The Intimacy of Art and Nature

Abstract

This chapter critically explores a thought that has contributed to the ­perception of a sharp divide between human beings and their natural environments. This is the thought that there is a radical contrast between the aesthetic appreciation and significance of art and nature respectively. While attempts have been made to soften this contrast, some of these – both ‘naturalistic’ and ‘constructivist’ – implausibly reduce one type of appreciation to the other. A useful strategy for questioning the contrast is to consider ‘hybrid’ places, like gardens, which cannot be uniquely allocated to the category of art/artefact or to that of nature. Having rejected the idea that appreciation of gardens consists of two independent kinds of enjoyment – of art and of nature – the chapter argues that these hybrid places matter to us as symbols or epiphanies of a deep co-dependence between human beings’ creative practice and their experience of nature. Traditions of creative practice shape experiences of nature, just as these in turn shape practice. Not even notionally is it possible to envisage a way of human life in which there is not this co-dependence. It follows from this that the alleged divide between the human and the natural receives no support from a proper understanding of the appreciation and significance of art and nature.