The will of the eye: reflections on landscape

Abstract

Landscape is not what stands in front of us or around us, it is an invented concept, a relatively modern cultural construction. It is evident that there has always been landscape, but it has been only recently that it has been considered as something else than a plot of land, a place or a space with political or economic value. Poets and painters were the first to be aware of territory as an object of aesthetic contemplation, the first to give another meaning to the concept of space which surrounds us, and re-define it according to the feelings it provokes. Thus, landscape only exists where there is contemplation and the wish to know how to look and see, as an aesthetic object, what is represented before us in the open air. For all that, I find it essential to promote the teaching of an artistic discipline related to painting and drawing, and which enables us to value, understand, recreate and feel the landscape.