building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici
building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici
building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici
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works of man are part of a much wider context. The disturbing expanse of felled<br />
trees opens up to a view of a human figure lying on his side, gazing calmly towards<br />
<strong>the</strong> peaceful horizon. The solitary observer contemplates <strong>the</strong> spectacle produced by<br />
man and nature exactly as <strong>the</strong> shepherd used to contemplate Arcadia.<br />
In <strong>the</strong> final analysis, Innes was capable of recreating <strong>the</strong> works of <strong>landscape</strong> artists<br />
in <strong>the</strong> 17th and 18th century. Poussin and o<strong>the</strong>r artists before him introduced <strong>the</strong><br />
disturbing presence of a skull into delicate, picturesque idylls as a warning and as a<br />
representation of <strong>the</strong> motto Et in Arcadia Ego which means “I, too [Death] am in<br />
Arcadia”.<br />
The train of this period enabled <strong>the</strong> town dweller to have rapid, direct contact with<br />
faraway, uncontaminated areas.<br />
Thus, <strong>the</strong> machine, and especially <strong>the</strong> train, does not clash with <strong>the</strong> pastoral ideal<br />
and contributes towards <strong>the</strong> creation of what Leo Marx called <strong>the</strong> middle<br />
<strong>landscape</strong> 151 .<br />
“The railroad is <strong>the</strong> chosen vehicle for bringing America into its own as pastoral<br />
utopia”. 152 The conquest of <strong>the</strong> wild lands, <strong>the</strong> feeling of being able to improve<br />
uncultivated nature and develop an agrarian economy as Jefferson intended, fired<br />
<strong>the</strong> myth of <strong>the</strong> pastoral model up to <strong>the</strong> 1850s, <strong>the</strong> so‐called Golden Day years.<br />
However, society in <strong>the</strong> “middle <strong>landscape</strong>” had found a balance strongly oriented<br />
towards technological progress, which undermined <strong>the</strong> bucolic idea of <strong>the</strong><br />
development of a rural nation. Not by chance, a project was implemented precisely<br />
in <strong>the</strong> 1850s to create Central Park in Vaux and Olmsted, a perfect, middle<br />
<strong>landscape</strong> at <strong>the</strong> service of <strong>the</strong> metropolis. In <strong>the</strong> meantime, “[...] no‐one, not even<br />
Jefferson, had been able to identify <strong>the</strong> point of arrest, <strong>the</strong> critical moment when<br />
<strong>the</strong> tilt might be expected and progress cease to be progress. As time went on,<br />
accordingly, <strong>the</strong> idea became more vague, a rhetorical formula ra<strong>the</strong>r than a<br />
153<br />
conception of society [...]”.F<br />
151 SEGAL, Howard P., (review by) “Leo Marx's "Middle Landscape": A Critique, a Revision, and an<br />
Appreciation”, in SegalReviews in American History, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Mar., 1977), pp. 137‐150,<br />
published by The Johns Hopkins University Press<br />
152 MARX, Leo, The Machine in <strong>the</strong> Garden, Technology and Pastoral Ideal in America, Oxford, Oxford<br />
University Press, 1979 [first ed. 1964], p. 225 (Italian translation by Eva Kampmann La macchina nel<br />
giardino: tecnologia e ideale pastorale in America, Rome, Lavoro, 1987, p. 185)<br />
153 Ibid., p.226 (Italian translation p.185)<br />
89