Throughout the semester we discussed many concepts and their relation with ruin. As first it was difficult to relate many of the concepts with ruined, but with time the connection was easier to establish. Even though ruin is a common word, which is used daily I looked up the definition in order to clearly understand it. When researching the definition, I found that the best definition that related to this course was “physical, moral, economic, or social collapse”. Physical, moral, economic, and social collapse were all elements that we discussed throughout the semester.
When the definition mentioned physical, I immediately thought about the picturesque and the sublime. Understanding the definition of ruin helped understand the concept of picturesque and sublime. For me personally, I had trouble understanding the picturesque and the sublime. Even though I would reread Gilpin and Burke’s articles I kept thinking that the sublime and the picturesque were alike. Dannielle and Alexis took a class that discussed the sublime thoroughly. They helped me understand the difference between both concepts which in return allowed me to express my idea on both concepts on our posters.
The Picturesque Photo Essay was our inspiration for our creative and historical posters. We researched more in depth the concepts of picturesque and the sublime, and took new pictures. Our first thought was to use some of our personal pictures that were used for the essay, but none of them really gave us the picturesque and sublime feeling that we were aiming to get.
In our final posters we took Gilpin’s believe of the picturesque, Burke’s believe of the sublime, and created our own believe with Gilpin and Burke in mind. With the picturesque, we as a group came to the conclusion that picturesque could be best captured when there are jagged edges and ruggedness qualities in a portrait. With sublime we described it as a feeling of terror. Our historical poster describes in depth our beliefs of the picturesque and the sublime, which correlates with our creative poster that actually demonstrates our beliefs.
In our creative poster we took a picture of a tree stump that has obvious signs of ruggedness. The termites have eaten most of the top layer, and have left the tree stump there to decay. The physical appearance of the tree stump is ruined, meaning that there is no more hope for the tree to grow anymore, causing it to be subliminal.
In our poster we demonstrate subjects that at one point were beautiful and new. Over time however, they became ruined. As a group we wanted to take pictures of nature, since it is one of the oldest things there is on the planet. It is something that does get ruined overtime with the help of mankind. That is why we decided to incorporate a contemporary object. Our contemporary object was a car. The pictures turned out to look very dark and gloomy and this was mostly in part thanks to the weather. Overall, the whole process in getting these posters completed was very fun. We all worked well as a group and all incorporated our own ideas.
Even though the sublime and picturesque were very important concepts in this course, we only had two articles that thoroughly discuss the sublime and picturesque. In class we did discuss the paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner. Looking at a Disaster at Sea, I can definitely tell that it has all the qualities of a subliminal portrait. The image brings terror to the viewer as one can see that people in the boat have gone overboard. The viewer experiences the emotion of terror because one can only imagine what the people on board were feeling. The sea also shows diminutive. All those people are very small compared to the huge sea there is.
Disaster At Sea
Snow Storm: Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth by Joseph Mallord William Turner is also another example of sublime. This painting is very dark and once again gives a sense of terror. The painting looks like it’s a point of view shot. The shot is focused on the street light but the waves around it makes it seems like the viewer is stuck somewhere in the ocean and the streetlight is the last thing they will see before the water takes them away. This painting is a great example of sublime.
Snow Storm: Steamboat off a Harbours Mouth
Other images that we discussed in class were Gilpin’s images about the picturesque. He has two images in which one features a picturesque adornment and the other does not.
Scene without Picturesque Adornment
Scene with a Picturesque Adornment
It is obvious to see that the image with the trees and the mountains is busier, and it draws in the viewer more than the image of the smooth hills. Both the picturesque and the sublime are important concepts to know. Learning about history and comparing to modern times is always interesting because it just proves us that history repeats itself.
