This essay is concerned with the complex and often conflicting ways that the term landscape has been understood, explored and defined and how these different understandings have influenced research and writing within and between various academic disciplines including Anthropology. In Western discourse the concept of landscape …

Introduction

The title of this report stems from an exhibition I saw at Gimple Fils Gallery in London called Wood for the Trees and Falling Leaves that showed the works of thirteen contemporary artists who for various reasons depict or reference trees in painting, sculptures and video, (illustrations pp.17-19). My aim has been to research this topic in greater depth to find out why certain people feel so strongly about trees and forests and what meaning they attached to them symbolically or metaphorically and why. Trees enchant people and their symbolic use transcends many cultures while at the same time pointing to individual cultural differences……..

Introduction

The incorporation of cultural differences into art has a long history where artists have used the data of ethnography as source material for their work. The examples from early modernism are well known, Picasso, Matisse, Derain, Gauguin, appropriated forms from African and other …