This body of work explores the emotional aspects of my life through the metaphor of landscape. It is a contemplation of the genre of landscape in the contemporary art dialog. By exploring the materiality of paint and the physicality of working large I discovered the question of contemporary relevancy is no longer my primary reason for this investigation. My growth as an artist has come from exploring historical and contemporary influences and how they have affected my processes and visual aesthetic. Thus, a large series of work has emerged from an unexplainable desire to connect and share the crucial moments of my life through paint.

abstract: Western landscape photography helped to create an imaginative perception of a new nation for Americans. Early nineteenth-century photographers captured a vision of uncharted terrain that metaphorically fulfilled a two-fold illusion: an untouched Eden and a land ready and waiting for white settlement. The sublime and picturesque experiences of the West provided artists a concept that could be capitalized upon by employing various forms of manipulation. In the twentieth-century, the role of landscape photography evolved as did the advancement of the West. Images of wilderness became art and photographers chose to view the western landscape differently. Some focused more sharply and critically on the relationship between the land and the people who lived on it. The influential exhibition in 1975, New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape presented work that showed a landscape altered, marked by power lines, houses, and fences. The West as Eden no longer existed. Today, photographers continue to examine, image, and experience western land anew. In this thesis I examine the relationship of contemporary landscape photography and the role of the West, guided by an analysis that traces the history of American ideologies and attitudes toward natural land. The artists I have chosen recognize landscape not as scenery but as the spaces and systems people inhabit, and use manipulative strategies that emphasize an artificial character of the West. Their work elicits antecedent mythologies, pictorial models, and American ideologies that continue to perpetuate internationally. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Art History 2013

Esta pesquisa, de cunho bibliográfico e abordagem fenomenológica, visa contribuir com as discussões sobre pedagogia da escolha e itinerários de formação buscando articular a maneira como a instituição escolar aborda o texto literário e como este circula socialmente na contemporaneidade. O contraponto à instrumentalização escolar é dado pela noção de formação, pela qual se busca a valorização da experiência e da sensibilidade propiciada pela leitura de literatura. Contribuem teoricamente para esse itinerário as reflexões de Jorge Larrosa Bondía, Antonio Candido, Regina Zilberman e Beatriz Fétizon. Boaventura de Sousa Santos e Néstor García Canclini iluminam as abordagens sobre a circulação da literatura na paisagem contemporânea, pela quais se apresenta sua dimensão formativa frente às desigualdades sociais e de acesso, principalmente, aos dispositivos tecnológicos. / The bibliographical and phenomenological approach of this given research aims to contribute to discussions on the pedagogy of choice and training itineraries, in order to articulate how the literary text is addressed by the school institution and how it circulates socially nowadays. The counterpoint to school instrumentation is given by the idea of formation, in which one seeks the appreciation of the experience and the response triggered by reading literature. The theoretical contributions to this itinerary are based on the reflections of Jorge Larrosa Bondía, Antonio Candido, Regina Zilberman and Beatriz Fétizon. Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Néstor García Canclini shed light on the approaches regarding the circulation of literature within the contemporary landscape, leading to its formative dimension towards social inequality and the lack of access to, mainly, technological devices.

<p>The first part of this essay focuses on how we relate to the landscape at the international and the national level today. The landscape convention is presented and compared to actual current Swedish policies. Different definitions of landscape are discussed. The second part renders the landscape in different archaeological contexts. The central theme is the attempt to investigate if and how we can approach prehistoric man by looking at the landscape as a socially constructed concept. How we should relate to thelandscape from a prehistoric standpoint today is the topic of the third and final part of the study.</p>

The first part of this essay focuses on how we relate to the landscape at the international and the national level today. The landscape convention is presented and compared to actual current Swedish policies. Different definitions of landscape are discussed. The second part renders the landscape in different archaeological contexts. The central theme is the attempt to investigate if and how we can approach prehistoric man by looking at the landscape as a socially constructed concept. How we should relate to thelandscape from a prehistoric standpoint today is the topic of the third and final part of the study.

Esta pesquisa, de cunho bibliográfico e abordagem fenomenológica, visa contribuir com as discussões sobre pedagogia da escolha e itinerários de formação buscando articular a maneira como a instituição escolar aborda o texto literário e como este circula socialmente na contemporaneidade. O contraponto à instrumentalização escolar é dado pela noção de formação, pela qual se busca a valorização da experiência e da sensibilidade propiciada pela leitura de literatura. Contribuem teoricamente para esse itinerário as reflexões de Jorge Larrosa Bondía, Antonio Candido, Regina Zilberman e Beatriz Fétizon. Boaventura de Sousa Santos e Néstor García Canclini iluminam as abordagens sobre a circulação da literatura na paisagem contemporânea, pela quais se apresenta sua dimensão formativa frente às desigualdades sociais e de acesso, principalmente, aos dispositivos tecnológicos. / The bibliographical and phenomenological approach of this given research aims to contribute to discussions on the pedagogy of choice and training itineraries, in order to articulate how the literary text is addressed by the school institution and how it circulates socially nowadays. The counterpoint to school instrumentation is given by the idea of formation, in which one seeks the appreciation of the experience and the response triggered by reading literature. The theoretical contributions to this itinerary are based on the reflections of Jorge Larrosa Bondía, Antonio Candido, Regina Zilberman and Beatriz Fétizon. Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Néstor García Canclini shed light on the approaches regarding the circulation of literature within the contemporary landscape, leading to its formative dimension towards social inequality and the lack of access to, mainly, technological devices.

[pt] Os trabalhos de Richard Serra e Robert Smithson apresentamuma relação constituitiva com o espaço público da megalópole contemporânea. Explorando a noção de tempo específico da matéria, suas produções expandem a concepção de processo artístico e criam uma tensão com a arquitetura e o espaço institucional da arte. Ao propor a crítica a estes espaços e explorar o mundo, ambas as obras estabelecem um jogo de semelhança com a megalópole, incorporando a racionalidade de seu espaço ético, político e cultural. Para tal, considero a relação com a Nova York laboratorial na qual Serra e Smithson desenvolvem intenso debate com seus pares, relação constitutiva que aconteceu com e na caótica Manhattan do final dos anos de 1960, bem como nas áreas suburbanas de New Jersey. Smithson constrói sua obra tendo a entopia do subúrbio de new Jersey como referência determinante, a partir da qual tempos e espaços infinitos são trazidos às suas realizações. O embate de Serra com a cidade assume por sua vez um caráter concreto e literal. Trabalhando no próprio caos e nas ruínas contemporâneas da urbe, ele propõe uma nova relação entre obra, o espectador e o entorno. Em ambos os artistas encontrados o esforço do largamento do conceito da escultura contemporânea numa nova relação como mundo. / [en] The works os Richard Serra and Robert Smithson have a founding relationship with the public space of the contemporary megalopolis. By incorporating the notion of the specific time of material, their output expands conceptions of the artistic process and sets up a tension with architecture and the institutional space of art. As they propose to criticize institutional space and explore the word, the works set a play of similarities with the megalopolis, incorporating the rationale of its ethical, political and cultural space. I therefore investigate the relationship with the New York laboratory where Serra and Smithson engage in intense debate with their peers. This founding relationship was formed in and through the bustling Manhattan of the late 1960s and suburban areas of new Jersey. The decisive reference for Smithson s work was the entropy of the New Jersey suburb, from which infinite times and spaces are brought into his work. Serra s clash with the city is concrete and literal in nature. Working in the midst of the chaos and contemporary ruins of the city, he proposes a new relationship between the work, the spectator and the surroundings. There are elements in both artists that strive to broaden the concept of contemporary sculpture in a new relationship with the world.