M A P P
Kim Boske
I N G
On trees and men
Erik A. de Jong
1. I am sitting on a chair in the waiting room. The room is light and contemporary. When I look around, I notice that the walls of this fair-sized room are covered with photographs, depicting nature, or rather, more specifically, trees. The monumental photograph right in front of me provides a window to a grove of trees, branches and leaves, and the light that is shining through. It feels as if one is standing in de middle of a forest, amongst the branches, instead of in front of them.
This inner world of green, with touches of brown, yellow and blue, pulls you inside. There is a mysterious, isolated atmosphere, as if you are not supposed to look into it. Nature presents herself, as she is, so it seems, without human interference, having her own vital force, her own age, chaotic yet coherent. However, there is something strange going on: the image seems to be out of focus. When taking a closer look, I notice that different images of the very same compilation of trees have been projected on top of one other. They melt together, creating a new world that pictures reality all the same, yet seen from a different point of view. The overlapping layers bring the photograph to life. At first it seems a unity of touches and tones, at second sight I see a composition of branches and ultimately I discover movement, life. After observing even somewhat longer I realise that movement, colours, branches and leaves all appear simultaneously, that they manifest their universality in all directions and in all dimensions. The beauty of this is not a shape that intends to be ‘beautiful’ in the sense of pleasant or charming. The image had rather be called impressive, since the photograph reveals the composite, vital powers of trees. Some photographs show solitary trees, rooted in the landscape, some predominantly show blossoms. All these trees have been photographed from various points of view. Their different sides that have been projected on top of one other, do not show a true to nature representation of the tree, but they record the essence of the tree as a universal organism in the landscape, between the earth and heaven above. The trees depicted on these photographs take across vital nature and they reveal change, being the essence of organic existence by means of their movement. Together, the photographs on the walls of the waiting room evoke a dimension that is many times larger than the room itself. They intrinsically represent the essence of trees everywhere, being an individual, a grove, being nature and landscape.
Every single month I am sitting in this waiting room that is located at the Oncology ward in the Amsterdam Academic Medical Centre (AMC). I share the room with other people, together we wait, with our own diagnoses, amidst the landscapes of trees. Behind her, in the oncologist’s consulting room, a photograph of a solitary tree hangs on the wall. The tree spreads out his branches powerfully and monumentally, his universality gives life to the sterile room, and I realise: he is standing out there, over there, like other trees are standing everywhere in the landscape, in the city, in parks and in gardens. This single tree takes me to my own vitality — he mirrors the essence of life and change, an essence that I once again became aware of after having undergone heavy surgery. For a man, one of whose earliest memories is of walking, as a threeyear-old, in a rural estate park, under monumental trees, this vitality connects his early existence with today, an indissoluble tie between the tree and myself. The oncologist replies to my question that all the photographs in the ward are taken by Kim Boske, photographer.
2. ‘Plum blossoms, whether light or dark, and in particular red plum blossoms, fill me with happiness. I also like a slender branch of cherry blossoms, with large petals and dark red leaves’, the Japanese lady-in-waiting Sei Shōnagon (born in 965 AD) writes in the Pillow Book, her candid diary with many personal observations regarding the life she experiences around her.1 Trees are key players in her notes. Notes of which the intimate and highly individual powers of expression go unequalled in world literature
since. She dedicates separate paragraphs to trees, e.g. ‘Flowering Trees’, (from which the opening quote derives), and the longer chapter called ‘Trees’. The tree is a subject of observation, it inspires to a sense of beauty, every single tree tells a story, shares an experience. Trees are part of the landscape she often travels through. A scenery in which she can discern several kinds of trees, grouped together, on the plains and on the hills, creating a sublime effect. Not seldom the tree and its blossoms are attached to the season that they expose: blossoms mean the end of winter, and they proclaim spring with its early, middle and late phase. Colouring leaves announce autumn, and all its phases. Trees are time itself, one can read off the cycle of weeks, months, years. Trees and blossoms determine atmosphere, and thus they are essential for sensing and experiencing nature and scenery: ‘At the end of the Fourth Month and the beginning of the Fifth [i.e. summer], the orange trees have dark green leaves and are covered with brilliant white flowers. In the early morning, when they have been sprinkled with rain, one feels that nothing in the world can match their charm; and, if one is fortunate enough to see the fruit itself, standing out like golden spheres among the flowers, it looks as beautiful as the most magnificent of sights, the cherry blossoms damp with morning dew.’ The orange tree (Citrus sinensis L.) which she can see growing in the mountains, is closely connected to birdlife. In this case the hototogisu (Cuculus poliocephalus, one of the cuckoo species), with its characteristic call: ho-to-to. Trees and birds are so intertwined that they have become the subject of a great deal of Japanese poetry. For instance the mythological phoenix, with its robe of feathers of black, white, red, azure and yellow, belongs to the purple blossoms of the Paulownia (Pauwlonia tomentosa). This tree is the one in which he, according to original Chinese mythology, makes his nest, the place of his miraculous destruction and resurrection. If only because
of this, the tree inspires awe in Sei Shōnagon, in spite of her dislike regarding the broad leaves that become heart shaped when they open up. But since the tree also provides the timber for the koto, a string instrument producing lovely sounds, she cannot but come to the conclusion that she is not in the position of either approving or disapproving of this particular tree as she may do of other trees: this tree is not ravishing: it is resplendent. Sei Shōnagon comments on every single part of trees. This shows that she is a keen observer in great detail, a botanist nearly, had this discipline already been developed at the time. She doesn’t only look into the blossoms, but also into their foliage, their (capricious) branches and manner of growing, their sometimes modest, unspectacular appearances that nevertheless give reason to admire the tree due to the position and the colour of its leaves. Their names and use are often connected to religious festivities, and they evoke numerous associations in her about trees and rituals. The tree adds greatly to the aesthetics of nature: when, in the 5th month, the hinoki cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa) drips of dew, he produces the sound of rain, as the wind rustles through the branches. The white oak (Quercus aliena), standing far away in the hills, creates the illusion of its branches being perpetually snow-clad. The attention of the author can also be attracted by the leaves of a tree used for dyeing an exceptional kind of fabric, or timber that is being delivered to build a palace. The recollection of the nature of trees is mainly to be found in poetry: it is poetry which provides Sei Shōnagon with the main references for her own observations, associations and expressions. The tradition of observing nature can in this way both be commented on and be renewed: ever-present trees connect the elder and younger generations with one another.
3. Shōnagons observations show the intensity and intimacy of the ties between a tree and a human being. The tree is part of the landscape, supplier of materials, pigments and fruits, he is associated with religious ideas and customs, is subject of poetry and painting, is central in creating a garden. Trees constitute a living history book, their growth displays the passing of time, of seasons, of years. Every single tree refers to one of the same kind which grows elsewhere, either nearby or far off, standing alone as well as in a grove, being part of an abundantly natural diversity. Roots, trunks, barks, branches, leaves, blossoms, fruits, seeds and odours provide a source of beauty and experience. Having all these qualities, the tree plays a key role in many traditions that make a feature of nature and landscape in imagination, representation and custom. In the north of France the 12th century theologian and poet Alain de Lille wrote: ‘Omnis mundi creatura, quasi liber et pictura, nobis est in speculum.’ (‘All creation in the world, is, like book and illustration, a mirror for us.’) The tree mirrors, probably best of all, the upright man, with the earth at his feet, and heaven above his crown. The tree, depicted as an allegorical mirror, has been beautifully portrayed by the early Christian S. Johannes Chrysostom (5th century, also called Pseudo Chrysostom) in his Sixth Homily for the Holy Week. The tree is the Cross of Christ, but the simile also makes clear all the metaphorical and literal functions that a tree could have in an non-Christian framework, and this very fact makes the text all the more expressive: ‘This Tree is my eternal salvation. It is my nourishment and my banquet. Amidst its roots I cast my own roots deep: beneath its boughs I grow and expand, reveling in its sigh as in the wind itself. Flying from the burning heat, I have
pitched my tent in its shadow, and have found a resting-place of dewy freshness. I flower with its flowers; its fruits bring perfect joy — fruits which have been preserved for me since time’s beginning, and which now I freely eat. This Tree is a food, sweet food, for my hunger, and a fountain for my thirst; it is a clothing for my nakedness; its leaves are the breath of life. (…) If I fear God, this is my protection; if I stumble, this is my support; it is the prize for which I fight and the reward of my victory. This is my straitened path, my narrow way; (…) This Tree, vast as heaven itself, rises from earth to the skies, a plant immortal, set firm in the midst of heaven and earth, base of all that is, foundation of the universe, support of this world of men, binding-force of all creation, holding within itself all the- mysterious essence of man.’2 The tree described by Chrysostom refers, in all his qualities, also to the tree of trees: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the biblical paradise. A tree in the garden of gardens that determined the fate of the first human couple by revealing knowledge and sin to them, the cross that, whilst being a tree, saved humanity of that very sin. But all the details of the description have also been taken from trees in the visible world, trees that cast shades, provide food, give joy and which, in their growth and power, connect humans with the living nature and the life energy that they share. If one, while reading this early Christian text, imagines a dry and warm landscape, in which trees are a rare occurrence, then one is more capable to imagine how, in various civilizations, the tree really is a tree of life. Due to his vitality and surviving powers, amidst the elements, the tree provides a shelter, a magical object of religious and mythological devotion. Therefore, trees often are sacred places one can find all over the world. The Ancient Greeks and Romans had their holy trees and forests, as for example, the Zeus’ oak at the Dodona oracle. The Celts and Teutons used oaks and lime trees as religious places of cult, while the
oaks were also used as places of jurisdiction. This habit later on was regarded as pagan and thus it became the reason for uprooting the trees when Europe was christianized. Both oaktree and lime tree survived as central landmarks on village greens and they gave the village an important identity. In Europe we know of people asking for recovery by means of hanging pieces of cloth in certain trees. In Holland such trees are called ‘fever tree’. Traditions of popular belief, attributing inspiring powers to trees, exist all over the world. In India, for example, people attribute magic, religious and healing powers to trees. Trees may be depicted in their natural shape or they may be symbolized by the tree spirit that represents the vitality of the tree. In the old Indian Vedas Vanaspati is the Creator, he is the ‘lord of the woods’, Vanaspati being also the name given to the tree that symbolizes the axis mundi. To the Hindus the pipal tree (Ficus religiosa), called Asvatta in Sanskrit, is in fact one of the most sacred trees. Both the Bhagavad Gītā and the Mahabharata mention this tree, in both it is depicted upside down: its roots grow toward heaven, its branches towards the earth, serving as a model for the Universe, with no beginning, and no end. One of the origins of this meaning is the milky substance the ficus produces, which for that reason is associated with the motherly and the fertile. Often the tree is cultivated together with the banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis), which is regarded as a masculine symbol. It is a so-called bodhi-tree, under which a saint achieves enlightenment, like the Buddha did. His tremendous crown with heavy leaves casts abundant shades, whilst its juice, bark, leaves and aerial roots are used as medicines and its fruit (similar to figs) may be eaten. Both types of tree provide a home for the gods and they are therefore objects of worship and everyday rituals. Here the trees provide a ‘haven of refuge’ as well, they are carriers of meaning, and here they also represent religious traditional customs. Their extinction — Indians fell trees, as is done anywhere else in the world, for the sake of creating farmland — not only leads to the vanishing of a producer of oxygen and a soil stabilizing
entity, but also to the fading away of culture and above all an essential entwining of nature and culture. The tragic part played by the Tree of Souls in James Cameron’s film Avatar (2009), reveals the central place that the tree holds, being a personification of this particular entwining, both in Western and Non-Western traditions, right at the moment that an important debate on the future of nature on our planet is taking place.
4. In The Abyss Marguerite Yourcenar offers a pithy reflection on how tree and human being mirror each other. This time it is a humanist and secular description. The main character of her book is called Zeno, a twenty-year-old seminary student, who stands at the dawning of his life and personal development — the story takes place in the 16th century, a period of time in which the individual and his self-enquiry start playing a central role. During his summery rambles he ventures to go as far as the forest of Houthulst: ‘Its woods were the last of the lofty trees such as grew there in pagan times; strange counsels might be read from their leaves. Looking up to contemplate the green mass of foliage and needles, Zeno fell back into those alchemical speculations which he had begun in the School, or rather, in defiance of the School; in each vegetal pyramid above him he could read secret hieroglyphs of ascending forces: the sign of Air, which bathes and feeds those fair sylvan entities; the sign of Fire, the virtuality of which they have already within them, and which perhaps will destroy them one day. But he knew that these rising forces were balanced by forces descending
underground: beneath his feet the blind but sentient race of roots was tracing, in the dark, that same pattern of twigs infinitely dividing in the sky; cautiously these roots were groping their way toward some mysterious nadir. Here and there a leaf turned yellow too soon revealed, beneath its green, the presence of metals from which it had formed its substance, and on which it was now operating a transmutation. The force of wind had left the great tree trunks aslant, much as destiny bends a man. The young clerk felt as free as an animal of the wood, but equally threatened, too. Poised like a tree between earth and sky, he, too, felt bowed by forces which were pressing upon him, and would do so until his death.’3 Yourcenar uses forest and tree as metaphors for what Zeno will be facing in life. A human being is like a tree, a living system in itself, having to make sure that he stands his ground between earth and heaven. Both man and tree belong to the elements, within the elements. Yourcenar deliberately describes both liberation and threat as features of the intimate relationship that exists between tree, forest and human being, as she was acquainted with the often negative interpretation that was attributed to trees and forests in the Middle Ages. To Dante Alighieri the dark forest with its many trees is an allegory for sin and aberration, a wilderness one has to find his way out of, for in the first part of the Divina Commedia (1309 AD) called Hell (Inferno) we read: ‘Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark,’ And he continues: ‘For the straightforward pathway had been lost. Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is little more;’4 Trees and forests were seen as threats, as denoting wilderness where wild animals and darkness dominate: this is a well known gloomy image that occurs in fairytales (Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf) or in the tales of Robin Hood, in which the forest is, for good reason, the shelter for outlaws. A single tree may be the individual human being, a forest can be a horde of people, as in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1603/06). The trees of the Great Birnan Wood advance ominously, like soldiers, to fight Macbeth, the camouflage with leaves and branches being a Scottish disguising strategy. One may also recall Tolkiens ents in part two of The Lord of the Rings. They are tree-herds whose appearance is very similar to trees, and they look after the trees in the Forest of Fangorn. Also, they enter upon a struggle against evil, guided by Treebeard, the oldest ent. Stories like these show how trees and forests are connected to our imagination in a dualistic way. On the one hand they are our counterparts, they provide us with a mirror we cannot do without, on the other hand they contain dark powers that must be submitted. This reveals the inconsistent attitude of our culture towards nature and reveals our inability to cope with nature in a wellbalanced manner. Such an attitude finds its origin in the way we created civilization by cutting down trees and forests and how we thus turned wilderness into both farmland and settlements. One of the central tympanums in the 19th century Washington D.C. Capitol, the center and symbol of the American state and government, prominently depicts a settler who is felling a tree with an axe. This image, repeatedly used in the seal of several American states, is supposed to put a positive notion to the conquering of nature for the sake of civilization, as this conquest lays the foundation of a nation. The natural archetype of the German cultural landscape, the Lichtung, also reveals culture as the negative of the felled forest. This man-made open spot in the labyrinthine
One can still believe in Miracles in this 20th century. And this is a miracle. And I believe in God, even if the aphid will soon have devoured me in Poland. This jasmine, this jasmine leaves me speechless. He has been there for a long long time yet, but only now he starts to render me speechless.’5
forest, is a prerequisite for cultural development. However, this has not kept the Germans from valuing the forest as being the source of the German nation, at the time they developed ideas about their national identity in the 19th and 20th century.
5. When thinking of the city, we rather imagine ‘hard’ instead of ‘soft’ materials. We rather think of houses and streets, than of nature and trees. But if there are trees in the city, they do determine our experience immensely. In fact, they catch your eye, especially in the city, and again they evoke the counterpart of the landscape and forest that people cannot do without. The fact that people chain themselves to trees whenever there are plans to cut them down, makes clear that trees are essential for the city dwellers’ environment. In our culture gardens, parks, nature and the individual tree give us the opportunity to surrender to a dialogue with the world in which other living creatures take part as well. This dialogue may be highly personal and it can lead to a deep and intense experience. In the middle of WWII (1940– 1945) Etty Hillesum wrote in her diary, while looking through a window of her Amsterdam house: ‘Oh, the jasmine. My God, how is it possible that he grows over there, stuck between the bare wall of the neighbours and the garage. He is looking over the flat, dark, muddy roof of the garage. In the midst of this grimy and muddy darkness he is so splendid, unblemished, so exuberant and yet so delicate, a bountiful young bride, lost in a slum. I don’t know what to make of this jasmine. There’s no need to either.
A similar experience, as Rob Leopold wrote, ‘in whatever size or shape, in whatever sense interpreted as a place, a moment of seclusion and surrender, may right because of her highly personal and initimate character be a relief, that makes the most unbearable imponderable’. It is not surprising that for this reason people plant trees in memory of their beloved deceased or on the occasion of important events: the tree gives solace, keeps memory alive and expresses what cannot be expressed. Ever since the beginning of urban culture trees have been connected to the development of the Dutch city, even in that sense that in the old days, trees in the city already seemed to have made the urban and the natural experience interchangeable. The poet Constantijn Huygens was inspired by trees at the Haagse Voorhout. In 1621 he wrote his ode:
‘Yemand sal my konnen thoonen Of meer huysen, of meer houts, Maer waer sagh men oyt bewoonen Soo veel Stads, in so veel wouds? ’6
(‘Someone may be able to show me Or more houses, or more wood But where has one ever seen inhabiting So much city, in so much wood?’)
He made a witty comparison between the ‘Forest of poles’ in The Hague and the upside down forest of piles the city of Amsterdam was built upon. After all, tree trunks had been driven into the ground to carry the city. Such observations were shared by foreigners visiting Dutch cities. The Frenchman Misson got somewhat confused about the identity of the Dutch city after his visit to Rotterdam in 1688. The vessels at the quay seemed to him like a
floating ‘forest of poles’, whose silhouette mixed up with the ridges of the roofs and the branches of the trees: sea, city and nature melted together into one single image. Moreover, the trees were of great value for the economy of the city, as without timber, there would be neither vessel, house, cart, nor charcoal. Was the city a forest, or was there a city in a forest? This very same Misson compared the streets of Leiden, with trees in lines along them, with the ‘just as many avenues in a beautifully laid out garden’. Their leaves cast shades and provided food for horses, in urban sources their cultivation was seen as the ‘pride’ of the city. Amsterdam also had a great deal of painted trees: wall paintings from the 17th through the 19th century, found in canal houses, usually depict landscapes in which trees are the leading actors. Elisabeth Maria Post wonders, in 1788, whether such wall decorations do not actually demonstrate ‘how remote we, city dwellers, are from the value, the splendour and the greatness of nature, yet how we need her simple spectacles for our happiness?’ The way Misson associates trees with avenues in a garden is striking. Both garden and park have always been places where the ‘simple spectacles of nature’ were imitated, where a perfect landscape was created. Trees play an essential part here. Not only along canals or in inner-city gardens within the old moat of Amsterdam trees are part of reality, but also in the Plantage (plantation), a special place in the city, they are not merely creatures of imagination. Towards the end of the 17th century this area developed into a unique neighborhood, suitable for strolling around, through lanes and gardens, within the city walls. A place like this was hardly to be found elsewhere in Europe. Pleasure and science were intermingled in this spot: the collections of the Botanical Garden, the Dutch Republic’s centre of botany (plant science) and dendrology (study of wooded plants) were world-famous ever since the Hortus was founded in 1682. Since 1838 the learned society Natura Artis Magistra (Artis for short) transformed the Plantage into a zoo park that accommodated a collection of
animals, museums and a natural history library. Hortus and Artis still enhance this connection between culture and natural science. Also, they gave and give new meaning and continuity to nature within the centre of the city. The Hortus and Artis have grown into arboreta, scientific collections of various kinds of trees, developing into imposing city parks that function as ornament and green heritage, and are part of remarkable city ecology. The Hortus and Artis are, in fact, public manuals of nature. In the 19th century the existence of both Hortus and Artis made clear that parks were necessary for a city. Since then, trees have been the building blocks of all the parks of Amsterdam. What words mean to a poet, what paint means to a painter, what building material means to an architect, that is what nature is for a landscape architect. The Vondelpark was designed in 1864. It is an ensemble of nature and culture, representing a milestone in the history of the city of Amsterdam and of the development of Dutch landscape architecture. Living materials and the present topography were used for creating spatial illusions of a park landscape. Trees make up the foreground, the middle ground and the background. They create height and depth, they make an exciting, varied, dramatic setting of shape, silhouette and colours in different seasons. In this way a landscape architect designs the park like an atmospheric poetic composition and paints like a landscape painter, using the palette of shapes and colours provided by trunks, branches, leaves, blossoms and fruits. And he builds like an architect, though using only ‘soft materials’, space and time. Where poet, painter and architect deliver tangible pieces of work, the landscape architect designs, while bearing in mind future effects. The trees he chooses only get their definitive shape after years and years. The park is staged architecture of time. The park is not a static object, but a vital, dynamic process, thanks to the trees which serve as main figures. From these traditions the tree becomes more and more important in our days: as a catcher of particulate matter and also as
a producer of oxygen. Trees are an essential part of our daily life: a 100-year-old beech, with its leaves covering approximately 1,500 m2, may provide oxygen for about ten people. Moreover, how should one have learnt to climb trees — and how could one have learnt about the importance of landscape, nature and ecology, or of beauty, had there been no trees around?
6. A 20th century modernistic view has defined empty space as the essence of the Dutch landscape. The polder with its horizon became the outstanding example of this emptiness, and is therefore glamourized as if there has never been any other idea of landscape. In the 19th century, when actual landscapes were much more empty than today, people had a completely different opinion on the matter. Instead of focusing on emptiness, people rather admired a crowded landscape, characterized by density alternated by open space. Trees and forests were regarded as the bearers of this ideal picture, a landscape could in fact not really exist without them, although Holland had become quite deforested since the 17th century. This ideal originated in many different ways: it was rooted in the awareness of wilderness with its own natural system, but also in an Arcadian ideal, where trees both solitary and in groves give a park like quality to a landscape. Another background for the love of trees was the discovery that the earliest historical knowledge of Holland is linked to trees and forests. In his history book E.M. Engelberts wrote in 1784 that the surroundings of Haarlem were filled with trees and were inhabited by peace-loving Batavians. They lived right there, in dark,
sacred forests where they worshipped their gods.7 Patriotic love for the country, which the writer sees as a distinctive feature of the independent Dutch, originated in a land of trees. Engelberts supports his story with a map that reconstructs this Dutch landscape, for the first time in history, as a woody area. The new, 18th century idealization of nature showed that feelings, inspiration and moral elevation were projected in these woody landscapes, and thus nature could become the mirror of conceptions about man, honour, country, religion and immortality: ‘the silence within a noble forest [seems to] prepare the spectator’s heart for this mood, where it ought to climb in order to occupy itself, in a useful way, with worshipping memories’.8 This elevated character of the historic landscape around Haarlem, to become so characteristic for the development of the romantic notion of nature in the rest of Holland, would also determine the 19th century’s and today’s way of regarding nature. In Onkruid (Weed, 1886) by F.W. van Eeden we still find the sublime romantic feelings that project moral elevation in the Haarlem landscape. These effects come from trees and plants, not from heroic actions or brick monuments. Some oaktrees he regards as ‘Ruisdael’ oaks, an association that seems to show both the picturesque nature of these trees, but the more so enhances their typical Dutch character. In this Dutch nature ‘[we] become more lighthearted, more childlike, more natural; we take deeper breaths, we become more alert; in one word, we become different and better people’.9 Such trees are part of a kind of nature that he sees as ‘a wilderness, poor to the farmer, rich, however, to nature’s friend’. Dune flora and trees show him a true picture of the original savage Dutch nature and they illustrate a history, older and therefore more pure than human civilization. In Van Eedens work trees may become ‘antiquarian monuments’, silent witnesses of bygone times. It is in this text that the concept of ‘natuurmonument’ (nature monument) arose and that importance is attached to trees and flora in a sense that they are important witnesses of history in the landscape theatre. And this role they still play today.
If trees are so connected to our identity, then can we regard the world from the point of view of a tree? In his consummate novel The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino made the twelve-year-old Cosimo Piovasco of Rondò decide, on the 15th of June 1767, to spend the rest of his life in trees. In the course of his life Cosimo learns about a great variety of trees: ‘These sympathies and antipathies Cosimo came to recognize in time — or to recognize consciously; but already in those first days they had begun to be an instinctive part of him. Now it was a whole different world, made up of narrow curved bridges in the emptiness, of knots or peel or scores roughening the trunks, of light varying their green according to the veils of thicker or scarcer leaves, trembling at the first quiver of the air on the shoots or moving like sails with the bend of the tree in the wind.’10 He learns to see and understand the world from the point of view of lemontrees and figs, cherrytrees, the pomegranate, peach, almond, pear, plum and rowan, carob tree, the mulberry tree, the walnut, olive, oaks, pines, larches and chestnut trees. They teach him about social, political, philosophical and historical reality, since: ‘who is willing to perceive the earth in a proper way [has to] keep a certain distance’. Living amongst the trees inspires him at a certain point to write the ‘Plan for the Constitution of an Ideal State, established in the trees’, a design for the imaginary Tree Republic that is inhabited by righteous people. However extraordinary this life in the trees may have seemed to others, after Cosimos death, his younger brother finds out how this kind of view on the world is exceptionally meaningful: great richness become lost when trees withdraw slowly from the landscape, due to people’s desire to cut them down. A fair society cannot be without trees.
7. The origin of landscape painting in the 16th century meant the discovery of the tree. Without a tree, there is no landscape, and there is no landscape without a tree, whether it be Arcadian ideal scenes painted by 17th century masters like Nicolas Poussin or Claude Lorrain, or the Dutch landscapes by their contemporaries Jacob van Ruisdael and Meindert Hobbema. Until well into the 19th century trees determine fore, middle and background, standing alone, as well as in groves. They carry the landscape in every way due to their prominent and monumental manifestation. They cast shades, they catch and filter out light, and they are partnered with the people portrayed, with the animals, villages, fields, mountains and hills on the painting. Their presence required detailed study: of how they grow, of the pattern of the branches, of the bark, leaves and structure of the roots, ‘nature is the most perfect painting’, Barend Koekkoek, the landscape painter, wrote in his Herinneringen (Memories) from 1841.11 These studies revealed botanic characteristics and this resulted in the emergence of specialized artists drawing up trees, blossoms, leaves and fruits with scientific precision in order to do research, accompanied by descriptions. Realistic observation is not only the key to formal recognition, but it also judges the tree on its visual appearance. Does this make up the essence of a tree? And what about its spreading to all sides which is so hard to capture in an image? Or the movement of branches and leaves in both wind and rain? And how can a picture evoke the fact that he exists together with other trees simultaneously, or that he stands together with other kinds of trees? How can the image of a tree reveal his living identity, or give reason to take a closer look at this identity, to look beyond its shape? Should the artist not be like a scientist who researches nature by means of experiment, in combination with intuition and feeling? The late 19th century therefore tried to capture the essence of trees rather in spots and colours, in touches of light and shadow. Impressionists and photographers cared more about the atmospheric meaning of
trees than about true reproduction for the sake of fathoming the essence of their souls. In other traditions, where realism is less important, one can just as well recognize the tree, but something else happens at the same time. Chinese and Japanese brush painting, the latter influenced by the former, usually depict trees by means of painting just a part, like a branch, or a blossom. The brush may put it down in a few strokes as a solitary, or may quickly paint a mass, as if they were consecutive characters of script. The depiction tends to abstraction, but is still identifiable. In this tradition trees seem to refer to the essential element of the tree, which is shared by other trees. His portrayal is part of a mental construction, a memory that is activated the moment a part of the tree becomes visible, in the landscape, as an image, or as a poem. Image, literary tree, real tree: they are all part of a natural alliance. In the rich Ottoman tradition trees have prominently been depicted in miniature art and on maps. Trees were reduced to their basics and just like in the Chinese tradition, every tree stands for all other trees. On some maps one single tree should be read as indicating a garden full of trees. The tree then is an icon representing a complete landscape. A realistic picture is not necessary for evoking the world of experience, for the inner meaning of the tree. The photographs in this book don’t seek the shape, but the essence of the tree. As a living system, as producer of oxygen, as catcher of particulate matter, as bearer of DNA, as life community, covered with moss, fungus, alga, insects, birds and other animals, universally connected to his context of earth, heaven and nature. As one out of many, as refuge for human happiness, as landmark of the passing of time, as organism that reminds us of the fact that life means continuous growth and change. Implicating that trees simultaneously grow with us and vice versa, sharing respiration and the air of the world. They want to make us aware of what we know of trees, what we understand about trees and what we expect from trees, of how they are part of our feelings and
subconsciousness — or not. These photographs add to what we are asked for at this very moment in time: a new way of reflecting on our relation to nature and landscape in an urbanized culture. The relation between landscape and human being, between nature and art, is a complex theme: nature is movement and change, she dies — like we do —, she passes by, yet returns. Nature is a process. However, while time goes on, a photograph captures the moment. It constitutes the awareness of the now, captured and written in light. Nature and art thus are in dialogue and find their place in the architecture of time. In his Paranoia (1953), W.F. Hermans wrote: ‘my greatest misfortune is that I was not born a machine and that I cannot write with light, like a camera’. This is an intriguing utterance, as Hermans imagines that, had he been a camera, he could write with light. Like the light, that is captured by the lens, inscribes itself in the medium and in this way preserves a picture, writing with light would become like throwing light, revealing, expressing and giving meaning to the world around us on paper, paper that usually also is the carrier of a photograph. In this way both taking photographs and writing are expression, experiment and outcome of a personal perception, feeling, intuition, research, searching for relations and trying to apply them; both can be poetry, prose or drama, essay or lecture. At present it is necessary to look for ways that go beyond the 18th century aesthetics which coined the categories of the beautiful and the picturesque, which are comfortable with their pleasant, non threatening and superficial shapes of beauty and that as stereotypes confirm the ideal truth that we long for. We have reached the end of a tradition in which nature and landscape photography are just visual phenomena, preferably true to nature, servant of the elder painting ideals from a West European tradition. A new kind of photography on the other hand searches to write with light, wants to be a discourse, seeks to creep in, to create images that touch us or that like a mirror call us to account for our thoughts
and feelings, and our habits. Kim Boske is representative of a young generation, looking for this new way of researching and depicting the meaning of nature and landscape and our connection to them. Orhan Pamuk’s novel My name is Red is about the meaning and the boundaries of reality and the different ways of understanding and portraying in both the Turkish/ Ottoman and the European tradition. In the chapter ‘I am a tree’ a tree speaks about his loneliness: ‘A great European master miniaturist and another great master artist are walking through a Frank meadow discussing virtuosity and art. As they stroll, a forest comes into view before them. The more expert of the two says to the other: “painting in the new style demands such talent that if you depicted one of the trees in this forest, a man who looked upon that painting could come here, and if he so desired, correctly select that tree from among the others.” I thank Allah that I, the humble tree before you, have not been drawn with such intent. And not because I fear that if I’d been thus depicted all the dogs in Istanbul would assume I was a real tree and piss on me: I don’t want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning.’12
1 The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, translated and edited by Ivan Morris, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1970, 62– 64, 65–69 2 See for this text: www.crossroadsinitiative.com/ library_article/916/Cosmic_Tree_ Pseudo_Chrystomos.html 3 Marguerite Yourcenar, The Abyss, translated from the French by Grace Frick in collaboration with the author, London, Black Swann Edition, 1985, 38–39 4 Dante, in the translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/ dante/dante_contents.html 5 K.A.D. Smelik, Etty. De nagelaten geschriften van Etty Hillesum 1941–1943, Amsterdam, 1991, 484 6 C. Huygens, Voorhout, Kostelick Mal en Oogentroost, Ingeleid door L. Strengholt, Zutphen, 1978, 6 7 E.M. Engelberts, De Aloude Staat en Geschiedenissen der Vereenigde Nederlanden, Amsterdam, 1784 8 A. Loosjes, Het Hout of Boschgedachten in Zes Bespiegelingen, Haarlem, 1793, 99 9 F.W. van Eeden, Onkruid. Botanische wandelingen van F.W. van Eeden, 1886, Haarlem, Schuyt en Co, 1986, 1–2 10 Italo Calvino, Our Ancestors, Baron in the Trees, translated from the Italian by Archibald Colquhoun, London, Vintage, 1998, 141 11 B.C. Koekkoek, Herinneringen en Mededeelingen van eenen Landschapsschilder (1841), Schiedam, 1982, 231 12 Orhan Pamuk, My name is Red, translated by Erdağ M. Göknar, London, Faber and Faber Limited, 2001, 80
Images Mapping 1 Mapping 12 Mapping 6 Mapping 10 Mapping 5 Mapping 11 Mapping 4 Mapping 7 Mapping 9 Mapping 8 Mapping 3 Mapping 2 Mapping 13 All images: 2008–2009 except 12 and 13: 2012
Text Erik A. de Jong Artis Chair for Culture, Landscape and Nature at University of Amsterdam Design Vandejong, Lucie Pindat Translation Mara Werkman Lithography & Printing Lecturis You can find the Dutch version of the text at www.kimboske.com This project was made possible with the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund
ISBN: 978-90-819651-0-1 All rights reserved © 2012 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic, mechanical or digital means (including photocopying, recording or information storage and retrieval) without permission in written from the artist.
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