## MOTHER NATURE'S EXHIBITION

On the Origins of the Aesthetics of Contemporary Northern Landscapes

## Zoltán Somhegyi

## ABSTRACT

In this article Zoltán Somhegyi investigates the aesthetic qualities of Northern landscape representations, with a special focus on how contemporary examples are connected to classical ones. First he examines the history of the aesthetic appreciation of these sites, starting  from  their  early  modern  reception  and  from  the  differentiation  of  'Northern'  and  'Mediterranean'  landscapes:  while  the Mediterranean ones were highly valued already from the 15 th -16 th centuries on, the 'wilder' Northern landscapes were admired mainly from  Romanticism  onwards.  This  has,  among  others,  an  aesthetichistorical reason, namely the birth of the category of the sublime; and  in  this  case  the  harmonious  Mediterranean  landscapes  and the  irregular  yet  impressive  Northern  ones  relate  to  each  other as the category of beautiful does to the sublime. This is why from Romanticism on Northern landscapes became not only aesthetically valuable, but even more capable than the Southern ones to move the  spectator.  This  is  especially  because,  from  a  gnoseological point of view, the landscape might be a place - and the landscape representation a means - of self-interpretation. The historical overview is then used to better understand some of the most important characteristics  of  contemporary  Northern  landscape  interpretations and representations from leading artists of the region, which are analysed in the second part of the article.

## KEYWORDS

Northern art and aesthetics, Landscape representations, Romanticism, Contemporary Nordic art

'Lawrence  Weiner's  powerful  and  timely  installation  runs  until the  8th  of  May.  Mother  Nature's  exhibition  end-date  unknown.' I  received  this  witty  information  as  a  subscriber  to  the  regular newsletters of i8 Gallery, one of the leading art spaces in Reykjavík, with  the  subject  line  of  the  email: ' The  Volcano  Show  continues...' . * It is not very difficult to guess that the message arrived in those weeks of 2010 when the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano of Iceland, whose name earlier seemed almost impossible both to pronounce and  to  remember  for  non-Icelanders,  became  a  much-discussed breaking news, mostly due to blocking a large part of Europe's air traffic.

Even if one might say that it is just an attention grabbing headline in the newsletter or a scintillating and at the same time thoughtprovoking  form  of  PR-communication,  it  tidily  illustrates  connected to Northern art and how these natural forces are interpreted from an aesthetic viewpoint. This will then lead us to some further considerations  on  the  particularities  of  current  Northern  landscape-representations, with reference to their historical roots.

This  curious  geological  episode  and  the  funnily  respectful newsletter that it had inspired may thus remind us of a couple of mesmerising questions: where does this connection of an impressive and at the same time extremely powerful natural phenomenon to the world of art, so particular to Northern art come from? How can  we  trace  the  origins  of  the  strong  aesthetic  appreciation  of harsh,  challenging,  and  often  even  life-threatening  natural  phenomena? How does the special  interpretation  of  Nature  and  its mighty phenomena characterise Northern landscape representations? How does this 'Northern wilderness' continue to amaze the viewer even in contemporary art, turning the challenging sites into artful sights? Inspired by the newsletter, I could also ask: why does the eruption of a volcano become a 'Volcano show' in such a discourse? What is more, this appreciation manifests itself not only in national or regional pride, but - and, in fact, this is even more interesting from the aesthetic point of view - also in a particular choice  of  subjects  in  both  contemporary  and  older  art.  It  also influences the special ways of the representation of the elemental experience, as far as composition, display and accent of elements, choice of colours etc. is concerned.

True, the natural phenomenon of the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano was really impressive, but what inspires me here is to investigate the origins of this emphasis on the power of Nature and the appreciation of severe and harsh natural elements, and their often-occurring primary role in classical and contemporary Northern art. This interest is frequently referred to as 'respect of' and 'nearness to' Nature, and the expression is regularly quoted when discussing key features of Northern - and also Nordic - art, architecture or even design. However, it may easily seem an automatically used commonplace, without precisely explaining what one would exactly mean by that. Hence it seems worth examining in more detail why  in  (contemporary)  Northern  art  we  find  very  inspirational artists,  whose  examination  of  their  relationship  to  Nature,  and whose experience and attempts to represent the effects of elementary natural forces and phenomena can be so crucial to a better understanding their work. Thus in this paper I have a backwards movement in my questions and proposed answers. I am curious in a contemporary question that turns out to have its roots much earlier. Therefore, I am investigating the reasons and origins of the  aesthetic  appreciation  of  Northern  landscapes  and  natural phenomena in order to open new readings of contemporary works. In this way the questions concerning the characteristics of classical and contemporary Northern landscape representations and their difference  from  for  example  the  Mediterranean  ones  will  lead to  new  layers  of  meaning  of  recent  artistic  productions.  In  my analyses I contend that this 'nearness,' as well as the astonished examination  of  Nature  and  its  powers,  are  not  a  characteristics only of the last decades in Northern and Nordic art, but has its roots much earlier, at least from around the 18 th  century, and their survival is what still inspires many Northern artists today.

In order to understand this appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of Northern landscapes - both in contemporary and in classical representations -, first we have to examine the distinction itself, i.e.  the  differentiation  of  'Northern'  and  'Mediterranean'  landscapes that began to be discussed already in the early modern age.

In  the  history  of  art,  the  Alps  were  traditionally  considered as a border. A border that divides the Mediterranean lands - or, in a broader sense, the Mediterranean landscape, culture, way of life, art, gastronomy etc. - and the 'Northern' ones. Of course the two cannot be separated, and it would be quite difficult to exactly define  the  precise  'borders'  of  these  two  regions,  especially because both regions turn out to be artificial cultural topoi, a sort of invented category. Fabio Benzi and Luigi Berliocchi describe this  almost  abstract  vision  of  the  Mediterranean  region:  'It  is  a topos especially in the modern conception that interprets it as a privileged,  natural  and  spontaneously  beautiful  landscape:  this is the inheritance of a Romantic and thus substantially Northern European viewpoint that admires this landscape as an element that is not its own but is still somehow close to it, a place of poetry, of dreams, of a melting pot of civilisations and before that even the place of a mythical golden age; an intact place just as the gods had given it to man, who, in the glorious development of civilisation,  has  in  certain  parts  further  cultivated  it.' 1 Nevertheless the separation of the two regions derive from these quasi-abstract topoi, there are certain factual differences or even oppositions that nurture the separation and diversification, as well as the definition of these regions. It is enough to mention the presence and dominance of classical Antique heritage in the Mediterranean area and the  primacy of Gothic art in the North - an aspect that in great deal influenced both the art production and the art theory especially through the birth of an anti-classical aesthetic approach. As Werner Busch has repeatedly pointed out, this preference can be traced  since  the  late  Renaissance  onwards,  for  example  through those artists who - despite their interest in classical Antique culture - have intentionally not visited Italy, including, among others Rembrandt or Caspar David Friedrich. 2

Needless  to  say,  the  two  regions  are  not  homogeneous  in themselves: Southern Italy's giant volcanoes compared to the fine Tuscan  hills,  or  Denmark's  mild  slopes  compared  to  Norway's overwhelming fjords certainly weaken the generalisation on the morphology of these landscapes. What we can observe however is that the Mediterranean features were valued earlier than the Nordic ones, already from the 15 th -16 th   centuries. The natural forms first appeared merely as 'background' for religious images, but soon also as a genre, i.e. as a topic that merited to be presented in itself for its aesthetic qualities. This interest and heightened appreciation of the classical landscapes later motivated the Northern travellers to  undertake the several months or years long Grand Tour from the late 17 th  century on and especially throughout the 18 th  and early 19 th   centuries. On the other hand, as it is well known, the 'wilder' Northern  landscapes  were  admired  mainly  only  from  the  mid-18 th century and early Romanticism. How and why did this happen?

Curiously,  this  division  between  the  two  regions  became stronger, and the appreciation of the Northern landscapes started exactly through the analyses of the very 'border' (i.e. the Alps) itself.  The  interest  in  the  formerly  less  (or  not  at  all)  valued Northern landscapes that were not considered as potential objects of  aesthetic  pleasure  started  around  the  18 th century  in  parallel with  the  domestication  of  the  Alps.  By  'domestication'  of  the Alps  I  mean  the  changing  attitude  towards  both  the  aspect  and aesthetic potential of the natural beauty, and thus the early forms of appreciation of this chain of mountains. It seems right to call this as  domestication, since before the 18 th  century the Alps, as well as  other  high  mountainous  areas,  were  considered  frightening natural  parts  as  well  as  useless  elements,  unusable  for  practical aims  -  like  agriculture  -,  and  regarded  only  as  serious  obstacles for  transport  and  commerce.  This  interpretation  had  radically changed throughout the 18 th  century, when the Alps started to be viewed as magnificent and impressive natural formations, whose observation can equally lead to a sort of aesthetic experience. What was needed however is that beside 'beautiful', further categories could be used to classify and describe the aesthetic qualities of landscapes. From the categories that were recently introduced and diffused in the period's art theoretical discourse, picturesque and sublime were  the  most  often  used  in  connection  to  landscapes. 3 Picturesque, however, was more often applied to the description of (English) landscape gardens, whose appearance reminded the viewers of their favourite idealising painters of the previous century, including Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Gaspar Dughet, or even Salvator Rosa. Of course this was because in great deal these gardens were designed with a strong influence of these painters on  the  landscape  architects'  ideals  and  visual  repertoire.  This characteristic was described already in the 18 th  century by the poet William Shenstone, who coined the term 'landscape gardening,' as  we  know  it  from  Michael  Charlesworth's  exact  observation: 'Shenstone believes that the new garden design is and should be closely related to pictorial artistic practice and that gardens should be designed in a «picturesque» way so as to form pleasing threedimensional pictures akin to contemporary landscape painting to be first apprehended as views and then, unlike paintings, entered and explored.' 4 Picturesque is thus, in all its appearance, connected to the idea of the final result of art production, the picture itself. As William Gilpin defined it in his 1768 text titled Essay on Prints , picturesque is '…that particular kind of beauty, which is agreeable in a picture.' 5

Compared to  the  picturesque,  that  turned  out  to  be  a  rather purely  descriptive  category,  without  any  further  or  stronger emotional effects on the viewer, the category of sublime seemed more  adequate  to  label  the  peculiar  aesthetic  and  at  the  same time almost 'spiritual' feeling that was arisen, not lastly through the experience of encountering the harsh and un-classical forms and features of high mountains and - soon after - the 'irregular' Nordic landscapes. Exactly this emotional effect of the sublime becomes pivotal not only for the theoreticians of the phenomenon, but also for the artists trying to grasp and reproduce it on their  works.  As  Malcolm  Andrews  argued:  'The  experience  of the  Sublime  is,  almost  by  definition,  one  that  subverts  order, coherence, a structured organization (...). It bypasses the rational mind and concentrates its force directly on the emotions.' 6 This uncontrollable and indomitable character of the sublime that was surprising for the perceivers, a characteristic that was so different than the better-known experience of the beautiful. Hence sublime was not considered as a simple sub-category or as a new and just special form of beautiful, and not even as a novel way of experiencing the beauty, rather a proper and new experience in itself. This explains then why it was applied to describing the aesthetic qualities of such phenomena that previously was lacking any sort of considerations of this kind. We will see on the following pages how this approach then influenced the categorisation and appreciation of the diverse forms of landscapes. What is important at this  stage  of  our  argument is that in the history of the aesthetic categories, the 18 th -century diffusion of sublime in the art theoretical  discourse  is  strongly  connected  to  the  newborn  aesthetic evaluations  of  the  Alps  and  high  mountains  in  general.  This  is strongly supported by those textual sources that describe the first encounters  with  the  mountains.  Although  Albrecht  von  Haller's 1729 poem Die Alpen is traditionally considered one of the earliest appreciation of the Alps, there are some other earlier examples too,  where  travellers  report  their  ambiguous  feelings  when  encountering or crossing these mountains. From these reports and descriptions we can remember Henry More's An Antidote against Atheism of  1652,  where  he  writes  of  his  'delight  in  disorder' when observing the mountains that provides him 'with a pleasing Horror and Chillness,' or John Dennis' letter from 1688 analysing his emotions when ascending the mountains: 'a delightful Horror, a terrible Joy, and at the same time, that I was infinitely pleased, I trembled.' 7 These examples will then lead to other well-known oxymoron, e.g. Joseph Addison's ' agreeable  kind  of  horror ' or Lord  Shaftesbury's  writing  on  how  the ' wildness  pleases ' from 1703  and  1709  respectively,  which  further  prepared  the  way  for the theorisation of the sublime by Edmund Burke and Kant. Apart from these better-known examples, however, a significant series of other sources also influenced and formed the aesthetics of the Alpine landscapes, that were examined in detail in Cian Duffy's book titled The Landscapes of the Sublime 1700-1830 , where we can find many 18-19 th -century examples of what the author calls the 'discourse of ascent,' i.e.: 'a discourse which consistently correlates the physical ascent of the Alps with a variety of ostensibly unrelated  forms  of  elevation:  moral,  political,  epistemological, aesthetics  -  as  well  as  religious.' 8 These  texts  of  diverse  form and  purpose,  including  travel  descriptions,  geological  studies, and literary pieces were based on real, physical explorations of the Alps, where the experience of these site trips (or sight trips) were then converted in the more precise explication of the sublime phenomena and also influenced these landscapes' representations in artworks.

As with the high mountains in general, through the 'domestication' of the Alps, so also the Northern landscapes - often identified with and celebrated through austere mountain scenery - started to become objects of aesthetic interest, especially after having found the  relevant  classification,  the  sublime,  to  describe  the  curious pleasure and 'pleasing horror' they provided. Thus, as mentioned above, the examination of the division between the two regions (i.e. of the Alps themselves as border), and the increased appreciation of the Northern regions was a parallel tendency throughout the 18 th century. Apart from this, however, we can also mention a rather 'political,' or cultural-political reason of the appreciation of the mountains and of the 'wild' Northern landscapes. The increased value  of  the  irregular,  anti-classical,  previously  frightening,  but later  sublime  Alps  and  Northern  landscapes  can  also  be  interpreted  as  a  sort  of  compensation  for  the  lack  of  the  classical, 'harmonious' Mediterranean forms and sights, and, what is more, a sort of national pride, as it can be testified by several sources from the period. Just to mention a well-known quotation from the middle of the 19 th  century, from King Charles XV of Sweden, who himself liked to paint local landscapes, and who seriously claimed that the wild natural scenery is a significant and distinctive part of Northern identity: 'We have a wonderful country, perhaps not radiant in sunshine but all the more in seriousness and vigour. Our history and traditions are rich and poetic, full of noble memories, which with good reason constitute our honour and our pride. And so the history and natural beauty of this, the land of our fathers, shall be the main subjects of our art - together they build a temple, and thus shall the work of our artists be also the worship of our Lord of Nature, the Almighty God. This is the path by which our art  will  achieve  its  goals,  bestowing  upon  a  beloved  fatherland both honour and glory.' 9

The Swedish King was not alone with his observation of the Nordic lands, i.e. being a place 'not radiant in sunshine' though more adequate for seriousness both in life and art. A similar connection between the challenging landscape and national or 'Nordic' identity was established in other countries too. Sigrun Åsebø draws our attention to a similar tendency in the history of Norwegian art: 'Spending time in the mountains is highly rated as a recreational activity  and  finding  inner  peace  by  overcoming  the obstacles of nature and the body seems to be at the core of «Norwegianness».' 10 Just  like  in  Iceland,  where,  as  Auður  Ólafsdóttir  pointed  out:

'Icelandic  nature  is  not  only  a  challenge  for  all  the  senses,  it  is also  part  of  the  national  consciousness,  and  from  it  Icelanders derive part of their identity.' 11 In fact this harshness of the lands is still an influential source for contemporary artists too. We can remember the Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson's succinct conviction  on  artistic  production,  quoted  in  the  article  of  Jörn Glasenapp: 'The worse the weather, the better the result.' 12 The Northern region was thus often set against the Mediterranean and this  opposition  was  deeper  analysed  by  numerous  philosophers and art historians in the last three centuries, in order to describe and theorise the differences not only in the lifestyle, but also in the cultural production, the style of artworks and sometimes even in the moral values and standing points of these regions. The aesthetic and aesthetic-historical consequences of the differentiation and sometimes  even  opposition  of  the  two  geographical  areas  were comprehensively surveyed in a recent article of Konrad Lotter. 13 As he demonstrated, in the course of the 18 th  to the 20 th  centuries different viewpoints reinforced the contrast of the regions and the preference was alternatingly given for one or the other. Among the many examples Lotter invites us to remember how the 18 th -century climate theory influenced Winckelmann too, who, in his Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums of  1764  considered  the  ideal  climate  as one of the reasons why classical art could develop and flourish in the Mediterranean lands and at the same time why the extremities of the Northern seasons as well as the fog and thick haze make it impossible that in the Northern countries such an art is created that could be considered as universally exemplary and thus 'classical' or canonical. A bit more than a century later, in Nietzsche's 1886 Beyond Good and Evil the South will be the home of the ClassicalDionysian, and will be positioned against the Romantic-Christian North, the South being a '… great school of recovery for the most spiritual  and  the  most  sensuous  ills.' 14 While  for  Winckelmann and Nietzsche the South was the ideal home for arts and culture, in many Romantic texts we find the testimonies for the establishment of  the  aesthetics  of  the  Northern  scenery  and  countries.  In  her 1810 book on Germany, Mme de Staël is in a way both continuing the considerations of climate-theory and anticipating the national pride of later affirmations, including the aforementioned one by King Charles XV, when defining the challenging and unpleasant weather conditions as favourable for imagination and artistic production: 'It was pretty generally understood that literature existed in the north of Germany alone, and the inhabitants of the south abandoned  themselves  to  the  enjoyments  of  sense,  while  those of the north tasted more exclusively those of the soul. (…) from Weimar  to  Konigsberg,  from  Konigsberg  to  Copenhagen,  fogs and frosts appear to be the natural element of men of a lofty and vigorous imagination.' 15

What we can understand from these sources is that even after the  'emancipation'  and  rapidly  growing  appreciation  of  the Northern  landscapes,  the  differentiation  between  them  and  the Mediterranean  ones  still  survived;  but  in  many  cases  they  were esteemed on different  basis.  We  can  formulate  it  in  such  a  way that the harmonious Mediterranean landscapes and the irregular yet impressive Northern ones relate to each other as the beautiful  does  to  the  sublime.  Hence  this  'morphological'  difference between  the  two  regions  then  substantiate  the  aforementioned aesthetic categorisation, also because - as it is known especially from  Kant's  analyses  -,  the  beautiful  is  often  concerned  with qualities  connected  to  form  while  the  sublime  phenomenon  can in  many  cases  amaze  the  perceiver  with  its  formlessness  or  by something  definitely  outgrowing  the  perceptible  form.  In  this way the non-harmonious natural visions that were lacking those traditional  features  that  would  qualify  them  to  be  evaluated  on the  basis  of  the  category  of  beautiful  were  still  possible  to  be described with and through the experience of the sublime. What is more, this appreciation of the sublime seems to appear both at 'direct'  as  well  as  at  'indirect'  experiences  too  -  or,  translated to our current case both when physically encountering the harsh, wild  and  non-harmonious  landscapes,  and  when  enjoying  their representation as artworks. The aforementioned Joseph Addison is known to have specified the distinction between the effects of the primary and secondary pleasures of the imagination that can correspond  with  encountering  Nature  and  its  presentation  in  or through an artwork: 'If we consider the Works of Nature and Art, as  they  are  qualified  to  entertain  the  Imagination,  we  shall  find the last very defective, in Comparison of the former, for though they may sometimes appear as Beautiful or Strange, they can have nothing in them of that Vastness and Immensity, which afford so great an Entertainment to the Mind of the Beholder.' 16 Although from only this passage it would seem that Addison gives greater value to the direct experience or to the primary pleasures of the imagination, from other parts of his text we understand that he does not explicitly prioritise one or the other, he rather finds both as ways of incentivising the experience, like Karl Axelsson noted when analysing  Addison's  approach,  '(...)  the  experience  of  the wild scenes of nature, as well as the poetry of Milton, needless to say beget - apart from being an indisputable experience of the sublime for  the  creator  himself  -  the  experience  of  the  sublime for the addressees, and that the strong imagination is positioned at the heart of the experience of nature as well as of the experience of art.' 17 Addison's contribution to the interpretation of the sublime then lies not only in the fact that he started to distinguish it  from  beautiful,  what  Burke scrutinised soon after, but also in recognising the direct and indirect sources of experience and that their  common  effect  is  even  stronger.  As  Emily  Brady  pointed out  in  her  recent  book  on  the  history  of  sublime,  in  Addison's thought: 'When greatness in both art and nature come together, where there is a 'double principle' of primary and secondary pleasures, there is even greater pleasure than can be found in nature or art alone.' 18

This  also  clarifies  why  artists  were  highly  inspired  to  grasp the essence of these mighty natural scenes and at the same time to depict them in their works, while searching and searching for the  novel  experience. We can agree with Malcolm Andrews that the diffusion of sublime subjects can also be interpreted as a sort of reaction to the (slightly earlier) picturesque tendencies, looking for new forms of expressions either by rendering distant and exotic sceneries among their subjects or by presenting the already known from another perspective. 19 As a matter of fact, this other perspective can almost be taken literally, if we just observe the many new viewpoints  and  compositional  solutions  18 th -19 th -century  artists chose to show the overwhelming Nature, including the wide angles of the panoramas or, in other cases, the frightening cliffs almost stretch and break the frame of the image, that we can observe in the  works of both better and lesser known artists, including for example Caspar David Friedrich, Caspar Wolf, Thomas Cole, W. H. Bartlett, Frederic Edwin Church, James Ward or Philipp Jacques de Loutherbourg.

As  a  result  of  this  novel  interest,  we  have  completely  new sorts  of  landscape  representations  compared  to  the  ones  from the  previous  centuries  or  even  decades.  We  are  tempted  to  say that they became spiritually and emotionally more 'loaded' than their  predecessors. As it is often analysed, in the earliest forms of  this  genre,  including  Renaissance  pieces  or  the  Baroque  idealising  and  pastoral  landscapes  with  religious  or  mythological themes, the natural elements had a secondary role compared to the 'main' or 'official' subject matter of the painting. Even the earliest 'proper' or independent landscape images are in fact hard to define as really pure ones - as Werner Busch demonstrated in a careful analysis, the road to independence was long, and in most cases there were still significant factors modifying and layers of meaning added to the works, including religious, philosophical or political references. 20 The novelty of the 18 th  century and Romantic representations is, however, that through the amazed impression gained through the experience of the sublime, the artwork itself could efficiently become a mediator of this very experience, that can be proved by numerous texts and descriptions of works of art, including the often-quoted examples of visitors' reactions to the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich.

Based on all this, we can say that from the early Romanticism onwards, Northern landscapes become not only aesthetically valuable, but even more capable than the Southern ones of moving the  spectator,  especially  because,  from  a  gnoseological  point of view, the landscape might be a place for - and the landscape representation a means of - self-interpretation - as will be further examined below.

Therefore, although the growing national pride as well as the ideas  concerning  the  culture-shaping  character  and  power  of Northern landscapes certainly have central importance, still they may not serve as sufficient explanation for this heightened admiration of the sublime regions. I think we get closer if we examine the question also from the perspective of longing and experience or even longing for experience. If we accept the aforementioned classification, i.e. that the reception and appreciation of the harmonious Mediterranean landscapes and the un-classical Northern ones relate to  each  other  as  the  category  of  'beautiful'  does  to 'sublime,' then we are definitely tempted to add to this that the Southern scenery is more like a place to visit and see ,  while the Northern a place to experience and feel . Certainly, the distinction shall  not  be  strict,  as  well  as  it  must  include  the  already  noted exceptions in both regions, i.e. gentle and calming hills north from the Alps, as well as the frightening South-Italian rocks and especially  volcanoes.  Still,  if  we  continue  our  examination  through these topoi to describe the various sites, then exactly the Northern landscapes seem to have become the 'ideal' places for experiencing the sublime forces of Nature. 21

It is important to highlight, though, that it is not about a simple and delightful experience for its own sake, or a pleasurable exposure to Nature's impact. Instead of these, it is more connected to the ideas of the Romantic apprehension of Man's alienation from Nature that also leads to Nature's objectification and later exploitation. This process is an important aspect in the reception-history of Nature, and is profoundly analysed by several thinkers, among others by the young Schelling in Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, as  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  this  Science from  1797 ,  where Schelling  argues  that  the  separation  of  subject  and  object  will serve as the basis for reflection and thus can be interpreted as the first  step  towards  philosophy.  The  consideration comes up later with Heidegger's 1939 text On the Essence and Concept of Physis in Aristotle's Physics B,1 , where we can read the well-known passage: '(...) beings can be experienced as objects only where human beings have  become  subjects,  those  who  experience  their  fundamental relation to beings as the objectification - understood as mastery - of what is encountered.' 22 However, these reflections not only consider the philosophy of Nature, but have important consequences on  the  birth  and  development  of  landscape  representations  too, and hence we can agree with the affirmation of Heinrich Lützeler in his 1950 essay titled On the essence of Landscape Painting where he claims: 'Landscape painting can develop only when man experiences not only other fellow-beings or gods, but even Nature as  something  against  him,  encountering  him.' 23 This  makes  it now understandable how the objectification of Nature - in fact, in the  form of a landscape - becomes the criteria of being able to encounter it.

One of the key achievements of Northern Romantic philosophy and art is  the  comprehension that the experiences of the harsh, intensive and elemental forces of the powerful and sublime Nature result in strong direct emotional responses. Facing, encountering and being challenged by the sublime natural phenomena through demanding conditions will then lead to the desire of investigating both these factors and our responses to them, in order to position ourselves  in  -  or  against  -  the  overwhelming  Nature. 24 What  is more, Nature was understood as 'overwhelming,' as well as sublime, not only due to its physical, but also because of its temporal infinity. Hence the endless forces of Nature, experienced in particular  through  the  Northern  landscapes,  were  manifesting  the eternal essence and permanence compared to Man's limitedness in space and time. The Romantic understanding of the relationship between Man and Nature will thus interpret this in such a way that, nevertheless due to the objectification of and our alienation from Nature and nevertheless the fact that Nature's real essence remains out of our reach forever, the analyses of our emotional reaction to the sublimity of Nature's manifestations - e.g. while encountering its 'wild' and 'serious' aspects in the Northern landscapes - will still help guide us in our own process of self-interpretation.

When coming back to the initial considerations on the commonplace-like  claim  of  Northern  art  as  being  characterised  by a certain 'closeness' to Nature I suggest that we should rather speak of a 'close examination' of Nature and its powerful phenomena as  being  something  typical  in  both  classical  and  contemporary Northern  art.  If  we  only  said  'closeness  to  Nature,'  it  would over-simplify  and  diminish  the  real  essence  of  these  artworks. Based  on  this  I  propose  to  interpret  Northern  landscape  representations by defining them as signs or testimonies of the 'close examination' of Nature's infinite power and its effect on the viewer through  the  emotional  responses  it  generates  in  the  perceiver  both the perceiver of the real, physical place (e.g. the landscape painter or photographer), as well as the perceiver or observer of the final artwork, the landscape representation.

Depicting the powerful sublimity and eternal qualities of the Natural phenomena is a recurrent topic exactly because it documents the very experience of the infinite forces of Nature as well as the artistic elaboration of this experience. This self-referential feature of the Northern landscape - i.e. that it aids the viewer in his attempts of self-positioning and self-understanding while encountering the particular aesthetics of the region - that has proved to be long-lasting, up until today. Needless to say, contemporary art, just like the concept and the interpretation of the very concept of the artwork itself, as well as its purpose and function(ing) is in numerous ways different than 18 th -19 th -century art pieces - in fact, the investigation of these questions would require not only another paper but a book in itself -, and I am not intending to assume that current art production dealing with representation of the Northern landscapes is a straight and linear continuation of the Romantic practices. What I am curious of, however, is how certain approaches of the (direct) examination of the Nature and ideas connected to the importance of experiencing and representing of the sublime phenomena  survived.  Hence  my  approach  of  investigation  and interpretation might remind the reader of the seminal analyses of Robert Rosenblum when, in his 1975 book titled Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition. From Friedrich to Rothko , he  explored  the  earlier  less  emphasised  links  between  the  two periods. Just like Rosenblum, I am interested in the 'analogy of sensibility  and  intentions' 25 between  artists  separated  by  two centuries, without overstressing or postulating direct connections, rather to show how certain 18 th -19 th -century aesthetic ideas are still influential in contemporary art, and how we can trace the signs, effects, and pictorial consequences even in very recent creations.

Danish  photographer  Per  Bak  Jensen  has  a  clear  vision,  an extremely precise rendering, and in particular a sensitive capacity of representing the distance between the subject and the object, i.e. between the viewer (as experiencer and interpreter of the landscape) and the natural elements. He is often concerned with the sublime infinity, never-defeatable distance, uncontrollable power that cannot be dominated, and with how all this can still be somehow rendered through the medium of photography. As the artist explained it in an earlier statement: 'From when I first picked up a camera, as a child, to now, photography has been the way that I make contact with and try to make sense of the external world. In a way, I'm searching for the intangible, the unattainable, something that lies just beyond the immediately visible, but something that I take to be reality . It' s about my relationship to the world as I experience it.' 26

It  is  curious  how  the  word ' experience ' appears  in  Per  Bak Jensen's  statement.  In  his  artistic  attempt  then  the  pictures  are created  through  the  observation  of  the  outside  world,  and  even if his aim to capture the unattainable in Nature and to go beyond the 'immediately visible' will always remain impossible - as we know from the  Romantic  philosophy  of  Nature  onwards  -  still, at the end the attempt of the rendering of these sights helps the artist 'to make sense of the external world.' The observation and the representation of the landscape will be the artist's aid in positioning himself, exactly through the analyses of his relationship with 'the external world' or 'reality.' Looking at his images, the first feature that strikes the viewer is the calm and serene display of the elements. The vision has a particularly distant, formal and descriptive character, we can almost say that it is not only Nature that  does  not  allow  the  observer  to  get  closer  to  its  secrets,  but the artist himself too wants to respect and keep this distance - and this results in an almost unnatural alienation in the representation. This we can observe particularly well in a 2010 image of Per Bak Jensen, titled Snowfield ,  where he clearly differentiates between the precisely shown close detail of a tree in the foreground, and the infinite horizon in the background. In a way, we can recall the well-known  compositional  solution  of  some  Romantic  painters, especially  of  Caspar  David  Friedrich,  who  often  'skipped'  the middle ground in order to emphasise the inaccessibility and indomitable infinity of Nature. In the case of the Romantic painter this  infinity  was  shown  through  this  missing  middle  ground,  so that the eye cannot comfortably scan, discover and hence conquer and  appropriate  the  vision. 27 Per  Bak  Jensen  does  not  create his rendering so rigorously, i.e. we do have a small stripe of the Per Bak Jensen: Snowfield , 2010 C-print + matdiasec. 125 cm + 165 cm. Ed. 6 + AP Hp vivera pigment ink print + mat diasec. 159 cm + 202,6 cm. Ed. 3 + AP

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© Per Bak Jensen and Galleri Bo Bjerggaard middle  ground  on  his  image  that  leads  towards  the  ever-distant horizon, still Nature's infinity is clearly put in focus. As a matter of fact, in this aspect we can easily recall also Friedrich's famous work titled Monk by the Sea from two centuries before where the overwhelming and almost depressing infinity dwarfs the solitary human  figure.  Alternatively,  the  essentially  reduced  horizontal (horizon) and vertical (tree trunk and tilling) structures in Per Bak Jensen's photograph might also recall the stylisation process of the young Piet Mondrian, who coincidentally had also departed from the trees, to then arrive at the purest form of the artwork and to the essence of painting through the minimal and geometric compositions. With all these solutions, Per Bak Jensen - just like many of his Romantic predecessors - is interested in the capturing of both physical and temporal infinity, an aim that I analysed in an earlier catalogue text on the artist's work: ' While viewing the astounding natural  forms,  we  sense  the  calm  progress  of  the  endless  time determining  their  existence  even  in  their  apparent  immobility, especially when the artist even reinforces that sense by contrasting those forms with artificial ones doomed to perish much sooner. ' 28

To  show  another  example  of  the  examination  of  impressive and irregular landscape, we can quote some of the works of the Finnish-born,  USA-based  Arno  Rafael  Minkkinen.  In  many  of his  photographs  he  attempts  to  create  visual,  formal,  and  compositional  parallels  between  the  fascinating  landscape  and  the human figure, either by highlighting certain natural forms or by contrasting and complementing them. Some of the works at first sight might seem to be only made for the sake of a visual joke. However, observing them better, we can certainly feel that there are  noteworthy  considerations  behind  these  photographs.  The artist himself appears in many of his works, normally very close to the camera, in the extreme foreground, in order to have the amazing natural scenery in the background. However, this background is not a secondary element at all, but an essential component of the image: the works are actively investigating the relationship of the human figure and the landscape. Here the artist is in the act of measuring and comparing, but not only his own body with the natural form(ation)s, but also his whole existence to that of Nature, and hence his own limited temporality with the eternity of Nature. Landscape thus becomes not only a natural scenery or background for his photographs, but serves as a scale on which - or perhaps against which - to calibrate human existence in general. This is why in many cases Minkkinen's face does not appear on the images, only parts of his body, often only his hands or legs. By not showing the face, the most characteristic and individual part of the human body, he generalises the figure, making his investigations authentic and universally valid. Here we can again find a reference -  though  perhaps  only  an  indirect  or  implicit  reference  -  to  the Northern  Romantic  master:  in  Caspar  David  Friedrich's  images the figures are almost exclusively shown from behind, the famous Rückenfigur , thus not allowing the viewers to identify them through the  face,  and  at  the  same  time  making  them  become  universal representatives  of  mankind.  These  are  such  representatives,  who observe, contemplate, and analyse the infinite powers of Nature.

In  fact,  this  very  examination  of  the  temporal  and  physical difference  between  Man  and  Nature  can  also  become  a  topic  in itself, in both classical and contemporary Northern landscape-representations.  To  illustrate  this,  we  can  quote  a  member  of  the so-called  Helsinki  School  of  Photography,  Kalle  Kataila,  who made the act of observation the focus of his works. In the series titled Contemplation ,  a  figure  is  shown  in  the  foreground  while facing - and contemplating - the infinite distances. We can note a  curious  turning  point  in  the  examination,  as  it  is  not  only  the infinity  itself  that  is  shown,  but  the  very  act  of  observing  this infinity. Contemplation and meditation of the infinity are the real subject matters of the pictures, we can say that the mediation of this meditation will be at stake, and the work of art will become the  final  result,  the  aesthetic  object  of  this  existential  analysis. What is shown through the image is thus not only the eternity of Nature  experienced  in  and  through  the  landscape,  but  also  the essential human necessity of finding and defining ourselves while encountering the sublime and powerful Nature.

Apart  from  these  couple  of  two-dimensional  examples,  installations  can  also  become  significant  ways  of  mediating  the experience of the sublime eternity of Nature, as well as of letting the perceiver of the work encounter - often almost even physically encounter  -  the  aesthetic  consequences  of  this  encounter.  As  a well-known example we can remember a relatively recent exhibition of  Danish-Icelandic  artist  Olafur  Eliasson:  in  2014  he  created a  monumental  site-specific  installation  titled Riverbed in  the galleries  of  the  Louisiana  Museum  in  Humlebæk,  Denmark. A practically monochrome, silent, rocky 'landscape' filled up the classical, white museum space, with a gentle stream of water floating down in the middle of the art piece, adding a special and subtle auditory  aspect  of  the  work.  Through  the  installation,  Olafur Eliasson managed to examine a complex set of questions, connected, among others, to the power of Nature and at the same time the Arno Rafael Minkkinen: Maroon Bells Sunrise , Aspen, Colorado, 2012 © Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York Kalle Kataila: Contemplation , Helsinki, 2004 pigment print, framed, 70 x 95 cm, Ed. 5 + 2 AP, © Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Taik Persons ways of the representability of this very power too. We also should not forget that the artist created this site-specific installation right in a museum that became world-famous also due to its perfectly harmonious staging within the enchanting natural scenery around the buildings. Once in the museum space, the constructed fragment of Nature became artificial, more precisely: the boundary between 'natural' and 'artificial' started to blur. Originally the stones and rocks were definitely natural elements and components, but constrained in an artificial space, intentionally and carefully designed by the artist. This is exactly how Olafur Eliasson aimed to draw the visitors' attention to the representability of the infinite natural forces. Even if setting the 'landscape' in the museum might seem at first sight as limiting Nature itself - as if we could dominate it by confining its segment (the artificial landscape) within the walls - I think it is more fruitful to interpret it from the opposite direction: as  an  attempt  to  challenge  our  belief  in  our  faculty  of  grasping the  essence  of  Nature's  infinity  through  the  means  of  art.  And precisely this challenge will bring the viewer closer initiating the examination of and hopefully understanding himself. As Olafur Eliasson stated it in an interview about the show: 'I think that one when walking into the museum should see it as a way of amplifying what you know about the world already. And it is only when not stepping into some kind of a representational safe-haven you are actually in a situation where you feel comfortable of questioning yourself. ' 29 This  kind  of  'questioning  yourself' ,  or  enquiry  for our self-understanding is what will be at stake in many Northern landscape representations.

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From  these  examples  we  can  already  see  ways  of  how  the origins of aesthetic appreciation of the Northern landscapes are still influencing and defining many contemporary artworks. This showing and displaying of the infinity experienced when encountering Nature and sublime natural phenomena will then open up to new perspectives, discovering certain aspects that would not be possible if one did not tempt to face this very infinity. It seems, however, that observing 'Mother Nature's exhibition' is not only enjoying an impressive spectacle in itself when Nature opens up, that we have learned to evaluate aesthetically - and where, agreeing with  Martin  Seel,  this  learned  aesthetic  appreciation  functions even in the case of existentially threatening natural phenomena. As he stated in a recent article: '(…) appearances of nature often continue to maintain their aesthetic fascination when their impact has  become  threatening  or  overwhelming.  Our  sensory  grasp  is unable to measure sufficiently the quality of external nature. It could Olafur Eliasson: Riverbed , 2014

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Installation view

Water, blue basalt, wood, steel, foil, hose, pumps, cooling unit,

20.8.2014 to 11.1.2015 at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark

Photo: Anders Sune Berg

Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

© Olafur Eliasson be that we perish in a spectacle of cruel beauty.' 30 For, at the same time, this very observing of Mother Nature's exhibition also implies the long-lasting desire of representing the powers of Nature in order to position ourselves through them.

As  commonly  referred  to  and  widely  analysed,  by  among others  Alexander  von  Humboldt  or  Schelling  in  Romanticism, and later scrutinised by Joachim Ritter, man in the modern era has been alienated from Nature; however this should not automatically mean that we cannot find a new stance for ourselves. 31 Humboldt and  Ritter  were  right  when  affirming  that  after  Nature  became object of practical use and of exploitation, it is the responsibility of  the  aesthetic  to  make  Nature  perceptible  -  actually,  through the landscape representation. However, even if they describe the situation perfectly, we might perhaps reduce the unconditionally negative  tone;  what  is  more,  can  we  perhaps  interpret  it  as  an opportunity? Facing and showing the wild landscape, as well as the immense Nature and its sublime powers might not be purely and solely frightening, but also a possibility to redefine ourselves, in relationship with this alienated Nature. This is what we can learn from the Northern artists' 'close examination of Nature.' And this might have at the end a kind of calming feature too: what we can see or 'feel' in these representations as 'closeness' to Nature is not the regained harmony - that is, as we know, not possible anymore -,  much more the constant enquiry of these Natural powers that give us the opportunity and strength of finding our new position. We might not be in (harmony with) Nature, but have at least a new affinity  to  (re)define  our  present  state  through  and  by  being  exposed to Nature. Therefore, it is definitely worth visiting 'Mother Nature's exhibition,' once we are invited.

## NOTES

* Dedicated to Éva Farkas. I would like to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers of the Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, to David Butorac, to Zoltán Papp, to Max Ryynänen and to the members of the Science and Philosophy Reading Circle of The Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi, for their valuable comments and ideas while working on the final version of this paper.
1. Fabio Benzi and Luigi Berliocchi, Paesaggio Mediterraneo. Metamorfosi e storia dall'antichità preclassica al XIX secolo (Milano: Federico Motta Editore, 1999), 7.
2. See more on these differentiations in Werner Busch, 'Zur Topik der Italienverweigerung,' in Italiensehnsucht. Kunsthistorische Aspekte eines Topos , ed. Hildegard Wiegel (München - Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2004), 203-210.
3. About the relationship of landscape and aesthetic categories see Raffaele Milani, L'arte del paesaggio (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), 89-115.
4. Michael Charlesworth, "Types of Gardens," in A Cultural History of Gardens , ed. Michael Leslie and John Dixon Hunt, vol. 4, A Cultural History of Gardens in the Age of Enlightenment , ed. Stephen Bending (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), chapter two, 61.

5. Mark Roskill, The Languages of Landscape (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 22-23.
6. Malcolm Andrews, Landscape and Western Art (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 132.
7. Quoted in Ruth Groh and Dieter Groh, 'Von den schrecklichen zu den erhabenen Bergen. Zur Enstehung ästhetischer Naturerfahrung,' in Weltbildung und Naturaneignung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), 128.
8. Cian Duffy, The Landscapes of the Sublime 1700-1830 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 30.
9. Quoted in Torsten Gunnarsson, Nordic Landscape Painting in the Nineteenth Century (New Haven & London: Yale University Press), 115.
10.  Sigrun Åsebø, 'Travelling huts and invading spaceships. Marianne Heske, Tiril Schrøder, and Norwegian Romantic Landscapes,' Romantik: Journal for the Study of Romanticisms 3 (2014): 51.
11.  Auður Ólafsdóttir, 'Visions of nature in Icelandic art,' in Confronting nature: Icelandic art of the 20th century , exhibition catalogue published to coincide with an exhibition held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., USA, 2001.
12.  Jörn Glasenapp, 'Natur und nationale Identität in der isländischen Fotografie. Das Beispiel Ragnar Axelsson,' Fotogeschichte: Beiträge zur Geschichte und Ästhetik der Fotografie Jg. 36, Heft 139 (2016): 40.
13.  Konrad Lotter, 'Ästhetik des Südens. Ästhetik des Nordens. Anmerkungen zur Klimatheorie der Kunst,' Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 58/2 (2013): 295-313.
14.  Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (Project Gutenberg, 2009), accessed August 26, 2016, http://www. gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm, Nr. 255.
15.  Baroness Stael Holstein, Germany , Vol. 1. (London: John Murray, 1813), 53.
16.  Joseph Addison et al, The Spectator , (1712), ed. Gregory Smith (London: Dent, 1966) vol. 3., 284.
17.  Karl Axelsson, The Sublime. Precursors and British Eighteenth-Century Conceptions (Oxford etc.: Peter Lang, 2007), 136.
18.  Emily Brady, The Sublime in Modern Philosophy. Aesthetics, Ethics and Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 17.
19.  Andrews, Landscape and Western Art , 129-130.
20.  Werner Busch, 'Landscape: The Road to Independence,' in Landscapes from Brueghel to Kandinsky. The Exhibition in Honour of the Collector Baron Hans Heinrich ThyssenBornemisza , ed. Jutta Frings (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2001), 16-27.
21.  Groh, 'Von den schrecklichen zu den erhabenen Bergen. Zur Enstehung ästhetischer Naturerfahrung,' describes in more detail the development of the appreciation of the 'frightening' mountains.
22.  Martin Heidegger, 'On the Essence and Concept of Physics in Aristotle's Physics B, 1.' in Pathmarks , ed. William McNeill, trans. Thomas Sheehan (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998), 189.
23.  Heinrich Lützeler, 'Vom Wesen der Landschaftsmalerei,' Studium Generale 3 (1950): 215.
24.  The aesthetic and compositional consequences of this investigation I analysed in a previous paper: Zoltán Somhegyi, 'Eternal Distance. On the Significance of Window- and Cave Representations in Northern Romanticism,' The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 48 (2014): 60-73.
25. '... un'analogia di sensibilità e di intenzione' in: Robert Rosenblum, La pittura moderna e la tradizione romantica del nord. Da Friedrich a Rothko , trans. Cristina Schiffer (Milano: 5 Continents Editions, 2006; originally published in 1975), 10.
26.  Quoted in David Drake's review on Per Bak Jensen's exhibition at 12 Star Gallery in London: David Drake, 'Near and Far: Landscape Photographs by Per Bak Jensen at 12 Star Gallery, London,' Aesthetica Magazine , June 6, 2012, accessed August 26, 2016, http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/blog/ near-and-far-landscape-photography-per-bak-jensen/.
27.  Several scholars have analysed this question in more detail, among others: Else Marie Bukdahl, Caspar David Friedrich's study years at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and his importance for Danish art, particularly for the painters of the Golden Age and of the present day (Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art's School of Visual Arts, 2005); Wieland Schmied in a 2006 lecture, published in 2011: Wieland Schmied, 'The Modernism of Caspar David Friedrich: Inward Perspectives of Landscape Fragmentation,' in Facing Mental Landscapes. Self-Reflections in the Mirror of Nature , ed. Manfred Milz, (Hildesheim etc.: Georg Olms Verlag, 2011), 202.
28.  Zoltán Somhegyi, The Danish Waves of Light. Exhibition of Per Bak Jensen, Torben Eskerod, Trine Søndergaard and Ebbe Stub Wittrup (Budapest: Nessim Gallery, 2010), 8.
29.  Quoted from a video with Olafur Eliasson by Louisiana Channel, talking about his exhibition: 'A Riverbed Inside the Museum,' accessed August 26, 2016, https://en.louisiana.dk/exhibition/olafur-eliasson (the quotation is from minute 32).
30.  Martin Seel, 'Landscapes of Human Experience,' Contemporary Aesthetics , 13 (2015), accessed August 26, 2016, http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/ pages/article.php?articleID=731
31.  See more on the changing concept of landscape and its consequence on the landscape representation in Romanticism in a previous text of mine: Zoltán Somhegyi, 'From Domination to Respect. The Evaluation of Nature through its Representation from Enlightenment to Romanticism,' in Nature and the City. Beauty is Taking on a New Form , ed. Jale Erzen and Raffaele Milani (Sassari: Edizione Edes, 2013), 457-462.