Nature Critical Views

the sublime 'is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling'

Burke

'The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment'

Burke

'all that stuns the soul, all that imprints a feeling of terror, leads to the sublime'

Diderot

'wild nature: vast and powerful, inspiring power and awe'

Burnett on the Sublime

'one [is] founded on pain, the other on pleasure'

Burke contrasting the sublime and the beautiful

'The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him'

Friedrich

'it offers much less wealth of material than its living original, and is therefore vastly inferior.'

Santayana on realistic depictions of nature

'an artist must possess nature'

Matisse

'landscapes are culture before they are nature'

Schama

' It is a work of power, unity and style'

Glaize on Angkor Wat

'The symbolism of Angkor Wat serving as an axis mundi was intended to demonstrate the Angkor Kingdom's and the King's central place in the universe'

Harris and Zucker

El Greco's representation of Toledo shows the world as an arena for transcendent and tumultuous forces

Lubbock

"Those who look for the laws of nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator."

Gaudi

'This Mediterranean style consists of two basic elements that distinguish the work of the Catalan architect: light and forms of nature, which evoke the heritage of Mediterranean civilisations.'

Aicart on Casa Battlo (but could probably be expanded to Sagrada Familia too)

"All styles are organisms related to nature"

Gaudi

"All the buildings are a product of the earth, like the tree that sprouts from it, and is identified with it"

Gaudi

'Artists drew inspiration from both organic and geometric forms, evolving elegant designs that united flowing, natural forms resembling the stems and blossoms of plants'.

Sum Won on Art Nouveau (Modernisme - Gaudi's style - was a Catalan variant of Art Nouveau)

'The only important thing is that the stones have been moved.'

Long

'I really like the notion of [...] permanence and transience'

Long

'If you undertake a walk, you are echoing the whole history of mankind'

Long

Circles 'are universal and timeless'

Long

'I like the idea that stones are what the world is made of.'

Long

'my work has become a simple metaphor for life'

Long

'I use stones because I like stones or because they're easy to find, without being anything special, so common you can find them anywhere'

Long

"The Impressionist sees and renders nature as it is—that is, wholly in terms of color vibrations."

Laforgue

"I did not paint it to be understood, but I wished to show what such a scene was like"

Turner on Snow Storm

"underneath the chaos there is a real regularity."

Sum Won on Snow Storm

'Snow Storm signals Turner's buccaneering desire to assume art in extremis'

Monks

Turner's seascapes sit 'between transcendence and decomposition.'

Monks

'a patch of sky...salvation, rather than perdition'

Sum Won on Slave Ship

'the incoming typhoon is a symbol of impeding divine retribution'

Sum Won on Slave Ship

'his [the Japanese artist's] feeling [is] simpler'.

Van Gogh (Sunflowers being heavily inspired by Japanes art - particularly ukiyo-e woodblock prints)

"Gauguin was bowled over by the sunflowers"

Gayford

'I make more arbitrary use of colour to express myself more forcibly'

Van Gogh

Vincent' passionate belief was that people 'wouldn't just see his pictures, but would feel the rush of life in them; that by the force of his brush and his dazzling colour'

Schama

'transferred his pain into ecstatic beauty' to 'portray the magnificence of our world'

Sum Won on Van Gogh

Wintry Trees was produced during 'one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history'

Sum Won

"Its spare, rather dry brushwork again repeats the deliberately simple, austere quality that is the feature of many so called literati paintings."

Rawson on Wintry Trees