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These
paintings became a way to explore how driving in weather shifts and changes
the views outside the car as well how the driving experience informs our
basic interpretation of environment. We easily understand how painting
can mold cultural perception, which in turn influences landscape design
to become more like painting (view points, scenic routes, etc.). Theodore
Rousseau created mesmerizing sunsets of the forest of Fontainebleau while
JMW Turner stirred up interest in dramatic effects of storm and fire from
the safety of the salon. Painting functions as an indexical reference
for a type of experienced reality as well as its own self-enforcing, gratifying
sensation. As in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological interpretation
of reality, breaks or distortions only serve to expose and justify the
notion of an experienced external reality. In the case of driving, the
abstraction and distortion of the water are indexical to the windshield
(as smoke can be traced to fire). The result is that painting, per se,
can summon a pre-verbal experience- slipping outside of static referents
and into a gestalt of sensation, both fixed and fluid. |
