Using Paintings for Problem-solving and Teaching Physical Geography: Examples from a Course in Coastal Management

Abstract Use of paintings in undergraduate courses is discussed to show their value in interpreting landscapes from the viewpoint of the physical sciences. Issues of realism and ways to distinguish evocative value from information value are evaluated. Paintings are used to (1) enliven lecture material, (2) test student knowledge and preconceptions, and (3) form the basis of term projects. Paintings reveal historic uses of coastal resources and changing cultural preferences and human values, and they reveal alterations that are of such small scale or local significance that they would be difficult to find in narrative accounts. Student projects evaluate landscape alterations revealed in works by the same artist or the artist's contemporaries or trace differences in alterations through time.

[1]  Leonardo Da Vinci and the Art of the Renaissance in Its Relations to Geography , 1909 .

[2]  E. Semple.  The Templed Promontories of the Ancient Mediterranean , 1927 .

[3]  M. A. Arber.  The coastal landslips of South-East Devon , 1940 .

[4]  With the "Doctor Boat" along the Greenland Coast , 1943 .

[5]  R. Rees.  John Constable and the Art of Geography , 1976 .

[6]  J. House.  Monet, nature into art , 1977 .

[7]  Charles S. Aiken.  Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County: Geographical Fact into Fiction , 1977 .

[8]  British Literary Landscapes: Review@@@Literary Landscapes of the British Isles: A Narrative Atlas , 1980 .

[9]  M. Moss,et al.  Landscape evaluation in environmental assessment and land use planning , 1980 .

[10]  E. Bunkše.  Humboldt and an Aesthetic Tradition in Geography , 1981 .

[11]  R. Rees.  Constable, Turner, and Views of Nature in the Nineteenth Century , 1982 .

[12]  Masters of 17th-century Dutch landscape painting , 1987 .

[13]  Art and the Art of Communicating Geographical Knowledge: The Case of Pieter Brueghel. , 1987 .

[14]  Early Penang Hill Station , 1987 .

[15]  S. Quoniam.  A Painter, Geographer of Arizona , 1988 .

[16]  Henry W. Lawrence,et al.  Origins of the Tree-Lined Boulevard , 1988 .

[17]  D. Cosgrove,et al.  The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments , 1989 .

[18]  K. Nordstrom,et al.  Perspectives on Resource Use of Dynamic Coastal Dunes , 1989 .

[19]  M. Bell.  Did New England Go Downhill , 1989 .

[20]  The South and the Midwest: Art Across America : Two Centuries of Regional Painting, 1710-1920 , 1990 .

[21]  Marine concrete technology , 1991 .

[22]  R. Cooke.  Common Ground, Shared Inheritance: Research Imperatives for Environmental Geography , 1992 .

[23]  A. Short.  Beach systems of the central Netherlands coast: Processes, morphology and structural impacts in a storm driven multi-bar system , 1992 .

[24]  Wolfgang G. Natter,et al.  PETS OR MEAT: CLASS, IDEOLOGY, AND SPACE IN ROGER & ME* , 1993 .

[25]  H. Lawrence.  The Greening of the Squares of London: Transformation of Urban landscapes and Ideals , 1993 .

[26]  Geosciences and the Arts , 1994 .

[27]  Monet on the Normandy coast : tourism and painting, 1867-1886 , 1994 .

[28]  Michael Charlesworth,et al.  FIELDS OF VISION: LANDSCAPE IMAGERY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES , 1994, Landscape Journal.

[29]  Winslow Homer , 1995, American Art.

[30]  K. Olwig.  Recovering the substantive nature of landscape , 1996, The Meanings Of Landscape.

[31]  B. Wallach.  Painting, Art History, and Geography , 1997 .

[32]  M. Gandy.  Contradictory Modernities: Conceptions of Nature in the Art of Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter , 1997 .

[33]  S. Koff.  The Role of the Arts in Undergraduate Education. , 1999 .

[34]  Time in Space: Narrative in Classical Art , 1999 .

[35]  R. Morgan.  Preferences and priorities of recreational beach users in Wales, UK , 1999 .

[36]  R. Balm.  Expeditionary Art: an Appraisal* , 2000 .

[37]  D. Mcglashan.  Beaches and dunes of developed coasts , 2001 .