Land/Landscapes

Alain Roger
Life and Death of the Landscapes

Land/Landscape: this recent lexical distinction (it goes back no further than the fifteenth century) is to be found in the majority of Western languages: pays/paysage in French. Land/Landschaft in German, pais/paisaje in Spanish, paese/paesaggio in Italian. The land is, in a way, the ground zero of the landscape, the point from which its “artialization” proceeds, whether it be direct (in situ)or indirect (in visu). This is what history teaches us, but our landscapes have grown so familiar, so “natural”, that we have a tendency to believe that beauty is intrinsic. And is up to artist to remind us this basic truth: that a land is not, straight off, a landscape; and that there is, between one and the other, all the elaboration of art.