Living Stones and Other Beings: Earthen Ecologies within Baltic Visual Culture, 1860–1915
Living Stones and Other Beings: Earthen Ecologies within Baltic Visual Culture, 1860–1915

Summary/Abstract: This article stresses the urgency of an ecocritical perspective within Baltic art history. Interweaving environmental history with a regional approach, it examines the efficacy of a ‘visual epistemology’ of geology – specifically scientific studies of glacial erratic boulders dotted throughout the Baltic – and how it dovetails with issues of nature conservation, colonial conquest, multi-ethnic relations, and articulations of permanence and indigeneity. The study reveals how an ecocritical approach to nineteenth-century Baltic visual culture importantly transcends not only hierarchies of nationality, but also hierarchies of artistic medium. It concludes with proposals for moving beyond anthropocentric ideas of the nation, and towards a consideration of the enduring relevance of such images today.

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