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The Contemporary Sublime And The American Landscape, Bernadette Miller

Wayne State University Theses

This paper examines the reutterances of the sublime experience in the American landscape throughout nineteenth-century paintings and into the twenty-first century. Ultimately, the examination of key moments in American art, such as the Hudson River School, Barnett Newman's paintings, Land Art, Light and Space art movement, and contemporary works by Doug Wheeler and Jon Rafman, reveal a changing perception and definition of the subliminal experience in the American landscape. In nineteenth-century landscape paintings, more specifically in romantic art, what appears to be the depiction of nature's mighty and terrible force, in essence, is the celebration of human reason and the …