Document Type

Book

Publication Date

1999

Abstract

The big sky of the American West has the striking effect of focusing the viewer’s attention on both land and sky. On America’s Great Plains and High Desert, the sky dominates, forcing the eye away from the traditional Judeo-Christian vertical orientation and toward the horizon, generating a remarkable sense of balance. American Western narrative carries this story of balance and possibility. The Westerner finds himself accepting the landscape, indeed drawing upon it for physical and spiritual sustenance. Even the most imposing of surfaces—the landscape of eastern Utah or of the Dakota badlands—share a vulnerability with man as evidenced by erosion, but at the same time they offer a visible stability compared to the temporality of his threescore and ten. Man is not alien here; the physical world is part of who he is.

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