Landscape Theory
I. Analog, or the Art of the Impression
“So, this is where you’re clearing to plant your new Piet Oudolf landscape?” She was wearing heels, even on this mid-summer weekend in the country.
His gesturing hand stopped short of the full wide sweep he had felt a moment ago. “It’s already planted,” he said, his voice unexpectedly defensive. Come see my new field garden in the Piet Oudolf ouvre, he had texted her. Field garden, such a fine phrase. “We excavated and reshaped the terrain last summer. Planted the anchoring specimens last fall, and this spring I had a full crew out establishing the perennial beds.”
He had meant to awe her critical mind with his painterly landscapes. He had intended to seduce her with his A-list stature as overlord of the genteel exurban woods. His face, turning, willed her eyes along the gauzy drifts of ornamental grasses, the bright spikes of high color among undulating mounds in dusty lavenders and rich purples, the brilliant dots of deep roses in textured greening. His profile stood proud beside hers, looking out over what he had accomplished in one year, directing excavations for the living canvas of his vision.
“It’s messy,” she said. She was a celebrated art critic with an acerbic, much-quoted wit. “Confusing. Too busy and distracting. My eye doesn’t know how to read it.”
His gesturing wrist dropped. “It will become Monet’s garden. Impressionistic.” He was a little surprised that she should need a docent. “Look along that line of sight—it’s Claude Monet’s ‘Sunrise’. Do you see it?”
She sniffed audibly, but he was prepared. He had rehearsed this, had chosen where they would stand for the best perspectives. “Look. In the middle distance. It’s the perfect week to see Renoir’s ‘The Bathers’ in the pale oranges of the poppies. Do you see those two reclining forms?”
He paused just long enough to cut in ahead of her reply. “Now—look there—along the far right—in the curve of the rise. It’s van Gogh’s ‘Wheatfield with Crows’. See how I strategically placed those curves of green between the golds to guide your eye along the path up the rise?” Seeing her hard bright eyes, he moved on, keeping his voice diffident. “I haven’t resolved the question of the crows. The black poppies I love are too transient to hold the proper effect.” It was indeed one of his current disappointments.
He pointed instead to the dots of pink dianthus. “And look, pointillism in the garden.”
“Pointillism is childish,” she countered, as if she were jotting notes for the full verbal slaying she would execute later. “There is no organizing principle. I fail to see a sense of order. It’s disturbing.”
As always, she had touched a knife to the heart of it. Through her eyes he saw how the meadow revealed his lust for all that was sensuous and lush with wild undisciplined beauty. How he stood exposed before her as a petty connoisseur of self-expression. How his sensibilities were all softness and ease. He was beginning to regret the Domaine Leflaive he had set to ripen in the kitchen.
She wasn’t finished. “Impressionism is so sentimental. Do you know what those Monets need? A complete coat of white, don’t you agree? Vary the stroke, vary the size of the brush if you must, as long as the coverage is total. Rest for the eye.”
He gathered himself. He knew the brutal minimalism of her beach house, and he reconsidered his weekend. Desire and rage rose in unison; he wanted to penetrate the hard surface of her icy perfection. “I promise you,” he managed, channeling the anticipated passion of the evening into a jokey, husky sarcasm, “when you have your turn at being Goddess of the Landscape, you yourself will choose the organizing principle. You will give us absolute clarity in black and white. You will be hard-edged. Bold. Binary. And we will worship you for it.”
She liked that. Hard as she was, she softened at that proffered ownership. She wanted it. She leaned so slightly toward him. He thought ahead to pouring the wine.
#
II. 01010011110
In another eon in the infinity of cosmic iterations, She strode into the singularity of Her own godhead. She was swift and clear. She called into existence two simple colors: a pure dead black that swallowed all light, and a subtle smoky tone of bone ash that read nearly white against the utter black, showcasing the absolute truth of Her brilliance. There would be nothing soft or misshapen or untidily organic in this perfection. No spirals, no fractals. No fuzzy edges or nuance or entanglements. Absolute linearity and right angles, lined up in crisp perfection. The clarity of no and yes.
This is how She conquered chaos. Her vegetative life forms grew in linear blocks, and She allowed the creative expression of landscape plantings bundled into boxy rectangular masses. The towering blocks of black on bone satisfied her as profoundly true in their pure perfect essence. There were no subtle allusions or crafty confusions, no impressions of something other than what was complete in itself. She was pleased.
She had one weakness. She could not tolerate stupidity and, yielding to that inclination, She allowed her sentient lifeforms to construct thoughts of their own. She should have been firmer. They began to push restlessly against Her principles. Seeking edges and limits, they boxed in their lives with ground-to-sky blackout or built institutions vacant as bone. They created smaller and smaller units of organization, approaching the dot of pointillism from which profane point, She could foresee, the blasphemy of an arc could uncurl.
It was a credit to Her omniscient design that She had imprinted the Black Square like an icon in their DNA, and they lacked the imagination to see possibilities beyond. It was a sign of Her wisdom that they saw the world in crisp edges, with the linearity of black and not-white. The cliffs were sharp and straight, and the flat ocean met the shore with relentless delineation. She was pleased. It was finished.
She settled at last into a peevish boredom, which She took as confirmation that She had achieved the immortality of changeless perfection. On Her daily morning walk in Her gardens, She observed him wandering, weaving unevenly through the avenues of clipped shrubbery, and in Her impeccable grace She invited him to tour Her gardens so that She might instruct him. She was pleased to see that he was neither servile nor flattered. Neither of them remembered a former time or conjunction.
“You see how, from this spot, the view in all directions appears to repeat the Black Square to infinity?” She breathed into his ear. “Do you see it?”
She was thinking of the critical acclaim Her work demanded, even if he had no knowledge of the Malevich painting she had chosen for Her inspiration from a former iteration of worlds. She showed him Her best views, sweeping Her hand in a wide gesture of ownership: the tall, stacked towers that broke open for the view beyond, where further towers locked in a relentless infinity of barrier and bone. She showed him the triumphant void of ash horizon in its boundless emptiness. She showed him the bleached cliffs edged crisply above a black unmoving sea. She presented the full gallery of Her immaculate genius and waited for the ritual acclaim.
“It bores me,” he said boldly.
“Ah, and you see you have said it yourself. There is nothing to change, nothing unsettling or confusing.” She breathed again. “It is done.”
Still, neither of them remembered.
#
He returned to the cliffs when the view was crowded with Her bored and restless creatures, queueing in search of entertainments. He walked among them as they streamed in blocky precision along the cliff edges. But he was not bored. He had seen something bold in the juxtaposition of high cliff and long drop to ground below, and he offered his critique to Her in a single act that would undo Her cosmos.
Cliffside, they all witnessed that vault into the air. They all followed that silent arc to its sharp shattering on the beach below. They all looked down on that soft settling of broken lines, neither quite dead black nor ashen.
Bold! Brave! Bravo! His existential leap, breaking through the strict bounds of Her principles, was hailed as astonishingly original.
The imitators were enthusiastic and incautious. Reenacting his breakthrough, the vault became a celebration of chaos and possibility. Among the connoisseurs, the favored spot was the high sharp cliff he himself had chosen, and they leaped in spectacular singles, in stylized duos, in choreographed groupings. Further south, his followers were messier. Everything that could be hauled or dragged was pushed over the cliff edge to heap into a broken confusion. Everywhere, edges blurred.
It was the new high art form. It was an impression of bathers at sunrise.
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About the Author:
Rhoda Weber Mack writes long-form fiction, creative nonfiction, shorts, and flash at a standup desk overlooking the tall pines of the Pacific Northwest where she is working on a series of linked story projects. She hikes backcountry dirt roads and travels widely in cyberspace.