Kunst – Garten – Natur: Perspektiven gartenkultureller Forschung zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts
Stefanie Hennecke & Gert Gröning (Ed.)
Dietrich Reimer Verlag GmbH, Berlin 2010
319 pp, illustrated in black and white
ISBN 978-3-496-01423-2
In Germany disciplines with historical or sociological approach to garden topics are at present underestimated and this makes them particularly vulnerable to reductions in personnel and financing. At the same time a considerable number of old professors in garden culture and open space planning have been replaced by a new generation.
It is in this context Stefanie Hennecke and Gert Gröning have published the anthology Kunst – Garten – Natur: Perspektiven gartenkultureller Forschung zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts (Art – Garden – Nature: Perspectives of Garden Cultural Research at the Beginning of the 21st century). The editors don’t want to survey the multiplicity of current research projects to the garden topic, nor do they want to deplore possible shortcomings in it. Instead they show how much garden research, and not only this discipline, can benefit from unusual perspectives and networking between the arts. The book contains fifteen very different articles by different authors.
In the first article “Gärten und Landschaftsarchitektur im Comic “ Joachim Wolschke Bulmahn choses a literary genre which has seldom been studied before concerning the garden topic. The author discovers considerable knowledge of garden-historical details and recognizes psychological aspects of gardening that you do not find in serious publications. According to Wolschke-Bulmahn the comic-strip as a medium could serve to circulate ideas of garden cultur among laymen better than scientific texts do.
Uwe Schneider’s representation “Die Verfügbarkeit von Quellenmaterial in der gartenkulturellen Forschung: Ein innereuropäischer Vergleich“ demonstrates the results of the basic research-project “STOLO”, submitted by Schneider and Gröning. In one volume each, literature and source listings for garden-historical research in a Western European country are listed and commentated. Three volumes have appeared so far, for Italy, Switzerland and Spain. These titanic works could become immeasurably helpful for future garden research.
With “Die Genese der Gartenkunst als Gattung im System der frühneuzeitlichen Künste“ Stefan Schweizer works with new conceptual instruments on a classical field of garden-historical research. Following Michel Foucault’s discourse theory Schweizer explains how the attempt to define garden design as an art made garden design become an activity based on drafting/drawing?? and an art indeed. The author refers to the separate discourses in different literary genres which as late as 1709 with Dézallier d’Argenville formed the common term of ”garden architecture“. According to Schweizer it is the undifferentiated use of this term that obstructs the integration of garden-historical topics into the art-historiographical canon.
In “Ornamentale Raumformeln in den französischen Tanz- und Gartenkünsten des späten 17. Jahrhunderts“ Oliver Perrier points out parallels between parterre-ornaments and ballet-steps of the 17th century. Particularly in the comparison of contemporary dance notations and drafts for parterres the author shows that both art forms, which at the time in question were of enormous social relevance, were based on related forms of spatial operative creation.
Annette Richard and David Yearsley lead thereupon into ”Spielräume der Musik im Los Angeles von Joe Wrights Film ‘The Soloist’ “. Their analysis focuses on the movie’s main theme from Beethoven’s Eroica. They show how tight the historical reviewers connoted their musical reception of the symphony and the concert hall with a feeling of nature and landscape parks. In “The Soloist” the question which place is adequate for an individual interpretation of the music becomes a main topic also. The analysis brings the authors to the question of contemporary park redesign in Los Angeles.
With “Die Äolsharfe. Ein Instrument zur Musikalisierung von Gärten im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert“ Martin Ullrich follows historical descriptions of the natural sound. The romantic effect of the aeolean harp the author attributes to its quasi auto-poetic sound production. In the philosophical-poetical attributes that were given to the aeolean harp Ullrich recognizes an equivalent to the search for the natural style in the garden theory of this time.
Sigrid Thielking thinks about “Das Jardineske in der Literatur”. She points out how descriptions of gardens, garden theories, gardening and the presentation of gardens found its way into literary fiction. Often the failure in the garden is scornfully described: Exaggerated expectations, dilettantism and failed presentations. Thielking does not only find them in the works of Heinrich Heine, Mark Twain, Gustave Flaubert and Vladimir Nabokov but also in the works of less famous writers like Beverley Nichols and Karel Čapek. Thielking’s excursions seem to prove that we are still far from any kind of garden text typology within fiction.
Jessica Ullrich turns to the recent art scene in “Gärten als Kunstwerke – Natur als Material und Medium der Kunst seit den 1990er Jahren“. Ullrich states an increased interest of artists in gardens since the 1990ies. The artists’ creations are often of a conceptual value which goes beyond that of conventional gardens. Virtual gardens like Ken Goldberg’s Telegarden, formed with a robot by an internet community, or the square plastic modules that can be combined to Anette Weisser’s and Ingo Vetter’s Teppich-Garten or Ines Doujak’s Siegesgärten in which seed-packets present political messages of environmental reference.
“Das prasialogische Buffet“ by Anastassia Bichàn is the description of an edible installation by the authoress during the conference Kunst – Garten – Natur, which formed the basis for the anthology. The term “prasialogy“ was introduced by Gert Gröning as a theory of garden elements as a basis for design. Bichàn arranged one ‘French garden’ and one ‘English garden’, in which a soup lake, mince-forests and an oasis of fried onions formed some of the savoury garden components.
Imperial Chinese gardens are the subject of the explanations “Ein Manifest politischer Autorität: der Wiederaufbau des Yiheyuan“ by Bianca Maria Rinaldi. Twice this garden nearby Peking was demolished by allied troops from England and France in order to destroy an important part of Chinese identity. But also the empress Cixi saw such a great political importance in this garden that she had it rebuilt twice in the years 1888 and 1903 with money that was intended for the improvement of the Chinese fleet. Yiheyuan was a symbol of her unimpaired claim to power.
Carolin Mees describes “Community Gardens in New York City: Privat-gemeinschaftlich genutzte öffentliche Gärten für innerstädtischen Wohnraum im Freien“ as a way of political argument. In the mid-1970’s the movement of the Community Gardens illegally occupied numerous fallow plots of land in the South Bronx in order to turn it into collective gardens. These actions were very successful and finally the local politicians were forced to make improvements in South Bronx, which started new conflicts when community gardens were to be destroyed for new buildings. From her analysis Mees votes for a legal right for a garden for each citizen.
In “Gärtnern wie Goethe – Überlegungen zu zeitgenössischen Trends im Garten-Design“ Anette Geiger asks for current design trends concerning private gardens. In a market analysis Geiger recognizes in the up-to-date lifestyle a longing for the simplicity of Biedermeier and of “genius loci as a reaction to the all-is-possible of global gardening. The authoress finds hints for her opinion in successful garden-journals and also in the reactivation of the historical Königliche Gärtnerlehranstalt in Berlin as a trendy garden center.
Effects of a new perspective on landscape are explained by Sonja Dümpelmann in “Der Blick von oben: entdeckte und versteckte Landschaft zwischen 1920 und 1960“. Dümpelmann shows an interrelation between traditional views on landscape after Uvedale Price, William Temple or John Claudius Loudon on the one hand, on the other hand the desire for modern landscape design and finally the militarily motivated desire for camouflage. These interrelations formed new demands and fields of activity for landscape architects.
Rainer Schmitz and Johanna Söhningen examine in their “Überlegungen zur Landschaftsgestaltung der völkischen Moderne, erläutert am Beispiel des Olympischen Dorfes der Sommerspiele von 1936 in Elstal“ how Werner March and Heinrich Friedrich Wiepking-Jürgensmann tried to combine militarism and national sport in their design of the olympic village. Their synthesis of the arts combined social Darwinism with Germanic myths.
Finally Gundula Lang leads us to “Baden für die Konjunktur. Das Waldfreibad Steinbachtalsperre der 1930er Jahre in der Eiffel“. Referring to the close linkage of open-air swimming with the Volkspark movement, Lang underlines some other important motives to build the open-air bath Steinbachtalsperre: As economic impulse in a remote region, as part of a new recreational area and as medium of political ideology during those years.
The editors want to show perspectives for future research by an extremely broad spectrum of topics which cover garden theory and source research, as well as market analysis, the current art scene, dances and music, imperial gardens of China, comics and much more. Sometimes you notice references between the essays transverse to the anthology’s systematization. Sometimes one feels provoked: Has enough research been done to draw this or that conclusion? Does this belong to serious garden studies? Often you will find yourself inspired to think about seemingly well-known gardens and theories in a new way. If the anthology evokes these kind of questions, it fulfills the editors’ claims.