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Prairie Prospects: The Aesthetics of Plainness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

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The ways American prairie landscapes have been used and understood, since the first Euro-American encounters with them in the early 19th century, are inseparable from how they have been seen and described. The converse is no less true for pictorial depictions and verbal accounts. Far from being disassociated, the differing actions of perception and utilization are in fact interdependent, and as such have had far-reaching consequences for human interaction with the prairie landscape itself and for the subject of prairies as it is presented in literature and art. Although it is not often acknowledged, aesthetics lie at the heart of any discussion of the landform, even in policy debates over agricultural practices or proposals to restore a tract to native grasses. And just as critical, the land's use (or disuse) directly informs its representation in written or visual portrayals, whether these concern virgin territory or cultivated terrain.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

NOTES

1. Cosgrove, Denis E., Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (London: Croom Helm, 1984), 9.Google Scholar

2. Similar assertions have been made for landscape generally, in a theoretical framework by Cosgrove (Social Formation).

3. For more on this aesthetic see Carlson, Allen, “On Appreciating Agricultural Landscapes,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43 (Spring 1985): 301–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a discussion of approaches to prairie ecology see Tobey, Ronald C., Saving the Prairies: The Life Cycle of the Founding School of American Plant Ecology, 1895–1955 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).Google Scholar

4. In art history the lack of studies focusing on prairie imagery is in part due to the historical preference for monographs on an artist's production, or on stylistic or regional designations of a particular subject (that is, Baroque landscape, English, and so on). Even in recent American art history, however, where methodologies have proliferated and landscape has been especially favored, prairie landscapes are either ignored or subsumed within discussions of western art. Most recent art historical treatments of prairie landscapes have been from Canadian sources, especially Ronald Rees, although an exception is Kinsey, Joni L., Plain Pictures: Images of the American Prairies (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1996).Google Scholar Literary and geographical studies of prairies include those by Thacker, Robert, The Great Prairie Fact and Literary Imagination (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Olson, Steven, The Prairie in Nineteenth-Century American Poetry (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Madsen, John, Where the Sky Began: Land of the Tallgrass Prairie (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982)Google Scholar; and Manning, Richard, Grassland: The History, Biography, Politics, and Promise of the American Prairie (New York: Viking, 1995).Google Scholar

5. These definitions are paraphrased from the Oxford English Dictionary, 1971 edition.Google Scholar

6. Landscape here and throughout this essay refers to the idea of land within human history and understanding, its depiction in both literature and visual art, and, as well, the actual land itself and the uses to which it is put.

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24. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, The Correspondence of Emerson and Carlyle, ed. Slater, Joseph (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 470.Google Scholar

25. See the following Atlantic Monthly articles: “Illinois in Spring-time,” 2 (09 1858): 475–88Google Scholar; “The New World and the New Man,” 2 (10 1858): 513–31Google Scholar; “The Prairie State,” 7 (05 1861): 579–95Google Scholar; “Pioneering,” 19 (04 1867): 403–16Google Scholar; and “How We Grow in the Great Northwest,” 23 (04 1869): 438–48.Google Scholar

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27. “Ogden,” 17.Google Scholar

28. “Atwood,” 213–16.Google Scholar

29. “Palmer,” 293–98.Google Scholar

30. “Allison,” 373–80.Google Scholar

31. “Chicago Board of Trade,” 405–9.Google Scholar

32. Cronon, William, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 120.Google Scholar

33. Garland, Hamlin, Boy Life on the Prairie (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), 416.Google Scholar

34. Williams, Raymond, The Country and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 120.Google Scholar

35. There have been many studies of the Chicago Renaissance. Recent works that are especially useful for their insight into the relationships between aesthetics, prairies, and economics are Bray, Robert C., Rediscoveries: Literature and Place in Illinois (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Engel, J. Ronald, Sacred Sands: The Struggle for Community in the Indiana Dunes (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Hurt, James, Writing Illinois: The Prairie, Lincoln, and Chicago (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992)Google Scholar; and Wills, Garry, “Sons and Daughters of Chicago,” New York Review of Books 41 (06 9, 1994): 5259.Google Scholar

36. Quick, Herbert, Vandermark's Folly (1922; rept. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1992), 111–13.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., 228–29.

38. Ibid.

39. Iowa Department of Natural Resources, “What is HF 620 and Iowa's Natural Beauty?” Open Spaces (04 1988): 34Google Scholar; and “REAP Act Means Brighter Future for Iowa's Diverse Environment” and “Iowa Open Spaces Protection Plan,” REAP (09/10 1989).Google Scholar

40. Stone, Larry, “Prairie's Economic Impact Eyed,” Metro/Iowa Des Moines Register, 05 10, 1991, 5.Google Scholar

41. Stone, Larry, “Prairie Protection Proposal Satisfies Few,” Metro/Iowa Des Moines Register, 10 4, 1991, 5.Google Scholar

42. This issue is extensively discussed by the “New Western Historians,” most notably by Limerick, Patricia Nelson, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: North, 1987).Google Scholar

43. Peck, J. L. E., Montzheimer, O. H., and Miller, William J., Past and Present of O'Brien and Osceola Counties, Iowa (Indianapolis Ind.: B. F. Bowen, 1914), 1: 72, 178.Google Scholar

44. Perkins, D. A. W., History of O'Brien County, Iowa, from Its Organization to the Present Time (Sioux Falls, S.D.: Brown and Saenger, 1897), 9697.Google Scholar

45. Ibid., 72.

46. Woods, Roma Wheeler, “Reminiscences of Early Pioneer Days in O'Brien County,”Google Scholar in Peck, et al. Past and Present, p. 221.Google Scholar

47. “Iowa From Above,” Des Moines Register 05 6, 1991Google Scholar, sec. T, 1–2,

48. Mart's work can be compared with the aerial views of crops taken during the same period for the Department of Agriculture. But since they were taken from higher elevations, with no efforts at framing or selection, they do not have the same visual appeal. Moreover, their purpose was economic and administrative and emphasized the value of the land through its human habitation and cultivation. More recently, however, aerial photographs of farmland have been increasingly appreciated aesthetically, at least by photographers. See Gerster, Georg, Amber Waves of Grain: America's Farmlands from Above (New York: Harper Weldon, Owen, 1990).Google Scholar

49. Ibid., 207.

50. Ibid., 216.

51. Peck, et al. , Past and Present, 177–78.Google Scholar

52. George Taylor to Iowa Natural Resource Commission, undated, Waterman Prairie public comment file, Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

53. Bryant, Scott to Iowa Natural Resource Commission, 09 22, 1991Google Scholar, Waterman Prairie public comment file, Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

54. Bruce T. Stiles to Iowa Natural Resource Commission, September 6, 1991, Waterman Prairie public comment file, Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

55. Lovell, Jan, “She Fought to Save Iowa's Prairies,” Iowan (Winter 1987): 2227, 56, 57Google Scholar; and H, Adaayden, “State Parks and Preserves,” Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science 51 (1944): 4348.Google Scholar

56. Hayden, , “State Parks,” 48.Google Scholar

57. Cited in Lovell, , “She Fought,” 23, 56.Google Scholar

58. Perry and De An Thostenson to Iowa Natural Resource Commission, September 24, 1991, Waterman Prairie public comment file, Iowa Department of Natural Resources; quoting Leopold, Aldo, A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation from Round River (New York: Ballantine, 1966), 190.Google Scholar

59. Harrison Fisch, Testimony before the Iowa Natural Resources Commission, Iowa Natural Resource Commission Minutes, May 1991, 45–49.

60. Gene Wiese, President Iowa Cattlemen's Association, to Young, Richard C., 09 18, 1991Google Scholar, Waterman Prairie public comment file, Iowa Department of Natural Resources: Iowa Natural Resources Commission Minutes, October 1991.

61. Peck, et al. Past and Present, 178.Google Scholar

62. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, United States Census of Agriculture, part 15, various years.

63. Ibid.

64. Fisch testimony, 48; and Daniel M. Otto, Department of Economics at Iowa State University, “Economic Impact of Creating a Wildlife Preserve in Emmet and Dickinson Counties,” unpublished report.

65. Nelson, Tom V. to Field, John D., 09 16, 1991Google Scholar, Waterman Prairie public comment file, Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

66. Letter to the Editor from the Sutherland Area Prairie Study Committee, Sutherland Courier, 06 20, 1991.Google Scholar

67. Fisch testimony, 48.

68. Ibid., 46–47.

69. Ibid., 48.

70. Editorial, “Getting the Facts on Prairies,” Des Moines Register, 09 29, 1991.Google Scholar

71. Cindy Hildebrand, Testimony to the Iowa Natural Resource Commission, Iowa natural Resources Commission Minutes, October 1991, 89.

72. Fisch, Harrison, Editorial, “Iowa's Prairies Heritage: Another View,” Des Moines Register, 09 8, 1991, 3.Google Scholar

73. Stone, , “Prairie's Economic Impact Eyed.”Google Scholar