On defining landscape:
- ‘‘Landscape’ means an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors’
- [Landscape] is at once the relationship between humans and their surroundings, and the confluence of physical subsistence and psychological necessities.
- [Landscape] is a reflection of human interaction with natural forces.
- Landscape is evidence of cosmological processes that define kinship, group alignments and cultural practices.
Hawkins (Chapter 16) reminds us that John Constable’s paintings of peaceful rural scenes, such as The Haywain , were used to promote a timeless ideal of beauty and social order which belied exploitative labour relations, rural poverty and the political unrest that was sweeping the English countryside at the time they were painted.
On the etimology of the word landscape
- The origin of the word ‘landscape’ comes from the Germanic languages. One of the oldest references in the Dutch language dates from the early thirteenth century when ‘ lantscap’ (‘ lantscep’ , ‘ landschap’ ) refers to a land region or environment. It is related to the word ‘ land ’, meaning a bordered territory, but its suffix -scep refers to land reclamation and creation, as is also found in the German ‘ Landschaft ’ – ‘ schaffen ’ = to make. Its meaning as ‘scenery’ is younger and comes with Dutch painting from the seventeenth century, international renown of which introduced the word into English but with an emphasis on ‘scenery’ instead of territory. When ‘land’ refers to soil and territory, ‘landscape’ as ‘organised land’, is also characteristic of the people who made it. Landscape expresses the (visual) manifestation of the territorial identity, which is depicted in the visual arts.
On the social presence or absence of the word landscape
- Western way of conceiving of landscape as an aesthetic view of the countryside and its meaning as a territorial unit does not exist in cultures of the Middle East. Makhzoumi (2015) discussed the causes and effects of the absence of the territorial meaning of the word landscape in the Arab Middle East. She explains the absence of the concept by the extreme contrast between a hostile desert environment and the human-made agrarian and urban landscapes where people live. Therefore, the focus of aesthetic appreciation is on enclosed, ordered, constructed cultural environment, with qualities such as comfort, security and beauty. In Farsi, the expressions baghi sazi (‘to make garden’) and muhawata sazi (‘to make enclosure’) are closest to the concept of landscape.