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Landscape is an imitation of nature—derived from the Greek mimesis.
On one hand, a landscape is a depiction of nature; on the other, it is an abstraction created by the artist.
Landscape strives to represent the extraordinariness of natural phenomena, their transcendence, while simultaneously revealing their contingency—thus exposing both their temporality and capturing the unpredictability of chance for eternity.
A landscape not only presents the viewer with the physical world but also with a metaphysical reality that transcends it—or, as Heidegger would put it, "the truth of being."
A landscape is an image of the metaphysical dimension (or aspect) of the world.
It reveals the truth of existence—its temporality, changeability, and impermanence.
A landscape is an intentional phenomenon, perceived, understood, and interpreted by a cognitive subject—first by the creator and then by the viewer.
An additional value lies in the synthesis of matter and form, which constitutes an important aspect of a work of art.
A landscape constructs a representation (a manifestation) of reality that appears to the viewer in the act of perception and understanding. Even if a landscape is not fully realistic, it still reveals an essential aspect of nature—its richness and beauty.
Landscape is a complex artistic phenomenon—not only because it represents a fragment of reality (realism) but also because it connects us to a world beyond the image: the universe, the transcendent being (metaphysics).
For the artist, a landscape is something different than for the viewer. The artist, in creating the work, invests not only effort and time but also thoughts and emotions, making it deeply significant—an expression of a fragment of their life. For the viewer, however, it becomes a representation of a chosen subject, a mental construct conveyed through the language of art.
It does not matter whether we interpret landscape in naturalistic terms, phenomenological (as the phenomenon of nature), hermeneutic (landscape as the language of nature), religious (landscape as an image of God, imago Dei, transcendence), or artistic (landscape as an expression or conceptual vision of the creator). The essence lies in the aesthetic and cognitive experience of the subject.
The richness of the language of art allows the artist to create a reality represented in the landscape.
From the artist’s perspective, a landscape is simultaneously a contemplation of nature and a work of art, revealing two modes of being. A crucial aspect of experiencing a landscape is the sense of the sublime and the aesthetic experience—triggered by contact with nature but extending beyond the ordinary, everyday reality. This is what we witness when contemplating a work of art.
At its core, landscape distills the creative evolution of the artist—capturing a moment of creation and the contingency of being.
Landscape not only serves a cognitive function in the process of experiencing art but also constitutes a manifestation or description of reality in spatiotemporal terms, making it not only formally intriguing but also aesthetically significant.
Landscape demonstrates that nature is an extraordinarily important source of inspiration for an artist’s creative endeavors.
All the greatest artists of the past painted landscapes—Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Turner, Cézanne, and Van Gogh, to name a few. In modern and contemporary times, landscape remains an inherent element of the art world, inseparably linked to its development.
Marek Wojnicki