Recently in Art Category

Boston Globe:

What happened to landscape painting? Its decline in status is even more surprising given the current moral, scientific, and political preoccupation with the environment. One might think that scenes of nature - central to our culture for centuries - would still have a role to play now, having done so much to cultivate our appreciation of the environment in the first place. In a sense, however, landscape never went away: It was just transformed into something unrecognizable...

Interesting that the first word that pops up is "moral," no?

So what did happen to landscape painting? Francis Schaeffer once wrote:

For a Christian, redeemed by the work of Christ and living within the norms of Scripture and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, the Lordship of Christ should include an interest in the arts. A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God -- not just as tracts, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. And art work can be a doxology in itself.

And this:

But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn't treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.

My theory: Landscape painting eventually became a painful reminder of The God Who Is There. Making it unrecognizable was the artistic equivalent of a child sticking his fingers in his ears and squishing his eyes closed.