University of Aarhus 2005
What the rocks can tell
By studying the development of landscape painting, Professor Jacob Wamberg, Department of Art History, has developed his own theory about cultural evolution. He thinks that the absence of landscape painting in modern art might signify that culture and nature are merging.
By Jakob Kehlet
When Stone Age people once painted animals on the walls deep inside mountain caves, they used solid rock as their “canvas”. There are no depictions of trees or other landscape features in the first cave paintings. These only appear in the late Stone Age, when humans stopped being nomads. Later in the development of art, the rocks assumed a new function – from being the foundation for the artwork itself they now became part of the picture. In Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, the depth of the pictures increased, and the rocks appeared as bizarre, raw formations springing up within the universe of the painting.
Considerations about landscape paintings, and not least the function of the rocks, are at the core of Professor Wamberg’s theory about cultural evolution, which is the subject of his dissertation Landskabet som verdensbillede (The Landscape as a Picture of the World). He defended his dissertation in November 2005.
“While I was studying, I was already interested in the function of the rocks in Italian landscape images from the 15th century. The rocks were strangely artificial and organic,” he explains.
Professor Wamberg thinks he can detect a pattern in the way in which the rocks are depicted over time. They are a symbol of the uncultivated earth, which is beyond human control. The rock formations reflect the idea that the earth is like a womb, from which even the minerals are born.
“They describe the idyllic countryside, but also the demonic and untamed forces,” says Professor Wamberg.
By extensive use of a large number of philosophers such as Marx, Hegel and Habermas, he developed a dissertation about cultural evolution that traces the development from the simple drawings depicting animals and humans in the Stone Age up to the modern landscape paintings of the 19th century. The latter have a clear perspective and the motifs reflect a sentimental perception of nature and the human beings who make a living from cultivating it.
“The modern landscape painting presents a much sharper reflection on the ego. The beholder looks towards infinity, and at the same time, the pictures reflect a social approach to the understanding of nature, with traces of the influence of daily working life, for instance. However, nature has lost its divine power,” says Professor Wamberg.
In his opinion, the sentimental description of nature in modern landscape paintings is an expression of the beholder’s longing for nature in its pure and natural state.
Rejected first time round
Initially, Professor Wamberg was to defend his dissertation on cultural evolution at the University of Copenhagen in 2002. However, he heard on the grapevine that the three members of the assessment committee were going to reject the dissertation, and he therefore decided to withdraw it.
“Of course, that was a bitter pill to swallow, and I could have lived without it, especially when I disagreed with the criticism,” says Professor Wamberg.
In his opinion, the resistance to his dissertation is based on research policy considerations.
“The theory of evolution does not sit well with humanistic theory, and many people probably think of the way totalitarian regimes abused the theory of evolution. Since the Second World War, these theories have caused headaches for numerous people, but I actually think that it is possible to re-read Hegel, for example, and learn a lot from his ideas about the development of art – provided you ignore his ‘mind chauvinist’ views,” says Professor Wamberg.
After a three-year delay, he submitted his dissertation almost unchanged for assessment at the University of Aarhus, and this time it was accepted. He completed his defence without meeting deadly resistance, although Professor Wamberg was more than keen to discuss.
“Once a dissertation has been accepted, it implies that the opponents basically agree with its contents and the method used. I was therefore not overly nervous about defending my dissertation. The only ‘dark horse’ was the possibility of critical comments from the audience in the auditorium,” says Professor Wamberg.
There was only one critical voice among the audience, and it did not affect the basis of the dissertation. Professor Wamberg’s controversial work was therefore accepted in the presence of several media representatives.
Merger between nature and culture
The 44-year-old professor is already busy collecting material for a follow-up on the dissertation Landskabet som verdensbillede (The Landscape as a Picture of the World). In his next work, he will try to look into the future and consider why the landscape is no longer part of modern paintings.
“In the 20th and 21st centuries, the landscape painting disappears, and I think this signifies that nature and culture are merging. In the past, nature and civilisation were separate, but since 1900, it has no longer been possible to describe the history of nature without including culture, and vice versa,” says Professor Wamberg. He mentions nanotechnology and genetic engineering as examples of this merger.
“I think that the human being as a species is changing and that gene technology is part of an evolutionary development and not a coincidental discovery. We can no longer look at nature from the point of view of an observer – we have moved into its bosom,” says Professor Wamberg.
From the period of cave paintings onwards, rocks play a prominent role in art. According to Jacob Wamberg, they can be regarded as a link in an evolutionary development.