Rapture and Ruin
Landscape Work from the Collection
October 25, 2008 to January 25, 2009
 Paul Cézanne Les Baigneurs (Grande Planche) 1896-1898 lithograph on paper Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery Vancouver Art Gallery Acquisition Fund |
Although landscape is currently one of the most
popular genres within the visual arts, it only emerged as a
distinct category in Western art during the 18th century,
when artists shifted away from using landscape strictly as a
background for religious or historical subjects and began to
focus attention on the natural environment as a something
worthy of attention in itself. Since that time, landscape art
has evolved as both a set of conventions through which we
perceive the natural and built environments and as a site in
which established perceptions of those environments can
be called into question. Drawn from the Gallery’s collection, this exhibition will examine some of the traditions that have shaped the representation of landscape from the late 18th century up to the present, through the work of artists such as Karin Bubaš, Donald Young Cameron, Emily Carr, Paul Cézanne, Peter Doig, Geoffrey James, Anish Kapoor, Komar and Melamid, David Milne, Joseph Nash, Robert Smithson, Takao Tanabe and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, among others. Organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Grant Arnold, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art. |