Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Anderson, Kim

Area of Concentration

Art

Abstract

Broke Down and Broke narrates a sporadic West bound road trip through a series of landscape paintings that foreground the wild and absurd ways humans and nature interact. As a concept, the road trip is a continuation of romantic sentiments concerning nature that were popularized by 19th-century American landscape painting. The representation of humans in the landscape was carefully staged to align with a rhetoric of nation building anchored in American exceptionalism, resulting in distilled visions of nature that continue to influence modern values. Broke Down and Broke subverts landscape traditions and highlights the absurd, resulting in a distinct representation of the ways humans and nature interact in sometimes hazardous, and sometimes foolish, but always delightful ways.

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