LandEscape: A Symposium on Nature, Landscape, and Painting will present a full-scale educational symposium comprised of contemporary artists, scholars, curators, and writers to explore and analyze the venerable history and state of contemporary landscape painting, with a special emphasis on the role of the West. For many, the mere mention of a western American landscape might bring to mind a grand panorama painting by Albert Bierstadt with dramatic vistas framing our view of the snow-capped mountains in the distance. Picturesque images of the American West from the late nineteenth century continue to persist in the American imagination. In fact, many landscape painters working in the West today still emulate the nostalgic landscapes of the past. Artists constantly produce formulaic romantic views of untouched wilderness, and audiences still eagerly consume them. This symposium will try and address why this is the case. Complicated concepts such as these as well as an exploration of our pictorial landscape addiction will also be a part of this symposium. The symposium will present an overall art historical view of landscape representation in America from the 19th century to the present as well as the various philosophical underpinnings and theoretical writings that support a deep and firm contemporary view of landscape and nature.

Image at right: Karen Kitchel, Weeds (Parking Lot #5, Canada Thistle), 2001, oil on wood, Courtesy of the Artist.

Symposium Schedule

Friday, July 23 6:00pm
Jennifer Price- Keynote speech & Reception
(cash bar and appetizers will be served)

Saturday, July 24

9:00-11:30
SESSION ONE: Our Constructions of Nature

This panel will focus on the models, the schools of thought, and trace the historical basis for various philosophies around landscape and nature. The panel will also explore the multiple models and belief systems for thinking about and defining “nature” and why we create, choose and inherit these values and constructs.

12:30-3:00
SESSION TWO: The Conventions of Landscape Painting

This panel will name strategies, conventions, specific artists and will articulate various inherited assumptions prevalent in the continuation of landscape practice today.

3:30- 6:00
SESSION THREE: The Landscape Canon & Wrap-Up Discussion

This panel will explore who is in, who is out and why? What is at stake, and why is expanding the Landscape Canon in painting so fraught with complexities? Why do painters keep copying historical conventions instead of making something new? The panelists will explore why painting is behind in expanding its canon. What keeps painting steeped in nostalgia for both artists and collectors?

PRE-REGISTRATION FORM

Please print, fill out and return to the NIC
by July 19, 2010

Name: _______________________________
(for name tag)

Address: ______________________________

City: State: Zip: ________________________

Phone: _____________________________

Email: ________________________________

Cost for the Symposium
(Includes keynote speech & reception, continental breakfast, full day of panels, snacks & lunch)

$50 Non-members of the NIC
$45 Members of the NIC
$25 Students (with valid ID)
$25 Artists

Please call the museum at 307-235-5247 (ask for Lisa Hatchadoorian) to pay by credit card. Please make all checks payable to the Nicolaysen Art Museum.

Registration will open at 5:00pm on Friday, July 23 and 8:00am on Saturday, July 24. For more information on the symposium or area hotels, please call Lisa Hatchadoorian at 307-235-5247. Registration forms will also be available online at www.thenic.org