The Earth Garden: Going Back or Going Forward to Nature?

Abstract

Against the background of a short meditation on the contrasting ways in which landscape has been represented and idealized in Eastern and Western painting traditions, the article will try to show, using some striking examples, that the development of landscape painting in the last two centuries reflects the changing relationship of humanity and leading in both the East and in the West to either the expression of a nostalgic longing for to be as it once was, or to a gloomy expression of the vanishing of amidst the modern, technological world. Connecting to both the concept of harmony, which is a key concept in Eastern aesthetics, and to some recent reflections in Western philosophy on the relationship of and technology, a post-nostalgic conception of and natural beauty is defended, in which and technology are no longer seen as opposing categories, but rather as poles that are intertwined in an ever-lasting process of co-evolution. It is argued that we should not so much strive to go back to nature, but rather to go forward to nature and establish a new harmony between human and non-human and technology. The article ends with some reflections on the role artists and aestheticians may play in this transformation.