Commonplace And Beyond

Contemporary landscape architecture is progressing towards on appropriate and independent language of its own, among which Martha Schwartz's pop-landscape is, with no doubt, the most dramatic. Her drawing on the potentials of art has given the ever changing relationship between man and nature a new expression. Pop-art, land art and other related art movements have become sources of her inspiration and innovation. Her design dealing with art and urban landscape address the eternal questions of landscape design: questions of harmony and staring, of functionalism and romanticism, of order and chaos. Though her experimental projects have often given rise to controversial discussions on the claim of landscape architecture to be an art form. It should be acknowledged that Schwartz's willingness to take risks and keep playing after dark is what distinguishes creativity from service and makes us all partners, however reluctant, in her adventure.It is on this cognition that the study will illustrate Schwartz's design work as well as her design philosophy in further. To do so, find out a possibility of new way landscape design. Surrounding this purpose, the thesis will be dissected the following parts:1. Her art background and practice experience by which to find out how the artistic genre has influenced her design career, especially the pop-art, minimalist art, land art and concept art.2. The contemporary art from 50-60s of 20th century. The thesis has touched on the pop art on that it is the primary resource of Schwartz's pop landscape, especially on the choice of ready-made materials and florid color.3. The introduction most of Schwartz's important design work to summarize the five characters on her design: application of ready-made materials; geometrical layout; florid color; exaggerate forms and metaphor.4. Standing on both contemporary art and landscape design states, the thesis analyze Schwartz's design style, which can be divided into two parts. First is her design philosophy, which is steered by the pop art, land art as well as her cognition of landscape design. The Second comes from the first, which include many of her design feats: transfigure the commonplace; ridiculous forms; modernism form and structure; post-modernism space; integration of the tradition and modern and application of metaphor.Based on the four parts above, the thesis makes a deeper thinking about Martha Schwartz's landscape design within the whole professional framework. Take a whole perceive both on creativity and deficiency in terms of cultural, formal and ecological aspects. Then give a further expatiation on the relationship between art and landscape design.