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On Emma Stibbon’s alpine landscapes

 

«Statt Kunstwerke zu schaffen wird man die Natur in großem Maaße verschönern in ein paar Jahrhunderten Arbeit, um z.B. die A l p e n aus Ihren Ansätzen und Motiven der Schönheit zur Vollkommenheit zu führen.»
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1880

In Nietzsche’s rapturous words on the perfection of the Alps we have a wondrous vision of mountains. Between the Mediterranean and North Middle Europe the Alps form part of a legendary dream landscape of ideas, feeding our longing for a pure wonderland. The philosopher formulates a concept about a place for which the English had already coined the term «the playground of Europe».
Since the 18th century travellers, writers and artists have sought the wild and terrible beauty of nature as well as the picturesque and charming.The British artist Emma Stibbon is well aware of this charged history of ideas and yet her work engages directly with the forces of nature.
Stibbon’s images of glaciated mountains originate from her wanderings in the Swiss Alps and her view of the landscape is one of a person immersed in nature. In stark black and white monochrome she raises up ice fields from snow covered valleys, and her views from the summits show the observer the breathtaking height and breadth of the mountains’ grandeur. Working in wood she graphically depicts the contrast between the white snow and black rocks.
Stibbon shows the immense mountain landscape in a state of constant geological change; the monumental rendered fragile and fluid by erosion.She emphasises the implicit vulnerability of natural beauty at the mercy of tourist traffic and global change. Scientists believe the glaciers in the Swiss Alps will have largely disappeared by 2050 and completely disappeared by 2100. Whilst it provokes a sense of melancholy, Emma Stibbon’s work also urges us to contemplate the finiteness of this natural monument; whilst we may look at the protective white mantle of Firn snow covering the dark rocks, future generations will see barren, bare mountains.

 

Aeneas Bastian

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