The Aesthetics of Natural Environments

CONTEMPORARY AESTHETICS AND THE NEGLECT OF NATURAL BEAUTY

Ronald Heburn begins by charting how an aesthetics of nature in the 18C, based on beauty and the sublime, switched to an aesthetics of art by the 20C. Simultaneously we witnessed a rise in science at the expense of religion.

“The characteristic image of contemporary humanity, as we all know, is that of a ‘stranger’, encompassed by a nature that is indifferent, unmeaning and ‘absurd’. (Carlson & Berleant, 2004:44)

The point is made that rigorous aesthetics seeks to control the viewing experience. Nature cannot do this, and cannot be controlled to this degree. However the characteristics that differentiate nature from art objects may be valuable. Being in nature is an aesthetic experience – nature could be thought of an immersive installation, although then it is still a temporary visit to the non-normal rather than any act of symbiosis. Nature reserves can be seen as environmental art for humans as much as habitats for non-human species.

Art objects are bounded, whereas nature is not – although nature reserves are – it is at these liminal points that all the problems occur and mean (in my opinion) that they must be managed.

Nevertheless the traditional view is that nature is indeterminate. Frame, by contrast, provides a contextual limit to understand an artwork. The point is made that the surrounding is irrelevant but I think this is a narrow view – for example hang a blue painting on a yellow wall and it will have a different effect than hanging it on a blue wall. The author’s point is technically accurate for the isolated object but this is hard to achieve in reality.

The author concludes that the aesthetic properties of nature are not the same as those of art, and that we can separate natural aesthetics into either isolated natural objects (e.g. a photograph of a flower) or a oneness with or in nature.

The latter has a tendency to complexity and it seems that post-structural concerns are raised as to the ability to step outside this complexity to understand it. Interestingly there is a suggestion (p.50) to view nature upside down to visualise its pure aesthetic – I note the obvious comparison with view cameras or HCB’s suggestion of how to judge composition in an image.

Hepburn discusses the interpretative aspect of looking, and how this affects the aesthetic. He gives the example of walking across a tidal basin when the tide is out, knowing it will flood (Mont St. Michel in France can be seen like this). This knowledge is actually similar to Barthes description of how a photograph is experienced according to studium and punctum – i.e. based on cultural and personal knowledge.

Coleridge “Art is … the power of humanising nature” (quoted on p.50). Hegel: the aim of art is “to strip the world of its stubborn foreignness” (Carlson & Berleant, 2004:50)

“To be ‘one’ with nature in that sense was to realise vividly one’s place in the landscape” (Carlson & Berleant, 2004:51)

Hepburn goes on to define 4 types of artistic unity with nature:

• Contextual appreciation of what is normally outside the frame
• Humanising of nature (e.g. Minor White?)
• Naturalising of the human observer
  • Finding one’s place
  • Feelings beyond the human
• Reconciliation

I note this forms a sort of progression, almost like the different movements in a musical work such as John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. However it is not necessarily a purely aesthetic one – the point could be made that in trying to reconcile aesthetics with nature, aesthetics if being re-defined. The counter-point might be that it is being adjusted back to its more natural meaning from the 18C.

• Aesthetic:
  • (adj) Concerned with beauty or the appreciation of beauty
  • (noun) The set of principles underlying the work of a particular artist or artistic movement

The author finds issues with describing unity concepts, which perhaps reflect back to the definition. For example the point is made that a picture identical to nature does not release the same emotion in the viewer of a “real” natural phenomenon.

This is explored further via the term “realisation” which is compared to knowledge, the former being a more completed comprehension or understanding beyond the mere fact.

The author finishes by comparing this idea with Goethe’s Theory of Nature – which is phenomenology that promotes direct experiential contact combined with prolonged observation and grounded very much in environmental ethics.

APPRECIATION AND THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

In a way Allen Carlson takes Hepburn’s article (sometimes quoting it) and extends it. Carlson also starts with the idea that nature is unbounded whereas art is bounded – i.e. what to appreciate. Furthermore we understand how to appreciate art. The former can be accepted, although artists such as Francesca Woodman have found ways to challenge it, but it could be argued that the latter is somewhat specialised.

Carlson proceeds by pointing out how an appreciation of nature might differ and looking at different models for this:

• Object model
  • Single objects, for example a sculpture or a stone found on a beach
• Love of nature
  • Santayama associates the aesthetic appreciation of nature with a love of nature due to its “indeterminate form” (p.65), a process in which nature becomes art
  • Carlson considers versions of this argument with the object in situ or removed from its environment, although largely the point is the same – “natural objects possess what might be called organic unity with their environment of creation” (Carlson & Berleant, 2004:66) – but what about, say, a boulder that has been moved by glacial action?
  • It may be possible to look at appreciation of indeterminateness via a realisation of time (it’s extent in evolutionary terms) and randomness (how change occurs, not according to some grand plan)
• Landscape model
  • Appreciation of the representation of the view
  • Landscape is experienced (by the tourist at least) as a series of prospects – “our ethics … have lagged behind our aesthetics” (Carlson & Berleant, 2004:68 quoting Rees)
  • Or perhaps aesthetics have preceded ethics, an immoral or amoral model in which hyperreality has preceded the real?
  • Rees also raises the issue that an aesthetic appreciation of nature “simply confirmed our anthropocentrism by suggesting that nature exists to please as well as serve” (Carlson & Berleant, 2004:68)

Carlson notes that, since nature is 3D, this view model is inappropriate but if people behave like it exists it is perhaps not totally defunct. It becomes a model of behaviour, as if aesthetic appreciation is being performed.

To make a point Carlson then examines the obvious: “the natural environment is an environment … it is natural” (Carlson & Berleant, 2004:69). He then looks at the definition of environment as one of “self to setting” (I note that the prominence of self here may be at the heart of our environmental issues). But the author errs, in my opinion, by just assuming “the fact that nature is natural” (Carlson & Berleant, 2004:71). In other words nature is not our creation, although this is problematic – it can and has been argued that it is a cultural creation. This will be discussed at greater length in reviews of other texts.

Carlson moves on to discuss, after Dewey (Art as Experience), the need to “foreground the background” and to use all the senses. This again raises the question of what aesthetics is, and particularly if it is purely visual. This is relevant to discussions of Ginsburg’s hunter and in particular my strong sense that to survive in a natural environment a hunter must be familiar with the ground (background), not looking for specific things in it but open to exceptions that occur.

Carlson then makes his key point “common sense/scientific knowledge seems the only viable candidate for playing the role concerning the appreciation of nature that our knowledge of art, artistic traditions and the like play concerning the appreciation of art” (Carlson & Berleant, 2004:71). Carlson feels that “for our experience to be aesthetic, this unobtrusive background must be experienced as an obtrusive foreground … The resulting confusion must be tempered by common sense or scientific knowledge” (Carlson & Berleant, 2004:72).

This is controversial – is what Carlson describes really an aesthetic experience. Perhaps it is a question of what is meant by “foregrounding the background”. I would suggest the appropriate attitude is best described as turning down the personal foreground to be receptive to the background – almost a meditative state, relaxed but perceptive. A small but perhaps important difference.

THE AESTHETICS OF ART & NATURE

Arnold Berleant is the co-editor of this collection of essays on aesthetics, and some might see this essay as a counter-argument to Carlson’s scientific model. However I find it is not so clear-cut as this.

Berleant’s “research question”, to coin a phrase from our studies, is whether there is a single aesthetic that applies to art and nature, and he concludes by proposing a general theory model that encompasses both.

He states Kant’s point that a “disinterested” regard for the object is essential for aesthetic satisfaction, and that this implies a border or frame for the object to isolate it from other distractors. This leads to a focus on its internal attributes and completeness. Perhaps I will come back to the term disinterested, since it is relevant to the discussion above at the end of the review of Carlson’s essay. For me the term is suspect since the object model is based on intense focus of interest?

One issue with this is the difficulty in reconciling very large or utilitarian pieces such as architecture, the usual solution being to divide it into aspects according to structure or roles.

Nature cannot be appreciated in this way because at heart it is an appreciation of creativity, according to Berleant. Perhaps it is a question of what we consider creativity – for example models of natural design (evolution) can be built based on time + randomness. This not only interrogates the notion of creativity but also introduces the possibility of a process that is creative – for example AI. I note that discussion of the “creative process”, something that at first might seem a misnomer, is in fact a key part of artistic education.

Berleant moves to suggest that if the disinterested, object-focused model is not working for modern incantations of visual arts such as painting, it works even less for immersive experiences of nature. Hence he suggests a different model. He suggests sculpture as an area of overlap to some extent, therefore one that might reward further study.

“Our very conception of nature has emerged historically and differs widely from one cultural tradition to another” (p.81). Nature as a concept does not exist for non-human species. It did not sued to exist for humans either. It was simply an environment in which we lived, before we invented the tools and machines to alter it to any significant degree. But perhaps nature only became beautiful at this point?

Berleant returns to Kant, quoting “the mathematically sublime, where the magnitude of natural things surpasses our aesthetic imagination” (Carlson & Berleant, 2004:81-2) – now that’s what I’m talking about!

This is differentiated from the dynamically sublime, where the power of nature overwhelms and creates awe.

There follows an interesting discussion on the sublime, which perhaps goes to definition as does the previous discussion on aesthetic definitions. So usually (as I understand it) the sublime in nature is appreciated from a place of safety – it is a sort of cosy awe, be it the wonder of nature contained within the frame of a painting or photograph or a horror movie viewed from the sofa. Then we have “the safety sought in seeing ourselves separate from nature we now know to be specious” (Carlson & Berleant, 2004:82).

Specious – superficially plausible, but actually wrong – has a root in the word species.

In other words the safety aspect of the sublime is a visual trick of the art aesthetic, which has perhaps distracted us to tread the wrong path. This can be seen, therefore, as a comment on environmental ethics. This in turns leads to humility and connectedness, a sense of place within a larger scheme.

But perhaps the most important point of being within something is the engagement of the other senses. When art ceases to be flat on the wall and we stand within it, there is obviously the awareness of the third awareness but also further sensory acuteness, for example to sound.

Hence we have an aesthetic engagement with nature that Berleant suggests can lead to an appreciation of art – the nature of our appreciation has been influenced. Environmental art is used as an (obvious) example (is this cheating or bridging the divide between art and nature aesthetics?).

There is the question of what we consider aesthetics, and how this is defined beyond the visual (or even the 2D visual). So one way of putting it is that the appreciation of sculpture, architecture and music comes from expanding traditional aesthetics into three dimensions and other senses. Or another way is to say that art aesthetics is a subset of a wider discipline of aesthetics that can also be applied to nature.

A different way of putting this is that if nature is a cultural construct then it is possible, culturally, to develop an overarching aesthetic. In one way this is very different from the scientific model. Science of course is also a cultural concept (there is probably an argument that pretty much everything is). Then the question becomes perhaps whether the scientific model is actually aesthetic, and if so whether it simply falls within Berleant’s wider definition?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Carlson, A. and Berleant, A. (2004) The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Canada: Broadview Press