LANDSCAPE

SECOND EDITION

Edited by
W. J. T. Mitchell

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS • Chicago and London

Introduction
W. J. T. MITCHELL

The aim of this book is to change "landscape" from a noun to a vcrb. lt

asks that we think of landscape, not as an object to be seen or a text to
be read, but as a process by which social and subjective identities are
formed. The study of landscape has gone through two major shifts in this
century: thc first (associated with modernism) attemptcd to read the his­
tory of landscape primarily on the basis of a history of landscape painting,
and to narrativize that history as a progrcssive movemcnt toward purifica­
tion of the visual field; 1 thc sccond (associated with postmodernism)
tended to decenter the role of painting and pure formal visuality in favor
of a semiotic and hcrmcneutic approach that treated landscape as an alle­
gory of psychological or ideological themes. 2 I cal] the first approach
"contcmplative'' because its aim is thc cvacuation of verbal, narrativc, or
historical elcments and thc prcscntation of an image designcd far transcen­
dental consciousness-whethcr a "transparcnt eyeball," an expericnce of
"prcsencc," or an "innoccnt cyc." The sccond strategy is interpretativc
and is cxcmplificd in attempts to dccode landscape as a body of determí­
nate signs. It is clcar that landscapcs can be dcciphered as textual systems.
Natural fcatures such as trces, stoncs, water, animals, and dwellings can
be read as symbols in rcligious, psychological, or political allcgories; char­
actcristic structures and forms ( clcvated or closcd prospects, times of day,
positioning of the spectator, typcs of human figures) can be linkcd with
gcneric and narrativc typologics such as thc pastoral, the georgic, thc
cxotic, thc sublime, and thc picturcsque.
Landscape and Power aims to absorb thcsc approaches into a more com­
prehensivc modcl that would ask not just what landscape "is" or "mea.ns"
but what it does) how it works as a cultural practicc. Landscape, wc sug­
gcst, doesn't mercly signify or symbolize power relations; ir is an instru-
2 W. J. T. Mitchell
ment of cultural power, perhaps even an agent of power that is (or fre­
quently represents itself as) independent of human intentions. Landscape
as a cultural medium thus has a doublc role with respect to something
likc ideology: it naturalizes a cultural and social construction, representing
an artificial world as if it wcre simply givcn and inevitable, and it also
makes that representation operational by interpellating its beholder in
sorne more or less determinare relation to its givenness as sight and site.
Thus, landscape (whether urban or rural, artificial or natural) always greets
us as spacc, as environment, as that within which ''wc" (figurcd as "the
figures" in the landscape) find-or lose-ourselves. An account of land­
scapc undcrstood in this way thercforc cannot be content simply to dis­
place the illegiblc visuality of the modernist paradigm in favor of a read­
ablc allegory; it has to trace the process by which landscape effaces its
own rcadability and naruralizcs itsclf and must understand that proccss in
relation to what might be callcd ''thc natural histories'' of its own behold­
ers. What wc havc done and are doing to our cnvironment, what thc
cnvironmcnt in turn docs to us, how we naturalize what we do to each
othcr, and how thcsc "doings" are enacted in the media of representation
wc call "landscape" are thc real subjects of Landscape and Power.
Although this collection docs not contain any cssays on cincmatic land -
scape, it should be clear why moving pictures of landscape are, in a veiy
real sense, the subtext of thcse revisionist accounts of traditional motionless
landscape images in photography, painting, and other media. The basic
argument of thcsc essays is that landscape is a dynamic medium, in which
wc "livc and movc and havc our being," but also a medium that is itself
in motion from onc place or time to another. In contrast to the usual
trcatment oflandscape aesthetics in terms offixed genres (sublime, beauti­
ful, picturesque, pastoral), fixed media (litcraturc, painting, photography),
or fixcd places trcatcd as objects for visual contcmplation or interpretation,
thc cssays in this collcction examine the way landscape circulates as a
mcdium of cxchangc, a sitc of visual appropriation, a focus far the forma­
tion of idcntity.Thus, cven the most traditional subject of landscapc aes­
thctics, Dutch painting of the sevcnrcenth century, is rreatcd by Ann
Adams in this collcction as a dynamic, transitional formation that partici­
pares in an ccological rcvolution (thc literal crearion ofNcthcr-lands from
the sea) and the formation of a complcx network of political, social, and
cultural identitics. In Adams's accounr, Dutch landscape is not merely a
body of paintings to be inrcrprctcd "in historical context" bur a body of
cultural and cconomic practiccs that makes history in both the real and
rcprcscntcd cnvironment, playing a central role in the formation of social
subjecrs as unrcadably "privare" identitics and dete;rminarcly public selves
figured by regional and national identities.
lntroduction 3
In a similar way, Ann Bcrmingham's account of thc "politics of English
landscape drawing'' in the 1790s trcats the representation of landscape
both as a "discourse�' in which various political positions may be articu­
lated and as a cultural practice that silerices discourse and disarticulates
the readability of landscape in order to carry out a process of institutional
and política! legitimation. Elizabeth Helsinger shows how, for Turner,
landscape doesn't merely represent natural sitcs but creares a system of
"circulating sites" associated with the dissonant class interests of bur­
geoning British tourism, nationalism, and imperialism, a system that re­
flects back, in tum, on the very conditions of political represcntativity in
the public sphere. Joel Snyder examines the processes by which the Ameri­
can frontier is first appropriated and domesticated by landscape photogra­
phy in the nineteenth century and then (in the work ofTimothy O'Sulli­
van) is, as it were, alicnated from modes of popular consurnption to be
re-presented as an object of dangerous power that can be grasped only by
professional expertise. David Bunn examines the transference ofEuropean
landscape conventions (especially British) from the metropolian center to
the imperial periphery, focusing on the ways ''transitional" and ''pros­
thctic" features in both verbal and visual representations of South African
landscape work to naturalize the position of the colonial settler and to
manage the experiential contradictions of exile and domestication, exoti­
cism and familiarity.
This collection is framed at the beginning and end by a pair of essays
that take antithetical approad1es to the question of landscape. My essay,
''Imperial Landscape," sets out to displace the genrc of landscape painting
from its centrality in art-historical accounts of landscapc, to offcr an ac­
count of landscapc as a mcdium of representation that is re-prcsented in
a wide variety of other media, and to explore the fit between the concept
of landscape in modernist discourse and its employment as a technique
of colonial representation. Charles Harrison's concluding essay, "The Ef­
fects ofLandscape," reopens thc question of landscape as a genrc of paint­
ing, traces its fortunes in thc pictorial practices of mQdcrnism, and ana­
lyzcs its effects, especially its moments of rcsistance to ideological
constructions of the spectator. Harrison keeps us mindful of a point to
which all tl1e contributors of this volume would subscribe. An account of
the '' power" of landscapc or of thc medium in which it is represented is
not to be had simply by reading it as a representation of power relations
or as a trace of the power relations that influenced its production. Onc
must pay'attention to the spccificity of effects and to the kinds of specta­
torial work solicited by a medium at a particular historical juncture. Land­
scape in the form of the picturesque Europcan tradition may well be an
(Cexhausted" mcdium, at least far thc purposes of scrious art or sclf-critical
4 W. J. T. Mitchell

rcprcsentation; that vcry cxhaustion, however, may signal an enhanced

powcr at othcr lcvcls (in mass culture and kitsch, for instancc) and a
potcntial for rencwal in other forms, other places.
O NE
Notes
l. This approach to landscape aesthetics is most fully developed in the influen­
tial work of Ernst Gombrich, particularly his essay "The Renaissance Theory of
Art and the Rise of Landscape," in Nonn and Fonn: Studies in the Art of the Imperial Landscape
Renaissance (Chicagoi 1966). See also Kenneth Clark, Landscape intoArt (Boston,
1963), which popularizes and universalizes Gombrich's claim.
2. See, for instance, Reading Landscapc: Count1y-Cfry-CapitalJ ed. Simon
Pugh (Manchester, 1990): "This collection of essays proposes that landscape and
its representations are a 'texf and are, as such, 'readable' like any other culrural
form" (2-3).

Theses on Landscape
l. Landscape is not a genre of art but a medium.
2. Landscape is a medium of exchange between the human and the
natural, the sclf and the other. As such, it is like money: good for nothing
in itself, but cxprcssivc of a potentially limitless reserve of value.
3. Like money, landscape is a social hieroglyph that conceals the actual
basis of its value. It does so by naturalizing its conventions and conven­
tionalizing its nature.
4. Landscape is a natural sccnc mediated by culture. It is both a repre­
sented and presented space, both a signifier and a signified, both a frame
and what a frame contains, both a real place and its simulacrum, both a
package and the commodity inside the package.
S. Landscape is a medium found in ali cultures.
6. Landscapc is a particular historical formation associated with Euro­
pean imperialism.
7. Theses 5 and 6 do not contradict one another.
8. Landscape is an exhausted medium, no longer viable as a mode of
artistic expression. Like life, landscape is boring; we must not say so.
9. Thc landscape referred to in Thesis 8 is the same as that ofThesis 6.

5
 6 W. J. T. Mitchell
We are surrounded with things which we have not made and which have a
life and structure different from our own: trees, flowers, grasses, rivers; hills,
clouds. For centuries they have inspirad us with curiosity and awe. They have
been objects of delight. We have recreated them in our imaglnations to reflect
our moods. And we have come to think of them as contributing to an idea
which we have called nature. Landscape painting marks the stages in our
conception of nature. lts rise and development since the middle ages is part
of a cycle in which the human spirit attempted once more to create a harmony
with its environment.
-Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art (1949)
We have come a long way from the innocence ofKcnneth Clark's opcning
sentenccs to Landscape into Art. Most notably, perhaps, the "we" for
whom Clark speaks with such assurance can no Ionger express itself out­
side of quotation marks. Who is this "wc" that defines itself by its differ­
ence from "trees, flowers, grasses, rivers, hills, clouds" and thcn erases
this differcncc by rc-creating it as a reflection of its own moods and ideas?
Whose history and whose nature is "marked" into (<stages" by landscapc
painting? What clisruption required an art that would restare the "human
spirit'' to "harmony with its environment''?
Recent criticism oflandscapc acsthetics-a field that goes well beyond
the history of painting to includc poetry, fiction, travcl litcrature, and
landscapc gardcning-can Iargely be understood as an articulation of a
loss of innocence that transforms ali of Clark's assertions into haunting
questions and even more disquieting answcrs. ''We" now know that there
is no sin1ple, unproblcmatic ''we," corresponding to a universal human
spirit sceking harmony, or even a European "rising" and "dcveloping"
since the Middle Ages. What wc know now is what critics like John Barrell
havc shown us, that thcrc is a "dark side of the landscape" and that this
dark side is not mercly mythic, not mcrely a feature of the regressive,
,. Instinc�al drives '\ssociated with nonhuman "naturc" but a {)Or;al, ideq¡t
· Iogical,�d-i� darkncs\! that covers itself with precisely the sort of
llllloccnt idealism Clark expresses. 1 Contemporary discussions of land­
scape are likely to be contentious and polemical, as the recent controvcrsy
over the Tate Gallery's exhibition and the monograph on the works of
Richard Wilson suggest. 2 They are likcly to place the aesthetic idealization
of landscape alongside "vulgar'' economic and material considerations, as
John Barrell and Ann Bermingham do when thcy put the English land- 'I
s.cape movement in ,tj¡e sontext of the enclosure of ,ommon fields and the
¡lispossession of thc Ertglish peas!q¡;9,y,f
I might as well say at the outset that I am mainly in sympathy with
this darker, skeptical rcacling oflandscapc aesthetics and that this essay is
Imperial Landscape 7
an attempt to contribute furthcr to this rcading. Our understancling of
<(high" art can, in general, bencfit considcrably from a critica! perspective
that works through what Philip Fisher has called the "hard facts" cmbed­
ded in idealized settings.4 My aim in this essay, however, is not primarily
to add to thc stock of hard facts about landscape but to take a harder
Iook at the framework in which facts about landscape are constituted-the
way, in particular, that the nature, history, and semiotic or aesthetic char­
acter of landscape is constructed in both its idealist and skeptical interpre­
tations.
As it happens, there is a good <leal of common ground in these con­
structions, an underlying agreement on at least piree major '"fácts" al{mt
landscape:1 (l)l that it is, in its "pure" form, a western European and
modern phenomenon; J¡;}J, that it emerges in the seventeenth century
and reaches its peak in the nineteenth century;\(3) ihat it is originally and
centrally constituted as a genre of painting associated with a new way of
seeing. These assumptions are generally accepted by ali the parties in
contemporary cliscussions of English landscape, and to the extent that
they provide a common grammar and narrative shape far criticism, they
foster a kind of mirror symmetry between the skeptical critique and the
idealist aesthetic it opposes. Clark's opening paragraph, for instance, may
be read as still true if only its key terms are understood in an ironic scnse:
the "different structure" of nature is rcad as a symptom of alienation from
the land; the "reflective'' and imaginary projection of moods into land­
scape is read as the dreamwork of ideology; thc «rise and development''
oflandscape is read as a symptom of the rise and development of capital­
ism; the "harmony" sought in landscape is read as a compcnsation for
and screening off of the actual violence perpetrated there.
The agrcement on these�ee basic "facts,-let us call thcm thc <'Wcst­
crn-ness" of landscape, its modcrnity, and its visual/pictorial esscnce­
may well be a sign ofjust how well founded they are. Ifcritics ofraclically
clifferent persuasions take these things for granted, cliffering mainly in
their explanations of them, then there is a strong presun1ption that they
are true. The modernity of European landscape painting, far instancc, is
one of the first lessons landscape historians pass on to thcir studcnts. Ernst
Gombricll's classic essay "The Renaissance Theory ofArt and the Rise of
Landscape" ( 1953), with its story ofthe "revolutionary" emergcnce ofa
new genre called Iandscape in sixteenth-century European painting, is still
the basic refercnce point for art-historical trcatments of this tapie. 5
., Kenneth Clark expresses the lesson in its most general form: "People
who have given the matter no thought are apt to assume that the apprccia­
tion of natural beauty and the painting of landscape is a normal and
enduring part of our spiritual activity. But the truth is that in times when
 8 W. J. T. Mitchell
the human spirit seems to have burned most brightly the painting of
landscape for its own sake did not exist and was unthinkable. ,,6 Marxist art
historians replicare this ((truth" in the narrower field of English landscape
acsthetics, substituting the notion of ideology for Clark's "spiritual activ­
ity." Thus Ann \llermingha.o:t propases "that there ts an ideology' of land;
.
\ scap': and that in the eighteenth and ninetecnth cenrunes a class v1ew of
landscape cmbodied a,¡¡et.oüocj;tlly .and, finally, economic;tlly determined
talucs to which, thc paintcd imagc_;g�:..�::,J;µlttwali2e�prcssio11:-''7 Neither
Bermingham nor Barrell makes the explicit claim for world-historical
uniquencss that Clark does; they confine their attention quite narrowly
to the Englis�1 landscape tradition, and to even more spccific movements
within it. But in the absence of any larger perspective, or any challenge
to Clark's largcr claims, thc basic assumption of historical uniqueness
remains in place, subject only to differenccs of interpretation.
A similar point might be made about thc visual/pictorial constitution
of landscape as an aesthetic object. Bermingham regards landscape as an
idcological "class vicw" to which "thc paintcd imagc" gives "cultural ex­
pression." Clark says that "thc appreciation of natural beauty and the
painting of landscapc is" ( emphasis mine) a historically unique phenome­
non. Both writer,s elide thc distinction bctween �'\Mi!l�-and 'painting1;
:peq:eption ,1¡,.d {ijp.e��mati91d-Bermingham by treating painting as tlie
"expression" of a "view, '' Clark by means of the singular verb "is" that
collapscs thc appreciation of nature into its representation by painting.
Clark goes on to reinforce the equation of painting with seeing by citing
with approval Ruskin's claim in Modern Painters that <'mank.ind acquired
a new scnse" along with the invention of landscape painting. Not only
landscape painting, but landscapc perception is <'invented" at some moment
of history; thc only question is whethcr this invcntion has a spiritual or
a material basis.8
Therc are'two problem� with these fundamental assumptions about the
, aesthetics of láh"t!§i\pe: ,füst, they are highly questionable; second, they
are almost ncver brought into question, and the very arnbiguity of the
word "landscape" as 'iléñOting a place ór a paint�g encouragcs this failure
to ask qucstions. But the blurring of the distinction betwcen the viewing
and the reprcscntation of landscapc sccms, on the face of it, deeply prob­
lcmatic. Are we rcally to bclieve, as Clark puts it, that <<thc apprcciation
of natural bcauty" bcgins only with the invcntion of landscapc paintingr
Ccrtainly thc tcstimony of pocts from Hcsiod to Homcr to Dante suggests
that human beings did not, as Ruskin thought, acquire a "new sense"
sometimc aftcr the Middle Agcs that made them ''utterly different from
all thc grcat races that have existed bcfore.'19 Even thc more restricted
claim that landscape painting (as distinct from perception) has a uniquely
Imperial Landscape 9
Western and modern identity seems fraught with problems. The historical
claim that landscape is a ''postmedieval" development runs counter to
the evidence (presentcd, but explained away as merely <'decorativc" and
"digrcssivc" in Clark's text) that Hellcnistic and Roman paintcrs "cvolved
º
a school oflandscape painting." 1 And the geographic claim that landscape
is a uniquely western European art falls to pieces in the face of the over­
whelming richness, complexity, and antiquity of Chinese landscape paint­
ing.11 The Chinese tradition has a double importance in this context. Not
only <loes it subvert any claims for the uniquely modern or Western lin­
eage of landscape, the fact is that Chinese landscape played a crucial role
in the elaboration of English landscape aesthetics in the eighteenth
cen­tury, so much so that le jardin anglo-chinois beca me a common
European labcl for thc English ,garden. 12
The intrusion of élL\Wese_sraditions i�to the landscape discourse I have
been describing is worth pondering further, for it raises fundan1ental ques­
tions about th� Eurocentric bias of that discourse and its myths of origin.
Two facts abour Chinese landscape bear special emphasis: one is that it
flourished most notably at the height of Chinese imperial power and
bcgan to decline in the eighteenth century as China became itself the
object of English fascination and appropriation at the moment when En­
gland was bcginning to experience itsclf as an imperial powcr. 13 Is it
possible that Jandscape, understood as thc historicaJ "invention" of a new
Misüal.1pfetotíal- mediüin, ts integrally connected with imperialism? Cer­
tainly the roll call of majar "originating'' movements in landscape paint­
ing-China, Japan, Rome, seventecnth-ccntury Holland and France,
cightccnth- and nineteenth-cennu-y Britain-mak.cs thc qucstion hard to
avoid. At a mínimum wc necd to explore thc possibi1ity that thc reprcscn­
tation of landscapc is not only a matter of interna! politics and national
or class ideology but also an j¡¡ternational, global phenomenon, intimatcly
.
,bound up with the discoursls of impcnalism1 ,,.
This hypothesis necds to be accompanied �y •'whole set of stipulations
and qualifications. Impcrialism is clcarly not a simple, single, or homogc­
neous phcnomcnon but the namc of a complcx system of cultural, politi­
cal, and cconomic cxpansion and domination that varíes with the specific­
ity of places, pcoplcs, and historical moments. 14 lt is not a "one-way"
phcnomenon but a complicated process of cxchangc, mutual transforma­
tion, and arnbivalence. 15 lt is a process conductcd simultaneously at con­
crete levels of violcnce, cxpropriation, collaboration, and coercion, and at
a varicty of symbolic or rcpresentationaJ levels whose relation to thc con­
crete is rarely mimetic or transparent. Landscape, undcrstood as conccpt
or represcntational practicc, docs not usually declare its rclation to impcri­
alism in any direct way; it is not to be tmdcrstood, in my vicw, as a mere
10 W. J. T. Mitchell Imperial Landscape 11
tgg¡ ºf nefi¡¡ious imper�al dcsigns, n�)[ a� uniqucly ca�sed b� impe�ialism. When <loes landscape first begin to be perceived? Everything depends, of
... . .. . .
l!Yu¡,hlanctfcap e,¡ for mstance, which 1s often cred1ted w1th bemg thc cours e, on how one defines the "proper" or "pure" cxperience of land­
European origin of both the discourse and the pictorial practice of land­ scape. Thus, Kenneth Clark dismisses the landscape paintings that
scape, must b e seen at least in part as an fil_!tb..4nperial! and jlationalistic adorned Roman villas as <<backgrounds" and "digressions," not i-epresenta­
�tura! gesture; the transformation of the Netherlands ftom á tebellious tions of natural scenery in and for its elf. Landscape perception "proper"
colony into a�i'ftaritime cmpire in the second half of th e seventeenth cen­ is possible only to <'modem consciousness," a phenomenon that can be
tury indicates at the very least how quickly and drastically the political datcd with sorne precision. "Petrarch," Clark tells us, "appears in ali the
�nvir:t1J:'."ent of a cultural practi�e can chan�e, and it suggests. the possibil- history books as the :first modero man," and so it is no surprise that he is
1ty 0f!�ti2Rfil:¡:¡¡wkQlA1ªªº1;sl,that nught be charactenzed sunulta­ "probably the first man to express the emotion on which the existence of
ncousTy as m.lpen ·.,an anncolorual.!6 landscape painting so largely depends; the desire to escape from the tur­
e mi r e-� -- -1; more. pr<?fitably as somethu:1g �ike thc
,R�" _. ·-·�'e'""'·�· \ moil of cities into the peace of the countryside." Clark might admit that
� .r}��rp of WJlSl'Jhl\smllmfolding . . . . .. . 1ts own movcment m l:lme and some version of this emotion appears rather frequently in the ancient
.
i. JI, .
space from a central. point of origin and folding back on itself to disclose 1. genre of the pastoral, but he would probably insist that the enjoyment
l·
both utopian fantasies of the perfected imperial prospect and fractured 1 of thc view "for its own sake" is not quite achieved prior to "modero
images of unresolved ambivale nce and unsuppressed resistance. In short, [ consciousness." Petrarch doesn't just fice the city in good pastoral fashion
the posing of a relation between imperialism and landscape is not offered for the comforts of the country; h e seeks out the discomforts of nature.
here -g"��f;�Yfiffi2i�.l ;ti?--�� can settle- the meanin� of_ either term, but
l
"He was, as everyone knows, the first man to climb a mountain for its
as :\,provpca1:1on w,,llunquí¼. If Kenneth Clark lS nght to say that own sake, and to enjoy the view from the top." 18
<'lands�¡p'é'paüi"tüíg\�a; 'ilie chief artistic creation of thc nineteenth ccn­ A fact that <'everyone knows" hardly requires an argument, but Clark
tury,"17 we need at least to explore the relation of this cultural fact to 1:fie goes on to give one anyway. The unique historical placement of Petrarch's
other "chicf creation" of the nineteenth century-the system of global perception oflandscape at the originary, transitional moment ftom ancient
domination known as European imperialism. to modern is "proved" by showing that Petrarch himself lives in both
worlds, is both a modern humanist and a medieval Christian. Thus, Clark
notes that at the very moment Petrarch is cnjoying thc view, "it occurred
The "Rise" of Landscape
to him to open at random bis copy of St. Augustine's Confcssions to a
Man had not only reconquered his rights, but he had reentered upon his passage that denounces the contemplation of nature: ''And mcn go about
possession of nature. Severa! of these writings testify to the emotion which to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the
those peor people felt on beholding their country for the first time. Strange sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the
to relate! those rivers, mountains, and noble landscapes, where they were revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not."19 Properly
constantly passing, were discovered by them on that day: they had never seen abashed by this pious reminder, Petrarch concludes that he has "sccn
them befare. enough of the mountain" and turns his "inward eye" upon himsclf. What
-Michelet, History ofthe Fnnch Revoltetion (1846) Clark's "historical" narrative of the development of lañdscape ignores is
Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life,
that St. Augustine's admonition is itself testimony to the antiquiry of
The middle tree and highest there that grew,
the contemplation of nature. Long before Petrarch and long before St.
Sat like a cormorant; ...
Augustine, people had succumbed to the temptation of looking at natural
wonders "for their own sake ."
... nor on the virtue thought
Numerous othcr "originary moments" in the viewing of landscap e
might be adduced, from Jehovah's looking upon bis creation and finding
Of that life-giving plant, but only used
For prospect, what, well used, had been the pledge
it good, to Michelet's French peasants running out of doors to perccivc
Of immortality....
the beautics of their natural environme nt for the first time. The account
-Milton, Paradise Lost of landscape contemplation that probably had the strongcst influence on
IV: 194-96; 198-201 English painting, gardening, and poetry in the eighteenth century was
12 W. J. T. Mitchell
Milton's description of Paradise, a viewing, we should recall, that is
framcd by the consciousness of Satan, who "only used for prospect" his
vantagc point on the Tree of Life. The "dark sidc" of landscape that
Marxist historians havc uncovered is anticipated in the myths of landscapc
by a rccurrent sensc of ambivalence. Pctrarch fears the landscape as a
secular, scnsuous tcmptation; Michelet treats it as a momentary revelation
of beauty and frcedom bracketed by blindness and slavery; Milton presents
it as thc voyeuristic object for a gaze that wavers between aesthetic delight
and malicious intcnt, melting "pity' and "Honor and empire with revenge
cnlarged" (iv. 374; 390).
This amQivalencc, moreover, is temporalized and narrativized. It is
almbst as if there is somcthing built into the grammar and logic of the
landscape concept that rcquires the elaboration of a pseudohistory, com­
plete with a prehistory, an originating moment that issues ín progressive
historical dcvelopment, and (often) a final decline and fall. The analogy
with typical narratives of the "rise and fall" of empires bcom� even more
striking when we notice that the rise and fall of landscape painting is
typically rcprescntcd ás a threefold process of emancipation, naruraliza­
tion, and unification. Thc articlc "Landscape Painting'' ín The Oxford
Companion to Art providcs a handy compendium of thesc narratives, com­
plete with "origins" in Rome and the Holy Roman Empire of the six­
tccnth century and c'endings" in twentieth-cenrury Sunday painting.
\ dict Anderson notes that cmpires have traditionally relicd on "sacred silent \
Landscapc painting is routinely describcd as emancipating itself from sub­
ordinare roles likc literaty illustration, rcligious edification, and decoration
to achieve an indepcndent status in which nature is seen "for its own
sakc." Chines e landscapc is prchistoric, prior to the emcrgence of nature
"cnjoyed for its own salce." "In China, on the other han� the developmcnt
of landscapc painting is bound up with ... mystical reverence far the
powcrs of narurc."2 º to the contemporary Western mind," but it is, as wc have seen, ccrtainly
The "other hand'' of landscapc, whether it is the Orient, the Middle
Agcs, Egypt, or Byzantium, is preemancipatory, prior to the perception
of naturc as such. Thus, the cmancipation of landscape as a genre of
painting is also a naturalization) a frceing of nature from the bonds of
convention. Formerly, nature was represented in ''highly conventional­
izcd'' or "symbolic" forms; latterly, it appears in "naturalistic transcripts
of nature," the product of a "long cvolution in which the vocabulary of
rcndering natural sccncry gaincd shape side by side with the power to see
naturc as scenery." This ''cvolution" from subordination to emancipation,
convcntion to naturc has as its ultima.te goal the .unificatWn of naturc in
thc perception and rcprcsentation of landscape: "It scems that until fairly
reccnt times men lookcd at nature as an assemblagc of isolated objects,
Imperial Landscape 13
without connccting trecs, rivers, mountains, roads, rocks, and forest into
a unificd scenc. "21
Each of thcse transitions or dcvelopmcnts in the articulation of land­
scape prescnts itself as a historical shift, whcther abrupt or gradual, from
ancient to modcrn, from classical to Romantic, from Christian to secular.
Thus, thc history of landscape painting is often described as a quest, not
just for purc, transparcnt reprcsentation of nature, but as a quest for pure
painting) frced of literary conccrns and representation. As Clark puts it,
"The painting of landscape cannot be considered independently of the
trcnd away from imitation as the raison d)Ctre of art."22 One end to
the story of landscape is tlms abstraer painting. At the other extreme, the
history of landscape painting may be described as a movement from "conw
ventional formulas" to "naturalistic transcripts of nature."23 Both stories
are grail-quests far purity. On the one hand, the goal is nonrepresenta­
tional painting, frecd of refercnce, languagc, and subject matter; on the
other hand, purc hypcrrepresentational painting, a superlikencss that pro­
duces "natural representations of nature."
& a pseudohistorical myth, then, the discourse of landscape is a crucial
mcans for enlisting "Naturc" in the legitimation of modernity, the claim
that "we modcrns" are somehow different from and essentially superior
to evecything that preceded us, free of superstition and convention, mas­
tcrs of a unified, natural languagc cpitomized by landscape painting. Berre-
languages" like the "ideograms of Chincse, Latin, or Arabic" to imagine
thc unity of a ceglobal community."24 He suggcsts that the effectivencss
of tl1ese languages is based in the supposed nonarbitrariness of their signs,
their status as "emanations of reality," not "fabricated rcprcsentations of
it." Anderson thinks of the nonarbitrary sign as "an idea largely foreign
, I?Ot foreign to Western ideas of landscape painting. Is landscapc paintin{1
[' "the "sacred silent languagc" of Western imperialism, the mcdium in which
f it "emancipa.tes," "naruralizcs," and "unifies" the world for its own pur-
25
1 poses? Befare we can even pose this qucstion, much less answer it, we ,
j need to takc a closer look at what it ,néan:S to think of landscape as �
iuedium, a vas�-)ietwork of 'Cúlrurár C�es; rather than as a specialized
genre of painting.
The Sacred Silent Language
The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of
sorne twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning
 14 W. J. T. Mitchell
the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a prop­
erty in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the
parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of all these men's farms, yet to
this their land-deeds give them no title.
-Emerson, Nature (1836)
I have been assuming throughout these pages that landscape is best under­
stood as a �ürofPficiÍ.l�'.éiptéSSióñ�ot l't��e--_?fpain�g,-of fine!
�\ lt is now time to cxplain exactly what this meañt Tliere certainly is
a genre of painting known as landscape, defined very loosely by a certain
emphasis oi;i natural objccts as subjcct matter. What we tend to forget,
howcvcr, is that this "subject matter" 1s not simply raw material to be
represented in paint but is always already a t�)ll!!J:,olic forn;:4' its own
right. The familiar categories that divide the genre of landscape painting
into subgenres-notions such as the Ideal, the Hcroic, thc Pastoral, the
Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque-arc ali distinctions based,
not in ways of putting paint on canvas; but in the kinds of objects and
26
, visual spaces that may be rcpresented by paint.
Landscapepainting is best understood, then, not as the uniquely central
medium that gives us access to ways of seeing landscape, but as a repres�n-
tation of somcthing that is already a representation in its own right. 27 \
Landscape may be rcpresented by painting, drawing, or engraving; by
photography, film, and theatrical scenery; by writing, speech, and presum­
ably evcn music and other "sound imagcs." Befare all these secondary
rcpresentations, however, landscape is itself a physical and multisensory
mcdium ( carth, stone, vcgctation, water, sky, sound and silence, light and
darkness, etc.) in which cultural meanings and values are encoded,
whether they are pttt there by the physical transformation of a place in
landscape gardening and architccture, or faund in a place formed, as we
say, ''by nature." The simplest way to summarize this point is to note
that it malees Kenneth Clark's titlc, Landscape into Art, quite redundant:
4!ndscape,\s;¡>l¡:e�dtaJ:tirrée{ITr"thc moméflt'ofíts beholcling, 16lig befot� '
,i.t b,cfomes the subjec_t9.f;:�orial representátiori.7 \
e .. 1;::'.1'-dscape is a ii¡sdiumTll\the fufü,st sense �f thc word. It is a�atcrim
'll'meimsi/ (to borrow Anstotle's terrmnology) like language or pamt, em­
"bedded in a tradition of cultural signification and cormnunication, a body
of symbolic forms capable ofbeing invoked and reshaped to express mean-
ings and valucs. As a medium for exprcssing value, it has a semiotic
structure rathcr like that of money, functioning as a special sort of com­
modity that plays a unique symbolic role in the system of exchange-value.
Like money, landscape is good far nothing as a1use-value, while serving
as a theoretically limitless symbol of value at sorne other leve!. At the most
Imperial Landscape 15
basic, vulgar levcl, thc valuc of landscapc expresses itself in a specific price:
the added cost of a bcautiful view in real estate value; thc pricc of a plane
ticket to the Rockies, Hawaii, the Alps, or Ncw Zealand. Landscape is a
marketable cormnodity to be presented and re-prescnted in "packaged
tours," an object to be purchased, consumed, and even brought home in
tl1e forro of souvenirs such as postcards and photo albums. In its doublc
role as �ní¡ul)jljty and ..potcnt cultural symbpl, landscape is the object of
fctishistic practiees involving the limitless repetition of identical photo­
graphs taleen on identical spots by tourists witl1 interchangeable emotions.
As �. (e,Pshized commodity, landscape is what Marx callcd af'social
!rfücroglypljJ," &!::·tn:iQJ�m oLthe social rclations it conceals. Át fue same
time that it commands a specific price, landscape reprcsents itself as "be­
yond price," a source of pure, inexhaustible spiritual value. "Landscape,"
says Emerson, "has no owner," and the pure vicwing of landscape far
itself is spoilcd by economic considerations: "you cannot freery admire a
noble landscape� if laborers are digging in the field hard by."28 Raymond
Williams notes that "a working country is hardly evcr a landscape," and
John Barrell has shown the way laborcrs are kept in the ''dark side" of
\
English landscape to keep their work from spoiling the philosophical
contemplation of natural beauty.29 "L�4sf?:pe:'. must reprcsent itself,
then,�as the antithcsis of_"I d," as an '�al,,;CStatc'f quite independent of
-�r��:CS.t.��(!,I as a '<J?OCtíC)an·pfópciiy,, in Emerson's phrase, rather than a
l'r,teria!"ó\'i'f. The land, real property, contains a limited quantity ofwealth
in minerals, vcgetation, water, and dwclling space. Dig out all the gold in
a mountainside, and its wealth is exhaustcd. But how many photographs,
postcards, paintings, and awcstruck "sightings" of thc Grand Canyon will
it talee to exhaust its value as landscape? Could we fil! up Grand Canyon
with its representations? How do we exhaust the value of a mcdium likc
landscape?
��Fape'.is• a mediurtÍ not only for exprcssing valuc but also for ex­ 1
�,��fa��g1;�-������J?-�rs�s-mo� radically,
"'
��tionb�¿� the Human and thc non-Human.,Landscape
mediares the cultural and the natural, or "Man" and "Nature," as eigh­
tccnth-century theorists would say. It is not only a natural scene, and not
just a representation of a natural scene, but a natural rcprcscntation of a
natural scene, a trace or icon of naturc in nature itsclf, as if nature were
imprinting and encoding its cssential structurcs on our pcrccptual appara­
tus. Perhaps this is why we place a special value on landscapes with Jalees
or reflecting pools. The reflcction cxhibits Naturc representing itself to
itself, displaying an identity of the Real and the Imaginary that certifics
the reality of our own images.30
The desire for this certificatc of the Real is clearest in the rhetoric of
16 W. J. T. Mitchell
scicntific, topographical illustration, with its cr2.ving for pure objectivity
and transparency and the suppression of aesthetic signs of <'style" or
"gcnrc." But cvcn the most highly formulaic, conventional, and stylized
landscapcs tend to rcprcsent thcmselves as "true" to sorne sort of nature,
to universal structures of "Idea!>' nature, or to codes that are "wired in''
to thc visual cortex and to deeply instinctual roots of visual pleasure associ
M
atcd with scopophilia, voyeurism, and thc desire to see without being
secn.
In The Experience ofLandscape, Jay Applcton connects landscape formu­
las to animal behavior and "habitar theory," specifically to the eye of a
prcdator wl;io sea.ns the landscape as a strategic field, a network of pros w
pccts, refugcs, and hazards. 31 The standard picturcsque landscape is espe­
cially plcasing to this eye because it typically places the observer in a
protcctcd, shaded spot (a "refuge"), with screens on either side to dart
behind or to entice curiosity, and an opening to provide deep access at
the center. Appleton's observer is Hobbcs's Natural Man, hiding in the
thicket to pounce on his prey or to avoid a predator. The picturesque
strncture of this observer's visual field is simply a foregrounding of the
seene of"natural representation" itself, "framing'' or putting it on a stage.
It hardly mattcrs whether the sccne is picturesque in the narrow sensc;
cven if the features are sublime, dangerous, and so forth, the frame is
always there as thc guarantec that it is only a picturc, only picturesque,
and thc obscrver is safc in another place-outsidc the frame, behind the
binoculars, the camera, or the eyeball, in the dark refuge of the skull.
Appleton's ideal spectator of landscape, grounded in the visual field of
violcncc (hunting, war, surveillancc), ccrtainly is a crucial figure in thc
aesthetics of the picturesque. The only problem is that Appleton believes
this spcctator is universal and "natural." But there are clearly othcr possi­
bilities: the obscrver as woman, gathcrer, scientist, poet, intcrpreter, or
tourist. Onc could argue that they are ncvcr complctcly free. from thc
subjectivity of (or subjcction to) Appleton's observer, in the sense that
the thrcat ofviolcnce (like the aesthetics ofthe sublime) tends to preempt
all othcr forros of prcscntation and reprcsentation. Applcton's landscape
acsthetic applies not just to the prcdator but to the unwilling prey as well.
We might think of Appleton's "predatory" view of landscape, thcn, as
onc of thc stratcgics by which certain conventions of landscape are fo-rcibly
naturalizcd. Nature and convention, as we ha.ve seen, are both differenti­
atcd and idcntificd in thc medium of landscape. We say ''landscape is
nature, not convention" in thc same way wc say "landscape is ideal, not
real estate," and for the same rea.son-to erase the signs of our own
constructive activity in the formation of landscape as meaning or value,
to produce an art that conccals its own artifice, to imagine a representation
Imperial Landscape 17
that ''breaks through" represcntation into the realm of the nonhuman.
That is how we mana.ge to call landscape thc "natural medium" in the
same breath that we admit that it is nothing but a bag of tricks, a bunch
of convcntions and stcreotypes. Histories of landscape, as we ha.ve seen,
continually present it as breaking with convention, with language and
textuality, for a natural view of nature, just as they present landscape as
transcending property and labor. One influencia! account of the European
origins of landscape loca.tes it in the "free spaces" of medieval manuscript
illumination, an "informal space left vacant by the script" in "the margins
and bas-de-pages of manusctipts" where the painter could improvise and
escape from the demands of doctrinal, graphic, and illustrative subordina­
tion to ((the severe lines of the Latin text'' for a romp with nature and pure
painting. 32 Tlús double scmiotic structure of landscape-its simultancous
articulation and disarticulation of the difference betwecn nature and con­
vention-is thus the key element in the elaboration of its "history" as a
Whiggish progress from ancient to modern, from Christian to secular,
from the mixed, subordinare, and "impurc" landscape to the "pure" land­
scape "seen for itself," from "convcntion" and "artifice" to the "real" and
,, the "natural."
a,¡.,,-.�"'
These semiotic features of landscape, and the historical narratives they
generare, are tailor-made for the discourse of imperialism, which conceives
itsclf preciscly (and simultaneously) as an expansion of landscape under­
stood as an inevitable, progressivc development in history, an cxpansion
of "culture" and "civilization" into a "natural" space in a progrcss that is
itsclf narrated as "natural." Empires movc outward in space as a way of
; moving forward in time; thc "prospect'' that opens up is not just a spatial '
L... scene but a projected future of "development" and exploitation. 33 And
this movement is not confined to the externa!, foreign fields toward which
empirc directs itself; it is typically accompanied by a renewcd intercst in
the re-presentation Oftlie-home~landstape, thc ((nature" of thc imperial
-cefitet:3'-1'he development of English landscape conventions in the eigh­
'teenth"'centuty illustrates this double movement perfcctly. At the same
time as English art and taste are moving outward to import ncw landscape
conventions from Europc and China, it moves inward toward a rcshaping
and re-presentation of the nativc land. The Enclosurc_-move1:11cnt and the
accompanying disposscssion of the English riasantr)i �re an·i;,_ternal colo­
nization of thc h0iñ€ COuntry, frs ·1:ransfófffiation froin wh"at Blake called
"a green & pleasant land" into a landscape, an emblem of national and
imperial identity. Pope's 'Windsor Forest'' is onc such emblem, epitomiz­
ing British política! and cultural sovereignty ("At once the Monarch's and
the Muse's seats"), and its imperial destiny, figured in the "Oaks" that
providc the material basis for British commercial and naval power: 'While
18 W. J. T. Mitchell
by our Oaks the precious loads are born, / And realms commanded which
those Trecs adorn" (lincs 31-32).
Decline and Fall
lf, indeed, the reader has never suspected that landscape-painting was any­
thing but good, right, and healthy work, l should be sorry to put any doubt of
its being so into his mind .... 1 should rather be glad, than otherwise, that he
had formed sorne suspicion on this matter. ... We have no right to assume,
without a very accurate examination of it, that this change has been an enno­
bl\ng one. The simple fact that we are, if! sorne strange way, different from all
the great races that existed befare us, cannot at once be received as the proof
of our own greatness.
-Rusk.in, "On the Novelcy of Landscape"
Thc "realms" that proved most dramatically vulnerable to the "Oaks" of
British sea power at the height of the-eighteenth- and early nineteenth­
ccntury landscapc movement were the islands of the South Pacific and
the larger continental prize of Australia. Bctween the first voyage of Cap­
tain Cook in 1768 and the voyage of Darwin's Beagle in 1831, thc British
cstablishcd unrivalcd naval supremacy in the South Pacific and planted
colonies that would devclop into indcpendent English-spcaking nations.
Thc case ofthis conqucst makcs it of spccial intcrcst for thc understanding
of landscapc. Unlikc the colonial landscapcs ofindia, China, or the Middle
East, the South Pacific had no ancicnt, urbanized, imperial civilizations
or military establishments to resist colonization. Unlike Africa, it pre­
scnted few land masscs inacccssible to British "Oaks."35 Unlike North
America, it did not quickly develop its own independcnt pretensions to
be an imperial, mctropolitan center. 36 The scattered cultures of Polynesia
werc sccn, in Marshall Sahlin's phrasc, as "islands of history," the last
rcfuges of prehistoric, prccivilizcd pcople in a "state of nature.))37 The
South Pacific providcd, therefore, a kind of tabula rasa for the fantasics
of Europcan imperialism, a place whcre European landscape conventions
could work thcmselvcs out virtually unimpedcd by "native'' rcsistance,
whcre the "naturalness)) of those conventions could find itself confirmed
·-
by a real place w1derstood to be in a state of nature.
Bernard Smíth's�:,in theFSouth Padfic-,, documents this
proccss in encyclopcdic detail, noting the way that specific places were
quickly assímilated to thc conventions ofEuropean landscape, wíth Tahiti
representcd as an arcadian paradise in the style of Claude Lorrain and
Ncw Zcaland as a romantic wilderncss modelccl. on Salvator Rosa, com­
plete with Maori <<banditti." 38 Australia was a bit more difficult to codify,
Imperial Landscape 19
not because of any native resistancc (the aborigincs were probably subju­
gatcd and erased from the Jands.cape more quickly than any other people
in the South Pacific), but because of thc ambivalence in England's own
sense of what it wanted to see therc-a fearsome, desolare prison for
rransportcd convicts, or an attractive pastoral prospect for colonial set­
tlcrs. 39 But Smítll's account of the development of the Soutl1 Pacific land­
scape suggests that ambivalencc about the propcr forms of reprcsentation,
and about the "independence" or <'othcrness" of the colonized landscape,
is constitutive of its perceivcd nature. Here is Smith's overvicw of the
story his book will tell:
The opening of the Pacific is ... to be numbered among those factors contributing
to che triumph of romanticism and science in the nineteenth cenrury world of
values. Whilsc it will be shown how che discovery of che Pacific contributed to
che challenge to neoclassicism in several fields, more particular attention will be
given to the impact of Pacific exploration upon che theory and praccice of land­
scape painting and upon biological thoughc. For these two fields provide conve­
nient and yec distinct grounds in which to observe how the world of che Pacific
stimulated European choughc concerning che world of narure as a whole; in che
case of che former as che object of imitation and expression, in che case of che
latter as an object of philosophical speculation.40
The ambivalence of Europcan vision ("Romantic" versus «scientific,"
"ncoclassicism" versus "biological thought/' ''imitation and exprcssion"
versus "philosophical speculation") is mcdiated by its absorption into a
progressivc Whig narrativc that overcomcs all contradictions in che con­
quering of thc Pacific by sciencc, reason, and naturalistic representation.
The crucial moments in Smith's accotmts of landscape painting are typi­
cally found in "fcarless attempts to break with nco-classical formulas and
to paint with a natural vision."41 Smith trcats che Pacific as a spatial rcgion
that was thcrc to be "opencd," <'discovered," and constructed as an object
of scicntific and artistic representation, one that reserves ali <'challenges"
and historical, temporal movcments for thc interna! unfolding of Euro­
pean thought, its overcoming of its own attachment to artífice and con­
vcntion. The real subjcct is not the Soutl1 Pacific but European imperial
"vision," undcrstood as a dialectical movement toward landscapc under­
stood as che naturalistic rcprescntation of nature.
Empircs havc a way of coming to an end, leaving bchind their land­
scapcs as relics and ruins. Ruskin sccms to havc scnsed this cvcn as he
celcbrated che <'novclty" of landscapc, questioning whcther "wc havc a
legitimate subject of complacency" in producing a kind of painting (and
its associated fcelings) that rcvcals us as <'diffcrcnt from ali che great raccs
that havc cxistcd bcforc us."42 Kcnncth Clark says that "landscapc paint-
20 W. J. T. Mitchell
ing, likc ali forms of art, was an act of faith" in a nineteenth-century
of naturc that sccms impossible today;43 for Clark) abstraer paint­
�cligion
_
mg IS thc succcssor to landscape, a logical ourgrowth of its antimimetic
tcndencies. Perhaps abstraction, the international and imperial style ofthe
twcnticth ccntury, is best undcrstood as canying out the task of landscape
by othcr mcans.44 More likely, thc "end" of landscape is just as mythical
a notion as the "origins" and developmental logic we have bcen tracing.
But thcre is no doubt that the dassical and romantic genres of landscapc
painting evolved during thc great agc of European imperialism now secm
exhausted, at least for the purposes of serious painting.45 Traditional eigh­
tccnth- antj. nineteenth-ccntury landscapc conventions are now part of thc
rcpcrtory of kitsch, cndlessly reproduced in amateur painting, postcards,
packagcd tours, and prefabricated emotions. That doesn't mean that beau­
tiful scencry has lost its capacicy to move grcat numbers of peoplc; on
the contrary, more peoplc now probably have an appreciation of scenic
bcaucy, precisely beca.use they are so estrangcd from it. Landscape is now
more prccious than ever-an endangercd species that has to be protected
from and by civilization, kept safc in museums, parles, and shrinking "wil­
�crncss areas." Like imperialism itself, landscape is an object of nostalgia
10 a postcolonial and postmodern era, rcflecting a time when metropol,itan
cultures could imagine their dcstiny in an unbounded "prospcct'' of end­
lcss appropriation and conqucst.
As a conclusion to this cssay, I would like to examine two imperial
landscapcs that cxhibit in quite contrary ways this "precious" and "cndan­
gcred" c�ndition in the rearview mirror of a postcolonial undcrstanding.
Thc first IS New Zealand, a land that is virtually synonymous with pristine
natural bcauty, a nation whose principal commodicy is the presentation
and rcprcsentation of landscape; the second is thc "Holy Land," the con­
tcstcd tcrritorics of Israel and Palestine. It is hard to imagine two land­
scapcs more remete from one another, both in geographic location and
in cultural/political significancc. Ncw Zealand is at the periphery ofEuro­
pcan imperialism, the last and rcmotcst outpost of the British Empire, an
unspoiled paradise wherc thc ninetecnth-century fantasies of ideal, pictur­
csque, and romantic landscapc would scem to be perfectly preserved. The
Holy Land has been anhe centcr of in1perial struggle throughout its long
htstory; 1ts landscape 1s a palimpsest of scar tissue, a paradisc that has
been "dcspoiled" by conqucring empires more often than any othcr region
on earth. The juxtaposition of these t:wo landscapcs may help to suggcst
somcthmg about the range of possibilities in colonial landscape-the
poles or antipodes bct:ween which the global featurcs ofimperial landscape
nught be mapped m (say) Africa, India, China, the Americas, and the
South Pacific. More important than any global mapping, however, is thc
Imperial Landscape 21
possibility that a close reading of specific colonial landscapes may help us
to see, not just \!}e successfül:cj.()11).ÍJ1ati�u1, <;?{}l,Phl��J>-y imperial-represcnta1
J]ions, but.thc..signs.of resistance.to empire from both within and without.
Like all scenes framed in a rearview mirror, thesc landscapes may be closer
to us than they appear.
Circumference and Center
Columbus's voyage on the round rim of the world would lead, he thought,
back to the rocks at its sacred center.
-Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions
New Zealand would seem at first glance to be the site of least possible
rcsistance to the conventions of European landscape representation. Its
sublime "Southern Alps," its picturesque scacoasts, lakes, and rivcr valleys,
and its sheep-herding economy makc it seem tailor-made for imposition
of European versions of the pastoral. The fact that New Zealand was
originally colonized by missionaries who rapidly converted the Maori
inhabitants to Christianicy redoubles its identity as a "pastoral" parad.is e. 46
If Australia was imagined as a prison-scape for the incarceration of the
British criminal class, New Zealand was thought of as a garden and a
pasturc in which thc best elements of British society might grow into an
ideal nation, bringing the savagc inhabitants into a state of blessed har­
mony with this ideal nature. It's hardly surprising, then, that landscape
painting has always been the dominant mode in Ncw Zealand art, and
that this painting has consistently been bound up with questions of na­
tional identity. New Zealand represcnts itself as a nation of backpackers,
mountain climbcrs, shephcrds, and Sunday painters (a glancc at any travcl
brochure will confirm this), a refugc from tl1e problems of modern civiliza­
tion, a nuclear-free English socialist utopia in thc South Pacific.
The hegemony of New Zealand landscape had, however, a contradic­
tion built into it from the very first. How could New Zealand present
itsclf as a unique place with its own national identicy, while at the same
time representing itself witl1 conventions borrowed from European land­
scape rcpresentations? How could it reconcile its desire for difference witl1
its equally powerful desirc to be the same? An answer was suggested in
tl1e early eighties by Francis Pound, a New Zealand art critic who caused
a storm of controversy by questioning the uniqueness and originality of
New Zealand landscape painting. Pound shows that the histoty of this
painting, like that of its European predecessors, has largely been told as
the familiar story, of the movement from convention to nature, from the
Ideal to the Real, and that this story underwrites a progression from
 28 W. J. T. Mitchell
1.3 Jcan Mohr, "Israel 1979." Reproduced fromAfter the Last Sky. Counesy Jean Mohl.".
scc11cs.
_ Masada, the terraced hillsides, and the Arabian pastoral are ali, in
their ways, attempts to unify the landscape in the frame of both pictorial
convcntions and ideological convictions: the pastoral exprcsses nostalgia
for a Self that is now the colonized Other; 58 the georgic hillsides offer
the prospcct of pcrmancnt legitimare scttlemcnt; the sublime vista from
the Roman 1ull1 invites meditation on collective self-annihilation as an
altcrnativc to surrendcr.
The truth of the unified Holy Landscape is dearly division and conflict.
Jean Mohr's photograph of an Israelí condominium in the West Bank
sfrnply makes this fact formally explicit and unavoidable (see fig. 1.3). 59
Like Augustus Earle, Mohr depicts the collision of two media of spatial
organization in the landscape; this time architecture, not sculpturc, mocks
thc role of picmresquc repoussoir) or sidc-screen. The picturesque vallcy in
thc distance is framcd and dominatcd by the modero condominium, its
windows sighting down on the Arab village. Like the eyes of thc Maori
carving, thcy kccp the taboo territory under perpetua! surveillance. Unlike
Earlc's composition, Mohr's landscapc offers no threshold for the encoun­
tcr of conventions, the intcrchangc of gazes, only a stark confrontation
betwcen tradicional organic topographical forms and a crystalline, "cubist''
architecturc; only the contrast betwecn a passive, observed sccne and thc
gaze that is fixcd upon it. The landscape is conspicuous for its lack of
figures. The Arab village is too far away, and the foreground refuge too
Imperial Landscape 29
uninviting to delay anyone but the photographer. No one is about to
mistake Israel for New Zealand. Native and pake/Ja are at war in the
formcr, partly over the question of who is the native, who the alien, and
it would take a massive effort of picturesque "screening" and sclection of
prospects to keep the signs of this war out of the landscape. Wordsworth
might have callcd this "an ordinary sight''; certainly it is a daily and un­
avoidable prospect far the settlers who live in the condominium. Yet it is
also, in Mohr's stark composition, a scene of what Wordsworth would
have called '\risionary dreariness."
Emerson says that ''landscape has no owner" except "the poet,'1 who
can integrare its parts. But Mohr's photograph shows the sort of sight­
and site-that demands a poet capable of asking, "Who owns this land­
scape1" The colonizing settlers who watch from their fortified dwellings?
Thc inhabitants of the tradicional dwellings in the valley, a space that
must look just as deadly and threatcning to the colonial gaze, as its watch­
towers look to" them? The photographer, who has chosen this image from
ali those available and presented it to us as a representative landscape of
a contested territory? The only adequate answers seem at first glance radi­
cally contradictory: no onc "owns" this landscape in thc scnse of having
clcar, unquestionable title to it-contestation and struggle are inscribed
indelibly on it. But everyone "owns" (or ought to own) this landscape in
the sense that everyone rnust acknmvledge or "own up" to sorne responsibil­
ity for it, sorne complicity in it. This is not just a matter of gcopolitics and
the question of Israel as the site ofbig-power irnperialist rnaneuvering; it
is also a matter of a global poetics in which the Holy Land plays a histori­
cal and mythic role as the imaginary landscape where Eastern and Western
cultures encounter one another in a struggle that refuses to confine itself
to the Imaginary.
I realize that this analysis will sound hopelessly evasive, generalized,
and equivoca! to thosc who insist on "owning,, this landscape in the first
sense, whilc rcfusing to ((own" any responsibility for its fracturcd, ago­
nized appearance. But only an equivocal poetry ofthis sort will, I suspect,
prove adequatc to Ernerson's project of"integrating the parts ofthe land­
scapc" into a w1ity fit for habitation, much less contcrnplation. Equivoca­
tion may also be the key to practica] diplomacy and to the prospect of a
critica!/ poetic answer to thc question of Palestine. We have known since
Ruskin that the appreciation of landscape as an aesthetic object cannot be
an occasion for complacency or untroubled contemplation; rather, it must
be thc focus of a historical, political, and (yes) acsthetic alermess to the
violence and evil written on the land, projected there by the gazing eye.
We have known at least since Turuer-perhaps since Milton-that the
violcncc of this evil eye is inextricably connected with imperialism and