Left: Christo & Jeanne-Claude, "Running Fence," fabric and posts running across Sonoma & Marin couties, CA & into the Pacific Ocean, up for 4 weeks, 1972-76. Right: John Gast, "American Progress," oil painting 1872.

Professor Matthew Rohn (e-mail: rohn; phone: 3479)

T/Th 9:35-11, Flaten Seminar room. (This course is a substitute for the previously listed Art 275, "Issues in Art Criticism". It serves Environmental Study majors and concentrators, American Studies majors and concentrators, and Art and Art History majors, who may take it as an art history credit. GE credit for EIN and WRI.)

PURPOSE: This seminar-style course develops students' abilities to think systematically about ethical issues in encounters with the American landscape tradition. We study ways Americans have built on the land and have variously worshipped and represented nature in paintings, photographs and advertisements. Students will learn to read landscapes, to discover how important artistically, religiously, and ecologically the landscape tradition has been in the United States; and to become morally conscious viewers and creators of landscapes.

REQUIREMENTS will include a number of short papers (responding to works of art and the environmental issues they raise, reviewing some of the literature); a short research paper; an hour-long essay exam on ethics, and class participation.

TEXTS:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature".
Lawrence M. Hinman. Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory. 2nd edition. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998.
Stephen F. Mills, The American Landscape, Keele U. Press, 1997.
Albert Boime, Jr., The Magisterial Gaze: Manifest Destiny and American Landscape Painting, c. 1830-1865. Smithsonian Institution, 1991.
A Xerox anthology of articles.

Feb. 8. Introduction

Theme I, Christo's (and Jeanne-Claude's) "Running Fence": a case-study for exploring American landscape tradition and ethics.

Feb. 13. "Running Fence" -- view the documentary film they commissioned of it.
Read: Mills 1-93 and the Art in America article in the anthology on Christo's decision to run the fence through a protected area and into the ocean in violation of his agreements vows about respecting all laws and rules.
Exercise:write a page-long rationale for why he should not have done this and a page-long rationale why it was okay, if not good, that he did this. Speak to both aesthetic and ethical matters. Due Feb. 20.
Feb. 15. How "Running Fence" and its creators relate to the pluralistic notion of American landscape that Stephen Mills presents. -- What is the American landscape? (Class discussion.)
Read: Mills 94-123.

Feb. 20. Christo, Earthworks and the ecology movement of the 1960's. (Lecture by Professor Rohn)
Read: in the anthology Mark Rosenthal, "Some Attitudes of Earth Artists" and the selections in it from Suzy Gablik's book Conversations and Lucy Lippard's essay, "The Garbage Girls".
Feb. 22.Evaluating Earthworks and thinking about ethics and writing about art. (Class discussion.)
Read: Hinman Chap. 1 ("The Moral Point of View"); and the posting on WebCT of 3 drafts of a student's analysis of a landscape painting.
Exercise: choose your favorite earthwork from among the list provided and write a 1 page explanation why it should be admired the most from among the alternatives. You will find reproductions of these works in books on reserve and via the class's WebCT site. Some students will revise and post their essays on the WebCT forum, while others will respond to those essays. Due March 1; revised version due for posting on the Web by March 8 and responses due March 13.

Feb. 27. "Running Fence" in the context of American interest in shaping the land. (Lecture by Professor Rohn)
Read: in the anthology Pierce Lewis "Axioms for Reading the Landscape" and Spiro Kostoff's essay "The Shape of the Land".
March 1. Tolerance, Relativism and Seeking the truth in ethics, art, and ecology.
Read: Hinman Chap. 2 ("Understanding the Diversity of Moral Beliefs: Relativism, Absolutism, and Pluralism) & 4 ("The Ethics of Selfishness").

March 6. "Running Fence" and how it relates to the American landscape tradition in painting and photography. (Lecture by Professor Rohn)
Exercise: write responses to an exercise helping you learn how to read landscape paintings and photographs posted on the class WebCT. Due for class today.
Read: in the anthology the excerpt from Vincent Scully's New World Visions of Household Gods & Sacred Places: American Art 1650-1914 and the Gary Snyder essay "Territorial Photographs".

Theme II, Fundaments in ethics and in reading artistic landscapes:

March 8. Fundaments of ethics (Class discussion.)
Read: Hinman Chap. 5 ("The Ethics of Consequences: Utilitarianism", 6 ("The Ethics of Duty and Respect: Immanuel Kant") & 9 ("The Ethics of Character: Aristotle and our Contemporaries").

March 13. Fundaments of ethics continued and preparing for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts/Twin Cities trip. (Discussion and brief lecture.)
March 15. MIA/Twin Cities trip
Exercise: select an example of a landscape and a) note why this landscape interests you, b) write a brief dialogue for someone you might imagine in the landscape setting, and c) sketch how you could pursue research on an ethical matter tied to your landscape. (a & b will be turned in before you leave the museum; c is due March 24.

SPRING BREAK

March 27. Fundaments of ethics: reviewing utilitarianism, deontology & virtue ethics. (Class discussion.)
March 29. Fundaments of ethics:-- what special rights and privileges does American society accord artists & why (rethinking what Christo and Jeanne Claude did).
Read: Hinman Chap. 7 ("The Ethics of Rights: Contemporary Theories") & 8 ("Interlude: Theories against Theories: Recent Developments".)

Theme III, Going more deeply into the landscape tradition and ethics:

April 3. American landscape, religions & ecological ethics -- evolving Christian traditons. (Class discussion.)
Read: Hinman Chap. 3 ("The Ethics of Divine Commands: Religious Moralities"); Emerson's "Nature;" selections from the bible; an essay in the anthology (yet to be chosen) on Christian perspectives on ecology and their ethical implications.

Asher B. Durand, "Kindred Spirits," oil on canvas, 1849.

April 5. American landscape, religions & ecology ethics cont. (Class discussion.)
Read: Boime; and, in the anthology Barbara Novak's essay "Introduction: The Nationalist Garden and the Holy Book."
Exercise: Write a 2 page review of Boime's book. Due May 3.

April 10. American landscape, religion & ecological ethics -- a Pueblo perspective. (Class discussion) Read: in the anthology the Rina Swentzell's essay on Pueblo architecture versus colonial city planning and the excerpt on Native American landscape art from Lucy Lippard's Mixed Blessings.
April 12. Gender, ethics and landscape art. (Class discussion.)
Read: Hinman Chap. 10 ("The Ethics of Diversity: Gender").

Taos Pueblo

April 17. Reviewing ethical principles.
April 19. An exam covering major ethical principles.

April 24. Review of the exam and principles.
April 26. American landscape tradition used to help sell things that damage and pollute the land (SUVs, pleasure parks, stores, etc.)
Read: in the anthology Kenra Smith's analysis of the S.U.V. as a 'dense fact.'

Albert Bierstadt, "Looking Up the Yosemite Valley, c. 1865-76. This imagery establishes the compositional elements and the dream of venturing into the wilderness that those selling S.U.V.s 150 years later employ.

Jeep Grand Cherokee advertisement, October 2000.

Theme IV, Short research papers:

May 1. Work on the research papers.
May 3. Work on the research papers.

May 8. Work on the research papers
May 10. Post research papers on the Web.

May 15. Discuss research papers.

Final exam.

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