Episode 2239 | The Real Meaning of Picturesque

Welcome to another episode of Exploring Art Podcast, a Florida International University student podcast for the creative curious. I'm your host, Tia. I'm very pleased to have Saoud and Alessandra. Welcome to Exploring Art Podcast. Hello. Hello. Hello. Okay, guys. So, the year was 1840. An American writer, Nathaniel Willis, stood on the shores of Lake George in upstate New York. Before him, stretched a vast, glittering body of water framed by mountains that seemed to rise and fall like waves to stone. Some peaks curve softly like arches. Others jutted sharply into the sky. Between them, like hazms, crags, promenetories and peaks, a landscape shaped, it seemed by an artist's hand. Willis wrote, "There is every variety which a painter would require for the noblest composition of mountain scenery. To Willis, the scene didn't just look beautiful. It looked composed, as though nature had arranged itself into a masterpiece. But here's the question. Is the beauty of Lake George found in the land itself? Or in how the viewer frames and interprets it? This is the puzzle of the picturesque. Some say the word comes from the French bie-dorec, meaning like a picture. In this view, beauty lies in resemblance. The lake is beautiful because it looks ready to be painted. Others trace the word back to the Italian bie-dorec, meaning like a painter, in which case beauty emerges through the imagination of the viewer who mentally frames and arranges the scene. So, which is it? Is beauty something inherent in the landscape? Or is it something we can create with our minds, like painters shaping a canvas? I think nature is already inherently beautiful because, for example, it's taken Willis. He visited Lake George, right? And he found it beautiful, but he didn't create beauty. He's not inventing beauty or just discovering a beautiful beauty. He's finding beauty that already was there. Yeah, but I also think that we are the ones making those beauty social constructs, you know, the way that we find this standard for beauty. We can just look at a piece of gum in the ground and say that that's beautiful. Right, but gum is a nature. It's something that was put onto the floor. I know, but it's the way that we can look at things and see them as beautiful. There's this standard, this idea. Yeah, and I agree. I think Willis said that Lake George already looked like it had been composed by artists. So I think he already had the image that nature was like a painting, that the nature that was right in front of him was already beautiful. But I feel like there can be a different perspective from somebody else coming to see Lake George. Maybe they wouldn't think it's naturally beautiful. Maybe they would not think it's beautiful at all. I think maybe just entirely depends on who he was looking at. That's definitely why there's two different definitions, "bitores, quen, le mbitoresco." The French think that beauty already exists and that nature is inherently beautiful. And then beauty comes from the viewer's imagination and the Italian definition. Which one do you guys think makes more sense to you guys? I honestly would lean more into the Italian definition because going back to my point before it comes from this social construct that we have around beauty. And that's why multiple people can nominate something as beautiful. I agree more with the French definition, "bitores" because across the world there are very national monies. You have the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Mount Everest, Cinnamon Jaro. And these are across different parts of the world. You know, America, Africa, Asia. Obviously these places have very culture, Asia and America have different mindsets when it comes to aesthetics and art. But still, these places get a lot of tourism or university agreed upon and as beautiful with Mount Everest having been the taught non-moral way. A lot of people loaded to hike or whatever. Grand Canyon, very beautiful. People with a picture, and Niagara Falls, all these places. So I think that since there's a lot of people going there, I think we cannot agree that not all of us are. But I think it's very apparent that all these places are beautiful. We and tourists seem to agree on this whether they're from the east or the west. Right. But are we traveling to these places because they're beautiful places? Or because people are telling us that they're beautiful places? Like Willis? He had a lot of public influence on what people thought. So when he released a piece about Lake George, obviously everybody started seeing it more beautifully because he had a lot of public influence. So are we traveling to these places because famous people say that they're beautiful or are we traveling to them because they are inherently beautiful? I guess it comes more from like, or personal point of view because I mean, even if somebody tells me that it's beautiful, but I don't consider it very interesting, I'm just not going to visit it. But I feel like what he said about different landmarks, I think we find those places beautiful and therefore they're nominated as big landmarks. Well, if nobody had ever seen like George before, would people still consider it beautiful? Like is beauty objective or like subjective? I think that's the whole thing that we're trying to get to like, is beauty objective by the viewer or is it subjective to the viewer? I still think that it's how we're connected that beauty is creative because it's just based on us. We are the ones who think things are beautiful. Like nobody would consider it beautiful. It wouldn't be beautiful. I would be worth French definition again. But I think that's the only way to get to it is to be able to get to it. And I think that's the only way to get to it. And I think that willis felt something when he saw all the elements of nature together. And he painted enormous landscapes to inspire people to be like, "Oh wow, this is so beautiful." So like, honestly, maybe we were looking at it wrong. Like maybe they weren't just paintings of paint mountains. Or if it was beautiful or not beautiful. Maybe they're painting to try to make people appreciate the nature that's in front of us. Like, I don't think we appreciate nature enough, subjective or objective. Nature's appreciation, whether it's beautiful or not, it doesn't have to be particularly important. It's more so appreciating what we have in front of us. And I guess the appreciation or lack thereof is what some people would consider picturesque. Because again, going back to like San Batonro, San versus like Willis. She painted things that were ugly and she painted things that were beautiful, but either way, those paintings are meant to evoke something, like Alessandra said, and that evocation of feeling is what's going to make people either appreciate the nature or not. So do we appreciate nature enough? I think people appreciate it wanting to capture it. There's a bunch of stock photos, people taking pics in front of big mountains, clairs, rivers, and we want to save a moment in which we find ourselves in the middle of something beautiful, and this could be pictures and paintings. And what you say is exactly why nature is inherently beautiful because people visit these places and including with us himself, he visit Lake George and he described it as beautiful. That means that nature makes for humans to have the urge to appreciate it whether that's by painting or taking a picture of an umbrella to their Instagram or whatnot. So nature and itself has beautiful qualities that humans want to appreciate and document. Yeah, going back to the thing you said about uploading pictures and social media and stuff like that, Nathaniel Willis, when he wrote about George's kind of like us posting pictures nowadays, to Instagram, influencers will post beautiful pictures of their vacation to Hawaii or something else, but we watch them post these things and we scroll through their like Instagram carousels or their TikTok videos and we experience the beauty through them, which is kind of like reading about it or capturing like a painting or something like that. But again, we aren't actually experiencing this, we're just hearing about it or reading about it. Would it be different in person? Are people actually experiencing the beauty or like is it somebody else's like version of beauty that we're just experiencing from their point of view, their perspective, their phone? Like I feel like these are all the questions that we need to be asking. If you're viewing a beautiful place through social media, they're all beautiful as you're seeing it and how are social media is that and makes people want to do things and let's say somebody like Messi was like one of the most popular people on earth if not the most popular. Post a picture of him and say Miami, right? B.S.E. tips here in Miami, then tourism in Miami will probably increase and if he posts like a picture of the beach in Miami, people are going to want to go to that beach because it looks beautiful. Well, the thing you said about Messi is like super awesome. It was like I don't care about Messi. So him being in Miami or being in Saudi Arabia or being in Machu Picchu is not going to convince me, particularly to go to any of these places, to go to any of these landmarks. So it really just depend on yes, Messi has a big following but doesn't have the influence to actually get people to get a look-of-flight and go to wherever he is at. I think that's why beauty is subjective because you are not finding the place as Messi visits beautiful. You're not going to go just because he wants. Maybe because you don't want to. Yeah, exactly. Maybe because you just don't want to. Because he doesn't have any influence on me particularly. But going back to what Sao said about capturing these moments, those pics in the internet like stock photos or these pictures of influencers, I think they still hold some kind of meaning because they're compositions just like paintings. And since we're talking about the picture as people could see a photo of the Virgin Islands and think wow that's so beautiful. I love to go there. But the same person could see a picture of New York Central Park and think it's not that beautiful as I thought it would be. It's too crowded and that's what makes influence and social media so subjective. It's also objective. Well, I also think that this goes back to something that we were like talking about in class. When professor mentioned like the Eiffel Tower and like the Taj Mahal specifically, when you go there in person versus seeing it online or on social media, you might think or have this preconception like wow it's huge. The Taj Mahal it's so big or the Eiffel Tower, it's this monument like it's this landmark and it's huge and then when you go to that particular place, some of like the magic and wimsy is kind of gone for when you see it because it's smaller than you expected or it's not as big as you expected. So when we're talking about Willis and how he admired natural beauty, can things that humans made be beautiful or are we still going to cover like just like the natural beauty and only talk about beautiful like scenic landscapes and pretty versus ugly and that being picturesque. Can something that's not nature and maybe like architecture be picturesque. I think architecture is beautiful because of the beauty standards that we operate on. Things like symmetry, pattern and the mathematical questions that we follow to make a building work and also be aesthetically appealing to our eyes and pastry has a wolf and without earth beauty standards. Like people could like to live in a modern house but they could also like going back to the 70s and getting one that looks just like it and everything in our evolution grows. And that all goes back to nature because architectural designs in modern ones and ancient ones were based or are based on principles found in nature. For example, La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain was inspired by tree trunks and canopies and you can see this in their massive central stone columns that branch out at the top or the Beijing National Stadium which looks like the Burzness and it has like layers of steel that mimic the design found in Burzness. So nature is a big influence in architect and architectural designs and how we base them and this is very apparent even in our own city you can probably see this. And like this discussion about like evolution and things growing and things being based on nature are like all well and good but we're kind of missing the point of things with like architecture and natural beauty like for example like George was made so famous because of Nathaniel Willis but that was way back when it was only nature and water. Now like George has hotels and boats and social media and all the tourists because it's so popular. Do you think if Nathaniel Willis visited like George today with all the boats and hotels and all the social media people and the thousands of tourists do you think he would still describe it as pictures? Yeah because even with all these buildings and all the people the major qualities of Lake George are still there. You still have the clear water you still have the beautiful blue skies the trees that's not gonna go away. So while maybe small features are taken away the major beauty is still there and Lake George. Yeah but I still believe that that serene calmness that initials was captured in the way that Willis made is just gone because it's over saturated with all the people. Yeah the gentrification of Lake George and the addition of hotels and like buildings on the water also don't lend itself to the original ideal that Willis had portrayed in his writings when he was talking about all of the qualities that made it beautiful. There's a difference now in all those qualities because it has become so over saturated and so famous because of that original writing now instead of that serene calmness on the water there's boats and people and you can't really hear any like qualities like the birds chirping and like the serene land that's way lessened now like you can't hear the waves you can't look at the sky anymore and see the clearness because you might see like a hotel or something like that. Oh smells change really can't like realize how the lake water fills your nose or like the smell of the pine on the trees if there are pine trees there like all those qualities get diminished by smoke or fire that you can see from the nearby towns or anything else like detergents or stuff like that it also calls for pollution like this place it was so beautiful before but now that there's so much human influence on that particular beautiful natural position like now there really is not a huge change maybe when you're just looking at it but the environment is definitely different and I feel like that environmental quality definitely lends itself to the picturesqueness or not of this place. You know guys I think we had some very good points today I don't think anything we said today would ride around and I think it lends itself and to how well we can hold and tell you the truth. Yeah it's a close-it-off really quick I think we should talk about like what the picturesque has like taught us about beauty just to get like each other's opinions and like these sick ideas um they're discussing that we've had today. Well I mean after learning about the pictures I don't think beauty is just in the landscape or just in the viewer. I think it's a combination of both. I agree Lake George has incredible natural features but I think it would help people see it through the test of nature. Yeah and like what makes the picture so interesting is that it isn't just looking about like nature I think it's about what nature and like beauty really mean. The picture I've seen teaches us that like beauty isn't always something you can simply find it's something that we can like learn to notice and whether beauty exists in nature or it's just shaped by like our imagination like George could have reminded us to observe and appreciate like the natural world around us. I want to thank you so much for joining us today. Sao Eden Alessandra I really appreciate it. This concludes Exploring Art Podcast. Subscribe on iTunes Spotify SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening. Please join us soon and remember to stay curious. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]