Study of A River: by Claudia Costa Pederson

Study of a River
By Claudia Costa Pederson
Trained as a painter, filmmaker, and sculp-

tor, Peter Huttons filmic oeuvre is often dis-
cussed in relation to North American land-
scape painting traditions and to the early
cinema tableaux documentaries.1
An exemplar of Huttons large body of work,

Study of a River (1995), a 16 minute,
black and white silent film, evokes compari-
sons with the landscapes of the Hudson
River School and with the textural, slow,
episodic structures of experimental film.
Frame enlargement shows an ice cutter on the frozen Hudson.
Huttons film is significant because it works Courtesy Library of Congress Collection.
between and around historical visualities. The
film highlights the role of mimesis to inquire about sects with national identity. The film oscillates be-
the relationship between the politics of documenting tween homage and ambivalence through angular
nature and national and Euro-American identity for- compositions emphasizing the rivers negative
mation. 2 space. This evocation of North American landscape
art differs from the life-like mimesis and idealized
Study of a River depicts the winter landscape of pastoralism characterizing this tradition.4
the Hudson River in twenty-seven static shots taken
from a boat, the river banks, and a bridge. Shots For Hutton, the traces of human presence in the
span from extreme long-shots, such as the opening landscape are predominantly imbedded in industrial
scene showing a train running parallel to the river technologies of boats and trains.5 Like his predeces-
from a great distance, to extreme close-ups, includ- sors in painting, the artists attention to technological
ing the image of raindrops hitting a mud puddle reg- forms is equivocal. The choice of episodic film,
istering as scraggy lines of light. The visual style of Huttons hallmark, rejects the notion of documentary
fog, snow, light, shadow and texture quotes French film as truth (an objective view of actuality), as
poetic realism. 3 defined by Scottish filmmaker John Grierson, who
coined the term documentary in 1926.6 Instead, he
Paralleling Huttons play on scale, Study of a River favors the non-linearity of episodic documentary,
conveys awe through the juxtaposition and move- which unfolds through carefully considered composi-
ments of natural and industrial forms. The expansive tion, autobiography, and sensation. With Study of a
river surface dotted with ice floes, the snow and wind River, Hutton evokes the mimetic aesthetics of past
swept river banks, the massive forms of moving landscape traditions in painting and cinema to ulti-
ships and a bridge combine to simulate the feeling of mately point to their artificiality. If not self-evident
the American sublime. Huttons attention to color truth, Hutton asks, what then are the underpinnings
tone and texture with a range of blacks, whites, and of such fraught, yet culturally defining, representa-
greys suggest the visual and spiritual complexities tions of the North American nature?
latent in the landscape. The absence of sound further
reinforces the spatial focus of Study of a River, an Huttons interrogations are also in dialogue with pop-
allusion to landscape painting as well as meditation. ular culture and amateur tropes. Study of a River
With Study of a River, Hutton examines how mime- evokes the artists familial and professional back-
sis, a defining aesthetic of North American art, inter- grounds, as a seamans son, as a former seaman
1
himself, and as the director of the Film and Electron- Tom Gunning, The Image and its Eclipse: The Films of
ic Arts Program at Bard College since 1989. Huttons Peter Hutton, Spiral, no. 4 (July 1985), pp. 7-10; Scott
MacDonald, Ten + (Alternative) Films about American
cinematic tableaux of the Yangtze River, the Polish Cities, The Isle Reader: Ecocriticism, 1993-2003, Mi-
industrial city of Lodz, northern Iceland, and a ship chael P. Brench and Scott Slovic, eds., (Athens: Universi-
ty of Georgia Press, 2003), pp. 231.
graveyard on the Bangladeshi shore, (the subjects of
2
his other films) indicate his understanding of globali- Patricia Zimmerman, States of Emergency: Documen-
taries, Wars, Democracies, (Minneapolis, MN: University
zation, continuing Study of a Rivers exploration of of Minnesota Press, 2000); Mette Hjort and Scott McKen-
the interactions of industry and nature.7 zie, eds., Cinema and Nation, (London and New York:
Routledge, 2000); Jeffrey Geiger, American Documentary
Film: Projecting the Nation, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Uni-
Huttons visits to the Detroit Art Institute with his fa- versity Press, 2011).
ther in the 1950s to watch amateur travelogue films, 3
Susan Hayward, Cinema Studies, the Key Concepts,
and his fathers extensive photographic documenta- (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 151.
tion of his travels were formative. Hutton mentions 4
Malcolm Andrews, Landscape and Western Art (Oxford:
his interest in the realist genre of travel literature, in Oxford University Press, 1999), 135.
particular, the diaries of Henry Hudsons voyage up 5
David Schuyler, Sanctified Landscape: Writers, Artists,
the Hudson River punctuated by awe for the land- and the Hudson River Valley, 1820-1909, (Ithaca and
scapes beauty as a source of inspiration.8 As a London: Cornell University Press, 2012), pp. 28-46.
meditation on national and spatial identities Huttons 6
Ann Curthoys, Connected Worlds: History in Transna-
Study of a River suggests that these notions are tional Perspective, (Canberra, Australia: ANU E Press,
2005), pp. 151.
profoundly tied to the vagaries of memory, ambiva-
7
lent signs, and media/visual ecosystems. P. Adams Sitney, Immanent Domain: The Films of Pe-
ter Hutton, Artforum, no. 9, Vol. XLVI (May 2008), pp.
366.
Huttons sublimity hinges between the historical en- 8
Lived Experience, Mouse Magazine. http://
tanglements of mimetic models of representation moussemagazine.it/articolo.mm?id=945. Accessed July
and the political tropes of nation and empire building 7, 2015.
through industry and technology. The Hudson River 9
Linda S. Ferber, The Hudson River School: Nature and
schools depictions of the American sublime were the American Vision, (New York: Skira Rizolli, 2009), pp.
80-122.
instrumental for popularizing the American grand
tour, where wealthy European and native city dwell-
ers traveled from the Hudson River, to the Catskills,
The views expressed in these essays are those of the author and do
along the Erie Canal to Niagara Falls, and back not necessarily represent the views of the Library of Congress.
through the White Mountains and Connecticut val-
ley.9 In the episodic recordings of North African and
Middle Eastern historical sites by Alexandre Promio
for the Lumire brothers, documentary film origins
double this movement. Explicitly both referring to
and rejecting these histories, Hutton refrains from Claudia Costa Pederson holds a PhD in Art History and
depicting the American landscape as wild, empty Visual Studies from Cornell University. She is an assis-
tant curator of new media for the Finger Lakes Film
spaces. Here, industrial ships plow the Hudson Festival at Ithaca College, and an Assistant Professor of
River, reminders that landscape is always an inter- Art and New Media at the Art and Design Department at
play between nature and capital. Wichita State University.

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Study of A River: by Claudia Costa Pederson

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Study of a River

By Claudia Costa Pederson

Trained as a painter, filmmaker, and sculp-

An exemplar of Huttons large body of work,

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