The Picturesque is Pure Intentionality

     In “The Uses of Landscape: The Picturesque Aesthetic and the National Park System,” Alison Byerly discusses the idea of the American wilderness as a cultural myth rooted in the aesthetic category of the picturesque. Byerly notes the shift of the American wilderness from the sublime to the picturesque. The wilderness was increasingly “contained and controlled” making it impossible to see the landscape as extending to infinity. The picturesque framing of the wilderness becomes embodied in the national parks. Byerly argues that the aestheticization of the wilderness as national park removes the landscape “from the realm of nature” and transforms it into a “legitimate object of artistic consumption” (53). Byerly provides a brief history of the picturesque movement and notes the paradox of the picturesque as both aesthetically democratic and elitist. The picturesque allows anyone to become an artist and frame a picture, however, money and leisure time was (and is still) needed to go on picturesque tours as well as a large estate in order to participate in picturesque landscaping. Byerly illustrates how our national parks also operate under this paradox. The national park are available to everyone, however, the activities aimed at experiencing nature are not. The idea of “experiencing” nature or the wilderness takes a comical turn in the essay when Byerly discusses the Sierra Club’s 1966 ads against congressional proposals to build dams in the Grand Canyon to make the river deeper for visitors to use powerboats to view the canyon walls. The full-page ads ran with the headline: “SHOULD WE ALSO FLOOD THE SISTINE CHAPEL SO TOURIST CAN GET NEARER TO THE CELING.” As the headline illustrates, in order for nature to be appreciated or preserved it must be linked to art. The headline argues that the Grand Canyon is an aesthetic object that we have framed and “must therefore be protected for the same reasons that we protect all parts of our cultural heritage” (59).
I really enjoyed Byerly’s analysis of the national parks as embodying the cultural myth of the wilderness. The wilderness is defined in opposition to the realm of civilization, in other words, the wilderness is where humans are not. However, Byerly notes the paradox of this definition because “spectatorial presence is essential to the idea of the wilderness” (58). Byerly finds the “old question” of a tree falling in the forest perfectly capturing the paradox: “a tree standing in the forest is not part of the wilderness unless a civilized observer is there to see it” (58). Byerly links appropriation of the framing of the wilderness with the framing of the picturesque. Like the picturesque landscapes of “counterfeit neglect” where “the passage of time was artificially introduced and carefully controlled,” the national parks are artificially and carefully controlled to appear “wild” and pristine. The picturesque is therefore not an accident of “found art” but “pure intentionality” (55). Byerly notes the invisible hands constructing the picturesque wild. A. Starker Leopold’s report on the philosophy of wildlife management claimed that “observable artificiality on any form must be minimized and obscured in every possible way” so “a reasonable illusion of primitive America could be re-created” (60). However, when Yellowstone was allowed to burn the public was outraged. The public preferred the artificiality and wanted it preserved rather than see the “true” wilderness.