Abstract

In early nineteenth-century Britain, the painter John Constable and meteorologist Luke Howard experimented with new aesthetic forms in response to the challenges climate posed to representation. In landscape paintings, sketches, tables, and graphs, the artist and scientist grappled with climate’s temporal scale, which extended beyond the domain of immediate “feeling” associated with landscape representation. Their efforts to construct a stable representation of England’s climate took shape against the polluted atmosphere of industrial, imperial London, and in tandem with the modern state’s disciplinary visuality. In their work, an aesthetics of climate emerged that was responsive to an environment increasingly known through numeric data and abstraction.

摘要

在19世纪初期，英国画家约翰·康斯特勃（John Constable）和气象学家卢克·霍华德（Luke Howard）尝试了新的美学形式，以应对气候对制图所带来的挑战。在山水画，素描，表格和图表中，艺术家和科学家努力应对气候的时空尺度，这一尺度超出了与景观表现相关的直接“感觉”的范围。他们为构建英格兰气候的稳定代表所做的努力，在工业，皇家伦敦的污染气氛下形成了，并与现代国家的学科可视化相结合。在他们的工作中，出现了一种气候美学，这种美学对通过数字数据和抽象越来越广为人知的环境做出了响应。