Modest Sublime November 28, 2005

Modest Sublime references the history of landscape painting and photography from the 19th and 20th centuries. From the dramatic works of Caspar David Friedrich to the contemporary New Romantic photographers, the tradition of the grand romantic landscape as transcendent and sublime has been transformed through the postmodern filter. The works of the artists included redefine what contemporary landscape art can be and recognize that landscapes are a hybrid of both nature and culture. In this universe the artists present Nature as object, reflecting desire as both ideal and the real. They confront the contradictory relationships contemporary culture constructs, the ones that inform our concept of nature and landscape as a genre and experience. Their approaches range from the philosophical to the quirky, the playful to the horrific, but more importantly the works selected question how modes of representation mediate individual experience.

http://www.ves.fas.harvard.edu/events/modestsublime.html