building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

Numerous pictures of these events exist, but it was the artist, John Stewart Curry
(1897‐1946), who has left us a plausible, but rather extrovert version of these
events, in a painting of the Oklahoma land rush as a moment of collective
exhibitionism and a rush towards dreams, which were often shattered by inability
or difficulties.
However, the frontier landscape [Figures 128‐129] was not merely a longing for
fortune, thought o be found placed in land or in gold, and the people who lived
there did not even mirror the simplistic image of Indians and gun fighters portrayed
by the “dime novels”. There was also space for moments of contemplation and
reflection. It was in the first half of the century that the habit began of stopping the
train on viaducts, such as the Starrucca (1848), to allow passengers and tourists to
admire the view.
The Starrucca viaduct was a major railroad infrastructure of the eighteenth century,
built near Lanesboro, Pennsylvania, which was to become a well‐known subject of
paintings thanks to its considerable size. With a framework over 300m‐long,
standing on seventeen stone arches, it immediately became the symbol of progress.
As Nicoletta Leonardi has highlighted “it became an unfailing step in the growing
tourist industry, which was developing as a result of the rapid advance of the
railroad.” 265
Before the steam engine was invented, “the invention of the horse” could not really
support either the desire to get to know and explore new territories, or the
expansionist push which followed the first moves towards the Pacific coast. The
Pony Express and stagecoaches were soon replaced by the telegraph and railroad,
which began to score the landscape in long straight lines.
Nevertheless, if the means of transport par excellence was the machine, the real
object of interest was inevitably the uncontaminated environment of the American
forests.
In a continually evolving situation such as the one described, the sublimation of
nature and the wilderness was mainly due to the work of artists, whom the new
265 LEONARDI, Nicoletta, Il paesaggio americano dell’Ottocento, pittori fotografi e pubblico, [The
American landscape of the nineteenth century, painters, photographers and the public] Rome,
Donzelli editore, 2003, p. 37 [English text translated from Italian by the editor]
169