the natural, the big, the distinctive

The national epic found its monuments, as often as not, in the American landscape, replaced the built environments that it lacked. Niagara Falls mocked the fall line of Europe’s overshot water mills and even more the contrived fountains of Versailles or Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers in the Piazza Navona. The Rockies dwarfed the Alps. The majestic Mississippi lorded over a quaint Rhine. The Great Lakes reduced Europe’s waterscapes to ponds. Redwoods defied Europe’s hoary oaks, grizzly bears its domesticated farmyard fauna, Yellowstone’s geysers the lapdog hot springs of European spas. The natural, the big, the distinctive – all challenged the artifice of ancient and aristocratic societies, while arguing strenuously for a republic of native, once-and-future virtue. 

How the Canyon Became Grand: A Short History by Stephen J. Pyne. Penguin Books. 1998. p.32,33

Spaniards are not Europeans

…one must never forget that Spain is the only country in Europe whose landscape is not European, not at all, therefore it is natural that although Spaniards are Europeans even so they are not Europeans.


Picasso by Gertrude Stein. Courier Dover Publications. 1984. p.37

Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of the times gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievement--to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity--to loiter about the ruined castle--to meditate on the falling tower--to escape, in short, from the commonplace realities of the present, and lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.


Washington Irving, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon. 1820 as found in Robert Irwin, The Alhambra. 2004. p.135