Landscape and Imagination: Art, Poetry, and Music Across the 20th Century
6 weekly sessions on campus, on Tuesdays at 11am - 1pm, starting from Tuesday 3 November
Overview
Explore how artists, poets and composers have imagined, interpreted and transformed landscape from the Romantic period to today. Across six weeks, this course traces shifting ideas of place, nature, memory and environment through painting, photography, poetry and music. We look at how creative figures — from J.M.W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich and Constance Mayer to David Hockney, Lee Miller, Olafur Eliasson, Carol Ann Duffy, Alice Oswald, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Grace Williams, Delia Derbyshire, Anna Meredith and Erland Cooper — use landscape to express emotion, identity, conflict and change.
No prior knowledge is required, just an interest in different art forms. By the end of the course, you’ll have a deeper understanding of how landscape inspires the creative imagination, and how art, poetry and music speak to one another across time.
Syllabus
Week 1 — Romantic Beginnings: Nature, Emotion & the Sublime
- What we explore: How Romantic artists used landscape to express emotion, awe, spirituality, and the inner life. We look at the emergence of the sublime and the idea of landscape as a mirror of the imagination.
Week 2 — Industrial Change: City, Countryside & New Ways of Seeing
- What we explore: How the arrival of industry, railways, and new technologies reshaped the countryside and the city. We examine how artists responded to a world where nature and modernity collided.
Week 3 — Modernist Experiments: Colour, Movement & Fragmented Space
- What we explore: How modernist artists broke apart traditional landscape, experimenting with abstraction, rhythm, colour, and perception. Landscape becomes imaginative, symbolic, and psychological.
Week 4 — War, Memory & the Altered Landscape
- What we explore: How war reshapes the land — trenches, ruins, displacement — and how artists use landscape to process trauma, witness destruction, and imagine renewal.
Week 5 — Postmodern & Pop Landscapes: Identity, Media & the Everyday
- What we explore: How late 20th century artists turned to cities, media, technology, and popular culture to rethink what landscape can be — from digital space to urban identity.
Week 6 — Contemporary Visions: Environment, Global Voices & New Technologies
- What we explore: How today’s artists respond to climate change, migration, ecology, and digital worlds. Landscape becomes global, political, and deeply imaginative.
Course lecturer
Dr Judith Walsh is a lecturer in modern and contemporary art. Her PhD examined aesthetic, cultural and societal themes and trends of the post war period including the ‘battle’ between figurative and abstract art. Currently working for the University of Liverpool she has also taught extensively for Tate Liverpool, National Museums Liverpool and Liverpool Hope University. She is particularly interested in the collaborative nature of artistic practice and the philosophy of aesthetics and contemporary art in a globalized world.
Course fee
- Standard fee: £100
- Concession fee: £50