Abstract

In this discussion I consider one aesthetic issue which arises from certain intimate relationships between art and nature. The background to these relationships can be traced to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It includes factors of considerable importance in the history of the aesthetic appreciation of nature such as the eighteenth century infatuation with landscape gardening and the continuingly influential role of landscape painting. Here, however, I concentrate on these relationships only as exemplified in a contemporary phenomenon – environmental art. By environmental art I mean both the earthworks and earthmarks of artists such as Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, and Dennis Oppenheim and certain structures on the land such as those of Robert Morris, Michael Singer, and Christo. Some paradigm cases are Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Heizer's Double Negative, Singer's Lily Pond Ritual Series, and Christo's Running Fence.