art Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...

, a cloudscape is the depiction of a view of

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles, suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may ...

s or the

sky The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the planetary surface, surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere of Earth, atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from ...

. Usually, as in the examples seen here, the clouds are depicted as viewed from the earth, often including just enough of a

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

to suggest scale, orientation, weather conditions, and distance (through the application of the technique of

aerial perspective Aerial perspective, or atmospheric perspective, is the effect the atmosphere has on the appearance of an object as viewed from a distance. As the distance between an object and a viewer increases, the contrast between the object and its backgro ...

). The terms ''cloudscape'' and '' skyscape'' are sometimes used interchangeably, although a skyscape does not necessarily require a view of clouds. A highly complex cloudscape—as in some works of

J. M. W. Turner Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 177519 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbu ...

, for example—within an otherwise conventional landscape painting, can sometimes seem like an abstract painting-within-a-painting, nearly obliterating the realistic setting with a grand display of gestural force. Some critics have explicitly cited 19th century cloudscapes and

seascape A seascape is a photograph, painting, or other work of art which depicts the sea, in other words an example of marine art. The word originated as a formation from landscape, which was first used for images of land in art. By a similar de ...

s as precursors of the work of

abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

artists such as

Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s u ...

. Thus, commenting on a 1999 Turner exhibition, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' art critic Roberta Smith writes that, in 1966, "the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

established the artist's lush late works ... as precursors of both

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

and modernist

abstraction Abstraction is a process where general rules and concepts are derived from the use and classifying of specific examples, literal (reality, real or Abstract and concrete, concrete) signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstraction" ...

. The current show is a feast of Frankenthaleresque plumes of color...

Smith further observes that such works "conflate extremes of sea and sky with extremes of painting, showing both to contain elements of the unfathomable and the unknown

There are some later cloudscape

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

s - for example, the ''

Sky Above Clouds ''Sky Above Clouds'' (1960–1977) is a series of eleven Cloudscape (art), cloudscape paintings by the American modernist painter Georgia O'Keeffe, produced during her late period. The series of paintings is inspired by O'Keeffe's views from he ...

'' series by

Georgia O'Keeffe Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 March 6, 1986) was an American Modernism, modernist painter and drafter, draftswoman whose career spanned seven decades and whose work remained largely independent of major art movements. Called the "M ...

- in which the clouds are seen from above, as though viewed from an airplane. "Traveling around the world, she was exhilarated by the views seen from an airplane window.

Such "airborne-view" cloudscapes are in a sense

aerial landscape ::''(This article concerns painting and other non-photographic media. Otherwise, see aerial photography)'' Aerial landscape art includes paintings and other visual arts which depict or evoke the appearance of a landscape art, landscape from a p ...

s, except that typically there is no view of the land at all: only white clouds, suspended in (and even below) blue sky.

Image gallery

Image:John Constable 027.jpg, ''Weymouth Bay'' by

John Constable John Constable (; 11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was an English landscape painter in the Romanticism, Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for revolutionising the genre of landscape painting with his pictures of Dedha ...

, c. 1816 Image:Ary Pleysier (1809-1879) - Beach View With Boats.jpg, ''Beach View With Boats'' by

Ary Pleysier ARY may stand for: * Abdul Razzak Yaqoob, a Pakistani expatriate businessman * Andre Romelle Young, real name of Dr. Dre * Ary and the Secret of Seasons, an action adventure video game * ARY Digital, a Pakistani television network * ARY Digital Net ...

Image:JMWTurner Sunrise with Sea Monsters.jpg, ''

Sunrise with Sea Monsters ''Sunrise with Sea Monsters'' is an unfinished oil painting by English artist J. M. W. Turner. It is in the permanent collection of Tate Britain. Description Turner created this painting in the coastal town of Margate, in about 1845, near t ...

'' by

(1845)

External links

COLOR IMAGE of cloudscape by Georgia O'KeeffeA Planetary Order (Terrestrial Cloud Globe)
Clouds in culture Landscape art by type Visual arts genres {{art-stub

Image gallery

See also

External links