ARC 111 Chapter Notes - Chapter 14: Villa Di Pratolino, English Landscape Garden, Picturesque

• School: University of Kentucky
• Department: Architecture
• Course: ARC 111
• Professor: Andrew Manson

Document Summary

Landscapes of the informal, the exotic, and the. Sublime: the european transition to modernity exhibited contradictory attitudes toward nature, made tangible in the english gardens (the picturesque, irregular style of garden developed for. English country houses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) of the eighteenth century. For some, the return to a mythical state of nature became the key to new social and political attitudes. Others insisted on surpassing nature through the use of mechanical processes: english gardeners referred to their casually composed landscapes of nonclassical order as the. The english garden and empirical thinking picturesque (an aesthetic theory seeking inspiration in nature and characterized by irregularity, the exotic, and the sublime). They organized them piece by piece, never allowing a vision of the whole. One came across exotic fragments, such as fake classical ruins, gothic towers, and. The landscape echoed the quest for a society based on a broader knowledge (or control) of other peoples.