Cloudscape (art)

{{Short description|Artistic depiction of a view of clouds or the sky}} {{for|photography of clouds|cloudscape photography}} {{more citations needed|date=May 2016}} [[File:Jacob Isaaksz. van Ruisdael 004.jpg|upright=1.3|thumb|A cloudscape painting by Jacob Isaakszoon van Ruisdael]]

In art, a '''cloudscape''' is the depiction of a view of clouds or the sky. Usually, as in the examples seen here, the clouds are depicted as viewed from the earth, often including just enough of a landscape to suggest scale, orientation, weather conditions, and distance (through the application of the technique of aerial perspective). The terms ''cloudscape'' and ''skyscape'' are sometimes used interchangeably, although a skyscape does not necessarily require a view of clouds.

A highly complex cloudscape—as in some works of J. M. W. Turner, for example—within an otherwise conventional landscape painting, can sometimes seem like an abstract painting-within-a-painting, nearly obliterating the realistic setting with a grand display of gestural force. Some critics have explicitly cited 19th century cloudscapes and seascapes as precursors of the work of abstract expressionist artists such as Helen Frankenthaler.

Thus, commenting on a 1999 Turner exhibition, ''The New York Times'' art critic Roberta Smith writes that, in 1966, "the Museum of Modern Art established the artist's lush late works ... as precursors of both Impressionism and modernist abstraction. The current show is a feast of Frankenthaleresque plumes of color...."[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07E0DD103DF933A05757C0A96F958260&sec=&pagewanted=2]. Smith further observes that such works "conflate extremes of sea and sky with extremes of painting, showing both to contain elements of the unfathomable and the unknown."[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07E0DD103DF933A05757C0A96F958260&sec=&pagewanted=2] There are some later cloudscape paintings - for example, the ''Sky Above Clouds'' series by Georgia O'Keeffe - in which the clouds are seen from above, as though viewed from an airplane. "Traveling around the world, she was exhilarated by the views seen from an airplane window." [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/geok/geok_2.htm] Such "airborne-view" cloudscapes are in a sense aerial landscapes, except that typically there is no view of the land at all: only white clouds, suspended in (and even below) blue sky.

==Image gallery== <gallery widths="200px" heights="150px"> Image:John Constable - Weymouth Bay, c. 1816.jpg|''Weymouth Bay'' by John Constable, c. 1816 Image:Ary Pleysier (1809-1879) - Beach View With Boats.jpg|''Beach View With Boats'' by Ary Pleysier Image:JMWTurner Sunrise with Sea Monsters.jpg|''Sunrise with Sea Monsters'' by J. M. W. Turner (1845) </gallery>

==External links== * [http://www.georgiaokeeffe.net/sky-above-clouds-iv.jsp '''COLOR IMAGE''' of cloudscape by Georgia O'Keeffe] *[http://greyisgood.eu/globe A Planetary Order (Terrestrial Cloud Globe)]

Category:Clouds in culture Category:Landscape art by type Category:Visual arts genres