Günter Dinhobl (Hrsg.): Sonderband 7. Eisenbahn/Kultur – Railway/Culture (2004)
II. Die Wahrnehmungen von Raum / The perceptions of space - Jill Murdoch: The Railway in Arcadia: An Approach to Modernity in British Visual Culture
The Railway in Arcadia: an approach to modernity in British visual culture cribed to landscape in eighteenth century British political philosophy, coupled with the unique political and class structures of British society, that foreclosed the possibility of an artistic acknowledgement of the presence of the railway in the British landscape. The Construction of the Landscape In the meaning ascribed to landscape, that crystallized in the eighteenth century, the clear prospect, presented to the viewer from a slightly raised and detached viewpoint, demonstrated the ability of both artist and viewer to take a long and dispassionate view. This was exemplified by Claud Lorrain’s landscape paintings from the seventeenth century which were very popular in eighteenth century Britain; the structures were translated into the land itself by, among others, Capability Brown in the landscape gardening movement. The long prospect was explicitly related to the ability to abstract general principles and take a detached view in intellectual and political life. Furthermore, it was assumed that only men removed from the wants of everyday life - through property and education - could take a rationally detached view of the world. The prospect therefore as the sign of liberty [...] and abstract reason embodied not only an aesthetic point of view but a social [...] one as well.12 People who needed to dabble in the dirt of industry or finance in order to survive were excluded by this philosophy from suitability for positions of power in society. The man of independent means [...] who does not fret or labour to increase them, will be released from private interest and from the occlusions of a narrowed and partial experience of the world, and from an experience of the world as material. He will be able to see the public, and grasp the public interest, and so will be fit to participate in government.* 1' Landscape art thus supported the status quo, an expression of the class basis of government - and a confirmation of class identity for those who had the appropriate classical education necessary to ‘read’ the relevant philosophy into the landscapes - real or painted - in question. Writing in 1757, Edmund Burke affirmed this, saying that only men of independent means could be said to have any ‘taste’ in the sense of aesthetic judgement: There are [men] so continually in the agitation of gross and merely sensual pleasures, or so occupied in the low drudgery of avarice, or so heated in the chance of honours and distinction, that their minds, which had been used continually to the storms of these violent 12 Bermingham, Ann: English Landscape Drawing around 1795. In: Landscape and Power, ed. by W. J. T. Mitchell. Chicago 1994, p. 84. 1 ' Barrel I, John: The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt. New Haven 1986, p. 8. 117
