Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
from the broader history of industrial landscape paintings and drawings.
In this section we analyze typical early twenty-first-century photographs
of chemical plants against this art historical background. We argue that
the stereotypical features of these photographs break with the important
art historical traditions most often used to depict industry and instead
rely on art historical traditions that were not typically used to depict
industrial scenes. In doing so, we suggest that today's photographs of
chemical plants employ a visual strategy that sanitizes the negative
cultural associations of chemistry while simultaneously embracing a
demeaning kitsch aesthetic.
3.1 Industrial landscape: historical traditions
Since the eighteenth-century period of industrialization, artists' render-
ings of industry began to express a conflicted reaction to industry in the
larger culture, a response that is at once celebratory and admiring and a
site of distain and distrust. 12 During the British romantic period these
responses were expressed through renderings of the industry within the
tradition of the picturesque or sublime landscape painting. A proto-
typically sublime rendition of industry is famously captured in Philippe
Jacques de Loutherbourg's 1801 painting Coalbrookdale by Night
(Figure 13a). Coalbrookdale, the center of early English iron works and
therefore an engine of English prosperity during this time period, was
itself a conflicted site where the quintessential English countryside was,
as expressed by the renowned agriculturist Arthur Young, “too beautiful
to be much in union with the variety of horrors spread at the bottom; the
noises of forges, mill etc. , with their vast machinery, the flames bursting
from the furnaces with the burning of coal and the smoke of the lime
kilns” (Briggs 1979, p.13). This painting and an aquatint of Coal-
brookdale from 1805 by William Pickett for Loutherbourg's book on The
Romantic and Picturesque Scenery of England and Wales (Figure 13b) 13
12 For a documentation of industry in art, see the exhibition catalogue Beneke &
Ottomeier 2002 as well as Frese 2000 and Türk 1997; for early industrial landscape
paintings in England, see Klingender 1968, Wagner 1979, and Briggs 1979.
13 Loutherbourg, P. J. de: 1805, The romantic and picturesque scenery of England and
Wales , Bowyer, London Plate II.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search