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Seeing Landscape through Artistic Practice

This layered, or perhaps knotted, aspect in the conditions of viewing, is recognised as evident in See and Seen; significantly, the complex place of desire when it is the landscape that is the object of our gaze. It is my own desire, as it relates to my history as a cruising gay man in public parks, that I wish to underscore as a primary element in my approach. It is important to register here that I do not view my sexual orientation as a private concern, but as a valid starting point for critical consideration. The elaborate, humorous playing out of the gaze in gay culture is compelling, especially as it is played out in the act of cruising, an act that defines the site as ‘the beat’. Don Kulick writes about ‘the beat’: “Gay men impose a communicative grid of their own design on public spaces like parks, and those who know the signals, those who sense the signs – those who share the culture – can intercept the messages and, perhaps, if the mood is right, interface and interlock.” 129  This cruising attitude is used by me in the museum, where I act under disguise, as the spectator, or the copyist. It is just one of the grids I hold in front of the painting.


Calum Storrie writes about a series of drawings made by Edgar Degas,, showing fellow artist Mary Cassatt with her sister in the Louvre. The drawings demonstrate Cassatt as a museum spectator, often showing her back so that the viewer is looking at pictures and objects in the museum over her shoulder. Storrie writes about one of the drawings with the title “At the Louvre: Mary Cassatt in the Etruscan Gallery”: “… her sister Lydia’s attention is drawn away from the guidebook in her hand to gaze at Mary or beyond her. From a vitrine, the two faces of reclining, dead Etruscans gaze out beyond the edge of the picture. Lydia may be a little distracted but Mary seems engrossed in the act of looking. Thus, the viewer of the picture is engaged in a myriad act of looking that involves Degas, Mary Cassatt, Lydia Cassat and the Etruscan figures. It is tempting to describe this as ‘just looking’ yet the looking provides the way into the experience of the museum and its objects. There is a particular kind of looking going on here; it is both looking at and looking through. It is also about reflection; the reflection of the glass and the reflection generated by the relationship between objects and their context. In order to get more out of this experience it is necessary to make some kind of imaginative leap, as it is when gazing out, like Baudelaire’s man of the crowd, through the shop window.” 130  I find this a beautiful description. I recognise it from the perspective of both gay cruising and from strolling around a museum looking at the ‘faces’ of the paintings, a bodily activity where one uses both the gaze and the glance when looking at the objects (both people and paintings). Sometimes I believe that the object looks back – not in the sense that the painting takes power over Madeleine in Vertigo – but more like a reaction of curiosity.

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Annotations | Images | Index

83: Spartacus International Gay Guide 1992-93, Bruno Gmülder Verlag AG, 1992-93, Berlin, pp. 492-493.
Photo: Mattias Givell


84: Matts Leiderstam, Returned, Hampstead Heath, 1997, oil on canvas, 40,5 x 55,5 cm.
Photo: Per Hüttner

129 Don Kulick, “Cruising Culture”, a short text written for the catalogue for the show Se hur det känns, Rooseum, Malmö, 1996.

130 Calum Storrie, The Delirious Museum: A Journey from the Louvre to Las Vegas, I.B. Tauris Publishers, London & New York, 2006, pp. 22-23. I also read the following statement by Norman Bryson as being not only about looking at paintings, but could also apply to cruising – or other pursuits –where the pictures become subordinated to other reasons for looking: “… gaze, prolonged, contemplative, yet regarding the field of vision with a certain aloofness and disengagement, across a tranquil interval, from that of the glance, a furtive or sideways look whose attention is always elsewhere, which shifts to conceal its own existence, and which is capable of carrying unofficial, sub rosa messages of hostility, collusion, rebellion, and lust.” Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze, as part of the series ”Language, Discourse, Society”, editors: Stephen Heath & Colin MacCabe, Palgrave, 2001, p. 94, first published 1983 by MacMillan Press Ltd, Hampshire and London.

Åsberg, Stig
Page: 20(a.)

after-image
Page: 5, 5(a.), 26, 32, 34, 40, 48, 49, 55, 56

Akerman, Chantal
Page: 3, 3(a.), 57(a.)

Alberti, Leon Battista
Page: 27

Angelo Giorgio, Cardinal
Page: 19, 19(a.)

Armitage, John
Page: 51(a.)

Art Institute of Chicago
Page: 32

Arvidsson, Kristoffer
Page: 35(a.)

Ashburton, Lord
Page: 19(a.)

Augé, Marc
Page: 53, 53(a.)

Bätschmann, Oskar
Page: 33(a.)

Bal, Mieke
Page: 8(a.)

Barton, Judy (character in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 30

Baudelaire, Charles
Page: 44

beat, the
Page: 44

Beckett, Samuel
Page: 39

Bellini, workshop of Giovanni
Page: 28

Bierstadt, Albert
Page: 17

Bjurström, Per
Page: 19, 19(a.), 33, 57, 57(a.)

Blaugrund, Annette
Page: 17(a.)

Böttcher, Ann
Page: 7, 7(a.)

Bonaparte, Lucien
Page: 19(a.), 41(a.)

Bosch, Hieronymous
Page: 40

Brealey, John
Page: 19, 19(a.)

British Museum, London
Page: 22, 22(a.)

Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York
Page: 45

Bryson, Norman
Page: 2, 2(a.), 8, 8(a.), 27(a.), 44(a.)

Butler, Judith
Page: 48, 48(a.), 49

Calaresu, Melissa
Page: 9(a.)

Calefato, Patrizia
Page: 43, 43(a.)

Cavalli-Björkman, Görel
Page: 19(a.)

Cederström, Gustaf
Page: 46, 46(a.)

Certeau, Michel de
Page: 53

Cézanne, Paul
Page: 39

Church, Fredric Edwin
Page: 17, 17(a.)

Claude Glasses
Page: 5, 12, 18, 51, 54

Claude Lorrain Mirror
Page: 10

Claude Mirror
Page: 5, 10, 11, 18

Claudian
Page: 11, 14, 14(a.), 15, 17, 41, 41(a.), 53, 56

Claudian gaze
Page: 17

Claudian light
Page: 14

Claudian model
Page: 14, 14(a.), 15, 41(a.)

Cohen, Ernst
Page: 8(a.)

Constable, John
Page: 25(a.), 41(a.)

copy
Page: 4, 4(a.), 5, 5(a.), 20, 22, 25, 26, 30(a.), 31, 32, 32(a.), 34, 38, 40, 41, 41(a.), 42, 42(a.), 44, 48, 51, 55, 57

copying, act of -
Page: 31, 51

copyist
Page: 26, 32, 34, 40, 41, 42, 44

Courbet, Gustave
Page: 34(a.)

Crary, Jonathan
Page: 13, 13(a.)

cruising
Page: 8, 35, 35(a.), 44, 44(a.), 49

Dahlbäck, Bengt
Page: 20(a.)

Degas, Edgar
Page: 44

Dercon, Chris
Page: 51(a.)

Duchamp, Marcel
Page: 2, 45

Düsseldorf School
Page: 15

Dughet, Gaspard
Page: 27

Dunwell, Frances F.
Page: 16(a.), 17(a.)

El Greco
Page: 2

Elster, Madeleine (character in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 30, 31, 34, 38, 44

Fabiani, Bardo
Page: 43(a.)

Fahlcrantz, Carl Johan
Page: 14, 15

Ferguson, John "Scottie" (character in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 30, 31

Ferrier, Maïten de
Page: 32

Field, Cyrus
Page: 17(a.)

framing
Page: 7, 33, 35, 51, 54

Fraser, Andrea
Page: 40(a.)

Fredlund, Björn
Page: 8(a.), 19(a.)

Fried, Michael
Page: 28(a.)

Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Gothenburg
Page: 8(a.), 19, 19(a.), 46, 46(a.)

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Page: 24

Gallerie Brunner, Paris
Page: 19(a.)

Gardner, Jack
Page: 29(a.)

gay
Page: 8, 35, 35(a.), 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 48(a.)

gaze
Page: 4, 5(a.), 8, 9, 13, 17, 20, 23, 24, 26, 27(a.), 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, 36, 42, 44, 44(a.), 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 54

gender
Page: 30, 43, 48(a.), 49

Georgel, Chantal
Page: 24(a.)

Getty, Paul
Page: 19, 19(a.)

Gilpin, William
Page: 9, 9(a.), 12, 12(a.), 16, 16(a.)

Giori, Cardinale
Page: 22

Goldfarb, Hilliard T.
Page: 28(a.), 29(a.)

Gombrich, Ernst Hans
Page: 25(a.), 48(a.)

Gordon, Douglas
Page: 30(a.)

Grünewald, Matthias
Page: 2

Grammel, Sören
Page: 30(a.)

Granath, Olle
Page: 4(a.)

Grand Tour
Page: 9, 14, 32, 35(a.)

Grate, Pontus
Page: 37(a.), 41(a.)

Gray Mirror
Page: 10

Great Chain Overlook, The
Page: 5

grid
Page: 24, 25, 25(a.), 26, 37, 38, 44, 46, 47, 49

Guerrilla Girls
Page: 40(a.)

Gustaf Adolf VI of Sweden, King
Page: 18

Hansen, Constantin
Page: 8(a.)

Harriss, Joseph A.
Page: 32(a.), 40(a.)

Hedén, Karl-Gustaf
Page: 8(a.), 19, 19(a.)

Herrmann, Bernard
Page: 30(a.)

heterosexual
Page: 48, 49

Hidaka, Ritsuko
Page: 24, 24(a.)

history
Page: 1, 7, 15, 18, 19, 20(a.), 21, 24, 26,32(a.), 35, 41(a.), 44, 46, 47, 48, 55, 56

Hitchcock, Alfred
Page: 30

Hockney, David
Page: 11(a.)

Holger, Lena
Page: 46(a.)

horizon
Page: 25, 27, 35, 38(a.), 41, 52, 53, 54, 56

Hudson River Highlands
Page: 16, 16(a.), 17(a.)

Hudson River School
Page: 17, 17(a.)

Hudson Valley
Page: 17, 18

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Page: 28, 29(a.)

Isakson, Karl
Page: 39

Kennedy, Randy
Page: 45(a.)

Kitson, Michael
Page: 22(a.)

Købke, Christian
Page: 8(a.)

Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia, Grand Duke
Page: 46, 46(a.)

Kopp, Céline
Page: 42(a.)

Krauss, Rosalind
Page: 25, 25(a.)

Kulick, Don
Page: 44, 44(a.), 49

Kunstverein München, Munich
Page: 30(a.)

landscape, Arcadian -
Page: 9, 35

landscape, cultivated -
Page: 16

landscape, designed -
Page: 10

landscape, Dutch -
Page: 10

landscape, lost -
Page: 16

landscape, national -
Page: 9, 14, 15

landscape, Nordic -
Page: 15

landscape, pastoral -
Page: 21, 34, 35

landscape,pictorial
Page: 14

landscape, Roman -
Page: 11

landscape, Romantic -
Page: 52

landscape, Swedish -
Page: 14, 15

landscape painter
Page: 5, 14, 17, 19(a.)

landscape painting
Page: 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 11(a.), 14, 15, 53

Landscapes, Ideal -
Page: 9, 9(a.), 22(a.), 33(a.), 35, 40, 41(a.)

Landscapes, Imperial -
Page: 14, 14(a.)

Langdon, Helen
Page: 11(a.), 33, 33(a.), 57(a.)

Lawler, Louise
Page: 40(a.)

Lefebvre, Henri
Page: 27

Lenbach, Franz von
Page: 30(a.)

Liber Veritatis
Page: 21, 22, 22(a.)

linguistic matrix
Page: 25

Lorrain, Claude
Page: 2, 4, 4(a.), 5, 8, 8(a.), 9, 10, 11, 11(a.), 12, 12(a.), 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 18(a.), 19, 19(a.), 20, 21, 21(a.), 22, 22(a.), 23, 25, 25(a.), 26, 27, 28, 33, 33(a.), 34, 34(a.), 35, 36, 36(a.), 38, 38(a.), 41, 41(a.), 42(a.), 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 57(a.)

Louvre, Paris
Page: 24, 32, 32(a.), 40, 44, 44(a.)

Lyberg, Louise
Page: 32(a.)

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Stockholm
Page: 35(a.)

Maillet, Arnaud
Page: 12(a.)

Malsch, Friedemann
Page: 28(a.)

Manson & Woods, London
Page: 8(a.)

Martin, Elias
Page: 14, 14(a.)

Matisse, Henri
Page: 39

memory
Page: 7, 11, 17(a.), 20, 30(a.), 31, 35(a.), 41, 41(a.), 43, 51

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice
Page: 24, 24(a.), 27, 27(a.), 39, 39(a.), 55, 55(a.)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Page: 17(a.), 24

Metz, Philip
Page: 30(a.)

mimicry
Page: 5, 6, 34, 40, 47, 49, 51

Mitchell, W.J.T.
Page: 11(a.), 14, 14(a.), 28(a.), 38(a.), 48(a.)

Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Page: 20, 40(a.)

Molvidson, Martin
Page: 46(a.)

Mulvey, Laura
Page: 30, 30(a.), 31

Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica
Page: 41, 41(a.)

museum
Page: 4, 4(a.), 5, 8,18, 19, 20, 20(a.), 23, 24, 24(a.), 25,26, 27, 28,29, 29(a.), 30, 30(a.), 31, 32, 32(a.), 33, 34, 36,38, 40, 40(a.),42, 42(a.), 43, 44, 44(a.), 45, 46, 46(a.), 47,49, 50, 51

Museum of Modern Art, New York
Page: 45, 45(a.)

National Gallery, London
Page: 24, 41(a.)

Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
Page: 4, 4(a.), 5, 8(a.), 18, 19, 19(a.), 20, 20(a.), 24, 27, 32, 32(a.), 37, 38, 41(a.), 46, 47, 48(a.), 55, 57(a.)

nature
Page: 7, 9, 12, 13, 17, 18, 24, 33, 34, 39, 43, 47, 48, 51, 57

Newman, Michael
Page: 51, 51(a.), 52, 52(a.)

New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans
Page: 8

new viewer
Page: 45, 54

Nilsson, Håkan
Page: 48, 48(a.)

non-place
Page: 53, 53(a.)

Nordic Light
Page: 15

Nordqvist, Per
Page: 14

Novak, Kim (actor in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 30

original
Page: 4(a.), 5, 5(a.), 8, 14, 18(a.), 19(a.), 20, 22, 25, 25(a.), 26, 29(a.), 32, 33, 34, 39, 40, 41, 41(a.), 42, 46, 46(a.), 47, 48, 48(a.), 49

painting, historical -
Page: 6, 24, 30, 35, 41(a.)

painting, landscape
Page: 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 11(a.), 14, 15, 53

painting, lost -
Page: 26

painting, process of -
Page: 39, 57

Palazzo Riccardi, Florence
Page: 19(a.)

Pehrson, Mathias
Page: 18(a.)

perspective
Page: 11, 18, 27, 27(a.), 33, 44

Persson, Helena
Page: 8(a.)

Petterson, Åke
Page: 18(a.)

Phelan, Peggy
Page: 5, 39, 39(a.)

Phillips, Tony
Page: 27(a.)

Piaggi, Anna
Page: 43, 43(a.)

pictorial space
Page: 24, 25

pictures journey
Page: 8

Picturesque
Page: 5, 9, 9(a.), 10, 10(a.), 11, 11(a.), 12, 12(a.), 14, 16, 17, 18

Pollock, Jackson
Page: 48(a.)

Pordenone, Bernardino Licinio da
Page: 28(a.)

Poussin, Nicolas
Page: 9, 27, 33, 33(a.), 40(a.), 41(a.)

Prado Museum, Madrid
Page: 41(a.), 53

queer
Page: 4, 43

Röthlisberger, Marcel
Page: 8(a.), 19, 19(a.), 21, 21(a.), 22(a.), 34(a.), 35, 35(a.), 36, 36(a.), 37, 38(a.), 41, 41(a.), 42, 42(a.)

Rørbye, Martinus
Page: 8(a.)

Raphael
Page: 36

Rebekah
Page: 4(a.), 5, 15, 16, 18, 19, 19(a.), 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 25(a.), 26, 28, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 37(a.), 38, 40, 41, 42, 47, 55, 57

recognition
Page: 2, 8, 28, 38, 39, 40

Rembrandt van Rijn
Page: 19(a.)

repetition
Page: 5, 39, 40

restorer
Page: 18, 19, 19(a.), 20, 21

Roman campagna
Page: 8(a.), 34

Rossholm Lagerlöf, Margaretha
Page: 9(a.), 22(a.), 33, 33(a.), 34, 34(a.), 41(a.)

Rubens, Peter Paul
Page: 41(a.)

Ruiz, Raúl
Page: 40, 40(a.)

Sandberg, Ragnar
Page: 39, 39(a.)

Sandrart, Joachim von
Page: 36, 57

Sarto, Andrea del
Page: 30(a.)

See and Seen
Page: 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 29(a.), 44, 47, 49, 50, 54

seeing, act of -
Page: 27, 43, 49, 54

seeing, moment of
Page: 21, 48, 54

seeing, process of -
Page: 5, 26

seeing, way of -
Page: 7, 9, 14, 18, 39, 51

shepherd
Page: 4(a.), 19(a.), 22, 33, 35, 42

Shiner, Larry
Page: 40(a.)

spectator
Page: 11, 11(a.), 13, 29, 29(a.), 30, 33, 38(a.), 41, 43, 44, 50, 53

Stewart, James (actor in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock))
Page: 30

Stewart Gardner, Isabella
Page: 28, 29, 29(a.), 49

Storrie, Calum
Page: 44, 44(a.)

tourist
Page: 5, 7, 9, 9(a.), 10, 13, 18, 54

translate
Page: 2(a.), 11, 19(a.), 26, 39, 46

translation
Page: 1, 18(a.), 19(a.), 27(a.), 39(a.), 55(a.), 57(a.)

traveller
Page: 9, 10, 14, 53

Turner, J.M.W.
Page: 11

US Military Academy at West Point, New York State
Page: 5, 16, 17, 18, 54

vanishing point
Page: 11, 27, 51, 52

Vertigo
Page: 30, 30(a.), 31, 38, 44

Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Page: 43

viewer
Page: 2, 4, 5, 7, 13, 17, 18, 21, 23, 24, 24(a.), 26, 27, 28, 29, 29(a.), 30, 33, 34, 38, 40, 41(a.), 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54

viewing, act of -
Page: 13

viewing, conditions of -
Page: 44

viewing, modes of -
Page: 13

viewing aids / instruments
Page: 10, 13, 48

viewing point
Page: 13, 52

Virgil
Page: 9, 9(a.)

Virilio, Paul
Page: 51, 52

Warner, Deborah Jean
Page: 10, 10(a.), 12, 12(a.)

Williams, Raymond
Page: 7, 7(a.), 10, 10(a.)

Wittgenstein
Page: 48(a.)

Wood, Marjorie 'Midge' (character in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 31

X-ray
Page: 18(a.), 19, 19(a.), 55, 56

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