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Show 86 subject was the landscape itself and his exclusive and direct attention to his subject allowed Bodmer more freedom to interpret what he saw. A brief examination of the artistic traditions upon which landscape painting was established may allow a clearer understanding not only of the reasons why both Maximilian and Bodmer were so affected by the castles, but also may bring into clearer focus the implications this genre held for both science and art. Landscape paintings have long been used to explore the connections between the real and the ideal. Nature became an extention of the self, as the artist projected his inner needs, fears, and aspirations upon the natural world he saw. In his attempt to place himself in context, the artist reorganized nature, in order to examine the most fundamental and persistent questions --man's purpose and place in the world, his connections with the rest of nature, and the intricate relationships between what could be seen and what was simply known. Such romantic interpretations of nature rested on firmly established artistic conventions that were immediately understood and universally accepted by artist and viewer alike. Around the mid-eighteenth century, European philosophy, literature, and art had united in a common search for a new way of seeing the world in which man, rather than imposing artificial order, became part of nature through direct experience. The goal of the romantic landscape painter was to cut through the man-made barriers that prevented his "return to nature." The romantic, reacting to the constraints and decorum imposed by the concurrent phenomenon of neoclassicism, craved emotional experience. The confrontation between artist and a wild, disordered, sublime, and picturesque |
