PRAIRIE PHENOMENOLOGY IN NEBRASKA
Research into the provenance of the Lone Tree Folds (a panoramic nine-panel tempera painting apparently depicting a dynamic, spatiotemporal exercise in “practical aesthesis” involving a sculpture placed in the middle of a prairie landscape) suggests the existence of community of artists in 1940s Nebraska who may have engaged in ritualized practices of sustained attention—activities perhaps standing in some affiliation to the Order of the Third Bird. Do the Lone Tree Folds depict an alternative mode of viewing particular to life on the prairie? Does this practice of looking suggest a departure from regionalist depictions of landscape?
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