Not much in the way of accurately depicting the soil profile in
the "Agony", just rock and no vegetation. The scarcity of the
landscape makes the tragedy more pronounced. 
Do the words art and artist have any place in agriculture? We invariable think of art only in terms of a painting or a sculpture, and an artist is limited to one who has created these objects. However, a second and broader definition of an artist is "any person who performs his work as if it were an art." Let's consider this view.
One of the major high schools in St. Paul was Mechanic Arts (near the state capitol). Architecture courses were even offered there. In other words, there was a recognition that the making of things was an art, a special skill. We tend to forget that some of our present universities started out as schools of agriculture and mechanic arts, thus began Michigan State University (Mich. St. Agriculture and Mechanic Arts) and Iowa State University (IA State A. And M.). And there is still Texas A&M, and Oklahoma A&M. Of course, they weren't considered equal to their sister universities (Univ. Of Mich., Univ. Of IA) because they lacked the refinements brought to an institution by a medical school and a liberal arts curriculum as opposed to a mechanic arts curriculum. Engineering and agricultural colleges were inferior - because of this age old bias of art versus science and technology.
The preceding serves to introduce a broad view of the words art and artist and to consider a statement attributed to Daniel Webster: "In tillage is the beginning of all arts." This is a pithy statement deserving of analysis for in just eight words it tells us that: 1. Tillage is a form of art (if well done), 2. A tiller of the soil is an artisan (from Latin artist, skilled in arts), 3. Agriculture (tillage) is one form of civilization (just as art is one aspect of civilization). Donald G. Baker, Professor Emeritus, 1996.
I consider the soil in place in the landscape to be beautiful enough so that it should be captured by the artist. The soil scientist's "art" is to capture the "essence" of the soil by writing a perfect soil description. Lets Look at how the soil has been viewed by the artist throughout history.
Not much in the way of accurately depicting the soil profile in
the "Agony", just rock and no vegetation. The scarcity of the
landscape makes the tragedy more pronounced.
Cezanne begins to show
something in the railroad cut but not the correct sequence of soil horizons
that actually would have occurred.
Here we see a very
good depiction of a Spodosol Landscape and the horizon sequences are correct
(A-E-Bhs-C).
Grant Wood does a good
job of describing the "prairie soil" that is having a tree planted in
it.
A
photograph of a roadcut through the big woods of SE Minnesota where the
horizons are A-E-Bt-C. This view is worthy of being painted.
This
dig requires that the horizons serve as clues to locate important information
about our ancestors and how they lived. Understanding soil horizons is
important for archaeologists since they can serve as clues for determining
where to dig.
Return to Unit 3 Chapter 2