art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

, 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 surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from outer space. In the field of astronomy, ...

. Usually, as in the examples seen here, the clouds are depicted as viewed from the earth, often including just enough of a landscape to suggest scale, orientation, weather conditions, and distance (through the application of the technique of aerial perspective). 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, 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 seascapes as precursors of the work of

abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

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'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' 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 between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

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

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

and modernist abstraction. The current show is a feast of

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 ...

esque 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 the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

s - for example, the famous cloudscapes of

Georgia O'Keeffe Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American modernist artist. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been called the "Mother of Ame ...

- in which the clouds are seen from above, as though viewed from an airplane. According to an essay at the website of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, "Among the most dramatic and well-known images of O'Keeffe's later years are her cloudscapes of the 1960s and '70s. Traveling around the world, she was exhilarated by the views seen from an airplane window.

Below, in the "external links" section, is a link to a color image of O'Keeffe's gigantic cloudscape entitled ''Sky Above Clouds IV'' ( 1965; oil on canvas; 8 x 24 ft.; Art Institute of Chicago). 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 from a perspective abo ...

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, c. 1816 Image:Ary Pleysier (1809-1879) - Beach View With Boats.jpg, ''Beach View With Boats'' by Ary Pleysier Image:JMWTurner Sunrise with Sea Monsters.jpg, '' Sunrise with Sea Monsters'' by J. M. W. Turner (1845)

External links

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

Image gallery

See also

External links