AEREALITY

A poet and scholar meditates on the unique physical and metaphorical perspective offered by an aerial view of the world.

Fox (Making Time: Essays on the Nature of Los Angeles, 2007, etc.) has thought deeply about “the aerial imagination”—how we perceive terrain, organize land into geometries and rearrange it, becoming the most transformational force on the planet’s surface, “surpassing rain as the worldwide shaper of land late in the twentieth century.” The author structures his narrative around three flights: over the American West, the Hudson River Valley and Australia’s southeastern quadrant, three territories sufficiently diverse to support his wide-ranging observations. His analysis is part historical, invoking explorers John C. Fremont and Alexander von Humboldt and alluding to events as disparate as the Dust Bowl and the construction of Australia’s remarkable Dog Fence; part environmental, detailing the depredations of military bomb sites, mining operations and urban sprawl; and part technological, explaining how the evolution of flight and photography have led to the wonder, for example, of Google Earth. More than anything, he examines how artists have complicated aereality, making unexpected visual correspondences and adding another dimension to literal cognition. From informed discussions of anonymous Aboriginal paintings, to celebrated artists like Frederic Church, Thomas Cole, Ansel Adams, Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Stieglitz, Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria and Andy Goldsworthy, to a number of lesser-known moderns, Fox is persuasive in his claim that aereality is, at least in part, a “search for the Divine.” If the author’s treatment seems too idiosyncratic—precious even—it’s due largely to the strangeness of his topic. In the end he proves a likable and patient guide.

An enjoyable examination of the “God’s Eye View.”