The Beauty of Environment: A General Model for Environmental Aesthetics Page: 55
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a model should be developed in which it is possible to analyze the environment as styles and types,
which are clearly derived from its special nature. The environment is not a work of art, but neither
can it be explained purely by the natural sciences: it is also an aesthetic whole or parts of the whole.
Cultural environments in particular become more like works of art: in these there is also often a
sign language, symbols, etc. that are related to art, the interpretation of which is the task of cultural
history. Thus cultural knowledge becomes equally important, or even primary, to natural scientific
knowledge.
y. Differences
Rejection of former attempts to analyze nature artlike has meant freedom and independence for
modern environmental aesthetics. The environment has begun to be examined in its own right. R.
W. Hepburn recalls this line in his article "Nature in the Light of Art":
I have not been claiming that nature can be aesthetically contemplated only in the light of art, or that
every sort of influence art-experience can have on nature-experience is necessarily beneficial to the
latter. There can be aesthetic reward in considering a natural object, a shell or cave or fern, out of all
relation to human artifice, in terms of the natural processes that produced them or maintain them in
being. Aesthetic pleasure can arise in being aware of the very remoteness of those processes from the
activities of artists.
[Hepburn 1973: 253.]
In order to illustrate the differences I shall concentrate in the following on the comparison of the
work of art and the environment as aesthetic objects. But behind the essential differences between
them is the fact that both are aesthetic objects - or that both contain an aesthetic object. It is an
object discovered through a certain mode of examination; and this is influenced by the ability of the
observer. Definitions, as well as background knowledge, are significant.
The relationship between the environment and art can be elucidated by means of contrasts, by
demonstrating the differences between a work of art and the environment as aesthetic objects. The
clarification of the basic differences is also beneficial to the definer of art: a difficult concept of art
can be delimited by exclusive definition, by demonstrating what art is not. The so-called
environmental arts then form a border-area problem. The differences are not observable surface
differences but rather derive from rules adopted by the art institution and diverge from other rules
regulating the systems of human activity.
The principal differences can be contrastively presented according to the following fourteen-
point division. The technique and language of expression of the various art-forms cause deviations
between the forms; what is said concerning the environment applies to the environment in a'state of
nature as a basic case. The differences are generalizations, not absolutes that apply to all cases; they
become especially vague when one thinks of the mixed forms of the environment and art.
The examination starts from the work of art, because it is here the basic case to which other
phenomena can be compared. The differences can 'be grouped, for example, according to the
maker, the work, and the receiver. The order is 'chronological': I shall begin with the differences
that relate to the making of the work (points 1 - 3); after which I shall examine the properties of
the final result, the work (points 4- 11); and finally I shall examine the differences related to the
observer and the audience (points 12- 14). - The differences are dealt with by, among others,
R.W. Hepburn in his article "Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty"
[Hepburn 1967], Aarne Kinnunen in his article "Luonnonestetiikka" ('The Aesthetics of Nature')
[Kinnunen 1981. based on a lecture given in 1975] as well as in Melvin Rader and Bertram Jessup's work Art
and Human Values [Rader & Jessup 19761.55
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Sepänmaa, Yrjö. The Beauty of Environment: A General Model for Environmental Aesthetics, book, 1993; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc52173/m1/73/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Center For Environmental Philosophy.