| Summary: | <p>This thesis examines the work of British landscape painter and drawing master Alexander Cozens (1717–86). Its focus lies on the interactions between different media—such as painting and printmaking as well as image and text—in the work of this artist, both on the level of artistic practice and conceptual thought. I argue that such interactions are the context in which Cozens’s unusual blotting technique, and its theoretical claims about artistic creation and pictorial composition, took shape. Utilising the concept of artisanal epistemology, the thesis demonstrates that Cozens’s theory of blotting emerged from both his intellectual engagement with contemporary aesthetic debates <em>and</em> his practical engagement with different media—both of which were shaped by issues of intermediality.</p>
<p>The thesis begins with a close reading of Cozens’s theory of blotting as articulated in <em>A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape</em> (1786). It demonstrates Cozens’s reliance on empirical epistemology in defining the blot as entirely abstract in form. The second chapter juxtaposes the theory with the practice of blotting to show that Cozens’s ideas on the subject changed over the course of his career, from his fist publication in 1759—<em>An Essay to Facilitate the Inventing of Landskips</em>—to the New Method of 1786. Chapter Three traces in detail Cozens’s practice as a printmaker, arguing that his theoretical conception of blotting was conditioned by his practical engagement with different printmaking techniques. The final chapter returns to the theory of blotting and considers it as a technique of pictorial composition that marked a profound departure from earlier notions of invention in painting. Together, the chapters offer not just a new interpretation of Cozens’s remarkable œuvre but provide a case study for future research on the theoretical potential of prints in shaping art-theoretical debates.</p>
|
|---|