Abstract

This presentation will examine the relationship between artist-made holograms and the landscape tradition in art. Following selected examples of significant historical movements,
various directions in the visual arts from throughout the second half of the twentieth-century will be explored as well as specific post modern strategies in image making. The
presentation will then focus on more recent technology-based and media works including video, installation art and holography. Finally, examples of landscape and nature-based imagery in holography will be examined in depth through works by individual artists. The motivating ideas and issues behind landscape holography will form the basis of the presentation’s conclusion.

Intro

Following selected examples of significant historical movements,various directions in the visual arts from throughout the second half of the twentieth-century will be explored as well as specific post modern strategies in image making. The presentation will then focus on more recent technology-based and media works including video, installation art and holography. Finally, examples of landscape and nature-based imagery in holography will be examined in depth through works by individual artists. The motivating ideas and issues behind landscape holography will form the basis of the presentation’s conclusion. One of my dreams is to build a lab in the countryside to bring high technology into nature and nature into the lab. Working in the woods through all four seasons, I would like to use natural shapes and forms, recording elusive details.” With these simple words holographer Rudie Berkhout poetically describes a union of two seemingly irreconcilable worlds: the existing natural environment and technological progress. Berkhout is certainly not the first artist to express an interest in uniting the two, but he is a new addition to a long tradition of individuals who seek to unify potentially opposing realms. In painting, photography, installation, video and now holography, artists throughout history have turned to the landscape and nature-based imagery as their source of inspiration, the subject of their explorations and more recently, the material of their art itself. For centuries artists have consistently employed landscape iconography as both central image and background element. Without recounting the history of landscape art here, it is important to recognize the fact that many artists working at different times have felt a closeness to nature. During certain periods, groups of artists depicting the landscape have produced revolutionary works which have had lasting effects on the history of art, for example, seventeenth-century Dutch painters or, of course, the French Impressionists.

• René Paul Barilleaux, Director of Exhibitions and Collections/Chief Curator, Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Mississippi, USA

Full text p.9-18