Published in the Journal of Environmental Art, No. 34
This research examines the transformation of humanity’s “gaze” toward nature—from ancient times to the present—as an evolution of aesthetic sensibility, using artworks as clues. The analysis spans from medieval landscape painting through land art to contemporary installations addressing climate change. In ancient times, nature was an object of indifference or fear, and landscape painting did not exist. However, from the early modern period onward, prompted by Descartes’ subject-object dualism, nature became objectified, and landscape painting was born. In the modern era, natural aesthetics became fixed and popularized, while in the postmodern period, an aesthetic consciousness emerged in which the body was drawn into and unified with nature. Contemporary environmental art proposes a post-dualistic “gaze” that reconsiders nature as an entity equal to humanity by transforming the everyday into the extraordinary. Such aesthetic sensibilities have been continuously updated rather than discontinuously ruptured, and this research traces their genealogy to aesthetically clarify the enlightening structures inherent in contemporary art addressing ecology as its subject.