This article was downloaded by: [Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute]On: 07 December 2014, At: 19:43Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: MortimerHouse, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Visual SociologyPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rvst19

Suburban landscape: Views of New Jersey artistsJudith J. Friedman aa Department of Sociology , Rutgers University , P.O. Box 5072, New Brunswick, NJ,08903Published online: 03 Jul 2008.

To cite this article: Judith J. Friedman (1993) Suburban landscape: Views of New Jersey artists , Visual Sociology, 8:2,28-39, DOI: 10.1080/14725869308583720

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725869308583720

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose ofthe Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be reliedupon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shallnot be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and otherliabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

28 Visual Sociology, 8(2), pp. 28-39 © International Visual Sociology Association, 1993

Suburban Landscape: Views of New Jersey Artists1

Judith J. Friedman

Suburban landscape predominates within NewJersey; people live in one suburb and driveto a job in another. Research on communityideologies suggests, however, that evensuburban residents have vague images ofsuburbs. Vague images can mean, in turn,that the state's visual artists produce fewimages that incorporate the newly-createdsuburban landscape that they see every day.Research on art worlds also suggests littleencouragement for work that depicts thenewer suburbs. Consistent with this, only afew of the visual artists living in New Jerseywho have put slides in three large slide filesinclude work that deals with the newersuburban landscape or with the process ofcreating suburbs. Instead, artists who depictNew Jersey landscape concentrate on thestate's "natural" landscape or on the state'solder industrial suburbs. The privacy of newersuburbs no doubt also contributes to thispattern. In suburbs, even places designed forcrowds, such as retail malls, are private.

Suburban landscape prevails in the UnitedStates. Highways link sprawling suburban job

sites and housing developments. This suburbanlandscape is diverse. It includes front and backyards, garden apartments, parking lots, streets,highway interchanges, corn fields, vacant lots,industrial parks, office buildings, shopping malls,warehouses and factories lining freight railroads,landfills and trucking terminals in wetlands alongrivers and recreational parks. Despite this diver-sity, suburban landscape provides few views forpostcards.

Landscape, whether suburban, urban, agri-cultural, or "natural," is a social product. As Wil-son (1992:12) points out, "nature is a part ofculture." During the process of landscape creation,social values and relationships take physical form(Jackson, 1984; Meinig, 1979; Zukin, 1992).These social values and relationships are notalways obvious to those viewing the landscape,

for landscape can encode social relationships ina way that people read as "natural"(Bermingham, 1986; Duncan, 1990). Thus per-ceptions of landscape can miss much that isthere.

This paper explores landscape perceptionsusing recent visual art produced by artists wholive in a predominately suburban state, New Jer-sey. Work depicting Mew Jersey landscape pro-vides a collective portrait of this Eastern state.In this collective portrait, artists express percep-tions of Mew Jersey landscape through what theyignore, as well as through what they decide toinclude and to emphasize. Thus the parts of thestate's landscape omitted from the collective por-trait can be as revealing as the parts of the state'slandscape that artists collectively emphasize. Dothese artists deal with the suburban landscapeso prevalent in Mew Jersey? If they do presentsuburban landscape, what parts of this landscapedo they select?

Using visual art to explore perceptions isindirect, and it brings in complications such asconventions about landscape art. Monetheless, itcan provide a useful alternative to other sourcesof data, including interviews.

Recent research on community ideologiessuggests that many people have vague imagesof suburbs. Hummon (1990) asked residents ofnorthern California communities to describevarious kinds of communities. Images of smalltowns and of cities were clear and shared. Incontrast, images of suburbs tended to be vague.For example, a suburb is a place with "the bestqualities of small towns and cities" (103). Some"CJrbanists" were clearer; they connected suburbswith "boredom, uniformity, conformity ..." (115).

These ideologies suggest that artists' collec-tive portrait of a suburban state may minimize thesuburban environment. A lack of clear ideologiesabout suburban communities can make it is easyto overlook the possibilities for creating visual

Department of Sociology, P.O. Box 5072, Rutgers University, Mew Brunswick, MJ 08903

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ren

ssel

aer

Poly

tech

nic

Inst

itute

] at

19:

43 0

7 D

ecem

ber

2014

Suburban Landscape 29

art out of suburban landscape. Thus possiblyfew of the artists who encounter this landscapedaily incorporate suburban landscape in their artwork. Other artists may reject suburban land-scape as material, except perhaps to commenton its lack of interest. Research on art worlds,summarized later in the paper, suggests addi-tional reasons to expect little work that depictsthe newer Eastern suburbs.2

Slides in three large slide registries providean overview of recent landscape art producedby visual artists who live in Mew Jersey. Back-ground on New Jersey and on its visual artistsprovides a context for this overview.3 The paperconcludes with a discussion of additional fac-tors, including characteristics of U.S. suburbs,that can affect the ways in which visual artistsdeal with suburban landscape.

Suburban New JerseyI tend to equate "New Jersey" and "sub-

urbs." A brief description of the state will explainwhy: New Jersey is largely suburban. In North-ern New Jersey, the New York City urbanizedarea extends north toward the New York border;south, along the Jersey Shore; and far to thewest. Pennsylvania realtors advertise their de-velopments as within commuting range of NewYork. Another extensive suburban area extendseast from Philadelphia. These suburban areasmerge among the suburbs of New Jersey's cen-tral corridor. New Jersey has cities, includingNewark, but many sizable New Jersey commu-nities mix urban and suburban characteristics.The far northwest and parts of South Jersey are,arguably, not yet suburban.

Jobs, as well as homes, are suburban. Olderindustrial suburbs, such as Jersey City, have rowhouses and frame houses next to factories. TheNew Jersey Turnpike and commuter rail linesrun through the Hackensack Meadowlands, withtheir landfills, trucking terminals, and new officebuildings. South of Newark, the Turnpike passesa major container port, and then refineries,chemical factories and tank farms. The New YorkTimes occasionally features notable sites alongthis stretch of the Turnpike (Bendel, 1986;Sorensen, 1982), and an article on the New Jer-sey joke included these sites within "a rich com-post of negative images [of New Jersey] applied

over three centuries" (Ginsburg, 1992). This olderindustrial landscape remains central to mediaand to public images of New Jersey.

The vast majority of New Jersey's subur-ban jobs are in newer suburbs, and many peoplecommute by driving from one suburb to another.Central Jersey's twin towers are at Turnpike Exit9, along the Raritan River, in suburban EastBrunswick. Across the river at Exit 10, RaritanCenter, a commercial and industrial park builton the former site of the Raritan Arsenal, em-ploys over 13,000 people full-time (Gallotto,1993). Retail jobs are in regional malls and thesmall malls that line highways. The corporateheadquarters and back office buildings that clus-ter around highway interchanges are less visible,as are the older factories and warehouses alongfreight railroads.

Corporations that build industrial parks,warehouses, and office buildings sometimes leaveacreage in second-growth forest. Elsewhere,corporations maintain large lawns, and artificialponds sustain a huge year-round population ofCanadian geese. Thus suburban non-residentiallandscape visually merges with suburban single-family housing developments, townhouses,condominiums, and garden apartments. Bothnon-residential and residential areas provide theopen, neat, maintained nature that psychologistsfind people prefer to unkempt nature (Chenowethand Gobster, 1990; Friedman, 1992; Kaplan andKaplan, 1989). Overgrown fields with signs thatannounce "future financial center" provide someless-managed nature.

Northwestern New Jersey also has extensivesecond-growth forests, mountains, and theDelaware Water Gap. South Jersey has the Shore,and it has extensive Pine Barrens largelyprotected from suburban development (Friedmanand Renwick, 1986). Environmental organizationsfrequently present New Jersey as Wilderness witha Manhattan skyline. There are corn fields,cranberry bogs, and horse farms as well. An artistliving anywhere in the state does not have totravel far to find landscape conventionally definedas scenic. Overall, however, older industrial areas,new industrial parks, retail malls, office parksand office buildings, housing developments, for-mer fields in various stages of succession, high-ways, and interchanges predominate, especiallyin northern and central New Jersey.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ren

ssel

aer

Poly

tech

nic

Inst

itute

] at

19:

43 0

7 D

ecem

ber

2014

30 Judith J. Friedman

New Jersey's visual artistsThousands of New Jersey residents produce

visual art. Some have no formal art training;others have Master of Fine Art (MFA) degrees.4

Artists who present their work to the public canuse outdoor art fairs, exhibitions organized byretail malls, juried exhibitions organized bymuseums, galleries, and other art organizations,or group and individual exhibitions in museums,corporation headquarters, university galleries,office buildings, commercial galleries, culturalcenters, environmental centers, libraries and otherspaces. Some artists exhibit only locally, andthey rarely enter a Manhattan gallery or museum.Others are active in one or another Manhattanart worlds.

There is no reason to expect that artists whodeal with landscape will concentrate on the ordi-nary landscape around them. Artists depict imagi-nary landscapes, idealized landscapes, abstractlandscapes, landscapes that expresses their feelingsabout nature and realistic landscapes. They drawon landscape seen on vacations, seen in muse-ums, seen in dreams, landscape rememberedfrom childhood. Thus landscapes that an artistexperiences daily are just one part of that artist'sdecisions about whether or not to deal with land-scape and what to do with landscape.

Sociologists emphasize the various ways inwhich art worlds influence artists' decisions, in-cluding their decisions about the kinds of workthat they will produce (Becker, 1982; Gilmore,1992).5 Artists connected with a particular vi-sual art world begin to develop shared meaningsas they go through similar formal art training.The process continues as artists interact witheach other and with others who comprise theirart world, including those who control exhibitionspaces. Thus, each visual art world developscharacteristic ways of evaluating visual art worksand of exhibiting art.

Art worlds include various markets for visualart. Several studies of specific markets for visualart suggest ways in which market conditions canaffect artists' decisions about landscape work.6

Halle (1989) found landscape, current orhistorical, the single most common subject inthe visual art that people in the Mew York regiondisplayed within their homes. Scenic views of

rivers, forests, and fields apparently predominatedamong "current" landscapes. Halle emphasizesthese landscapes' serenity and their general lackof people. Studies of "mass art" (which storespromote as "handmade" and "original") bringout similar patterns. Landscape is the mostpopular genre (Lindauer, 1990). There are scenes"reminiscent of the 19th century Hudson RiverSchool" (Reed, 1988:33), pastoral scenes, andalso abstract works in current decorator colors.

Corporate art collections and corporate in-terior decorators provide different markets.Martorella (1990:180) found work by regionalartists, including "serene" landscape paintings,popular in corporate markets.

Overall, these descriptions of various art mar-kets suggest substantial demand for landscapes,but little demand for visual art that deals with sub-urban landscape.

Artists who want ties with Manhattan's com-mercial or alternative galleries are likely to facethe expectation that they will develop a style thatis individual, yet fits into current conventions forfine art (Rosenblum, 1978; Simpson, 1981).Landscape itself is acceptable; Manhattan gal-leries and museums are exhibiting "new" land-scape (Whitney, 1990), and a related form ofenvironmental art has expanded (Cembalest,1991; Goldberg, 1991). The expectation ofuniqueness suggests pressure to seek out an un-der-used landscape or to present widely-usedlandscape in a new way. While Eastern suburbsmay provide under-used landscape, possibly theyprovide little acceptable landscape.

Landscape art in New JerseyThe description of the landscape art produced

by visual artists living in New Jersey will focuson the extent to which these artists present thesuburban elements of the state's landscape andthe kinds of suburban landscape that they depict.Hummon's work on suburban ideology providesone reason to expect few suburban landscapes.While the discussion of art worlds has suggestedadditional reasons to expect few suburban land-scapes, it also suggests that certain artists will seekout "underused" landscape. The paper concludeswith a discussion of characteristics of U.S. sub-urbs that also can discourage visual art basedon the newer Eastern suburban landscape.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ren

ssel

aer

Poly

tech

nic

Inst

itute

] at

19:

43 0

7 D

ecem

ber

2014

Suburban Landscape 31

Identifying Landscape ArtThese questions about landscape art pro-

duced by artists living in Mew Jersey require anoverview of the landscape work that these visualartists are producing. Since there is no completelist of artists who live in New Jersey, I identifyartists through slide files maintained by numer-ous art organizations, recent group and juriedexhibitions, exhibition reviews, and conversationswith artists, gallery owners, and other knowl-edgeable people.

This paper concentrates on work producedby artists who have placed slides in any one of thesizable slide files maintained by three non-profitart organizations located in northern New Jerseyor in Manhattan. To participate in a slide file, anartist provides a resume and a set of slides, usu-ally twenty. Each organization accepts slides fromany artist. Resumes typically list any art degrees,one-person, group, and juried exhibitions, andawards. Some artists add a statement about theirwork, and some include an exhibition catalogueor review. Participation is a way to promote one'swork. Gallery owners and others who organizeexhibitions look through such slide files and con-tact artists.

One of these organizations asks the artist toidentify their style, and landscape is one stylecategory.71 looked at slides in this file first, andthen identified landscape work in the other filesby looking for similar work, and, especially forabstract work, by checking slide titles, exhibi-tion titles, and any artist's statement or exhibitreview. When in doubt, I considered work land-scape.

Even with this inclusive approach, artists pro-ducing landscape are a minority.8 Combining thethree files, I identified one hundred and fifty dif-ferent artists who included at least five slidesthat I considered landscape. I have acquired ad-ditional information about some of these artistsfrom exhibits, exhibition reviews, catalogues, andconversations with the artists.

Profile of the ArtistsAs their location suggests, these three slide

files particularly serve artists who live in north-eastern and central New Jersey. Just over a third(37%) of these one hundred and fifty "landscapeartists" live in Hoboken or Jersey City, commu-

nities a fast, one dollar train ride from Manhat-tan.9 Most of the remaining two-thirds live in thesuburban communities that stretch far west,southwest, and south from Manhattan.10 Theseartists are active. Exactly half list two or moreone-person exhibits within the preceding fiveyears,11 and about a third (31%) list a Fellow-ship from the New Jersey State Council on theArts. Formal art training varies widely. Just overa third (35%) have a MFA degree, and a fewmore (6%) have an MA in art. Another 28% haveBFAs. Most of the rest mention non-degreeclasses and workshops, and a few state that theyhave had no formal art training.

This profile suggests that the set of "land-scape artists" identified through these three slidefiles over-represents artists who live in northernand central New Jersey, artists who have links tocertain Manhattan art worlds, and artists who havesubstantial formal art education. These patterns areconsistent with the locations of the files and withthe commitment represented by putting twentyslides into a slide file.

Landscape workThe vast majority of the landscapes in these

slide files have no apparent connection with NewJersey or with suburbs. There are abstract land-scape paintings and sculptures, installations, andlandscapes that depict Europe and other parts ofthe O.S., especially the Southwest. Other artists cre-ate imaginary landscapes. In addition, there arenumerous views of grassy hills with trees alongthe horizon. While the Eastern (J.S. landscape cer-tainly contains such scenes, some of these pastorallandscapes seem generic.

New Jersey LandscapesUsing, again, inclusionary definitions, just

fifty-eight (39%) of these artists included slidesof New Jersey landscape.12 Within the NewJersey work, two kinds of landscape stand out:Eastern wilderness and the landscape of NewJersey's older industrial suburbs. Views of forest,rivers, and other scenic areas are most numerous.Slides from 43% of the fifty-eight artistsemphasize such views of New Jersey; many ofthese artists also include slides of work based onthe "natural" landscape of Western states or onscenic areas of Europe.13 Nearly as many artists

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ren

ssel

aer

Poly

tech

nic

Inst

itute

] at

19:

43 0

7 D

ecem

ber

2014

32 Judith J. Friedman

(36% of the fifty-eight) concentrate on the brickbuildings, streets, and petro-chemical sites ofNew Jersey's older industrial suburbs. Relativelyfew artists (13%) deal with the state's newersuburban landscape.14 As I describe each cat-egory of landscape work, 1 will provide examplessimilar to work found in the slide files.

"Natural" LandscapeThe New Jersey scenic work covers the

range of woodlands, mountains, rivers, canals,and bogs of northwestern, central, and south Jer-sey. Paintings and photographs based on theforests and rivers of Northwestern New Jerseyare most common, but many works depict SouthJersey's Pine Barrens or the Jersey Shore.

Signs of current human activity are rare, asare people, except at the Jersey Shore. Someartists emphasize "natural" areas along the Shoreitself, while others emphasize the boardwalks,Victorian buildings, or people on the beach. Ruralscenes rarely include evidence of active farming,and roads lack utility poles. There are signs ofolder economic activities, such as canals. Any

houses are not split-levels. Only two of theseartists include work that makes explicit referenceto environmental issues. Overall, this is a neat,maintained landscape, despite implication ofWilderness.

Marguerite Doernbach's New Jersey paint-ings convey the landscape of New Jersey's PineBarrens, where she frequently hikes, and thelandscape north of Trenton, near the DelawareRiver. "Laurel in the Pine and Oak Forest" (Fig-ure 1) is from her Pine Barren series. Landscapesin her "Memory" series include self-portraits andportraits of friends. Hannah Fink recreates thefleeting images that we experience as we movethrough a landscape. Works such as "The Ca-nal" (Figure 2) combine photographs, maps,drawings, and painting on a canvas that is shapedto move the viewer through a space.

There are other hints of suburbia. A photo-graph of a river view includes an unobtrusivepark bench. A view of trees reflected in watercomes from a suburban lake. The title of a viewof autumn leaves connects these leaves with a

*"?£**• *•&$&&^flk^s, -•, *

Figure 1 Marguerite Doernbach "The Pine Barren Series, #7:"Laurel in the Pine and Oak Forest," 1984, oil, 30" x 44"

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ren

ssel

aer

Poly

tech

nic

Inst

itute

] at

19:

43 0

7 D

ecem

ber

2014

Suburban Landscape 33

Figure 2 Hannah Fink, "The Canal," 1984, photographs, maps,pencil, oil stick, and oil mounted on shaped canvas, 50" x 72"

suburb. Details of nature provide a way for art-ists to find "natural" landscape anywhere.15

Industrial SuburbsAnother substantial number of artists deal

with the landscape of New Jersey's older indus-trial suburbs. Some concentrate on this land-scape, while others include slides of this land-scape plus slides of "natural" areas outside NewJersey or slides of abstract work.16 Artists whodeal extensively with this industrial landscapeare likely to live in an industrial suburb, andseveral include statements that describe how theysought out subject matter in their community.

The actual landscape of New Jersey's olderindustrial suburbs is both diverse and distinct:row houses, brick factories and warehouses, land-fills, refineries, modern chemical factories andcommercial harbors. Viewers will connect suchscenes with New Jersey and with the New Jer-sey Turnpike.

Artists' work based on these older indus-trial suburbs varies in content and in media.Merrill Mason photographed a Jersey City lotcontaminated with chromium, transferred thephotographs to fabric rectangles, and combined

the rectangles to make the quilt, "ChromiumWeb," shown in Figure 3. Transparent appliquesin iridescent yellow-green convey chromium's ef-florescence.

Several other artists use photographs, con-structions incorporating found objects, or paintingsto make explicit comments about toxic waste. Stillothers produce images of chemical factories thatemphasize shape. In addition, there are paint-ings and photographs of scenes along the high-ways that run through the older industrial areasin and around Jersey City, Hoboken, and Eliza-beth, and work that focuses on the brick rowhouses typical of these older industrial suburbs.

Newer SuburbsDespite the large proportion of artists who

live in newer suburbs, only seven of these fifty-eight (and 150) artists included slides of workthat deal with the newer suburban landscape.Among them, just two artists clearly commenton the process of suburbanization. Bascha Mon'smonotype collages and mixed media works havetitles such as "lost land" and "treesarelife/carsdestruction" (Figure 4). Her work reflectsconcern with the struggle between old and new

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ren

ssel

aer

Poly

tech

nic

Inst

itute

] at

19:

43 0

7 D

ecem

ber

2014

34 Judith J. Friedman

in the landscape and also in the lives of thepeople who live in new suburban developments.

A few other artists include work that re-flects on life within suburbs in New Jersey - oranywhere else. Mel Leipzig provides almost theonly views of residential areas. Many of his paint-ings depict people within their own homes or intheir yards (Figure 5). The location might bewithin the city of Trenton, but, as Eileen Watkins(1990) points out, Leipzig's settings can be "al-most cliches of suburbia."17

Abstract work, some with landscapeelements, predominates in June Wilson's slides.A triptych traces an encounter somewherebetween a deer and an automobile; "Red Sky"(Figure 6) is the third of these paintings. Wilsondescribes this triptych as a "mental landscape"crucial to her transition from realistic work toabstract work based on natural forces (personalcommunication). A reviewer (Mahoney, 1991)linked Wilson's more recent abstract paintings

Figure 3 Merrill Mason, "Chromium Web," 1990, laserphotocopies of photographs transferred to fabric, machinepieced, embroidered, and appliqued, 46" x44"

(Figure 7) with suburbs, noting "the corres-pondences between the vacancies of nature insuburbia - moments experienced as gazing atstars, listening to trains, sitting in traffic, brood-ing over oncoming car lights - and the longingof the soul for a higher energy."

Clearly "Eastern Wilderness" and oldersuburban industrial areas predominate in thiscollective portrait of New Jersey. Only a fewartists included slides of work that comments onthe transition from open space to suburb or workthat comments on life in suburbs. Indeed, mostof New Jersey's suburban landscape is missing.In thousands of slides, I did not find a new in-dustrial park, an office building along a suburbanhighway, or a garden apartment, condominium,or townhouse development in a new suburb. Nofield has a sign announcing a "future financialcenter." The most common sub-urban imagesdepict older industrial suburbs. In addition, someartists find details of nature or scenic views in

suburban parks. Taking all theseslides together, we have a collectiveportrait of an Eastern suburbanstate that virtually omits thesuburban landscape built up sinceWorld War II.

Two Methodological IssuesThe 150 "landscape artists"

who have placed slides in one ofthese three slide files are a smallproportion of all the artists in NewJersey who produce landscapes.Certainly some of the others, es-pecially photographers, emphasizethe newer suburban landscape. Theprofile of the artists in these slidefiles suggests biases toward resi-dence in North Jersey, substantialformal art education, high levels ofactivity, and ties with Manhattan artworlds. The impact of these biaseson the collective portrait of NewJersey is difficult to judge, in partbecause the geographical bias andthe bias toward ties to Manhattanmay work in opposite directions.Research on Manhattan art worlds(Simpson 1981; Rosenblum 1978)

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ren

ssel

aer

Poly

tech

nic

Inst

itute

] at

19:

43 0

7 D

ecem

ber

2014

Suburban Landscape 35

Figure 4 Bascha Mon, "treesarelife/carsdestruction," 1990, mixed media on canvas, 15" x44"

suggests a relatively high proportion of theseartists will feel pressure to seek unique (but ac-ceptable) subject matter. This could include East-ern suburbs. Yet better representation of artistswho live in central and south New Jersey mightincrease the proportion who work with the newersuburban landscape, if only because a smallerproportion deal with older industrial suburbs.

Overall, however, artists who live in the olderindustrial suburbs seem more likely to incorpo-rate elements of their everyday environmentwithin their art work than artists who live in thenewer suburbs.

The reviewer's comment about the suburbanquality of Wilson's abstract paintings illustratesa second methodological issue: interpretation. Icategorized work shown on artists' slides by typeand by location using any information available.Frequently, the only information came from theslides themselves, and classification can bedifficult. Inferences about intention based onslides alone would be less secure. Artists'statements and my conversations with artistsshow that one artist presents Mew Jerseychemical factories to make an explicit statementabout our treatment of the environment. Othersmake less explicit statements, but they wantviewers to think about the implications of thislandscape. Still other artists want to show hownight transforms this landscape. Similarly, oneartist will present New Jersey as forestedwilderness in order to argue for open spacepreservation, while another artist selects forestlandscape to express feelings inspired by nature.

Why so little ordinary suburbanlandscape?

The New Jersey of these slides is, again,Eastern wilderness and polluting industry. Themost common suburban landscapes in the state- the housing developments, strip malls and newindustrial parks - are rare, even absent. The mostcommon suburban landscape in the slides is thatof the older industrial suburbs.

Since the visual images on these slides are,in part, cultural products, the rarity of imagesshowing newer suburbs suggests that we don'tknow what we think about these suburbs, or wedon't want to think about them. Those of us whowork with central New Jersey's suburban land-scape exchange stories about the people whostop their car to ask what we possibly find tophotograph or paint. State tourist brochures donot feature suburban images (Hummon 1988).The very familiarity of suburban landscape canmean we do not really see its features, or wedismiss them. This suggests few buyers seekout visual art work that depicts such landscape.

These patterns in the collective portrait ofNew Jersey are consistent with the suburbanideologies that Hummon (1990) found in northernCalifornia. If it is hard to put perceptions of thenewer suburbs into words, it can be hard toexpress perceptions of these suburbs visually. If"Urbanites" find suburbs boring, perhaps the mosturban of New Jersey's suburban landscape ismost acceptable in Manhattan.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ren

ssel

aer

Poly

tech

nic

Inst

itute

] at

19:

43 0

7 D

ecem

ber

2014

36 Judith J. Friedman

Aspects of U.S. suburban landscape itselfalso discourage its use in visual art. Suburbanlandscape surrounds New Jersey's residents, butsuburban landscape is private and dispersed. Wesee what is around our homes and work places,what highway departments create along majorcommuter highways, and what has grown upalong commuter rail lines. Much of the rest canbe, in practical terms, invisible. Highwaydepartments do not provide scenic overlooks ofsuburbs. Many new industrial and commercialparks are on minor roads off major highways,and trees separate this landscape from com-muters on the highways. There can be physicalconstraints as well. Roads lack shoulders; signsban parking.

Privacy may be the greatest constraint.Cities have extensive public areas, but suburbsare private places (Baumgartner 1988). Someonephotographing a suburban residential street or asuburban office building is more conspicuousthan someone photographing a city street. Asuburban retail mall is private. An industrial park

can be on a private road or have a long privatedriveway. Many new residential developments areself-contained, some have gates with securityguards. Suburban residents are indoors, or notat home. While there is a long tradition ofphotographing and painting city street scenes,artists can find it difficult to transfer this traditionto suburbs.

Finally, suburban landscape can be hard toorganize visually. Fields beginning succession,early second-growth forests, even suburbantownhouse developments, lack obvious focalpoints. Only older strip malls form street scenes.Past landscape art provides ample models fornew work on "natural" landscapes, but fewerguidelines for dealing with the Eastern suburbanlandscape. Here the older industrial suburbs areexceptional. There is a tradition of painting andphotographing older industrial buildings.

Possibly suburban images are more com-mon in other parts of the country. Photographerssuch as Joe Deal, Lewis Baltz, and Robert Adams

**f

Figure 5 Mel Leipzig, "The Big Tree," 1992, acrylic, 57" x 86"

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ren

ssel

aer

Poly

tech

nic

Inst

itute

] at

19:

43 0

7 D

ecem

ber

2014

Suburban Landscape 37

document the transformation ofdesert to suburb. Whether or notthe slides in files maintained byWestern art organizations includemore suburban images is an openquestion, however.

The relative scarcity of vi-sual art works depicting ordinarysuburban landscape means thatresearch using visual images toidentify common perceptions ofsuburban life is likely to require(a) images drawn from the entirecountry and (b) other sources ofvisual images. Possible additionalsources include snapshots in per-sonal photo albums and imagesin advertisements.

Summary: New Jerseyartists' views of NewJersey

"f -J

Figure 7 June Wilson, "Warning," 1989, oil, wax,acrylic on canvas, 60" x 80"

Visual artists living in New Jersey collectivelydepict the state's landscape as managedwilderness plus older industry. In the "natural"landscapes, human activities usually are eitherpicturesque or invisible to those who know littleecological history. At the same time, this "na-tural" landscape is neat, closer to park thanvacant lot. Some of this landscape, especiallydetails of nature, is based on suburban parks. Inaddition, many artists work with the olderindustrial landscape found in suburbs nearManhattan. Despite the large number of artistswho live in the state's newer suburbs, few NewJersey artists comment on suburban devel-opment or on life in suburbs. The newer eco-nomic landscape of suburban industrial andcommercial parks, suburban office buildings, andretail malls is conspicuously absent. The overalllack of suburban images is consistent with otherevidence that we have vague perceptions ofsuburbs. It also is consistent with the privatecharacter of (J.S. suburbs.

Figure 6 June Wilson, "RedSky," 1984, oilstick on canvas, 60" x 70"

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ren

ssel

aer

Poly

tech

nic

Inst

itute

] at

19:

43 0

7 D

ecem

ber

2014

38 Judith J. Friedman

Notes1 I presented earlier versions of this paper at the

Eyes Across the Water, the Second Amsterdam Con-ference on Visual Sociology and Anthropology (June1992) and at the Stone Symposium of the Society forthe Study of Social Interaction in Knoxville, Tennes-see (March 1993). Karen Cerulo, Henry Finney, andSamuel R. Friedman provided insightful comments. Ialso want to thank the organizations that helped meuse their slide files and the many artists who havediscussed their work with me and have allowed me toreproduce copies of their work.

2 Apparently few visual artists dealt with the sub-divisions that went up after World War II (Garvey,1989).

3 This research draws on my experiences as aphotographer and as a member of several New Jer-sey artists' organizations, and it draws on my researchabout New Jersey's environment (Friedman andRenwick, 1986) and its suburbs (Friedman, 1994).

4 There are many similarities between New Jer-sey art worlds and the art worlds of St. Louis during the1970s (McCall, 1977, 1978), of Chicago during the1960s (Levine, 1972), and of a northeastern city inthe 1980s (Finney, 1993), including the high percent-age of females. There are differences as well. Somedifferences involve New Jersey's proximity to NewYork. Others involve national changes through recentdecades, including the temporary increase in statefunding for the arts (Balfe and Wyszomirski, 1986),increased corporate interest in the arts, and an in-crease in alternative exhibition spaces.

5Gilmore (1992:149) notes that the "networksand social processes through which artists and sup-port personnel interact help explain variation in col-lective forms of artistic expression."

6White and White (1965) describe connectionsbetween French landscape painting and changing mar-kets.

7Slides of artists who selected the style"environment" produced no additional landscapeartists. Still, my definition of landscape could bebroader than that of many artists, and I could havemissed other "landscape" artists represented in thisslide file. I include cityscapes, seascapes, andenvironmental portraits.

8No doubt other artists in each file produce nu-merous landscapes. Some artists who placed slides inseveral of these files included landscapes in one slidefile, but not in another.

9The percents are for the one hundred and forty-four artists who included a resume.

10Artists who live in the Trenton area or south ofTrenton may develop ties with Philadelphia art com-munities.

11 Counts such as number of exhibits in the pastfive years end with the most recent date in that artist'sfile.

12A few others (among the one hundred andfifty) included one or two slides with New Jersey inthe title. Two of the fifty-eight did not include a re-sume.

13This work merges with the pastoral landscapes,and a few artists mixed images of places that happento be in New Jersey with images of similar placeselsewhere.

14The remaining eight percent provided slideswith an even balance between "natural" landscape andthe landscape of the older industrial suburbs, or slidesof abstract work.

15Bermingham (1986) describes the increasinguse of detail by British landscape artists as Englandbecame suburban.

16In addition, a few artists who concentrated on"natural" landscape included one or two industrialscenes such as petroleum storage tanks.

17This illustrates the ambiguity of "suburbs."Cities such as Trenton have neighborhoods visuallyindistinguishable from neighborhoods just across thecity boundary.

ReferencesBalfe, J. and M. Wyszomirski. 1986. "The Arts in New

Jersey." Journal of Regional Cultures 4(5): 205-222.

Baumgartner, M.P. 1988. The Moral Order of a Sub-urb. New York: Oxford University Press.

Becker, H. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of Cali-fornia Press.

Bendel, J. 1986. "A short, but thrilling, Turnpike tour."New York Times (September 2):35.

Bermingham, A. 1986. Landscape and Ideology: TheEnglish Rustic Tradition, 1740-1869. Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press.

Cembalest, R. 1991. "The ecological art explosion."ARTnews 90(Summer):96-105.

Chenoweth, R. and P. Gobster. 1990. "The Natureand Ecology of Aesthetic Experiences in the Land-scape." Landscape Journal 9(1): 1-8.

Duncan, J. S. 1990. A City as Text New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Finney, H. 1993. "Mediating claims to artistry: socialstratification in a local visual arts community."Sociological Focus 9:403-431.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ren

ssel

aer

Poly

tech

nic

Inst

itute

] at

19:

43 0

7 D

ecem

ber

2014

Suburban Landscape 39

Friedman, J. J. and H. Renwick. 1986. "Garden state,garbage state." Journal of Regional Cultures 4(5):183-204.

Friedman, J. J. 1992. "Landscape preference research:a review and critique." Paper presented at the ISASymposium on Current Developments in Envi-ronmental Sociology, Zeist, The Netherlands.

_____. 1994. "Suburban variation within highly ur-banized regions: the case of New Jersey." Subur-ban Communities. M. Baldassare ed. Greenwich,CT: JA1 Press.

Gallotto, A. 1993. "800 new jobs help Raritan Center tobe a big player in area's economy." The Star Led-ger (February 16): 16.

Garvey, T. J. 1989. "Garden becomes machine: im-ages of suburbia in the painting of Roger Brown."Smithsonian Studies in American Art 3(3): 3-24.

Gilmore, S. 1990. "Art worlds: developing theinteractionist approach to social organization."Symbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies . H.Becker and M. McCall eds. Chicago: University ofChicago Press. 148-178.

Ginsburg, E. 1992. "Ye olde inferiority complex." NewYork Times (May 24): 13, 8.

Goldberg, V. 1991. "A terrible beauty." ARTnews 90(Summer): 106-113.

Halle, D. 1989. "Class and culture in modern America:the vision of the landscape in the residences ofcontemporary Americans," Prospects 14: 373-406.

Hummon, D. 1988. "Tourist worlds: tourist advertis-ing, ritual, and American culture." The Sociologi-cal Quarterly 29: 179-202.

_____. 1990. Commonplaces: Community Ideol-ogy and Identity in American Culture. Albany:SUNY Press.

Jackson, J.B. 1984. Discovering the Vernacular Land-scape. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Kaplan, R. and S. Kaplan. 1989. The Experience ofNature. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Levine, E.M. 1972. "Chicago's art world. " Urban Lifeand Culture 3: 293-322.

Lindauer, M.S. 1990. "Reactions to cheap art." Em-pirical Studies of the Arts 8(2): 95-110.

Mahoney, R. 1991. "June Wilson." Arts Magazine.(March).

Martorella, R. 1990. Corporate Art. New Brunswick:Rutgers University Press.

McCall, M. 1978. "The sociology of female artists."Studies in Symbolic Interaction 1: 289-318.

_____. 1977. "Art without a market: creating artis-tic value in a provincial art world." Symbolic In-teraction 1(Fall): 32-43.

Meinig, D.W. 1979. "Introduction." and "The behold-ing eye." The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscape.D. W. Meinig ed. New York: Oxford UniversityPress. 1-7, 33-48.

Reed, C. 1988. "Off the wall and onto the couch!"Smithsonian Studies in American Art 2(Winter):33-44.

Rosenblum, B. 1978. "Style as social process." Ameri-can Sociological Review 43(June): 439-438.

Simpson, C. 1981. SOHO: The Artist in the City. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

Sorensen, L. 1982. "On the turnpike: forgettable sites."New York Times (April 4): NJ 32.

Watkins, E. 1990. "Familiar cast of players in suburbiabring prof's views to realistic life." The Star-Led-ger (Sept. 16): Leisure 12.

White, H.C. and C.A. White. 1993. Canvases and Ca-reers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Whitney Museum of American Art. 1990. The NewAmerican Pastoral. New York: Whitney Museum.

Wilson, A. 1992. The Culture of Nature. Cambridge,MA: Blackwell.

Zukin, S. 1992. Landscapes of Power. Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ren

ssel

aer

Poly

tech

nic

Inst

itute

] at

19:

43 0

7 D

ecem

ber

2014