Forbes Lipschitz Featured in Journal of Landscape Architecture

The landscape architecture professor explores a novel approach to agricultural landscape representation: the paint-by-numbers tradition.

Forbes Lipschitz Featured in Journal of Landscape Architecture

Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Forbes Lipschitz has published “By the Numbers: Rethinking the AgriCultural Image” in the Journal of Landscape Architecture.

The paint-by-numbers system is particularly well-suited to introducing the public to the various intricacies of the agricultural landscape, both because of its interactive aspect and the similarity of its detailed process to the regimentation of commodity production. The method has wide appeal: when the paint-by-numbers kit debuted in the mid-twentieth century, proponents praised it for ‘democratizing’ art, although critics derided it as a ‘metaphor for the commercialization and mechanization of culture’. Applying this method of representation to the working landscape is also particularly apt because numbered paintings embrace the twin principles of standardization and commodification, two defining characteristics of twenty-first-century agriculture.

Read more at the Journal of Landscape Architecture