ENTRANCE TO A LANE
Hermeneutics in the field of British Landscape Painting in 20th and 21st centuries
Fine Art and The Otter Gallery Research project

The project linked the production of new paintings with The Otter Gallery Collection as a context and foundation for the conference/symposium on British landscape painting.
The development of modernist inspired landscape paintings can be seen as a specific characteristic or genre of 20th century British art. The relationship between 19th Century Romantic tradition and a new visual aesthetic centred on formalism and ‘significant form’(Clive Bell) produced a new visual language/vocabulary through which artists were able to engage critically with notions of abstraction, formalism and also with notions of memory, place and the natural world seen against the backdrop of industrial mechanisation. Lanyon, Heron, Sutherland and Moore (all present in The Otter Collection) produced work that inspired a range of more recent artists who have continued this critical approach to painting.