turns reality into allegory: the sawn trees present in some of his paintings are a slight nod to human intrusion, but other evidence of the built environment has been studiously deleted. For example, Cole’s rendering of Catskill Creek doesn’t include the railroad tracks or hints at industry that existed at the time. Cole’s deletions say as much as his imaginative additions—there are consequences to the rush of civilization and to man’s intrusion. In that way, Cole was prescient.

“Cole was painting before we even knew the word ‘ecology,’” says Kate Menconeri, chief curator and director of curatorial affairs at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, who coordinated the exhibition and edited the accompanying catalog. "[When Cole was working] Darwin has not yet been published. This idea that the land is a system and we are part of that doesn’t exist yet.”

Responding to Cole

Over the past few years, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site has invited contemporary artists to create responses to Cole. The artist owned a small camera obscura, using it to capture and frame the landscape and define the composition for his paintings. So it was appropriate that photographer Shi Guorui used a camera obscura to recreate Cole’s landscapes as photographs, using sketches of his paintings to match the locations. Shi, born in Beijing, moved to Catskill in 2014 and lives and works just a mile from the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. He had been using a camera obscura long before discovering Cole. His works in Ab/Sense–Pre/Sense are pinhole photographs of the area, sometimes the exact views Cole painted.

Shi’s process of setting up a giant camera obscura in the woods required building ten- to 20-foot tents and the rental of a 20-foot box truck. Exposures can take as long as 36 hours, during which time Shi remained inside the tent. Because moving items disappear or blur

CAMERA OBSCURA

The exhibition features a walk-in camera obscura, which will bring the outdoor environment into the gallery. A camera obscura (which literally translates in Latin to "dark room"), creates an image when light passes through a small aperture into a darkened chamber and creates an inverted image.

LAND AND LANDSCAPE

during long exposures, Shi’s images are missing people—just as Cole edited out the tourists on the viewing platform at Kaaterskill Falls.

These camera obscura images have movement and an almost electric light. “It’s a literal record of time and light at a place, a way to slow down time and be mindful of the natural world,” Menconeri says. For Shi, Cole’s locations and artifacts inform a new version, but the large prints, with their depth of field, light, and detail also speak to Chinese landscape scrolls of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127).

“We invited artists to create site specific works ... Some responded directly, like Shi,” says Menconeri. “Other artists are responding to what’s happening now in our own world. Shi retraced Thomas Cole’s footsteps and went to the places that Cole painted 180 years before. He studied his writing and made new interpretations of the places.” The way artists today approach the genre is far more varied than in Cole’s time, such as making landscapes out of natural material itself—using soil and earth, or through photographic processes or sculpture. “Or [Shi] reimaging the landscapes through light and time, or Kiki Smith is thinking about elements that make up land,” she says.

Smith also lives in Catskill. The multi-disciplinary artist focuses on the natural world, myth, cycles, and the interconnectedness between humans and the land in which they live. While Cole’s landscapes encompass light-filled views, Smith animates the details, focusing her artistic lens on the animals, plants, stars, and pollinators. “I think more about being in a specific place, rather than being in a landscape. A place reveals itself to you over time … a place can hold so many different perceptions and meanings manifesting very different aspects of a place,” Smith says.

Smith’s From the Creek was originally conceived as an installation in Cole’s house and studio. The artist presents an expanded version for the Albuquerque Museum exhibition, developing works that both respond to Cole directly and go beyond, addressing themes such as art, landscape, and history, balancing the built and natural world. “Think of it as a wild kingdom of animals, [Smith is] not a conventional horizon line landscape artist,” says Menconeri. In the installation at the Museum, Smith didn’t want to include labels on the works, to underscore the feeling of encountering the art in the forest.

Thomas Cole, Study for “Catskill Creek,” c.1844–45, oil on wood, 12 × 18 in. (Framed: 15 ¾ x 21 5/8 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington, Avalon Fund, 1998.67.1

Below: Kiki Smith, Fortune, 2014, cotton Jacquard tapestry, 9' 5" × 6' 3" (287 cm × 190.5 cm), Published by Magnolia Editions, Photograph by Tom Barratt, courtesy Pace Gallery, © Kiki Smith, courtesy Pace Gallery

Opposite: Shi Guorui, View of Catskill Mountains, New York, February 6-7, 2019; 2019; unique camera obscura gelatin silver print; 44 15/16 in. x 115 in.; collection of the artist, image courtesy of the artist

From New York to New Mexico

"Nature as a site untouched by humanity is a ghost that haunts us,” Nicola López wrote in 2020 when the Museum exhibited Haunted in the lobby.

Nicola López; Apparition I; 2019; collograph on archival inkjet print on paper; 21 ½ x 31 ¼ in., Edition of 8; Published by LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies; image courtesy of Nicola López Left: Paula Wilson, Eye Spots, 2021, two-color lithograph with chine collé on Thai Kozo, white Arches cover, and Gampi papers, 27 ¾ x 22 in. (sheet), image courtesy of Paula Wilson

ON VIEW

SHI GUORUI: AB/SENSE – PRE/SENSE October 8, 2022 – February 12, 2023

KIKI SMITH: FROM THE CREEK October 8, 2022 – February 12, 2023

NICOLA LÓPEZ AND PAULA WILSON: BECOMING LAND October 8, 2022 – February 12, 2023

THOMAS COLE’S STUDIO: MEMORY AND INSPIRATION November 19, 2022 – February 12, 2023

López resides in both New York and Santa Fe, and is personally familiar with the Hudson River Valley from childhood journeys through the area and feels connected to both places. The exhibition, Nicola López and Paula Wilson: Becoming Land, allowed her to focus on the idea of how landscapes are changing and to reflect on human influence on the land. “Landscape painting implies the idea of human vision, or surveying the land, and embedded in that gaze is an implied hierarchy—a sense of human ownership and conquest,” she says. The actual human impact on the land is evidenced, for example, by the almost ghostly and transparent architectural structures imposed on the desert landscapes in her work. “The insertion of a piece of imaginary architecture is an act of questioning the position and role of humanity in this landscape, alluding to an intervention, or a dominance,” Lopez says.

Like Shi, López uses the process of light sensitivity in creating cyanotype prints. Both the camera obscura and the cyanotype require the participation of the natural world—the sun and the environment—as collaborators in the work.

Thomas Cole’s efforts to elevate “landscape” and his questioning of the human impact on the land set the stage for artists like López and fellow New York/New Mexico transplant Paula Wilson to respond to the land and to consider landscape in reference to our current sensibilities about ecosystem, environment, and climate change.

Wilson’s work includes large-scale figures that contain landscape views, integrating different perspectives, seasons, and relationships. Other works show current technologies such as phones as part of the relationship between humans and the natural world. Her work offers a nuanced exploration of nature, incorporating plants and animals, and human technology and debris which are undeniably and increasingly part of our evolving connection to the land.