2 Minneapolis shows display the changing nature of landscape art

Whether beribboned with freeways, edged by mountains or unfolding as verdant fields, landscapes fill the horizon.

Yet, with every passing year, humans see them anew, projecting fresh philosophies, aspirations, anxieties and ideas onto the familiar rocks and rivers around us. Even in those rare situations where some vast expanse remains unchanged for a long time — say, a national forest or an Alpine peak — perceptions shift and different meanings emerge.

Two summer shows in Minneapolis afford occasion for musing about our ever evolving notions of landscape: "Seeing Nature," a collection of 39 paintings by marquee European and American artists at the Minneapolis Institute of Art through Sept. 18, and Magnus Nilsson's photos of austere Nordic vistas at the American Swedish Institute through Aug. 14.

"Landscape is a tool for seeing and knowing about the world," said Rachael DeLue, an associate professor of art at Princeton University, who recently spoke about "Seeing Nature" at the institute. "An artist sees the landscape in a particular way and brings his or her subjectivity to it, transforming it in a way that enables us to understand the world in a new way."

A quick spin through cultural history suggests how landscapes can be tied to everything from philosophy, religion and social structure to the economics, architecture and history of their time. (Whew!)

Chinese scholars inked their nature-centered philosophy onto silk scrolls 500 years ago when they depicted humans as ant-sized pilgrims dwarfed by craggy mountains in formidable wilderness. By contrast, European humanists put people front and center, while reducing the landscape to postcard vistas glimpsed through windows (think "Mona Lisa"). And Christians turned nature into moralizing props (Eden's tree) or used landscapes as backdrops for spiritual dramas (annunciations, crucifixions).

By the 17th and 18th centuries, landscape paintings expressed possession, power and desire. British grandees had themselves portrayed before estates that trumpeted their status, while French courtesans were shown flipping their skirts in forest swings that hinted at easy conquests in naughty glades.

Back then, "nature wasn't valued for itself; it was property, terrain, or a sign of wealth and accomplishment," DeLue said.

It wasn't until the 19th century that landscape painting really came into its own, especially in France and the United States. As roads improved and trains threaded the countryside, French artists packed up their easels and headed for fresh air, returning with paintings of Barbizon forests (Courbet), Normandy fields (Monet) and Provençal mountains (Cezanne).

Across the Atlantic, Thomas Cole and other talents turned to the unspoiled mountains and valleys of the Hudson River and New England, which they romanticized in big-skyed celebrations of America's natural grandeur and economic potential.

American ideas of landscape were "shaped by Emerson and Thoreau, who wrote about nature as a source of knowledge or spirituality," DeLue said. "One didn't need to turn to a book, or go to church to understand spirituality. You could go to nature."

Nilsson, the Swedish chef whose huge photos of Nordic landscapes are on display at the Swedish Institute, may not have read Emerson, but the New Englander's transcendentalist musings echo in Nilsson's luminous horizons, shimmering seas, iridescent clouds, verdant valleys and monumental cliffs plunging to rocky tide-lapped ledges. The heart drums hard against the mind in such empty places.

"It is a beautiful painting, but it is also an exercise in mythmaking that hides a history of dispossession" of native people, DeLue said. "The Grand Canyon of the Arizona may have looked like that, but the West did not. The story of the settlement of the West is one of violence and genocide. One of the great rewards of this exhibition is its potential to unpack history."

Contemporary issues are voiced in landscapes, too, inadvertently or not.

Ed Ruscha's untitled 1989 painting of an iconic gas station silhouetted against a twilit sky reprises a motif the Los Angeles artist has used repeatedly in colorful, sunny images over many years. This 9-foot-wide painting, included in "Seeing Nature," is startlingly different, a tonal study in sooty black and gray, as if ash from one of California's annual wildfires has darkened the sky, or smog snuffed out the air, or even that the endless road trips of the American dream have sputtered to a polluted end.

"The Ruscha is the perfect illustration of what we've done to the American landscape, built it up with gas stations and convenience stores," said Rachel McGarry, the institute's curator who oversaw the "Seeing Nature" show.

"Looking at all these beautiful landscapes, you can't help but get concerned about the environment and the need to protect it."

mary.abbe@startribune.com 612-673-4431

Twitter: @maryabbe