Cloud Studies: The Visible Invisible

Clouds have long been objects of fascination, although their taxonomy was only established by early nineteenth-century meteorologists. For aestheticians and art historians, clouds also raise questions about painting's illusionistic uses of space. In John Constable's painting, clouds represent an "organ of sentiment"; his cloud sketches are exercises in representing space, mass, and mood. The poet John Clare also uses clouds to represent states of mind for which he lacked a language. Natural observation in Con­stable and Clare has different valances: for Clare, observation represents a form of defence against impingement; for Constable, "the man of the clouds," the science of cloud-watching gives rise to thought. The material­ity of clouds (bearing dust and pollution) is a feature of nineteenth-century climatic accounts. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology offers a contemporary theory of clouds as embodied and related seeing. Constable's cloud-sketches suggest that clouds are not just objects, but a form of cognition