The Hudson River School

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The Hudson River School is a movement in American painting dedicated to realizing sublimity in nature. Many of these paintings are in the Wadsworth Athenaeum, which I used to visit with my family. Looking at these paintings, with so many seemingly effortless, tiny details, made me sure that everyone must consider them beautiful – and the people around me seemed to agree. It’s true that there is nothing sensually pleasant or intellectually good about looking at paintings. I didn’t even learn about the movement until after coming to college, despite having seen many examples of them growing up. But I still knew they were beautiful. Part of this is because they depict nature, which Kant believed to be the most beautiful when it looks like art, …show more content…
There’s also the possibility for both, since a free play between imagination and understanding must exist to comprehend beauty. “We are conscious that this subjective relation, suitable for cognition in general, must be valid for everyone, and thus must be universally communicable, just as if it were a definite cognition, resting always on that relation as its subjective condition” (Kant, 292). While I think the person is crazy, I also understand that this isn’t science, and there may be nothing psychologically wrong with them. Beauty happens in the head, and since the person who thinks Hudson River School paintings are ugly and I both have heads, and the beauty in the painting is universally communicable, we should both see it. In other words, if I think the painting is beautiful, they should too. Thus we should both …show more content…
Kant thinks that the way fire and water constantly move and mesmerize people is a result of the unceasing variety of shapes. The light in Hudson River School paintings seems to reflect off surfaces in paintings in the same way, giving the illusion that it’s moving. This supposed movement involves the imagination even more, engaging me even as I understand what the painting is supposed to represent. The fact that the light doesn’t really move draws me in even more, because as I stand next to the painting, I’m wondering how it appears to move when it really
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