Artlog

George Inness’s Lackawanna Valley, 1856 considers nature in terms of the contrasts between raw nature and the rapid progression of cultural evolution and the industrial revolution. The president of Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad at Scranton, Pennsylvania commissioned Inness to paint Lackawanna Valley, requiring him to add more tracks than existed and to paint the company’s name on the engine. This begs the question whether one should experience Lackawanna Valley as an advertisement for the railroad or a critique of development. In the same vein, Lackawanna Valley, 2008 suggests both an advertisement for grassy suburban living and nostalgia for the country landscape that once flourished. The four minute video embedded in the panel depicts the rapid destruction of a hundred year old farmhouse, representing the death of the family farm as Americans distance themselves from nature and move toward industrial food production.

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By the time Winslow Homer painted Right and Left in 1909, he was in his mid-seventies, had suffered a minor stroke and was entering the final year of his life. The title, Right and Left, is a hunting phrase referring the successive shooting of ducks with separate barrels of a shotgun, but this work more strongly suggests the tragic reflection on life and death of someone nearing the end of his days. The employment of animals, in this case ducks, aids in the illustration and exploration of the complex human emotions surrounding death via a more palatable, less overt route. The hunter, placed in the center of the canvas, is shooting in the direction of the viewer, placing us in the same precarious position as the ducks and ultimately Homer. It is unclear if the hunter has successfully struck both his marks – one golden-eye duck could be diving to escape his fate while the other’s condition is yet to be revealed. In Right and Left, 2008 the fate of the bird on the right is clear, thus emphasizing our fate and that of nature too. The golden-eye ducks have been replaced on the canvas as they have in nature by flourishing Canadian Geese, the suburban equivalent of the urban pigeon. The hunter’s shotgun, now a semi-automatic, is being fired aggressively at the imperiled viewer. The hunter is now represented by the video game character from Man Hunt, the most violent American video game to date. This painting subtly addresses both the complexity of life and death and the evolving system of nature.

Winslow Homer’s Deer Drinking, 1892, depicts a doe he observed on one of his annual late summer/early fall hunting trips in the Adirondacks, straddling a fallen tree in order to drink from a forest pond. Homer’s dark colors suggest a mysterious spirit in the forest, while his formal composition implies precise observation. Deer Drinking, 2008 depicts the doe through the eyes and mind of the viewer with a distinctly contemporary understanding of this creature. The deer painted over a century ago is the same deer being painted today, a constant. Yet the culture and environment in which this constant is being experienced has changed significantly. The deer in 1892 invokes a sense of beauty and the American wilderness, while the same delicate creature in 2008 signifies something quite different, something far less romantic. This changing paradigm, as humans and animals battle for space, renders the lovely deer essentially a road hazard and a vehicle for disease, highlighting the complex and ever changing relationship between man and the natural world.

The Oxbow, 2008 is based on Thomas Cole’s Hudson River School painting View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm – The Oxbow, 1836. The vast landscape viewed from above shows an idealized pastoral scene with a wild, dark storm passing off to the left of the canvas. The storm suggests impending change while the oxbow symbolizes human control over raw nature. “Now that the storm has passed, our eyes can move out to the horizon, into infinite light: the American promise.”(Thomas Cole) The artist is slightly visible in the gully where he has taken refuge, but his painting gear is prominently placed on the hillside. Cole states many a mountain stream and rock has its legend, worthy of poet’s pen or painter’s pencil. In Oxbow, 2008, the idyllic landscape has met the fate feared by Cole, the “Man with the Ax”, symbolizing progress and greed. This work highlights the human attempt to harness nature, to control its beauty and use its resources.