Working on the exercise on the Picturesque and rereading sections of Andrews (1999) a couple of things caught my eye that are relevant to what I have in mind for this assignment.
One (at page 116) is the reference to the Claude glass that travellers used was a means of creating picturesque views of the countryside through which they passed, framing the landscape and so “fixing it”. I suppose that the camera is in a way a modern equivalent framing the view and creating a composition.
The other is his discussion a couple of pages earlier (pages 114 and 115) of Train Landscape, 1940, by Eric Ravilious, and its strangely static nature:
“What is particularly unsettling about this picture is that there is no suggestion of any movement that would normally have the effect of blurring the contours of the exterior world. We are now very used to seeing landscape move rapidly past us through the window frames of train compartments or cars, so that the frame hardly contains a stable composition as it does through a house window. But the car, train or carriage passenger can enjoy a linked sequence of landscapes from that point of view. We imagine ourselves, by an odd transference, as seated in a stationary interior with the world rushing past outside …”
That is very much the effect that I am interested in achieving.
Andrews, M, (1999). Landscape and Western Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press
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