The Cottage in a Cornfield

John Constable, The Cottage in a Cornfield, c. 1817-33 #cottagecore

I have often discussed here the enduring popularity of pastoral poetry and images of Arcadia. The latest manifestation of this long tradition is 'cottagecore'. An NPR article on the phenomenon explains that 'visually, cottagecore looks like this: sourdough bread starters, foraged mushrooms, open meadows, freshly picked flowers, homegrown produce, knitting, baking pies, and, yes, rustic cottages. The pastoral interpretations live on TikTok, Pinterest, and prominently on Tumblr.'  The Wikipedia article on cottagecore references Theocritus, Shakespeare, Marie Antoinette and Animal Crossing. It notes the impact of Covid-19: ^'sites such as Tumblr had a 150% increase in cottagecore posts in the 3 months from March 2020. The trend has been described by Vox as “the aesthetic where quarantine is romantic instead of terrifying”.'

How does landscape figure in cottagecore? #cottagecore posters tend to favour flowery meadows, sunlit glades, golden hayfields and sun-dappled streams. Some of their photographs look too perfect to be real. The use of filters tend to make the world look like CGI. Tellingly there are a lot of images of paths you can imagine yourself taking, to escape the confinement of lockdown and fear of the pandemic. Cottages feature occasionally but so do many other kinds of building - the phrase clearly signifies a mood rather than a type of building. Sometimes young women picture themselves in these scenes, with long hair and natural-looking clothes (the forest-loving Mori girls were a similar internet fashion in Japan).

Cottagecore is part of the larger phenomenon of Generation Z aesthetics. A 2018 Pinterest article noted that 'there are over 37 million aesthetic related boards on the platform, with Gen Z’ers searching for “aesthetic” 447% more than Millennials.' There is an Aesthetics wiki that gives a list of 'aesthetics' used by Generation Z, of which cottagecore is but one. Under C, for example, you will find Classicism and Cubism, but also Clovercore (which 'conveys ideas of nature and love with a bright and dreamy color palette'), Chaotic Academia ('an aesthetic that involves haphazard routines, messy habits, unusual or banned literature and studying with a passion') and Cloudcore ('based on the visual culture of clouds. The pictures are usually taken during sunsets when the clouds have more color in them.') 

When it comes to landscape imagery there are various aesthetic categories similar to cottagecore: naturecore, forestpunk, mosscore. The goblincore hashtag denotes abject landscape features: 'aspects of nature that most would find "ugly" or dirty, ranging from animals such as frogs and snails to materials such as moss, mud, plants, and fungi such as mushrooms.' In contrast #fairycore or #fairywave 'is an aesthetic surrounding the theme of nature, soft pastels, butterflies, magic, flowers, soft animals like bunnies, and the vibe of springtime.' You could look on all this as trivial and even comical, but who knows where culture is heading next and how these social media platforms will evolve? Perhaps a wholly new landscape aesthetic will appear. 

I think I may have first come across the term cottagecore earlier this year in connection with Taylor Swift's album 'folklore'. She has just released another record, 'evermore', to very good reviews. Announcing it on Instagram she acknowledged the element of escapism in this latest collection of songs. "We were standing on the edge of the folklorian woods and had a choice: to turn and go back or to travel further into the forest of this music. We chose to wander deeper in."