Art or Indulgence?

[vinteuil]

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... the 'English' landscape garden has always 'involved' things like bridges, statues, follies, grottoes, temples, and other non-plant things -

https://www.google.com/search?q=stou...w=1366&bih=609.

https://www.google.com/search?q=painshill+park&rlz=1CAIUCU_enGB828&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwjNotCWx8rhAhWNJTQIHW3rDf0Q_AUIDygC&biw=1366&bih=609

... and, doversoul, does not the Japanese garden also involve much 'non-plant' stuff - gravel, stones, temples?

I've not seen the Chihuly at Kew ( ... lordy, it's ferociously expensive to go to Kew these days! "I remember when it was one [old] penny!"... ) - but saw some of his work at the V&A and liked it - and certainly the Kew pieces looked splendid on the local tele news last night...

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[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I may be arguing for the sake or argument but does this also apply to publicly funded gardens?

I don't see why not - and most of the Parks I know have some sort of "furniture" and/or "ornament". Certainly the Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh and Logan, and Harlow Carr have them, as well as the RHS annual Flower Show at Chelsea.

[eighthobstruction]

....all verey well....but its codswallop innit....I would have said b^^^^x but....David Shrigleys take on botanical drawings would be perhaps interesting....or David Shrigley Day in the Life of Kew Gardens....Dale Chihuly just a more refined sort of English Jeff Koons....<[still the expertise in making is fantastic]>

Anyone see the Sean Scully "I'm a meglomaniac and I don't care"programmeBBC2 last Sat....given enough rope and by the end he had very definitely hung himself....but he doesn't care....

[french frank]

... the 'English' landscape garden has always 'involved' things like bridges, statues, follies, grottoes, temples, and other non-plant things

Up to a point. Though I'm not sure that such features were intended to do more than embellish the natural landscape. They were not intended to be the chief objects of admiration. The glass artworks seem intended to be the main draw - where artifice takes over from nature? Do they enhance or detract/distract from the plants? (And does that matter, anyway?)

[Serial_Apologist]

....all verey well....but its codswallop innit....I would have said b^^^^x but....David Shrigleys take on botanical drawings would be perhaps interesting....or David Shrigley Day in the Life of Kew Gardens....Dale Chihuly just a more refined sort of English Jeff Koons....<[still the expertise in making is fantastic]>

Anyone see the Sean Scully "I'm a meglomaniac and I don't care"programmeBBC2 last Sat....given enough rope and by the end he had very definitely hung himself....but he doesn't care....

Yes I did, and was tempted to mention it here, but have been too busy to get my mind around either his work or his character. Not previously having heard of Scully for some reason, (despite myself being an unreconstructed Modernist), I preferred the recentish work - the stripes, the textural effects, particularly how adjacent colourings left in the broad brush get spun into neighbouring blocs, as well as the crudeish approach to Mondrian stylings - to the cold machine-like precisioned work of the big paintings resembling trellis or lattice work from the 1980s which, like some Op Art, I don't really get. I also liked the early post-Impressionist figure paintings, a style he has returned to in the paintings of his son. There's irony in the fact that he makes so much money for himself out of what he does: on the one hand it doesn't seem to have gone to his head in terms of eschewing a fairly austere lifestyle - he must incur large renting charges for the premises scattgered around the globe, as well presumably as having to pay out for employing people in the construction of the monolithic sculptures we saw - while on the other hand he seems not to be the sort of person one would want to get into a disagreement with.

[Serial_Apologist]

Up to a point. Though I'm not sure that such features were intended to do more than embellish the natural landscape. They were not intended to be the chief objects of admiration. The glass artworks seem intended to be the main draw - where artifice takes over from nature? Do they enhance or detract/distract from the plants? (And does that matter, anyway?)

Some of the exhibits shown on yesterday's lunchtime news DID detract for me, in a gaudy, "Look at me" kind of way. Eighth's comparison with Jeff Coons is about right, ime: ostentatious ornaments, rather than sculptures. I think seeing them up close would tend to enhance that impression.

[vinteuil]

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... the 'English' landscape garden has always 'involved' things like bridges, statues, follies, grottoes, temples, and other non-plant things -

https://www.google.com/search?q=stou...w=1366&bih=609.

https://www.google.com/search?q=painshill+park&rlz=1CAIUCU_enGB828&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwjNotCWx8rhAhWNJTQIHW3rDf0Q_AUIDygC&biw=1366&bih=609

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Up to a point. Though I'm not sure that such features were intended to do more than embellish the natural landscape. They were not intended to be the chief objects of admiration.

... the eighteenth century landscape garden was a deliberate evocation of a Poussin / Claude imagining of a Greek / Roman arcadia. The temples were a primary feature, not just an 'embellishment'.

"The lake at Stourhead is artificially created. Following a path around the lake is meant to evoke a journey similar to that of Aeneas's descent in to the underworld. In addition to Greek mythology, the layout is evocative of the "genius of the place", a concept expounded by Alexander Pope. Buildings and monuments are erected in remembrance of family and local history. Henry Hoare was a collector of art; one of his pieces was Claude Lorrain's Aeneas at Delos, which is thought to have inspired the pictorial design of the gardens. Passages telling of Aeneas's journey are quoted in the temples surrounding the lake... "


https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/p...eneas-at-delos.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stourhead#/media/File:Stourhead_garden.jpg

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stourhead

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[doversoul1]

vinteuil and ferneyhoughgeliebte
Kew gardens are not ornamental gardens that are meant to be admired as designed places. It is a place where people go to see living plants from all over the world. This looks to me like plonking down some statues of imaginary animals (with AI) in London Zoo.

And as for Japanese gardens, if some extravagant objects are placed in an already established garden, I expect it will be considered to be unspeakably bad taste.

[vinteuil]

Yes I did, and was tempted to mention it here, but have been too busy to get my mind around either his work or his character. Not previously having heard of Scully ... // ... he seems not to be the sort of person one would want to get into a disagreement with.

... I liked Rachel Campbell-Johnson's line in her review, describing how he "rose to artistic fame through the sheer pugilistic power of his self-belief."

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[ardcarp]

As for the thread title, why not Art and Indulgence? Not mutually exclusive really.

Or has someone already suggested that?

[vinteuil]

vinteuil and ferneyhoughgeliebte
Kew gardens are not ornamental gardens that are meant to be admired as designed places. It is a place where people go to see living plants from all over the world..

... what!

Kew is many things. Yes, it is a Botanical Garden.

But it also has its Pagoda, Japanese Gateway and Minka, Temples of Arethusa and Bellona, Ruined Arch, Ice-House...

It is a palimpsest of what people over the last few hundred years thought a 'garden' ought to be, It's much more than just "a place where people go to see living plants from all over the world. "

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-47910451

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[oddoneout]

vinteuil and ferneyhoughgeliebte
Kew gardens are not ornamental gardens that are meant to be admired as designed places. It is a place where people go to see living plants from all over the world. This looks to me like plonking down some statues of imaginary animals (with AI) in London Zoo.

And as for Japanese gardens, if some extravagant objects are placed in an already established garden, I expect it will be considered to be unspeakably bad taste.

The two things are not mutually exclusive and in fact garden design, and the creation of structures, can do much to increase the appreciation of the plants, and the well-being of the 'exhibits'. If it was only intended to be a workplace then, for instance, the fancy glasshouses(ancient and modern) wouldn't be needed, just industrial glass acreage. It has a long history as a place of general enjoyment that doesn't require horticultural knowledge to appreciate, although such knowledge undoubtedly adds to the experience.
The Wiki entry makes for useful reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kew_Gardens
I too remember when it was cheap to enter. It was my refuge as a student during the scorching summer of 1976. I'd catch a bus to one of the turnstile side entrances and head down to the wooded areas to sleep the afternoon away ready to resume activities once evening brought the temperature down marginally.

[MrGongGong]

vinteuil and ferneyhoughgeliebte
Kew gardens are not ornamental gardens that are meant to be admired as designed places. It is a place where people go to see living plants from all over the world. This looks to me like plonking down some statues of imaginary animals (with AI) in London Zoo.

And as for Japanese gardens, if some extravagant objects are placed in an already established garden, I expect it will be considered to be unspeakably bad taste.

It sounds like you want Kew Gardens to be something other than the thing that it is?
I think (and i'm not an expert on garden design) that there is a big difference between a garden that you look at from outside and one that you walk through (and several others)....

Also, you seem to be imagining that sculpture that draws on natural forms is somehow meant to be the thing it draws on ?

When I visited Tokyo I was struck by these kinds of things



La Mer isn't the sea itself or even a recording of the sea or even a molecular analysis of the contents of the sea
ALL of these are valid and different

[Serial_Apologist]

... what!

Kew is many things. Yes, it is a Botanical Garden.

But it also has its Pagoda, Japanese Gateway and Minka, Temples of Arethusa and Bellona, Ruined Arch, Ice-House...

It is a palimpsest of what people over the last few hundred years thought a 'garden' ought to be, It's much more than just "a place where people go to see living plants from all over the world. "

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Vints is right:

"The Royal Botanic Gardens have three principal origins: Kew Palace, its gardens planted in 1696 by Sir Henry and Lady Capel, and the park of Richmond Palace to the north. George II lived at Richmond Lodge, with his son Frederick and daughter-in-law Princess Augusta nearby at Kew House. All that now remains of the Hanoverian retreat is Kew House, renamed Kew Palace. It was here that the Capel family planted the first specimen trees in the late seventeenth century.

"Kew Gardens now cover 121 ha (300 acres), forming an extensive park held by the bends of the river Thames. The river also gives views of Syon Park ... in the west. As a museum of landscape and botanical speciment Kew is unsurpassed, containing specimens collected over two centuries.

"In the mid-nineteenth century Princess Augusta's eighteenth-century gardens at Kew (derived from the work of William Chambers) and Queen Charlotte's gardens at Richmond Lodge (by Capability Brown) passed to the state, under the charge of the great botanist Sir William Hooker (1841-65) and his son Joseph (1865-85).

"In the first five years of Sir William's directorship the gardens expanded from 4.5 to 31ha (11 to 76 acres), and W A Nesfield (father of W E Nesfield) later laid out the four major vistas (Pagoda Vista, Broad Walk, Holly Walk and Cedar Vista) and designed the picturesque lake (1845) and the pond in front of the Palm House (1847). The gardens now became a repository of the world's botanical species, with a research laboratory and separate houses for orchids, alpine plants, ferns, cacti and so on. The cataloguing spirit of the Victorian age is exemplified by the Palm House (1844-8), containing every know variety of palm. An excellent map and guidebook are available at the entrance..." (A Guide to the Architecture of London, (1992), E Jones and C Woodward, Weidenfelt & NIcholson, London, PP 369,370).

[doversoul1]

OK. I concede to that (Kew being more than one thing) but I still think this is an easy attraction. Well of course you (one) can say ‘what’s wrong with that? It draws more visitors to the place’. Ah well. David Bowie prom.