“This is not a Landscape”: Circulating Reference and Land Shaping

A look at a definition of landscape in an ordinary dictionary reveals that landscape can mean both a representation of a scene (pictorial scenery) and that which might be thus represented, as when “a portion of territory that can be viewed at one time from one place” is represented in a painting of, for example, “natural inland scenery” or as “a particular area of activity: SCENE”: Landscape is thus both a form of representation and something that is represented. This raises issues, I will argue, concerning the historical and present day character of the interrelationship between the representation and that represented.