I love colonial era landscapes. Beautiful paintings of America before industrialization

As an American artist/landscape painter and now a dual citizen living for the last 50 years in New Zealand I'm amused (never puzzled ) by the difficulty Americans have in acknowledging the cost of colonisation. In New Zealand, we have spent years openly grappling with it, especially as white colonisers. I think as a nation we are richer and stronger for this exercising of diversity. As a landscape painter, I agree with the participants of this video. No landscape is neutral politically ( colonising, war, disenfranchisement, climate change, pollution, farming practices etc ) and that needs to at least be acknowledged if only in the mind of the artist. Landscape painting, real landscape painting is never simply decorative. If that's what you want, buy a Bob Ross. But even there the perceptive viewer will see layers of social and political nuance. Great video 5/5

Decolonization is *not* a metaphor. This art isn't going to give indigenous people their land back, and to use language that suggests otherwise is lazy, irresponsible, and self-defeating. Maybe instead, begin showcasing landscape art from Native American artists from any of the 573+ federally recognized tribes, or maybe pick a low hanging fruit and do so much as a land acknowledgment at the museum?

Okay but other than the older gentleman and his beautiful paintings, the other artworks are quite frankly, atrocious, no matter how many political ideologies the creators of those canvases spew out. In all honesty I can't think many who would enjoy this type of "art"...And this is coming from a POC immigrant to North America.

This is a very important subject.love to research about it.

This video is ridiculous. What about the biases of the contemporary artists? is that taken into consideration? Of course not. Some artists nowadays like to claim that "all art is political," and have no problem calling out the "biases" of other artists, yet they have no regard for their own. Besides, it's not like "bias" = bad. It's subjective. The bias is expected and, to be honest, makes up what art is in the first place. "Non-biased" art is not art. What's more, the egregious claim that "historical precedent" is somehow entirely bad really shows the depth of their own indoctrination. I see liberal virtue signaling, turning historically non-political pastoral art into some sort of overt proclamation: racist or anti-racist. I don't see how introducing more "brown people" into art, particularly pastoral art, somehow addresses "inequity."

leave it to modern artists to call classical landscapes political and racist. What is their art if not political?