Challenging landscape Eurocentrism: an Asian perspective

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors reflect on what may be understood as an overly Eurocentric focus on landscape in the first edition of the Companion to Landscape Studies. In addressing the topic from an Asian perspective, with specific reference to China, they aim to take a reflective, rather than an essentialist, approach to the concept of 'Eurocentrism', not just in landscape studies, but in the related field of cultural heritage studies. John Olsen's concepts of landscape in motion and of travelling through landscape have remarkable synergy with an Asian cultural view and understanding of landscape generally and Chinese perceptions in particular. Landscape as an idea in the Western genre has found, since the sixteenth century, art historical expression through painterly renditions of landscapes, whether they be the history painting genre of the Italianate School or the realism of the ordinary everyday landscapes of the Dutch School.