The Chosen People: The Hudson River School and the Construction of American Identity

This article considers nineteenth-century riverscapes of the Hudson in relation to the formation of American identity. It argues that riverscapes in the United States contributed to welding a national identity to a Christian one, although officially the identities were distinct. I examine the role of the Hudson River School in the creation of the ‘wilderness’ as an image of American homeland, and how this construct incorporated the iconic figure of the Euro-American Christian ‘pilgrim-pioneer.’ America looked more to the future than to the past for its national narrative, and an orientation to the future was symbolized in art by the flow of the Hudson toward distant horizons, while the pioneer identity was extended to embrace the entrepreneur-developer. The pioneer has remained an iconic figure for American nationalism, but is now more firmly located in the nation’s past; Janus’s gaze has been adjusted, demonstrating the potentially fluid character of nationalist discourse.

Audiosfery lochów, poetyki krajobrazu. Ślady estetyk romantyzmu w grach cRPG

The aim of this text is to discern and analyze aesthetic tropes in selected fantasy cRPG games in the areas of visual arts and music. The analysis is con­ducted in the context of American romanticism, especially Hudson River School of painting, and musical works belonging to the dungeon synth genre. Through the enumeration and close reading of the elements pertaining both gameplay and digital landscapes, it is argued that the specific type of romantic imagery and its philosophical underpinnings may have influenced the recurring themes in cRPG games, including character development, avatar’s agency and player’s projected disposition towards the game world.

From Place to Presence: Landscapes and Transcendence

Ranging from the Transcendental and Romantic writing of the nineteenth century through the experimental verse of Gerard Manley Hopkins and the iconic depictions of westward expansion in the landscape painting of Thomas Cole (and the Hudson River School), to the rural poetics of Robert Frost, this article argues that poets, like painters, must not merely sketch or describe the sublime or transcendental nature of a scene; they must capture its visual and emotional impact, and – through some artistic device – reenact its transcendence to move the reader or observer from place to presence.

Paris-on-Hudson

In 1969, a curious picture entered the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City, as part of a major bequest by American banker Robert Lehman (1891-1969). Identified as a Hudson River Scene, the painting, undated and unsigned, depicts an idyllic river landscape, surrounded by green hills, indeed reminiscent of the Hudson River School. Yet the attribution devised by the museum for might appear curious at first glance, as it does not rule out the possibility of a work produced by a little-known French painter named Victor de Grailly. Born in Paris in 1804, Grailly died in the same city in 1887. Mentioned in several museum collections, his pictures constitute a debatable body of work to this day. But if only a few biographical elements have been saved about the artist, the crunch of the debate lies elsewhere.

Imágenes de otros mundos. La alianza entre pintura y videojuego.

La industria del videojuego ha encontrado en la pintura el medio donde visualizar sus propios mundos ¿Podría suponer el desarrollo de los videojuegos AAA una revalorización de la pintura naturalista convirtiendo al concept artist en el nuevo pintor del siglo XXI? Objetivos que nos planteamos:Revisar la creación de imágenes de mundos en la pintura.Estudiar el papel del concept artist en la industria del videojuego.Desarrollar el análisis de un caso práctico actual. El arte tiene la capacidad de representar una imagen del mundo coherente con los planteamientos ideológicos desde los que se desarrolla. La pintura ha satisfecho, a lo largo de su historia, la necesidad del hombre de crear una imagen del mundo, una representación del mundo e imaginar nuevos mundos. Una práctica que conectaría con el concepto de Mundo abierto desarrollado en los videojuegos actuales.Realizaremos una breve revisión de la representación de mundos en la pintura a través de su historia, desde la idealización en la Edad Media a los planteamientos experimentales de la vanguardia artística del siglo XX. Actualmente, el concept artist representaría al agente de la industria del entretenimiento encargado de desarrollar la visualización del mundo en el que se desarrollan los videojuegos. La labor de encarnar estas imágenes se realiza a través de la pintura, mediante técnicas tradicionales o digitales. De este modo, se estaría produciendo una revisión de las claves pictóricas clásicas con el objetivo de resolver problemas de representación actuales, replanteando las relaciones entre arte y diseño o cultura y entretenimiento. Para profundizar en estas cuestiones, planteamos estudiar el caso de Red Dead Redemption 2 y su relación con la Hudson River School.

“‘The Mighty Meaning of the Scene’” Feminine Landscapes and the Future of America in Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes, in 1843

Like many of her contemporaries, Margaret Fuller had great hopes for the West. The Western lands, open for America’s future, held the promise of what America could become. In Summer on the Lakes, Fuller sketches what she hopes America will become. Using the landscape aesthetics of her age, such as the work of Andrew Jackson Downing and the Hudson River School of landscape painting, Fuller describes the ideal landscape as one that is more feminine and nurturing, one in which humankind lives in harmony with nature. Fuller’s landscape descriptions both point to a better future for America and critique the values of her contemporaries. Fuller contrasts America’s more male vision of conquest of the land with her feminine ideal of harmony with nature—a cultivated garden—to show what America’s future should be, as it builds westward.

“Only Surpassed by the Light of Revelation”

Asher B. Durand (1796–1886) began his long career in the Hudson River School under the guidance of his mentor, Thomas Cole (1801–1848). Influenced by the death of Cole in 1848 and other factors, Durand turned to the William Cullen Bryant poem, “Thanatopsis.” Durand’s Landscape—Scene from ‘Thanatopsis,’ an expansive allegory with a farmer and a funeral in the foreground illuminated by a sunrise, offers reassurance with its vision of nature’s paradisiacal beauty. The Christianized sublimity of this allegorical Durand painting reveals a hopeful vision for a heavenly paradise. This essay explores the significance of Durand’s 1850 painting in conjunction with Bryant’s “Thanatopsis,” a study Durand composed, Classical Landscape (Imaginary Landscape c. 1850), his 1855 Letters on Landscape Painting, as well as Durand’s 1862 repainting of the canvas.