The Time of the Landscape. The Origins of the Aesthetic Revolution

Abstract

In Le temps du paysage. Aux origins de la revolution esthétique, Jacques Rancière traces the history of the aesthetic understanding of landscape from the 18^th century to the beginning of the 19^th century. Primarily focused on the discussion on the art of gardening, this new essay finds in the scenes created by nature itself an important precedent of the evolution from the representative to the aesthetic regime, which blurs the lines between art and non-art. Not only does Rancière consider the landscape as a metaphor for a particular social order, but also refers to nature as a kind of unintentional artist, creator of composition models that come up with forms of equal coexistence in a shared, common world.