II - Grainfields: Making Landscape

Summary

Abstract

“Grainfields: Making Landscape” looks at Ruisdael's treatment of the boundary between barren and fertile land, as well as his own practice as an artist. His choice of motifs shows human craft and labor within a landscape. These, together with his own evident artistry, suggest an interest in technē, that is, maker's knowledge. His experimentation with etchings in which he explores the vital forms of botanical life in borderlands reveals this interplay of mind and hand. These concerns with making, labor, and the transformation of the land would have been appreciated by his likely patrons. Moreover, his preoccupation with the indigenous landscape would have had a particular significance for those with knowledge of and interest in “foreign” places and vegetation.

Keywords: edgelands, technē, morphology, process, picturablity, etching

Technē: Labor and Landscape

Jacob Ruisdael's landscapes of dunes and country roads reveal his consistent effort to find a technique for rendering pictorially the details of nature he observed so closely. His paintings of grainfields and edge lands, which also figure among his earliest works, show an even greater preoccupation with finding a way of matching his mark making with the morphology of natural forms. Not only do open grainfields present the pictorial problem of portraying a massive form made up of individual stalks, but the boundaries between fertile land, waste, and pathways juxtapose varied and complex environments. Ruisdael's choice of motifs and treatment of this land and its boundaries exemplify human craft and labor, including his own, within a landscape. His experimentation with etchings in which he explores the vital forms of botanical life in these borderlands especially reveals this interplay of mind and hand, that is with maker's knowledge or technē. Ruisdael's concerns with making, labor, and the evident role of transformation in his artistry and subject matter would have resonated with his many contemporaries who had a vested interest in this sort of countryside.

The term technē as used here describes the process by which Ruisdael labored to embody what he saw (the domain of “knowledge”) by means of his craft (practice). Technē so understood considers the work of art as including the labor and explorations required to achieve the best possible solution. In Ruisdael's case that would be the ability to convey the environmental character of a place as well as to capture the structure, morphology, and even something of the sprightliness of natural forms.