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Making sense of environmental beauty
An analysis of beauty discourse in Noord-Holland
Primo Reh (10314016) Master thesis Heritage and Memory Studies Written under supervision of: dhr. prof. dr. Erik de Jong mw. dr. Hanneke Ronnes dhr. ir. Rob van Leeuwen Amsterdam, juni 2017
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Table of contents
Foreword 3
1 Introduction 4
2 Beauty and preference 14
2.1 Subjectivity or objectivity? 18
2.2 The development of aesthetic preference 24
2.3 Representations of beauty 29
3 Experiencing Noord-Holland 32
3.1 The perception of landscape 36
3.2 Aesthetic appreciation 39
3.3 Towards the aesthetic experience 42
3.4 Who is to aesthetically judge? 45
3.5 Beauty discourse and the aesthetic appreciation of Noord-Holland 47
4 Concluding discussion 50
Notes 56
References 58
Appendix A 63
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Foreword
The amount of different subjects a student encounters usually depends on the duration of study. I
have encountered many, of which this master thesis bears witness. Before one begins reading I want
to shortly describe my study path for it is explanatory for my interests and the combination of
subjects and their emphases in the chapters that follow.
Landscape and nature already had my interest when I started studying earth sciences in
Utrecht. I chose to point my focus to geology which is rather technical and thence lacked any cultural
side of study. That changed when I subsequently started studying history in Amsterdam. Especially
the disciplinary achievements after the so-called ‘cultural turn’ were held in high regard and surely
had my attention as well. The critical thinking in the tradition of Jacques Derrida’s (1930-2004)
deconstruction theory appealed to me and in particular semiotic’s bearing on the way present-day
historians approach history: social history and its generalization through processes has been long
forgotten and exchanged for the idea that every culture is completely unique in its own context.
After I acquired bachelor degrees in both earth sciences and history I enrolled in the master
program Heritage and Memory Studies which is interdisciplinary. Compared to the study of history
this field’s focus is more on the present; through the analysis of heritage inter alia situations of
contemporary conflict are encountered. Its relevance to present day societal issues is therefore more
often noticed. Critical thinking and thinking in concepts – such as discourse – are amongst the
master’s main teaching objectives, and, moreover, it aims to provide practical experience in the form
of an internship. My internship was facilitated by MOOI Noord-Holland, an organization in the sector
of environmental beauty. My time as an intern has inspired the speculative framework of this thesis.
This is the path that led me back to the subject of landscape, and, this time, with a particular way of
thinking of which this thesis is the reflection.
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1 Introduction Two societal developments are causing conditions that could result in a completely different knowledge of environment and environmental beauty. Instead of experiencing environments in the field we become more and more accustomed to look at them through all sorts of screens – symptomatic for a dispersed image culture and constituting a possible break of beauty discourse. It is therefore the main purpose of this thesis to investigate how our sense of environmental beauty is being established, and what a different beauty discourse could imply for Dutch environmental beauty in the future.
“Na twintig jaar kwam ik in Castricum en kon ‘De rustende Jager’ eerst niet meer vinden, zoo raar stont-i er tusschen. De hoofdstraat, een blootebillen-gezicht en verder overal ‘lieve woninkjes’, God zal ze.” (In Insula Dei (1942), Nescio cited in Van Toorn, p. 51)
Polders stretching beyond the reach of the eye, Amsterdamse School architecture and its immense
influence on later architectural styles, an omnifarious coastal area that surrounds almost the entire
province – ask anyone what is beautiful about the environment of Noord-Holland and they will
probably enumerate a diverse but well-known list of characteristics. There seems to exist a discourse
of ‘beauties’ that moreover corresponds with the images we encounter in textbooks, films,
museums, and on tourist posters and postcards. That agreement incites to question what informs
and what is being informed; does culture inform our sense of environmental beauty, is it the other
way around, or is it both?
Environmental beauty is being regarded as a common phenomenon and people are
accustomed to perceive it in their immediate surroundings. A beautiful environment seems to be
almost a fixed proposition; we often forget that what we live in is carefully designed. Designed with
the spirit of the age in mind and according to its own beauty discourse. Indeed, thinking about
environmental beauty only commenced during the Renaissance; suddenly landscape began being
recognized as potentially beautiful, was therefore subject to artists, and eventually even an art form
itself (Van Toorn, 1998). Although relatively new compared to other beauties, environmental beauty
has still been contemplated – and interventions in the landscape of Noord-Holland subsequently
executed – for ages.
In what is generally believed to be beautiful, some tastes are better represented than others.
Also, for dominant taste is rigid and therefore fragile, hard breaks between two periods of taste are
not uncommon in history. During the Renaissance, for instance, Classicism was the dominant beauty
discourse. Erudite architects were loyal to the canon, repetition was the norm, and this common
culture dictated the rules that were in turn respected by the builders. Consensus was so strong that
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ultimately stylistic unity was achieved. It was therefore rather peculiar that in 1747 an effeminate
young man, the Englishman Horace Walpole (1717-1797), began building a house in a radically
different style – the Gothic style. Against all odds it took only a few decennia for Gothicism to turn
the tables and an opposition with the discourse that supported Classicism was the result (De Botton,
2006).
Of course, both Classicism and Gothicism related to more than architecture alone; both styles
embodied a set of ideals that severely influenced the way people thought about, perceived, and
designed all aspects of environment. For environment is all-comprehensive it includes the human-
influenced environment, nature, and anything that is in between. The beauty discourse that applies
to present-day Noord-Holland has no different mechanism; it is apparent in all aspects of
environment, and informed by all aspects of society. As has occurred many times in history, we are
seemingly on the verge of meeting societal conditions that allow for yet another break of beauty
discourse.
To explain I must discuss two societal developments that I noticed during an internship in the
Welstand (‘design control sector’; DCS) which was facilitated by a ‘design control organization’ (DCO)
in Noord-Holland, appropriately named MOOI Noord-Holland. I want to make clear that this thesis is
neither meant to be an analysis of the design control sector, nor to be a recommendation for its
reform. However, to explain how the subjects of this thesis came together, I must describe the place
where the ideas developed.
The first development is the design control sector going through a change of practice in which MOOI
Noord-Holland is a key player. Until only recently it was mandatory to present building plans to
design control commissions in which renowned architects – ‘the experts’ – sit whose job it is to judge
these plans in accordance to design standard policies. However, as a result of an amendment of the
law, municipalities are no longer required to involve design control organizations when dealing with
building applications. Design control organizations see their very existence threatened and hence
reinvention is their retention. Instead of regulation providing income, customer demand is to be
raised. To point out what is being improved – or better to say; the industry’s shortcomings – a short
transcript of an interview I conducted after sitting in at one of the meetings is explanatory:
Primo “Would you have preferred the original plan?”
B “Yes, but we can also adhere to the revised plan. Actually, we submitted the original plan
because we thought the design control commission would support it.”
Primo “Are you annoyed by the fact that you are forced to conform to design control guidelines?”
O “I am, but considering the bigger picture it makes sense.”
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Primo “Could you explain?”
O “I prefer just going about my business, but if everyone would it will end in disorder.”
Primo “Do you think agreement would have been reached faster if the plan was presented to the
design control commission at an earlier stage?”
B “Yes I do. During the formation of other plans I have had the opportunity to ask questions. That
way it is easier to conform to written and unwritten design control regulation.”1
(Interview with B (architect) and O (client) conducted on March 7th
2016)
Confusion all over. Architects try to conform their designs to what they think will please the design
control commission. What will be approved and rejected, however, is not always clear to them.
Design guidelines are partly fixed in municipal design standard policies. Besides mandatory
obedience to these guidelines there is room for interpretation on part of the experts in the
commission and it is not always apparent to the client and architect what is desired of them
beforehand. The client and architect therefore often feel at the mercy of the design control
commission which decides whether or not they may move forward. To overcome this inefficiency
design control organizations now try to be involved in the plan process at an earlier stage. This way
client and architect will know what ‘rules’ to abide to when the object is being designed and will not
be surprised later on.
There is, however, a more ideologically infused endeavour that is currently being undertaken
by MOOI Noord-Holland: the democratization of environmental beauty – i.e. transferring aesthetic
‘power to the people’ by asking them directly what they regard as beautiful (MOOI Noord-Holland,
2017). Indeed, the above incomprehension between experts and lay people is a symptom of a deeper
and long-standing problem. Between them, there seem to exist different understandings of what a
beautiful environment is, and more importantly, on what characteristics environmental beauty
depends (Howley, 2011; Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989; Strumse, 2001). The level of education contributes
most to this inconsistency. Experts hold a standard – set by expert training (which is not necessarily
aesthetic training) – against which they compare a particular example that is to be assessed for its
aesthetic value. Lay people do the same thing without this training and have therefore another set of
standards against which environments are measured (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989).
Traditionally, experts are thought to be better able to ‘separate what they know from what
they sense’ in a justified way, and to be more aware that they unconsciously ‘know more than they
know’. In other words: environments should be compared against the expert standard since lay
people’s standards are influenced by feelings, emotions, and apparently the wrong knowledge. In
this conservative view the expertise of a person is the basis for passing qualified judgement on
environmental beauty (Cold, 2001a; 2001b; Berleant, 2012d). Jargon, moreover, is further
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complicating things (Figure 1). Experts tend to communicate in words that are not understood by lay
people. When I was sitting in during commission meetings, it was not uncommon for the client (and
myself) to have that dull stare of a person who is not grasping what is discussed in front of him.
Forthcoming is the so-called ‘expert-lay people gap’ which in fact constitutes a social question: are
environmental aesthetics the monopoly of experts or should public ideas of beauty be more
involved?
Figure 1: Do It Yourself Architectural Dialogue. Table mockingly suggesting that it enables lay
people to speak ‘architect’ (http://isites.harvard.edu).
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Consensus about this issue will probably never be attained. We can, however, predict that
with the democratization of environmental beauty comes an aesthetics that leans more heavily on
lay people’s opinion. Emotion and lay people’s knowledge of beauty will therefore inescapably have
a larger influence on future aesthetic judgement of environments. The balance between the
traditional ‘educating the people’ and the more democratic ‘listening to the majority’ is shifting in
the advantage of the latter.
That brings us to the second development that must be discussed. The amount of screens available
to us has been increasing exponentially in the last two decades (Figure 2). Also, consider the amount
of screen minutes we live through every day (Figure 3). The majority’s idea of beauty is increasingly
being shaped by a continuous influx of images. From the moment we wake up until the minute we
fall asleep we spend on average almost seven hours looking at screens. The ‘bombardment of
images’ we endure daily – informed by and at the same time fuelling beauty discourse – comes with
a couple of implications. First of all it emphasizes the visual component of beauty. It follows that the
more we are moulded by digital visual representations of beauty the more we will focus on the
‘analogue’ visual component of beauty in real life. Second, instead of experiencing beauty ourselves
we more and more assume the representations of others. Beauty becomes therefore spoon-fed, and
we, in the meantime, become less and less accustomed to having an open, creative relationship with
real life aesthetic phenomena.
Figure 2: Global shipments of desktops, notebooks, smartphones, and tablets between 1999 and
2013. Data by NPD Display Search (2004-2013 data) and Philips (1999-2003 data) (Morgan Stanley
Research, 2014).
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Third, these beauty representations of others are selective. The images we are presented
with are consciously transmitted to us; behind the scenes of beauty is commercial interest and
purpose. We are therefore led to believe in beauty for other reasons than beauty itself. The result is
a falsified idea of beauty which could cloud aesthetic judgement. These clouds directly lead to the
fourth and last implication. Selections are – as the word already implies – narrowing. They limit our
contact with other beauties; we live, to use a fashionable word, in our own bubble – a ‘beautiful
bubble’. The bubble works in at least two ways. First, we become part of various mainstreams
(selections) relatively easier than before. Second, present day technological sophistication has
resulted in software picking up personal preferences. The detected preference is based on your own
digital behaviour and these personalized selections therefore even further narrow down the images
available to you. Allow me to note that in this time of renewed emphasis on national identity – and in
its wake the perceived importance of local identities – we seem to (sub)consciously adhere to a more
and more standardized idea of beauty. The discordance is interesting. The more since our idea of
beauty is in turn connected to the construction of identity.
Figure 3: Average screen minutes in 2014. Survey asked respondents “Roughly how long did you
spend yesterday… watching television (not online) / using the internet on a laptop or PC / on a
smartphone or tablet?”. Survey respondents were age 16-44 across 30 countries who owned or
had access to a TV and a smartphone and/or tablet. The population of the 30 countries surveyed in
the study collectively represent ~70% of the world population (Milward Brown AdReaction, 2014).
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Rapid societal change is regularly accompanied by people feeling overwhelmed. The British
writer Sara Maitland, for instance, retreated to a cabin on the heath to avoid society’s noise and to
get acquainted with silence. Experiencing society’s turmoil as too intrusive is of all times. Other
modern examples are the American transcendentalist and radical philosopher Henry Thoreau (1817-
1862) who retreated to Walden Pond because he felt isolation is the necessary condition for a
thoughtful life, and Richard Byrd (1888-1957), the great American explorer, who by himself spend a
whole winter on Antarctica for he wanted to ‘taste’ peace, quietness, and solitude to discover their
inherent sanctity (Maitland, 2008). Escapism is a natural reaction to the feeling of technological
development going too fast, and therefore not uncommon. Some new developments threaten
certainties indeed. Would we, for instance, still be able to separate the virtual from the real in ten
years (Sir Edmund, 2017)? And will our sense of beauty therefore be radically different in future
times? Must we welcome or disapprove of changes such as these?
Without qualifying the above two developments as being good or bad, desirable or undesirable, it
must be recognized that they constitute a current change in design control practice that coincides
with a public sense of environmental beauty that is still in the process of fundamentally changing.
Not only does that raise questions (and sometimes eyebrows), we must at least consider a deeper
epistemological change as well. According to the Dutch Rijksbouwmeester (Chief Government
Architect) Floris Alkemade we have arrived in a new paradigm that comes with another kind of
design challenge. A couple of months ago he delivered a speech in which he called for a
disconnection from past designs and the invention of radically different ones.2 Although Alkemade
was talking about his field of expertise – architecture – and thus conveniently used the term
‘paradigm’, we should, with the above developments in mind, widen the possible scope of change to
the more Foucauldian notion of an epistemological change that transcends the individual sciences
(Foucault, 1966).
This research is not about discourse theory and is certainly not an analysis of different
notions of discourse. However, since there are a couple of great scholars whose names are firmly
connected to the concept of discourse – Jacques Lacan (1901-1981); Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996);
Michel Foucault (1926-1984); and Jürgen Habermas – I feel the need to shortly explain why in this
thesis the notion of beauty discourse is generally aligned with Foucault’s framing. First, the
Foucauldian notion opens up the possibility of radical change of discourse over time: a sequence of
épistèmes.3 This notion therefore allows for the possibility of the perception of beauty entering a
new épistème. Second, since the Foucauldian notion, although it is focused on the sciences, is far
more comprehensive than the paradigmatic change of Kuhn (fitting disciplinary change), it allows for
a change in epistemology (Foucault, 1966). In this case that is the large but at the same time selective
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and thus restrictive pool of online information currently changing the conditions under which we
gather knowledge. Part of that knowledge is the knowledge of beauty: how we get to know beauty
and therefore what beauty means to us. And third, focusing not on change, but on the ‘contents’ of
discourse, the Foucauldian notion describes power-knowledge systems (Foucault, 1966). It is
undeniably true that we are relatively easier influenced in what we find beautiful by someone with
authority. Of course authority exists on several levels: from experts putting forward their insights, to
a famous artist talking on television about something he likes, to an esteemed friend’s opinion that
something is beautiful.
Beauty discourse not only dictates how to aesthetically appreciate and what to appreciate,
but also the very inclination to find environments beautiful at all. The idea that environments can be
beautiful is not very old. They were artists, specifically, who in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries created a basis of a common cultural and aesthetic perception and hence developed
knowledge of the beautiful environment (Gadamer, 1977). Eventually, the discovery of
environmental beauty even led to the idea that environment must be beautiful. The present-day
framing of environments is (as will become clear) somewhat akin to the notion of place which
describes the ‘aesthetics of everyday life’ and constitutes the feeling of home: an ecological
relationship between people and a setting together with a set of meanings that both emerge from
and inform this experience (Hayden, 1994). The notion of place is widely regarded as being
ideologically driven by fast changing societal and geopolitical circumstances (Ingold, 2007;
Westerman, 2001).
Just as is place, beauty discourse is fundamentally ideological and therefore not only subject
to the appropriations of various forms of power (Dovey, 2001), but also, alike place, expected to
change due to societal developments (which are described above). Although Horace Walpole was
surely inventive and authoritative, his initiative was ‘catalysed’ by developments such as an
increasing historical awareness, the breaking-up of traditional agriculture, improved forms of
transport, and a new clientele that was languishing for stylistic variation (De Botton, 2006). The
transition between Classical and Gothic styles would probably not have happened as fast as it did
without a society that was ready for change.
Similarly, the artists’ sudden creation of a cultural basis for the adoration of nature – and
landscape becoming fashionable in its wake – had been preceded by technical developments that
resulted in a loss of contact with nature, and, subsequently, in people’s longing for wilderness (De
Botton, 2006). Again, transition between beauty discourses occurred rapidly due to societal
developments. You could say that at this moment we are passing through societal developments that
together are similar in regard to their comprehensiveness. First, the environmental beauty industry
changing practically – democratizing; and second, a radical shift in the way we gather knowledge of
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the beautiful, caused by an increase of screen minutes. Based on history, it is justified to pose that a
contemporary rapid break of beauty discourse could occur.
We will know when it happens. The future contents of beauty discourse cannot be predicted
scientifically; its analysis is typically done in retrospect. What can be conducted, however, is research
as to discover the direct implications of the contemporary societal change. In context of the
speculative framework set up above, it is the main purpose of this thesis to investigate how our
sense of environmental beauty is being established, and what a different beauty discourse could
imply for Dutch environmental beauty in the future. Nowadays, environment is more and more
studied by the humanities. Literature in this field about the aesthetics of environment is however not
yet that far developed. Moreover, environmental aesthetics and landscape biography, a discipline
and a field that do conduct research on environment and aesthetics, are reluctant to work with the
concept of beauty for it is seen to be too comprehensive and therefore troublesome (Cold, 2001b).
On top of that it is unclear if environment is always meant to be beautiful, or if an
environment in which everything is beautiful would still be considered as such (Van Etteger, 2016).
Still, the subject of research in this thesis is inter alia the design control sector – once created to
safeguard environmental beauty. It would therefore be rather strange to avoid the concept of
beauty. Fortunately, the study of beauty is no longer confined to one discipline (philosophical
aesthetics) and one domain (the creative sector), but is currently rather interdisciplinary. For the first
time, as will be explained in chapter 3, all comprehensive environments can be taken into
consideration and concepts such as discourse, power, and identity can be linked to the concept of
beauty.
Instead of approaching the concept of environmental beauty through the objects of
environment, this thesis will approach the concept through the perception of beauty – through
aesthetic preference and aesthetic experience. The perception of beauty is divided into the idea of
beauty, which is in your head, and the actual experience of the manifestation of beauty. Of course
these two are in a reciprocal relationship; the one does inform the other. This thesis, however, is
written under the assumption that part of their formation is different. Our idea of environmental
beauty is increasingly being formed by beauty representations – which are mediated by others and
for a great part received by looking at screens. Contrarily, the experience of environmental beauty
demands physical presence in that environment, and, moreover, needs a somatic engagement of the
body. The investigation of these two different perceptions of beauty is therefore divided into two
chapters.
Chapter 2 will start off with an analysis of various conceptions of beauty out of the conviction
that it is not possible to write about beauty without, at least for a brief moment, taking note of what
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some scholars think beauty actually is. At the same time it will be a warmup for the discussion about
the objective and subjective side of beauty. Subsequently, through an analysis of images of Noord-
Holland we will approach the subject of aesthetic preference. By means of an excursion into the
realm of psychiatry we will investigate whether or not aesthetic preference is susceptible to beauty
discourse. Especially preferences’ developmental process is interesting for it reveals the relative
importance of biology, personality, and culture in the formation of aesthetic preference. An attempt
will be made to build a framework in which the developmental processes of aesthetic preference and
their respective degree of objectivity or subjectivity are conceptualized. Moreover, it will be analysed
to what extent beauty discourses, of various degrees of influence and at work on various societal
levels, can co-exist. What is the mechanism of beauty discourse?
Chapter 3 will take up the issue of the aesthetic experience but will begin with an
investigation into the construct ‘Noord-Holland’; once a conglomerate of islands but presently a
heavily urbanized area. What would problematizing the notion of landscape and connecting it to an
all-comprehensive environment such as Noord-Holland yield? As we will have arrived in a more
concrete section of the thesis an example will show the possible impact of beauty discourse on
environment. Also, we will leave the second chapter’s notion of perception – which was mainly visual
– in favour of a new notion that allows us to experience an environment instead of appreciate a
landscape. A new theoretical section is then inevitable. The subject of aesthetics will be introduced
and subsequently a scholarly debate – which concerns the aesthetic appreciation of nature – will be
analysed for reasons that will become clear. Through thorough analysis we will come to a
comprehensive understanding of what an aesthetic experience is and of what the newly obtained
insights imply for the passing of aesthetic judgement: who is to aesthetically judge?
For the speculative character of the two described societal developments we will conclude
with a discussion that will form the synthesis of this thesis. First, to avoid confusion a short summary
of the gained insights will be provided – call it ‘the results’ if you will. Second, the possible future of
Dutch environmental beauty will be considered: based upon the gained insights it is now possible to
attempt the reciprocation of the second part of the main research question. What could a different
beauty discourse imply for Dutch environmental beauty and our notion of environment?
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2 Beauty and preference Anyone with some historical sense knows that the contemporary exclusive and characteristic
meaning of the word art is only two hundred and fifty years old. It was around that time that
aesthetics emerged as a philosophical discipline and that the great German Enlightenment
philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and his associates began debating the aesthetic
appreciation of the natural world. As a result, the ‘fine arts’ were detached from both the mechanical
arts and art in the technical sense of handicrafts and industrial production. Only with this
emancipation art acquired the quasi-religious function that it possesses for us now, both in theory
and practice (Gadamer, 1977). Subsequently, the concept of beauty became firmly related to the
conception of fine art. It is therefore semantically symptomatic that ‘fine art’ is translated into
German as die schöne Kunst, which literally means ‘beautiful art’. Inter alia these realizations
impelled another German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), to question in his
influential essay “The relevance of the beautiful” (1977) what beauty means in relationship to art.
Severely influenced by Plato, Gadamer provides us with the story of an old Greek myth that
describes the limitations of man compared to the divine, and his attachment to the earthly burden of
the sensuous life of the body.4 We must keep in mind that for the Greeks it was the heavenly order
of the cosmos that presented the true vision of the beautiful. In the story there is a chariot race to
the vault of the heavens led by the Olympian gods. Human souls also drive their chariots, and when
arrived at the vault of the heavens, they have a glance at the true world. Suddenly, in place of the
disorder and inconstancy that characterize our experience of the world down here on earth, man
perceives the true constants and unchanging patterns of being. Sadly, only the gods can surrender
themselves fully to the vision of the true world whereas the human souls are distracted because of
their unruly nature and sensuous desire. When back on earth only the vaguest memory of the truth
had remained and man was unable to scale the heights of it once again. Luckily, there is one
experience that allows man to yet see the truth: the experience of love and the beautiful, or love of
the beautiful (Gadamer, 1977).
According to Plato, it is by hard (intellectual) effort and the virtue of the beautiful that we are
able to acquire a lasting memory of the true world (Berleant, 2012g). And even then, what man is
able to see is still a mere illumination: “what if”, Plato sighs in his Symposium, “man had eyes to see
the true beauty – the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the
pollutions of mortality and all the vanities of human life” (Plato cited in Vacker and Key, 1993, p.
474). The beautiful that is visible to man is a glimpse of the ideal. Beauty that is presented in nature
and art gives us the experience of a convincing illumination of truth and harmony. To Gadamer,
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however, the important message that the above story has to teach is that the essence of beauty does
not lie in some realm that is opposed to reality. Contrarily, perceiving something beautiful gives us
the reassurance that the truth is not inaccessible to us, but can be encountered in the disorder that
reality is (Gadamer, 1977). Beauty is here, perceivable, and reserved not only for the gods but for
man as well.
We may be more than willing to believe Gadamer’s claim that beauty is omnipresent and we
could therefore suggest that it should be easily recognizable. As it turns out, however, sometimes
things that are perceived as beautiful at one place are not at another. A decade ago The Washington
Post conducted a famous experiment in the city’s subway. The newspaper asked Joshua Bell, one of
the world’s leading violin players, to play his instrument in one of the hallways. They had taken
precautions as for the crowd not to grow too big since Bell normally performs for kings and
presidents and people are prepared to pay high entrance fees for his concerts. Their anxiety proved
to be in vain. What happened is comical, surprising, and scientifically interesting at the same time:
out of the 1097 people that passed in the 43 minutes of playtime only seven stopped and stayed to
listen for longer than one minute (Sir Edmund, 2016). Another instance is the visit of the British
philosopher Alain de Botton to The Dutch Village in Japan (Sasebo, Nagasaki). Although the royal
palace Huis ten Bosch, several windmills and cheese shops, and even the twelfth century castle
Nijenrode – all Dutch landmarks – have been meticulously reproduced, De Botton experiences the
village as surreal and even uncanny because of the lack of further context in time and place (De
Botton, 2006).
If we cannot count on beautiful things to be beautiful anywhere and at all times, i.e. if we
accept that beauty is heavily context related, what is exactly the truth that is beauty? The following
paragraphs are not meant to be conclusive, but rather to be exemplary and showing a couple of
insights that, amidst the abundance of literature about beauty, caught my attention and interest.
Traditionally beauty is thought to be mainly a visual matter. Interesting is the analysis of the Italian
chemist and writer Primo Levi who compared the beauty of the chemical structure with the beauty
of architecture:
“The [chemical] structure makes you think of something solid, stable, well linked. In fact it happens also in chemistry as in architecture that ‘beautiful edifices’, that is, symmetrical and simple, are also the most sturdy; in short, the same thing happens with molecules as with the cupolas of cathedrals or the arches of bridges. And it is possible that the explanation is neither remote nor metaphysical: to say beautiful is to say ‘desirable’, and ever since man has built he has wanted to build at the smallest expense and in the most durable fashion, and the aesthetic enjoyment he experiences when contemplating his work comes afterwards…the true beauty, in which every century recognizes itself, is found in upright stones, ships’ hulls, the blade of an axe, the wing of a plane.” (Levi, 1975, p. 181)
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The conviction that beauty is functional, and, as Levi writes, contextual in time, is shared by the
British historian Simon Schama:
“What lies beyond the windowpane of our apprehension needs a design before we can properly discern its form, let alone derive pleasure from its perception. And it is culture, convention and cognition that makes that design; that invests a retinal impression with the quality we experience as beauty.” (Simon Schama cited in Ingold, 2012, p. 2)
Schama adds to the determinants of beauty an underlying plan: the design. If we think of the typical
design of classical music concerts, it becomes immediately clear that the subway concert of Bell does
not fit the general idea of the circumstances under which such a concert should take place. Its beauty
was therefore simply not recognized. However, the conclusion that beauty can only be recognized
when circumstances measure up to a general design is of course not justified; its absence makes the
recognition of beauty merely more difficult.
An example that has intrigued me for years is the habit of people to listen to (or rather
experience) silence. In fact, whole symphonies have been composed that consist of nothing more
than silence, or framed differently, the absence of sound. It begs the question if beauty is always
associated with pleasure. An example is what has been called the ‘paradox of the sublime’. Some
pleasurable aesthetic experiences are triggered by the encounter with an object or situation whose
quantity transcends the limits of our actual grasp. The so-called sublime aesthetic experience can, at
the one hand, originate from being in a vast mountain range that is all around you. At the other
hand, constituting the paradox, you could think of being in a storm. Although the experience can be
aesthetically stimulating, it is associated with negative pleasure as well since the storm is
intimidating. Also, the concept of ugliness must at least be mentioned since we are talking about
beauty, and, ugliness deserves the same kind of paradox as the sublime. If we believe that beauty
can evoke positive feelings such as hope, we might believe that ugliness evokes, amplifies, and
concretizes a sense of imperfection that is normally thought to be negative (De Botton, 2006).
However, at the same time imperfection is a natural part of beauty for ours is the human beauty –
the strive for the ideal and thus per definition imperfect – and not the divine beauty constituting the
ideal.
When scanning through the vast body of literature it becomes immediately apparent that
beauty is not only visual, but can manifest itself in domains Beyond the visible – to cite the title of the
scholar Rudi van Etteger’s 2016 PhD thesis. According to Van Etteger, it is the design itself that is
beautiful. He writes about landscapes of such a size that some characteristics, such as symmetries or
long stretching tree lines, can simply not be perceived due to their scale. Although related, De Botton
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reaches another and more Platonic conclusion. According to him it is about the idea behind the
design. Visuals alone are too arbitrary and pluralistic:
“[W]e must be free to pursue all stylistic options. We should acknowledge that the question of what is beautiful is both impossible to elucidate and shameful and even undemocratic to mention.” (De Botton, 2006, p. 77)
Rather, beyond the visual is the idea behind the design, the idea that constitutes what the meaning
of our existence should be. It is this idea that holds real beauty (De Botton, 2006).
Designs as the expressions of ideals. This way of thinking about beauty is omnipresent in the
architectural world. The Dutch urban planner Ben Eerhart, writing about architecture in Wat heet
mooi? (1980), puts it this way:
“I reserve beautiful for those expressions that constitute an ideal that appeals to me, when it strengthens or broadens my own.”
5 (Eerhart, 1980, p. 32)
Eerhart compared the architectural expression of the Baroque to the one of the remains of Nazi
architecture. During his analysis he reached the conclusion that it was the same aesthetics he
appreciated in Pirro Ligorio’s Villa d’Este in Tivoli and Albert Speer’s Reichsparteitaggelände in
Neurenberg: abundance. However, the villa evoked a feeling of positive excitement – happiness –
whereas Speer’s complex evoked at the same time appreciation for the expediency of the design and
repulsion for the idea behind it. Both are aesthetically rewarding, however, only the villa was
appreciated as beautiful.
Put into theoretical terms by the Danish professor of architecture Birgit Cold:
“An aesthetic experience of quality is a natural part of the perception of beauty, but we do not necessarily find a perception of beauty in any aesthetically qualitative perception.” (Cold, 2001b, p. 73)
It is not only things that are optimal in perspective of function or resources, have an aesthetically
rewarding design, or even conform to an individuals’ ideal or idea of the world. It is all these things
together. There is something about beautiful environments that is playful and creative. It is
structures, patterns, rhythms and symmetries, but also dualities such as order paired with variation,
fitness with small surprises, harmony balanced with minor irregularity, originality with a certain
familiarity, and femininity and sweetness complementing or contrasting masculinity and potency
(Cold, 2001b).
Beauty’s character seems to be intangible. Its perceptions are difficult to order and perhaps
easier to attain in a state of spontaneity and voluntariness. Especially environmental beauty has
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something alive to it; the promise of something coming about and openness to further fantasy (Cold,
2001b). This manner of looking at the concept of beauty does call upon our sense of subjectivity. Is it
possible to describe and analyse something as volatile and precarious at all? According to the French
romantic and realistic writer Stendhal (1783-1842) “la beauté n’est que la promesse du bonheur”
(Stendhal in De l’amour, 1822). It is therefore not permanent. It is elusive in character and its
variations seem to be endless. To cite Stendhal again: “there are as many styles of beauty as there
are visions of happiness” (Stendhal cited in De Botton, 2006, p. 112).
2.1 Subjectivity or objectivity?
The nature of beauty as being subjective is often held as axiomatic in contemporary culture. It is
dependent on the contents of human consciousness (Vacker and Key, 1993): when talking about
beauty, who has not encountered the phrases ‘each to their own’ and ‘let us agree to disagree’?
However, if beauty would be solely subjective – as Stendhal suggests – on what foundation do
municipalities build their design standard policies; there must indeed be some objectivity when it
comes to environmental beauty? Fortunately, there are some approaches to beauty that allow for its
analysis, of which aesthetic preference research is an important one.
Preference research suggests that there must indeed be an objective component in the
perception of beauty. The idea that beauty is solely subjective, and subsequently, that the true
beauty of objects cannot be known by man is based on Platonic (and later Kantian) subjectivism and
will be discussed in the next chapter about aesthetic experience. However, before we can turn to
aesthetic theory and the analysis of the aesthetic experience, our idea of beauty beforehand – before
the experience and partly dependent on aesthetic preference – will be analysed. In particular will be
focused on the manifestation of beauty discourse. It is the purpose of this chapter to establish that
the phenomenon of beauty is both unique and universal, that its perception is preceded by aesthetic
preference – both personally developed and conditioned by culture – and that in the middle of all
that subjectivity at least some objectivity can be found as well.
Think of advertisements displaying models. Their visuals are based on extensive preference
research that claims to have found universally preferred attributes: a model is instructed by the
photographer to take a stance or pose that relates in a certain way to the object that is commended
in the advertisement. The model itself is carefully chosen to fit the object and the further visuals of
the ad were carefully chosen to fit the object and the model. It is important to recognize that an
advertisement is already a representation of beauty since it is produced for the purpose of the
advertised object being beheld as a beauty object.
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Advertisements respond to a database of universally preferred attributes because they are
designed to address an as large a target audience as possible. At the same time, being part of a
specific beauty discourse, the advertisement itself potentially enlarges the base of customers – the
target audience – by influencing what people view as beautiful. The ad was therefore not only
designed under influence of beauty discourse, but also strengthens it. That mechanism is the same
for beauty representations of landscape. Landscapes are inter alia being designed to be considered
beautiful by their users. The idea of what is beautiful about landscape is being influenced by beauty
discourse, which will therefore influence the design as well. However, as people view the designed
landscape they will become increasingly accustomed to that particular representation of beauty, and
the accompanying beauty discourse is – through its discursive repetition – reinforced.
It is not said, however, that highly endorsed ideas of environmental beauty are created or
strengthened by beauty discourse only. Instead, the collective consideration of certain visuals as
beautiful – both in the case of model ads and landscapes – raises questions. Is the widespread
popularity of these visuals due to an objective congenital agreement on their beauty? Or has a
beauty discourse been created by a group of people that had the authority to do so, and would it
subsequently have created its own target audience? Focusing on the first question, would the
aesthetic preference for some attributes of landscape stem from a more instinctive sense of beauty
that was already present at birth? And, focusing on the second question, can influential beauty
discourses create a sense of beauty that is so common – collective – that it is perhaps better to
understand this ‘objectivity’ as ‘similarity in subjectivity’?
We will return to this problem momentarily. To avoid too much abstractness it is best to relate the
idea of aesthetic preference to landscape – i.e. the totality of our surroundings, man-made or non-
human influenced, or anything in between – first. About a year ago I set up a digital online collection
of beautiful places that are all situated within the geographical borders of the Dutch province Noord-
Holland – and named it the collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland (for a more extensive explanation of the
project, see Appendix A).6 People were invited to submit a couple of photos of their place of beauty
and to add a few words to describe in detail what they experienced as beautiful. The 354 submitters
were all adults, felt (at least) addressed to by the invitation, and amongst them were both experts
working in the field and lay people. The whole thing was not set up as a scientific survey, there was
no targeted respondent group, and the total amount of submissions is too small to deduct empirical
results, but still, some clear trends are recognizable and can be compared to other (scientific) surveys
about aesthetic landscape preference (for an explanation of categories, see Appendix A).
Almost half of the submitters chose a place that was (directly) outside the built environment.
Surprisingly, the amount of submissions representing cities was relatively low and even then
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approximately half of them involved some form of nature such as a park or a river. Moreover,
throughout the entire collection ‘nature’ (or nature-like) and ‘water’ are by far the largest categories
(Figure 4). Amongst them coastal areas such as dunes, beaches, lakes and seas are omnipresent, but
also polders, meadows, and bushes are popular (Figure 5). In the pictures of these areas canals,
rivers, hedgerows, treelines, and bulbs are very common (Figure 6), but human built non-natural
objects are abundant as well: ditches, dikes, windmills, and built architecture (Figure 7). The degrees
of quietness and openness seem to be the most important attributes. Other important attributes are
the degree of historicity, the visibility of culture (which is in this collection almost linearly related to
the feeling of historicity), and the possibility of recreation (which seems to be an inclination to be
physically active in the landscape of preference).
Figure 4: Nature and Water. Nieuwe Hondsbossche Duinen – Schagen (Collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland,
www.collectiemooi.nl).
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Figure 5: Polder and Meadow. Mijzen Polder, Ursem – Koggenland (Collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland,
www.collectiemooi.nl).
Figure 6: Treeline and Bulbs. Venhuizen – Drechterland (Collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland,
www.collectiemooi.nl).
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If we compare these observations to the findings of a couple of environmental preference
studies, it becomes clear that there are a lot of similarities. In Western countries there is a tendency
to value natural landscapes more positively than clearly human influenced landscapes (Howley, 2011;
Strumse, 2001). Especially in the Netherlands a phenomenon can be observed that has been called
‘new biophilia’: ninety percent of the respondents of a survey acknowledged the intrinsic value of
nature, i.e. nature’s right to exist irrespective of its uses and functions for mankind (De Groot and
Van den Born, 2003). And when asked to choose between models of development, another group of
Dutch respondents chose the development of wild natural settings over the plans to develop
Figure 7: Windmill and Dike. Oostdijk – Heerhugowaard (Collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland,
www.collectiemooi.nl).
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managed settings (Van den Berg and Koole, 2006). Kalivoda et al. (2014) summarized the findings of
numerous environmental preference surveys from all over the world and reached the conclusion that
there are four main rules of thumb that show which landscapes will be aesthetically preferred. First,
this depends on the presence and abundance of vegetation, water, well-preserved man-made
elements, and meadows – which in surveys are the most accentuated elements of landscapes.
Second, this depends on the degree of openness, unity, colour contrast, vividness, and naturalness –
which in surveys are the most preferred attributes of landscapes. Third, within settlements and in
regard to architecture, people tend to prefer traditional architecture, family houses, small lots,
contextuality, and tidiness.
The fourth factor in play is the survey respondents’ characteristics, such as occupation, level
of education, gender, living environment, age, and place of residence. It is suggested that the group
differences in aesthetic landscape preference are relatively small, and, do not weigh in heavily when
compared to the significance of the first three rules of thumb (Kalivoda et al., 2014). Of these, the
first two are focused on the presence of natural elements. Some have even interpreted this focus as
supporting an evolutionary theory of landscape preference whereby it is assumed that similarities in
responses to natural settings outweigh differences across cultures or smaller groups of individuals.
This interpretation is widely debated though, for other research has found substantial individual and
inter group differences in aesthetic landscape preference suggesting that familiarity – getting used to
ones surroundings – is of significant influence (Howley, 2011; Strumse, 2001). Several studies about
landscape preference therefore strongly emphasize the contextuality of their findings, i.e. they
emphasize that there can be considerable (temporal) differences between regions, groups, and
individuals (Van Zanten et al., 2016).
These two approaches to aesthetic preference – advocating preferential subjectivity and
objectivity – are opposite poles in the scholarly discussion. In reality aesthetic preference seems to
be dependent on both. Although lots of scientists point out that it will probably take shape under
heavy influence of culture, there are some trends that suggest a general need for natural
surroundings. It remains unclear, however, what is meant exactly with this ‘objectivity’; what is the
cause of this general need?
“While many take the view as did Kant in his Critique of Judgement that aesthetic quality is a highly subjective matter, by establishing a broad and deep consensus within society we can relatively ‘objectivize’ that quality.” (Kalivoda et al., 2014, p. 43)
Would Kalivoda et al. suggest that objectivity is what I meant with ‘similarity in subjectivity’: common
taste that is created by beauty discourse? Or would this ‘broad and deep consensus’ be meant to be
more intuitively bestirred and thus to be part of the human capacity to prefer at birth? Whether
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intuition or (globally) learned behaviour is the most important factor causing preferential objectivity
remains the question. It would be really helpful to understand the development of preference in
support of establishing the importance of culture in its formation, and thus in the understanding of
the susceptibility of our aesthetic preferences to beauty discourse. How widespread must a
preference be endorsed to be considered objective? Below what degree of endorsement does
preference become subjective? And to which extent are we receptive to be persuaded to prefer? We
will now turn to theory in an attempt to clarify the relative significance of biological, cultural and
personal factors in the formation of preference.
2.2 The development of aesthetic preference In the 1990 study A paradigm for landscape aesthetics the American urban and regional planner
Steven Bourassa recognized that there not yet existed comprehensive theory that described the
formation of human aesthetic preference in a landscape.7 In his article two modes of aesthetic
preference are distinguished – biological (innate or intuitive) and cultural (learned) behaviour – and
subsequently it is posed that there is a third that seems to have a certain degree of autonomy from
biological and cultural factors: personal idiosyncrasy and personal creativity.
To support this theory Bourassa borrows heavily from the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky
(1896-1934) who proposed that preference is subject to three developmental processes:
phylogenesis (biological evolution), sociogenesis (cultural conditioning), and ontogenesis (individual
development). Bourassa connects these processes with the ‘products of development’, the Umwelt,
the Mitwelt, and the Eigenwelt, which in psychiatrical theory are the three simultaneous modes of
existence. The first two modes respectively stand for the biological world and the social or cultural
world. Eigenwelt stands for one’s personal world or ‘the mode of one’s relationship to one’s self’.
With this last mode it is implied that the individual is mature or has developed to the stage of
intellectual responses; he or she has internalized language and uses it as a tool to influence his or her
own behaviour. It follows that this third mode of behaviour is no longer strictly the result of
biological and cultural factors but is underlain by them; the individual can transcend these
constraints through intellectual activity (Bourassa, 1990).
Under this reading of Eigenwelt personal idiosyncrasy and personal creativity are reserved
for almost all of us, and that subjective part of aesthetic preference is therefore both easily theorized
and highly elusive. It forces us to focus on what in the above section has been theorized as ‘present
at birth’ (biological behaviour, instinctive) and ‘similarity in subjectivity’ (cultural behaviour, learned).
These terms respectively correspond to the developmental processes of phylogenesis and
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sociogenesis, and to the products of development Umwelt and Mitwelt. There seems to be some
evidence that these modes of aesthetic preference are not so much intertwined, but rather distinct:
different parts of the brain specialize in innate and learned behaviours and the visual and other
sensory systems have direct connections to each of these parts (Bourassa, 1990). The three modes of
aesthetic preference thus represent three distinct domains that should not be confounded. At the
same time, they should all be taken into account as none can explain the whole range of aesthetic
behaviour alone (Strumse, 2001). These findings give us a glimpse of the different components of
aesthetic preference. However, they do not explain the relative importance of innate and learned
factors in the formation of preference. Also, Bourassa fails (as this was not his main objective) to
analyse the objectivity in preference.
An approach that could provide some clarity as to what objectivity in environmental
aesthetic preference is and where it comes from is ‘The Preference Matrix’ which was proposed by
Kaplan and Kaplan (1989). In their book The experience of nature it is asserted that the study of
environmental preference shows remarkable consistency, despite demographic differences and
across diverse settings. The explanation, they propose, is biological. Human functioning depends on
information which we are constantly recording and processing:
“People seem to be extremely facile in their ability to extract information from the environment. Even the very briefest glimpse of the passing landscape provides information. This information does not depend on posted signs or neon lights. It is far subtler and generally not a part of one’s awareness.” (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989, p. 50)
The hunger for information and its availability may influence the biological, innate side of our
aesthetic preference. To which extent a landscape allows us to instantly assert its informational value
is of importance, but the promise of discovery while entering the landscape seems to be equally
significant (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989).
The Preference Matrix, then, schematically displays landscape characteristics that influence
our assessment of whether or not a landscape provides us with these possibilities (Figure 8). It is
divided into two domains that represent critical facets of people’s relationship to information. The
horizontal axis shows the human needs for understanding and exploration, and the vertical axis
shows the degree of interference that is needed to extract the information: we are looking from a
distance – as if it were a two-dimensional picture – or we enter in an environment. From a distance
two important characteristics are of influence. Complexity; the number of different visual elements,
the richness of a landscape. And coherence; which is about the degree of order and is enhanced by
anything that helps organize the patterns of brightness, size, and texture. When we enter the
environment two other characteristics come into play. Legibility; which indicates whether or not the
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space is well structured and made up of distinctive elements, and, thus, if it is easy to understand
and remember. And mystery; which carries the promise to learn more, of further information (Kaplan
and Kaplan, 1989).
The Preference matrix suggests that the needs for understanding and exploration are both
important; the one cannot replace the other. Similarly, the desire for both the immediate and the
more inferential coexist. Kaplan and Kaplan conclude:
“It becomes apparent that the spatial definition or structure of an area, the textures that help one decide about the ease of locomotion or visual access, and the invitation to enter the scene to learn what cannot be determined from one’s present vantage point are all powerful yet subtle qualities of the environment.” (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989, p. 69)
In turn, it seems safe to conclude that aesthetical preference is at least in part informed by a
biological preference for certain features in the landscape, and, moreover, that this preference is
innate and objective for it is part of all of us. We must bring some nuance to this objectivity however.
Although biological preference is innate, is it thought to develop further after birth. Biological
aesthetic preferential objectivity is therefore no absolute; we can merely ascribe certain collective
aesthetic preferences to be grounded in biological evolution. Culture, subsequently, is able to further
develop biologically programmed aesthetic preference.
Are qualities of environment, such as openness, order, mystery, and structure, stimulating our sense
of beauty as well? Would landscapes that are aesthetically preferred because of these characteristics
be appreciated as beautiful too? There is no conclusive evidence as preference studies regularly
avoid the concept of beauty. Yet, the majority of the environments in the collectie MOOI in Noord-
Holland – submitted because of their beauty – display similar characteristics. That could suggest that
our perception of beauty is therefore at least partially objective. Indeed, recall that Bourassa
suggested that our sensory system – with which we perceive amongst others beauty – has a direct
connection to innate behaviour. We will therefore remain focused on the relationship between
biologically determined and culturally conditioned preference a bit longer. In what way do these
components work simultaneously to become an aesthetical preference assessment?
Understanding Exploration
Immediate Coherence Complexity
Inferred, predicted Legibility Mystery
Figure 8: The Preference Matrix. Landscape characteristics that determine the availability of information
(Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989).
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While even Kaplan and Kaplan (1989) emphasize the importance of contextuality in the
explanation of group differences, there seem to exist high levels of consistency between these
groups as well. In any case, The Preference Matrix does not conceptualize beauty. It merely describes
conditions to which we all respond with the same kind of aesthetical behaviour. The objectivity in
beauty itself (or truth as Gadamer conveniently puts it) cannot be subsumed scientifically under
concepts, “not even by art criticism which hovers between ‘scientific’ demonstration and a sense of
quality that never becomes purely scientific” (Gadamer, 1977, p. 22). It is impossible to convince
someone of the truth of something beautiful by argument. For it does not comply to the conceptual
universality of the understanding, the objectivity in beauty preference does not fit the universality of
the laws of nature. Although it may not be possible to prove an object beautiful, it is possible – as
Kaplan and Kaplan show – to claim more than merely subjective validity of beauty assessments.
Whether aesthetic preferential objectivity is biologically programmed, conditioned by globally
dispersed culture, or a combination of these two (where innate and learned behaviour meet and
produce more or less the same result); it is clearly in opposition with some local particularities of
beauty that seem to be diversions from this truth.
Figure 9: Graph schematically displaying the three domains of aesthetic behaviour and indicating which
domain is susceptible to discourse (Created 26-3-2017).
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What can be learned from psychiatry is that phylogenesis, sociogenesis, and ontogenesis
must all be taken into account to explain aesthetic behaviour. And that at the same time, they are
three distinct domains that should not be confounded. The application of this theory to aesthetic
preference leads to three principles (Figure 9). The first is that there are apparently different versions
of preferential objectivity and subjectivity. At the one hand there is biologically programmed
preference which is already present at birth (and will develop further thereafter). This is one version
of preferential objectivity. Related but not identical to biologically programmed innate preference is
the extreme of culturally learned global preference; although being in fact subjective, it is
‘objectivized’ through similarity in subjectivity. You could say that this is the most objective level of
culturally propelled subjectivity.
Hence the second principle: although both domains – phylogenesis and sociogenesis –
involve preferential objectivity, they should not be confounded. In other words, both ‘objectivities’
are fundamentally different developing behaviours. At the same time, we are not capable of
separating and only displaying one of them. These two principles apply to the subjective end of the
spectrum as well. One kind of preferential subjectivity is ‘personal idiosyncrasy and personal
creativity’ which entails personal taste that develops through intellectual activity. Related but not
identical to personal idiosyncrasy and personal creativity is the extreme of culturally learned
individual preference. Both levels of subjectivity relate to the individual, but at the same time they
are fundamentally different behaviours that have developed through the processes of respectively
ontogenesis and sociogenesis. The first has to do with individual intellectual activity and the latter
with learning from others.
And that is exactly the thing that sets sociogenesis apart from the biological and personal
developmental processes: its resulting behaviour is learned from others. This does inter alia happen
through the influence of culture and our susceptibility to beauty discourse. Moreover, the group size
of the others that we learn from is quite diverse. Between the extremes of global and individual
learned preference are (theoretically infinite) degrees of subjectivity. This is the third principle, i.e.
with a decreasing level of agreement we subsequently move away from objectivized global aesthetic
preference towards (for instance) European preference and subsequently Dutch preference;
subcultural preference; group preference; and ultimately the level of individual (learned) aesthetic
preference. It follows that when only a small group of people is convinced of a certain preference,
the accompanying discourse is less influential (or imposed) than a discourse that comes with fully
dispersed global culture.
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2.3 Representations of beauty In what way can we conceptualize the simultaneous existence of different degrees of subjectivity?
How can we explain more and less influential versions of an as absolute thing as the (Platonic) truth –
universal beauty; and in which manner does this coexistence work out in practice?
It has been documented that landscape preferences have evolved over time as individuals
both become more familiar with particular types of landscape and become more aware of
environmental issues – a manifestation of environment discourse if you will. Environmental values
are therefore a very important predictor of landscape preference (Howley, 2011). Particularly in the
Netherlands where 51% of a survey’s respondents has a vision of ‘greatness and the forces of nature’
when asked about their natural landscape of preference (De Groot and Van der Born, 2003).
Moreover, the better a given landscape matches an idealized image of its landscape type – agrees
with the discourse – the lower is the variance in preference judgements: the stronger is the
consensus about its aesthetic quality (Kalivoda et al., 2014). It follows that the aesthetics of a
preferred landscape are themselves preferred as well.
It must, however, be recognized that this survey most probably would have had a very
different outcome when it was conducted in China where environmental values are undoubtedly less
of a priority and public awareness is much lower. Preference does differ between cultures, and
aesthetic preference must therefore differ as well. Exemplary is what the American-Japanese scholar
Donald Keene brought to the fore in The Pleasures of Japanese Literature (1988): the Japanese idea
of beauty used to be very different from the Western ideal. Favoured were irregularity instead of
symmetry; transiency instead of eternity; and simplicity instead of ornateness. The contrast was not
the result of climate or biological differences, but rather of the work of painters, writers, and
theorists who influenced the aesthetic preference of a nation (De Botton, 2006). In terms of beauty
discourse: in Japan a very different but nevertheless strong and culturally determined aesthetic
preference had been around for ages until it was overtaken by Western culture.
To return to the example of the advertisement displaying a model; although its visuals are
based upon a preferential norm that constitutes a widely supported idea of beauty, it is not said that
the visuals of the ad are accepted as beautiful anywhere on earth. Also, there may co-exist multiple
versions of the truth in one place: although the ad could be recognized as beautiful, there can be
other sets of visuals that are locally regarded as beautiful at the same time. And some of these may
even be stronger adhered to than others. To say that beauty is a universal is simply to say that it is a
concept that can be abstracted from a broad range of concrete particulars. The conception of beauty
as universal does not mean that all cultures or societies must ascribe to the same particular
representations of it. Instead, because beauty is a universal it exists across cultures, but it is known
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through particulars that are unique to the context of each culture (Vacker and Key, 1993). This
supports the view that subjective aesthetic preference may not be so much culturally relative as
culturally contextual:
“One can observe the different particular standards for Oriental female beauty versus Occidental female beauty and realize that no one template of particular beauty can apply to both cultures. Yet, it is possible for an Oriental to appreciate and value an Occidental beauty and for an Occidental to appreciate and value an Oriental beauty.” (Vacker and Key, 1993, p. 483)
This explanation accounts for the co-existence of multiple representations of beauty at the
same place, of absolute and more ‘contextual truths’, and of more broadly or narrowly dispersed
beauty discourses. It explains why advertisements with Western looking models can appeal to people
of other cultures than the ‘Western culture’, and vice versa. It should be noted that in the last
decades an explosion of global mass communication between cultures has made possible a ‘cross
fertilization’ of subjective aesthetic preference (Vacker and Key, 1993). Also, note that the cross
fertilization of aesthetic preference is in fact the mediation of beauty discourse. Cross fertilization
not only occurs on the global level and between global cultures. Sub-cultures can be conveyed to
others that are nearby, even at the level of groups and individuals cross fertilization can occur.
Moreover, strong local beauty discourse can be transferred – for instance by the use of social media
– to a much wider, global audience and root to become global beauty discourse. When a
representation of beauty becomes culturally protected, which can occur at any societal level, we
speak of ‘institutionalized beauty’; a confirmation of something ‘we know is true’ (Cold, 2001b).
However, in these times of far-reaching globalization and cultural cross fertilization that is
possible between any two societal levels, we are surprisingly more than ever confronted with
particularities. It seems that every transnational, national, regional, and local culture has its own
‘canon of beauties’: certain buildings, natural phenomena, landscapes, and works of art that are
often depicted in textbooks, postcards, or tourist posters. These objects belong to a cultural-historic
convention and a stated canon which everybody within civilized society should know and appreciate
(Cold, 2001a).
Recall that the submissions in the collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland displayed features in the
landscape that are regarded as beautiful all over the world, such as openness of terrain or the liking
of traditional architecture. Also, there were similarities that can be ascribed to be more Western,
such as the tendency to value natural landscapes over clearly human influenced landscapes. But the
centre piece of a lot of submissions (almost 6%) was a windmill. Windmills are a very prominent
member of the Dutch canon of beauties. This is exactly how beauty discourse effects aesthetic
preference. Even in this small collection of places that are submitted for their beauty, various beauty
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discourses can be recognized that are at work at different geographical levels. Moreover, the image
of a windmill is part of a beauty discourse that has dispersed not only in the Netherlands, but
considering the vast amount of foreign tourists that visits windmills, has been cross fertilized all over
the world.
One could ask: would a windmill be considered as beautiful by a man that has been living in a
cabin in the woods for many years, completely isolated from humans, and cut off from all the
possibilities of communication with a world other than his own? If we would show this person an
image of a windmill, would it be liked and aesthetically preferred? Or would his aesthetic preference
be different without the constant bombardment of canonical images that the ones that participate in
society endure every day? According to Cold “a canon of beauties can be the worst enemy of
experiencing beauty because convention does not demand a direct and dynamic engagement and
awareness, which is the basis for discovering and experiencing beauty” (2001a, p. 19). If that is true,
we could ask the hermit to leave the cabin and accompany us to a windmill; would his aesthetic
experience be the same as ours? In other words: would the aesthetic experience of someone that has
not been susceptible to beauty discourse for many years be different than the aesthetic experience
of someone that has? It is important to emphasize that these questions are not about truth finding;
we have learned that there can be multiple truths that co-exist. Indeed, we are not to argue with
someone’s aesthetic preference or aesthetic experience since preference and taste are individual
truths in themselves. We can only compare aesthetic preference and aesthetic experience. But
before we do, the difference in formation between aesthetic preference – an idea of beauty – and
aesthetic experience – the act of experiencing beauty – must be analysed.
The next chapter will explore what an aesthetic experience is and in what it is different from
aesthetic preference. It will be shown that even when both terms display the word ‘aesthetic’, and
both can involve the recognition of beauty, they inhabit different worlds. What is it to leave the
screen, go into the real world, and aesthetically experience Noord-Holland?
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3 Experiencing Noord-Holland
Experiencing Noord-Holland. It sounds rather simple. However, even when taken apart ‘(aesthetic)
experience’ and ‘Noord-Holland’ are highly complex constructs. Let us begin with the latter. Noord-
Holland is a province of the Netherlands. It is home to almost three million people and includes some
of the major cities of the country. Besides metropolitan areas – including some of the polders – its
geographical borders encompass two seas, countless lakes, dunes and beaches, islands, marches,
rivers, forests, and lots of other natural phenomena (Figure 10). So far so good. But what happens if
we problematize Noord-Hollands as a landscape? There are a great many answers to this question
for any landscape is not only composed “of what lies before our eyes but [of] what lies within our
heads” as well (Meinig, 1979, p. 34).
Figure 10: Map of Noord-Holland showing its diverse landscape. The classification is decided on by Rob
van Leeuwen and of course arbitrary: (1) dunes and sand-ridges; (2) aandijkingen (polders), ‘De
Noordkop’; (3) marine clays, ‘West-Friesland’; (4) moraine, partly covered by sand, ‘‘t Gooi’; (5) peat
bogs; (6) reclamations (MOOI Noord-Holland, 2016).
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Depending on the kind of ‘beholding eye’, there are endless variations to what people see
when they look at the physical space comprised by geographical borders that is Noord-Holland. Its
landscape could be looked upon as nature. This idea had its greatest vogue in the eighteenth century
and was based on a longing for wilderness and on a view of nature as pure. However, in recent years
it has been debated whether the idea of a geographical division between nature and culture is still
maintainable since human influence on nature has increased dramatically and all land has been
included in the human domain in a new geological era that has been called the ‘Anthropocene’ (no
consensus on when it started) (Muilwijk and Faber, 2015). The idea of landscape as nature is
especially problematic when applied to Noord-Holland since the area has been shaped by human
hands unlike any other area in the world. In this light, one could argue that Noord-Holland is merely a
habitat to its inhabitants: man and nature are in a reciprocal relationship and landscape is therefore
a blend of man and nature. More unilateral, denying any reciprocal relationship, landscape could be
viewed as artefact: nature is the stage or platform on which man – creator and conqueror of nature –
is ecologically dominant (Meinig, 1979).
It is probably not surprising that these are shifting views; as the contemporary architectural
approach to landscape it is conceptualized as a space that is subject to natural cycles and that is
constantly developing culturally (Steenbergen et al., 2009). A tradition that has characterized Noord-
Holland both as nature and as being merely man-made – and is exemplifying for the impact of beauty
discourse on landscape – is the ‘Fine Dutch Tradition’ of inpolderen (poldering). The first coordinated
polderings were the so-called cope-parcelings that occurred from the eleventh to the fifteenth
century. Technological progress and a consciously implemented population-policy resulted in peat-
cultivation in Utrecht and Holland. Architectural concepts, however, were not yet present: the first
coordinated polderings were merely the result of the conquering of wilderness for social purposes in
what has been called ‘de eerste ontginning’ (primary cultivation) (Reh et al., 2003).
That changed during the period of ‘de tweede ontginning’ (secondary cultivation), which was
a clear break with the period of medieval poldering (Reh et al., 2003). Urban development and
expansion, along with Renaissance ideals, gave birth to the first views on what a polder-landscape
must be and this beauty discourse subsequently had an impact on the landscape of Noord-Holland.
Landscape has therefore also been conceptualized as a transmitter of culture (Meinig, 1979). The
investment in poldering by wealthy urban notables found a cultural legitimation in new esthetical
ideals: the arrangement of land according to a geometrical quadrangular grid. The best well-known
example is the reclamation of De Beemster (1612) (Figure 11). The quadrangular grid of De Beemster
was the perfect expression of the Renaissance’s rational ideal. These were the heydays of
seventeenth century Dutch poldering; between 1597 and 1648 approximately 35000 ha. of land was
reclaimed (Bremer, 2004; Noordegraaf, 2004).
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However, in the eighteenth century views on nature, and subsequently landscape, changed.
Nature became to be conceived of as an independent system that was intrinsically valuable (as will
be elaborated on further down). Is was therefore not so much to be conquered as to be respected
(Reh, 1996). A break of beauty discourse was the result and would have a direct impact on
nineteenth century Dutch poldering. That became apparent during another wave of poldering (ca.
46000 ha.) which occurred between 1815-1858. For the first time in Noord-Holland the Renaissance
ideal of ratio was confronted with dominant natural features (Reh et al., 2005). As was generally the
case in the nineteenth century, planners tended to approach natural features more respectfully of
which the poldering of the Anna Paulownapolder (1846) is a good example (Figure 12). The polder-
design was adapted to suit its natural features, resulting in a more differentiated kind of grid.
Figure 11: Map of De Beemster of 1658 (www.ifthenisnow.eu).
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Another conceptualization of landscape involves viewing Noord-Holland as a system; in this
view the visible landscape is a façade that overlies systematically linked processes. An example is the
atmospheric water management system in which water is redistributed through processes that are
globally interlinked. Such views on ‘invisible’ landscape are for this thesis only relevant when this
insight or knowledge contributes to – or triggers – a sense of beauty, which it does in case of Van
Etteger’s designed landscapes.
Moreover, following the idea that landscape is not only the result but also a transmitter of
culture, landscape is history. This view includes the idea that life must be lived amidst that which was
made before; it comprises of a sense of chronology and continuity and conceptualizes landscape as
stacked layers of history (Meinig, 1979). Exemplary is a fairly new interdisciplinary field – landscape
Figure 12: Map of the Anna Paulownapolder by H.P. Eskes (1856). Natural features as the Oude
Veer and the shape of the surrounding polders clearly shaped the polder-design
(www.regiocanons.nl).
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biography – which aims to write long-term life-histories of landscapes to reveal past representations.
Of course the conceptualization of ‘living’ landscape is instantly problematic since landscapes have
not been born and do not die. However, this example does point out that the concept of landscape is
not only about contemporary conceptualization. It is intrinsically linked to ideas and beauty
discourses from the past.
It becomes clear that perceiving landscape does not stop after the visual act. Looking at
landscape is conceptualizing it at the same time. What happens when the information we obtain with
our senses is subsequently processed by the brain; what is it to perceive landscape?
3.1 The perception of landscape The Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte (1898-1967) once said: “We see [the world] as being
outside ourselves, even though it is only a mental representation of what we experience on the
inside.” (Ingold, 2012, p. 1). It becomes immediately clear that all the ideas above that have been
swiftly touched upon have one thing in common: they are mental representations – incomplete by
definition – of the same objects in the same physical space; i.e. these representations are based on
what is seen in the eye of the beholder. It seems that ‘mental landscapes’ are inherently intellectual
constructs of which the meaning depends on culture, making them culturally determined intellectual
constructs. But then, are there landscapes that are not mental? I believe the vision of the Irish
archaeologist Tadhg O’Keeffe to be right: there would be no landscape without us for the simple
reason of ‘landscape’ being an intellectual construct.8 Landscape has no ontological meaning; i.e. it
has no meaning at all without someone or something giving it meaning. Or as the British
anthropologist Tim Ingold writes; to perceive a landscape is to imagine it (Ingold, 2012). This seems
confusing. If ‘landscapes’ only exist in our heads, do we actually refer to physical objects when we
talk about them?
It becomes more clear by examining the construct ‘natural landscape’ that is being
appropriated throughout all kinds of literature and of which the exact meaning is not always the
same. Most of the time, however, the term is used to describe a selection of non-human (produced)
objects in a physical space. Hence, when we refer to ‘landscape’, we are talking about all the objects
that fall within that physical space. The word ‘natural’ in front of ‘landscape’ merely brings the
selection back to the natural objects that may be positioned in between other sorts of objects. When
we follow O’Keeffe’s vision these objects alone do not make up a landscape since any mental
representation is missing. However, when we think or talk about them they become – through our
mental representation – instantly landscape. According to Simon Schama ‘landscape’ is a unification
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of physical substance and ideal form – it is our shaping perception that converts raw material into
the image of a landscape (Ingold, 2012).
Mental representation implies interpretation. According to the Dutch archaeologist Jan
Kolen:
“[…] even the most ‘anonymous’, ‘natural’ and ‘original’ of landscapes bears the imprint of human authorship and personal identity, not only in terms of past human presence and practices, but also in terms of aesthetic experiences, retrospective vision, scientific interpretation and naturalist engagement.” (Kolen, 2015, p. 71-72)
The mental representation of objects as landscape is an interpretation and personal. Since
‘landscape’ is an intellectual construct there is no single definition of the concept. Rather, every
being constructs its own version or understanding of it. The above examples of landscape ideas point
that out as well. It is all about perception, including the visualization of place and the experience of
beauty. What we see when we imagine a landscape is a unique mental representation which,
theoretically, no one else experiences exactly the same way (nor completely different). Thus, a single
physical space filled with objects ends up in infinite ‘parallel’ mental representations of that space.
The objects and mental representations taken together are – according to me – what is commonly
known as landscape.
Still, if any representation of the world ever made by any being is mental, and therefore an
interpretation and inaccurate by definition; has no being ever seen the world for what it really is?
Can we ever know what the real objects are like? This is one of the oldest philosophical questions
and akin to the question whether or not we are even present on earth. More and more physicists are
seriously considering the possibility that the cosmos as we know it is a projection – a hologram (Sir
Edmund, 2017). Intriguing, but for the subject of this section – centered around the mental construct
of beauty – far beyond its scope. However, a short analysis of the stance of the American
psychologist James Gibson (1904-1979) in the debate about the accuracy of our vision allows for the
introduction of both the notions of environment and multi-sensory perception as a prelude to the
next section.
According to Gibson seeing is more than impressions that are stamped upon the surface of
the retina and subsequently processed by the mind. Visual perception is the achievement of the
whole organism as it moves through its environment (Ingold, 2012). Until now in this analysis the
perceiver and the object were at a fixed position, while both are of course – to a greater and lesser
extent – moving entities. The concept of environment adds the factor of mobility in time and space to
this equation (Berleant, 2012b). In the mind of the perceiver the objects and their mental
representations – as theorized above – are still there, constructing the notion of landscape. When we
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conceptualize the physical space in which they are positioned as an environment though, movement
of the perceiver and alteration of the object are accounted for: instead of a relationship of ‘subject to
object’ we can think of ‘self to setting’. The setting is the environment in which we exist as a sentient
part: it is our surroundings, always under construction, and we ourselves are part of it (Carlson,
2004). The advantage of the concept of environment then, is its focus on the ability of the perceiver
to move around the landscape and to ‘imagine as he goes’. Moreover, mobility in time allows for the
landscape to develop meaning beyond its present day sensible characteristics – which has been
called the ‘power of place’ by the American historian Dolores Hayden: the power to nurture citizens’
public memory, to encompass shared time in the form of shared territory (Hayden, 1995).
To return to the perception of reality, to Gibson perceiving is something entirely different
than imagining. He argues that real objects can always be visually scrutinized further, whereas
mental representations have limitations to their possible enlargement. For example, a painted leaf
cannot be examined under the microscope for its cellular structure, but a real leaf can. Gibson argues
for the existence of a perceived reality. In this view, the real objects can be known by their
parametric constants; their invariants. I.e. no matter the degree of enlargement, the parameters of
the object will remain the same. The perception of these invariants is – according to Gibson – not
imaginative and thus reality. This view is directly opposed to what this analysis yielded so far: the
imagination – or inaccurate mental representation – of objects, landscapes and environments by the
use of perception. Ingold et al. offer a solution to this problem by reuniting perception and
imagination while yet acknowledging the human condition to be that of a being whose knowledge of
the world is not only shaped by the eyes and the mind, but grows from the very soil of an existential
involvement in the sensible world (Ingold, 2012).
To imagine, they suggest, is not so much to conjure up images of the world ‘out there’,
whether virtual or actual, true or false, as to participate from within the environment – through
perception and action – in the very becoming of things. Perceivers are not passive observers:
“To perceive, as to imagine, is to participate from within in the perpetual self-making of the world. It is to join with a world in which things do not so much exist as occur, each along its own trajectory of becoming. […] If imagination is the work of the mind, then it is a mind that far from remaining disengaged, wrapped up in its own auto-generative deliberations, mingles freely with the world along multiple lines of sensory participation.” (Ingold, 2012, p. 14, 16).
This idea accounts for mental representation and perception of reality as it merges them into a
duality. We are at the same time both real objects and mental representations, both perceiving and
being perceived – as participatory parts in an environment. Moreover, when Gibson suggested that
visual perception is the achievement of the whole body, he means that to visualize is to use your
eyes, to turn your head and to move your body. The same principle applies to perception in general;
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to perceive is to use all, but not only the senses. We move through environments by using our body,
what is sensed is processed by the brain, and the brain does not only utilize sensed stimuli but also
prior knowledge to construct image of landscape. In the following section aesthetic appreciation will
be examined which is inter alia driven by knowledge and for which the notion of environment is
important as well.
3.2 Aesthetic appreciation
Now that we have rid ourselves of the static landscape in favour of a flexible environment, the
subject of the perception of beauty can be connected to the latter. To fully understand the concept
of the aesthetic experience, however, we must go back to a time when environment was still
landscape and aesthetic experience was still aesthetic appreciation. Nature, as will be explained, has
been the reason for this conceptual change. Its evolving conception would cause paradigmatic
change on at least two occasions: the conceptualization of nature as landscape (eighteenth century)
and the conceptualization of nature as environment (twentieth century). Moreover, in the wake of
changing conceptions come conceptual problems. Indeed, to some people ‘nature’, and ‘landscape’
or ‘environment’, are close to being synonyms. As has been shown above, however, they can be part
of each other but are not one and the same. To others these concepts are contradictory for
resembling the distinction between ‘wild’ and ‘manmade’ and, in regard to urban environments, the
distinction between ‘living’ and ‘not living’.
Further, since the word ‘aesthetic’, and especially the word ‘beauty’, are prominent parts of
vernacular language, their exact meanings are often diffused. These meanings have to be explored
since it is aspired for this thesis to step out of the realm of experts and to consider the implications of
the vernacular perception of beauty on beauty discourse. As aesthetical philosophy is extremely
complex, and reaches beyond the scope of this thesis, I choose to approach the subject with an
ostensibly simple semantic question: where does the word ‘aesthetic’ come from? When I was
pondering this question I realized that the word is used to describe a variety of things. The two most
common uses of the word refer to the sensory perception of aesthetic properties, and the perception
of beauty (Dovey, 2001). Let us go back to the original meaning of the word for “language represents
the previous accomplishments of thought” (Gadamer, 1977, p. 12).
In the ancient Greek language the word aisthesis means ‘to perceive’. By referring to
something as aesthetic by sensory perception it is meant that a certain amount of the properties of
an object are perceptible by the use of the senses of sound, taste, smell, touch, movement or vision.
This direct aesthetic perception is the gateway to the emotional and cognitive processes, when we
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become aware, discover, are stimulated by, recognize and assess the environment (Cold, 2001a). It
follows that an object of which the properties are not perceptible by the senses is ‘anaesthetic’. The
allocation of an object as aesthetic, in this instance however, does not say anything about the quality
of the aesthetically perceptible properties. The terms ‘aesthetically appealing’, ‘aesthetically
rewarding’ and ‘aesthetically appreciative’ merely refer to the sensory perceptibility of these
properties.
Upon sensory perception of an objects’ properties an aesthetic response can be triggered on
part of the perceiver. Aesthetic responses can either be positive or negative. Positive aesthetic
responses are implying that an object is beautiful, picturesque or sublime (although the sublime can
be experienced as negative as well). Negative aesthetic responses are implying that an object is ugly
or uncanny (Van Etteger, 2016). It is important to recognize that in the perception of beauty the
word aesthetic is used to describe a qualitative aesthetic response to the object. It follows that an
object of which the properties are aesthetically perceptible but do not trigger a qualitative response
is ‘unaesthetic’ (Dovey, 2001). In this instance, the terms ‘aesthetically appealing’, ‘aesthetically
rewarding’ and ‘aesthetically appreciative’ are suddenly implying a positive aesthetic quality of the
object. Note that in vernacular language – although it might be subconsciously – the word aesthetic
is often used in the above two manners.
Aesthetic appreciation, then, is not about the object alone. It is the perception of the object
that leaves the perceiver ‘touched’; aesthetic appreciation is the interplay between the perceiver and
the perceived. This is best explained by what Gadamer means by the distinction between Erlebnis
and Erfahrung. For Gadamer, art is not to be understood as a magical, fantastic realm to which we
can escape; we do not encounter the world of art without being transformed in the process. If the
aesthetic appreciation of art would be based on Erlebnis, our experience would leave us unchanged,
we would not have heard the claim art makes upon us: art would be reduced to a mere
entertainment. However, if we undergo the experience of art in the sense of Erfahrung, we will find
ourselves touched and transformed (Bernasconi, 1986).
The same principle applies to all other environments – not art alone. Every time we
aesthetically appreciate we are changed. Our presumptions with which we encounter the next object
are not the same as before; aesthetic appreciation is driven by a growing body of experiences and
adds to our ‘aesthetic knowledge’ continuously. Moreover, knowledge that is used to aesthetically
appreciate environments does not only consist of the kind of knowledge that emerged in the
previous section: the understanding of an environment that influences the way we experience it. It
also consists of an evolving sense of what one finds aesthetically stimulating and the qualitative
aesthetic response to the object will therefore constantly evolve as well. The German philosopher
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762) called this phenomenon cognitio sensitiva; there is
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something in the experience of beauty that compels us to dwell upon the individual experience itself
(Gadamer, 1977).
The continuation of the semantic analysis leads us to a third use of the word aesthetic, which
stems from the reference to the theoretical and philosophical theories of aesthetic criticism in the
arts – aesthetical philosophy – which only emerged as a philosophical discipline (founded by
Baumgarten) during the age of rationalism in the eighteenth century (Gadamer, 1977).9 For the
purpose of this thesis it is best to analyse the scholarly discussion about the aesthetic appreciation of
nature which started around the time that, under the influence of Romanticism, people became
highly interested in the natural world. New present day insights that leave aesthetic appreciation in
favour of aesthetic experience, relate this experience not only to nature but to all-comprehensive
environments (such as Noord-Holland), and open the way for the conceptualization of lay people’s
perception of environment, come forth out of this discussion (Berleant, 2012b; 2012c; 2012f).
Aesthetic appreciation of nature started developing by the work of British and Scottish
philosophers such as Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1671-1713), Francis Hutcheson (1694-
1746) and Edmund Burke (1729-1797). It was then solidified by the work of Kant; his was the idea to
disentangle the objects of appreciation and the perceiver from interests – such as the personal, the
possessive, and the economic – with a method that he called ‘disinterestedness’ (Carlson and
Berleant, 2004). Disinterestedness simply signifies the characteristic feature of aesthetic behaviour
that forbids us to inquire after the purpose served by art (Gadamer, 1977). For Kant, aesthetic
appreciation was about experiencing the object with pleasure or displeasure. It follows that a
qualitative response to an object is aesthetic only if it is determined by the pleasurable of
unpleasurable nature of this experience (Budd, 1998a; Berleant, 2012e). The method of
disinterestedness resulted in a rich tradition of landscape appreciation; not only domesticated, rural
countrysides could be appreciated as beautiful, but even the wildest of natural environments could
now be appreciated as sublime (Budd, 1998b).
In between the two extremes of the beautiful and the sublime another mode of aesthetic
appreciation developed: picturesque appreciation. The picturesque (translated as ‘picture-like’)
mode in particular facilitated the aesthetic appreciation of the picture-like properties of sensuous
surface and formal composition. Tourists even used to pursue picturesque scenery with the help of
the ‘Claudeglass’, a small, tinted, convex mirror that helped to see the landscape as they would art
(Carlson, 2004; Berleant, 2012a). In a contemporary guidebook to the Lake District:
“Where the objects are great and near, it removes them to a due distance, and shews them in the soft colours of nature, and most regular perspective the eye can perceive, art teach, or science demonstrate …; to the glass is reserved the finished picture, in highest colouring, and just perspectives.” (Thomas West’s guidebook cited in Carlson, 2004, p. 67)
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Ultimately, under influence of eighteenth century disinterestedness theory, landscapes became
firmly embedded into beauty discourse with formalistic picturesque appreciation as the favoured
mode of appreciation (Carlson and Berleant, 2004).
During the mid-twentieth century both disinterestedness and the formalistic picturesque
mode of aesthetic appreciation began to be rejected with the development of the expressionist
theory of art and the rejection reached its climax with the development of the later institutional
theory of art. Both art theories together would generate a paradigmatic shift in the art world: the old
idea of disinterested contemplation of the sensuous and formal properties of isolated and solitary
objects was discarded in favour of a more emotionally and cognitively rich engagement with cultural
artefacts that are intentionally created by designing intellects, and are informed by both historical
tradition and art critical practices.10 As a result the aesthetic appreciation of the natural world was
left behind; in the beginning of the new paradigm aesthetic appreciation was limited only to art
(Berleant, 2012b). Subsequently, as remnants of the old paradigm, landscape architects,
environmental planners and landscape assessors still tended to focus on sensuous and formal
properties of scenery. The urgent need for a new mode of aesthetic appreciation of nature became
apparent (Carlson and Berleant, 2004).
3.3 Towards the aesthetic experience A 1966 essay by the Scottish philosopher Ronald Hepburn (1927-2008) – appropriately titled
“Contemporary aesthetics and the neglect of natural beauty” – preluded the long awaited
paradigmatic shift in the appreciation of the natural world. Besides the fact that for most people it is
impossible to eliminate personal interests and already present knowledge when aesthetically
appreciating nature, Hepburn argued that some features in the natural world are actually sources for
a different kind of aesthetic experience: since nature is not constrained by designing intellects, art
historical traditions and art critical practices, it facilitates an open, engaging, and creative mode of
perception. Besides the two extremes of the single object (i.e. a tree) and the consideration of nature
as a unity – ‘the whole’ – there are a number of additional levels, compared to the aesthetics of art,
on which nature can be aesthetically experienced. Hepburn amongst others named the
contemplation of a natural object in spatial or interpretative context; the humanizing and
spiritualizing of nature; and the emotional quality of natural objects (Hepburn, 2004). This realization
is somewhat akin to Meinig’s ‘beholding eye’: as in the imagination of landscapes, the appreciation of
nature depends on the aesthetic mode with which the perceiver experiences, which, in turn, partly
depends on knowledge.
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Building on these findings, the Finnish philosopher Allen Carlson introduced the ‘natural
environment model’ in 1979. Carlson posed that, despite the start of a new paradigm, there still
existed two inadequate models for the aesthetic experience of nature that were inappropriate given
‘the nature of the natural environment’. First, he argued, the object model is inappropriate for it
requires to remove the object from its environment. Even when the object is appreciated just for
what it is (i.e. a rock), contemplative removal from its context and thus conversion into art is
inevitable. Or as Carlson writes: there is a “distinction between appreciating nature and appreciating
the objects of nature” (Carlson, 2004, p. 65). Second, the landscape model – still directly linked to the
idea of the picturesque – encourages the perceiver to appreciate nature as if it were a painting: a
representation from a specific standpoint and distance. It is inappropriate for the natural
environment is not a scene, representation, static, or two-dimensional; the model not only limits – as
does the object model – but misleads (Carlson, 2004). The natural environment model offers a way
of experiencing instead of appreciating and is in line with the theorization of environment at the start
of this chapter:
“It involves recognizing that nature is an environment and thus a setting within which we exist and that we normally experience with our complete range of senses as our unobtrusive background. But for our experience to be aesthetic, this unobtrusive background must be experienced as obtrusive foreground. The result is the experience of a ‘blooming, buzzing confusion’, which in order to be appreciated must be tempered by the common sense and scientific knowledge that we have discovered about the natural environment so experienced.” (Carlson, 2004, p. 72)
The aesthetic experience is not distanced at all; if environments are three dimensional spaces
we must experience them as obtrusive foregrounds instead of two dimensional images of landscape
that are appreciated as unobtrusive backgrounds. Moreover, Carlson strongly emphasises the part of
knowledge in experiencing natural environments ‘on their own terms’. Indeed, not only scientific
(expert) knowledge suffices, but ‘common sense’ can be called upon to make sure that the aesthetic
experience is appropriate for the environment experienced: “We must have a consummatory
experience: one in which knowledge and intelligence transform raw experience by making it
determinate, harmonious, meaningful” (Carlson, 2004, p. 72). The aesthetic experience of nature
became – according to theory – more and more accessible for lay people. However, the emphasis
was still on ‘the right knowledge for the right environment’ whereas the other side of the vernacular
aesthetic experience – emotion and intuition – lacks a conscious mode of perception and is more
intuitive. Would this be what Carlson wanted to indicate with the phrase ‘common sense’?
We will return to emotion and intuition later. First it is important to extract the above
insights and implement them into the notion of environment which we developed in the first section
of this chapter. After all, Noord-Holland consists not only of nature, but of human influenced areas as
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well. Moreover, the areal ratio ‘natural’ to ‘human influenced‘ is not constant throughout the
province. It is therefore impossible to always possess the right knowledge for a ‘right’ aesthetical
experience. If the province, which as other all-comprehensive environments is a blend of nature and
human influence, is to be experienced ‘on its own terms’ it must be performed with the help of a
single mode of aesthetic experience that applies to all of our surroundings. This desire seems
paradoxical for at the same time it demands both theoretical generalization (a single mode) and
practical differentiation (‘on its own terms’). What we need, therefore, is a general aesthetical theory
that nonetheless accounts for the diversity of individual experience and divergent cultural factors in
our encounters with different blends of environment within a bigger space of environment such as
Noord-Holland.
The key to a more general aesthetic seems to be the movement in thought Carlson already
suggested – leaving the object as the centre of aesthetic appreciation for the experience of
perception. According to the American aesthetical philosopher Arnold Berleant the focus on
perception rather than the object allows for one and the same mode of aesthetic experience; for all
blended – natural and humanly influenced – environments. The underlying idea is that perceiving is
not just a visual act but a somatic engagement in an environment (Berleant, 2004; Van Etteger,
2016). In what he calls the aesthetics of engagement, Berleant envisions “a universal applicable
aesthetics based not on disinterestedness but on engagement”:
“What we grasp in the wilder states of nature we appreciate too in its more cultivated forms. Those environments where art and nature are deliberately fused, such as gardens […] The same fusion of art and nature occurs in modern architecture that is sensitive to its site, in urban planning that responds to geomorphological and geographical considerations, in site-specific sculpture, and in the design of urban parks. A single aesthetic applies to nature and to art because, in the final analysis, they are both cultural constructs, and so we are not talking about two things but about one.” (Berleant, 2004)
The aesthetic experience is not so much focused on the objects of environment as on their
engagement. With engagement Berleant means the act of perceiving in the form of active
participation. A universally applicable aesthetics is therefore literally an aesthetics of the universe: it
can be applied to any environment, no matter the degree of diversity or size.
Adopting the new ‘participatory aesthetics’ will not only change our aesthetic experience of
environments but the very nature of the experience (Berleant, 2004). We will enter environments
physically, immerse ourselves in their space. And at the same time we will use knowledge to better
understand and experience them. Gradually we will develop a qualitative aesthetic judgement about
the environment. Aesthetic experience eventually leading to an aesthetic judgement is a process that
demands consideration. An aesthetic judgement based on experience is therefore radically different
than an aesthetic judgement based on aesthetic preference; we can judge a picture of an
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environment in a magazine in a matter of seconds, whereas we would have to physically travel
towards – and subsequently take time to consider – the environment in question to gain aesthetic
experience. The aesthetic experience is by definition erfahren and therefore conducted in situ.
3.4 Who is to aesthetically judge? Let us assume that the hermit of the previous chapter eagerly accepted our invitation to accompany
us to the mill. However, on the way over he told us that in his time in the woods he was only focused
on surviving and had never taken the time to aesthetically mature. The obvious question –
considering the above section – is whether or not the hermit is qualified to pass aesthetic judgement
on the mill’s environment. It is important to separate three issues this question brings to the fore.
First, and discussed before, anyone is able to pass aesthetic judgement without any prior aesthetic
experience in the specific environment for the validity of the judgement is not dependent on a
person’s familiarity with the objects in the environment but on familiarity with the act of
aesthetically experiencing. In other words: if we take a measure of the hermit’s judgement based on
aesthetic knowledge, we must measure the amount of aesthetic experience he obtained in the
surroundings of his cabin.
But wait a minute, the hermit told us that he gained no aesthetic experience whatsoever. The
previous section implied that to pass qualified aesthetic judgement a person must have had prior
aesthetic experiences: knowledge of the environment is ostensibly replaced by knowledge of the
aesthetic experience. We could therefore be inclined to deny the hermit his aesthetic conception,
and tell him that only we should aesthetically judge because of our prior aesthetic experience. Of
course that would be resembling a situation wherein expert aesthetic knowledge is the condition for
passing qualified aesthetic judgement. If we did, both we and the hermit would be under the
impression that by surviving in the woods – or not consciously practicing environmental aesthetics –
no aesthetic knowledge is acquired. Moreover, it is widely believed that a person who is not an
expert – is not being employed in the field of environmental aesthetics – is not qualified for he or she
has not aesthetically matured ‘the right way’ (Cold, 2001a; 2001b; Berleant, 2012d).
Too often ‘qualified’ is confused with ‘expert’. Therefore second, and building on the
previous issue, genuine aesthetic experiences in unfamiliar environments are not reserved for
experts, because aesthetic experience not necessarily needs expert aesthetic knowledge. An
aesthetics of engagement can be applied by anyone who is physically present in an environment. The
conditions for the aesthetic experience to be genuine is that we engage, participate, immerse
ourselves in the environment and that we experience what we perceive as an obtrusive foreground.11
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Qualified aesthetic judgement is qualified because of these two conditions only. If we would explain
this to the hermit, he would probably sigh and enthusiastically tell us about moments he
encountered beauty in the forest. And at the same time he would realize that he has aesthetically
matured indeed; his aesthetic knowledge may have accumulated differently than expert aesthetic
knowledge – less consciously and emphasized – it is nonetheless aesthetic knowledge and it may
even be very valuable for it has not been influenced by expert training, other people’s opinions, or
further beauty discourses.
Still, the amalgamation of Carlson’s natural environment model and Berleant’s aesthetics of
engagement – as presented in the paragraphs above – requires aesthetic knowledge to ensure a
genuine aesthetic experience. But what about emotion and intuition? What if the hermit was
suddenly overwhelmed when facing the sight of the mill and his cognitive functions were suddenly
overtaken by pure emotion? Moreover and more generally, is it not the goal of most (landscape)
architects to play on people’s emotions; and is it not intuition – understanding without reasoning –
that sometimes inspires us towards positive aesthetic arousal? Are aesthetic experiences aroused by
emotion instead of supported by aesthetic knowledge not qualified to base aesthetic judgement on?
Yes they are, according to the well-known American philosopher Noël Carroll. Writing about
the aesthetic experience of nature he realizes that there is a longstanding practice which remains
untouched by Carlson’s natural environment model but needs not to be abandoned: being
emotionally moved as response to the perception of beauty in a natural environment. The key is not
scientific knowledge, common sense, or culture, but common human nature, or as Carroll writes:
“some of our emotional arousals to nature are bred in the bone” (Carroll, 2004, p. 96). An emotional
arousal is thus another kind of aesthetic experience in which we are moved, but our cognitions do
not mobilize the far more formal and recondite systemic knowledge described so far (Carroll, 2004).
This aesthetic experience is not less genuine though, for it meets the two posed conditions.
The hermit’s emotional aesthetic response to the mill therefore qualifies as a genuine
aesthetic experience. However, in what manner can we pass aesthetic judgement based on emotion?
It would not be supported by aesthetic knowledge, would be merely intuitive, and therefore hard to
support with arguments or even to explain. Carroll overcomes this problem with the so-called
‘arousal model’ which is based on the appropriateness of the emotion. For instance, if the hermit
becomes happy (assuming that he was neutral in his emotions before) seeing the mill that is
appropriately only if he is positively aroused by its perception. Finding the mill beautiful would thus
be a valid reason to be happy. However, if the hermit perceives the mill as uncanny, but still becomes
happy, it would be inappropriate. And then, if the emotion of happiness is appropriate – true – for
others as well, we could speak of an objective emotional response (i.e. objective for its
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collectiveness; ‘similarity in subjectivity’) (Carroll, 2004). Therefore third, an objective emotional
aesthetic response qualifies to base aesthetic judgement on.
Through an analysis of the aesthetic experience we are apparently back to the subject of
objectivity and subjectivity. To avoid confusion let us disentangle the two different
objectivity/subjectivity discussions immediately. While the discussion of the previous chapter was
related to the development of aesthetic preference formed due to all kinds of beauty
representations, and subsequently to the susceptibility of aesthetic preference to beauty discourse,
is the discussion in this chapter related to the objectivity of an aesthetic judgement based on
emotions that are aroused by a real-life aesthetic experience. Further, although images perceived
with the eyes and off the screen can nonetheless evoke emotion; these emotions are aroused by a
two dimensional beauty representation – when talking about landscape the most related to the
picturesque mode of appreciation – and not by a genuine aesthetic experience in an environment. It
goes without saying that the latter is viewed by many as the right aesthetic mode to base qualified
aesthetic judgement on.
3.5 Beauty discourse and the aesthetic experience of Noord-Holland Admittedly, not all of our emotional arousals in the face of nature should be ascribed to our common
human nature, rather than to what is sectarian in our cultures. In that light, the Canadian aesthetical
philosopher Thomas Heyd proposes to consider a diversity of stories or accounts – another form of
non-expert aesthetical knowledge – as our guides in aesthetic analyses to account for the fact that
people come from a great variety of walks of life and cultures (Heyd, 2004). With stories or accounts
is meant the stories and accounts of others, which with their richness in detail enhance the
possibilities for the play of the imagination while we aesthetically experience an environment. Heyd
distinguishes artistic stories (poems, novels, etc.); non-artistic stories (travel reports); and non-
verbally expressed stories (paintings, films, etc.).
These stories can be about actual places and could be connected to a geographical location.
Also, these stories and accounts are cultural constructs of which the details could be culturally
relative. At first sight Heyd seems therefore to be suggesting that a part of the aesthetic experience is
culturally relative. However, when we further analyse the idea of a story guiding us in our aesthetic
experience, it becomes clear that the author of the story merely describes his or her own aesthetic
experience. A description of a tree branching out will probably not incite you to go out and search for
that exact tree, it will rather encourage you to look up and admire the tree in front of you. Alike
subjective aesthetic preference, the culturally determined part of the aesthetic experience is
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therefore not so much culturally relative as culturally contextual. The story does not guide towards a
specific object or a specific environment, but towards a ‘different flavour’ of the aesthetic experience
itself.
What has become clear about the aesthetic experience is that it does not depend on a single
kind of aesthetical knowledge, emotion, or story. To fully experience beauty in the environment of
Noord-Holland we must include what Cold has called the ‘total experience’: “perceptions of beauty
become integrated collections of aesthetic, social, cultural, and emotional impressions in the context
of a place and a situation which, in a ‘magic’ moment, merge and reinforce each other” (Cold, 2001b,
p. 90). However, we cannot avoid questioning the relative importance of the components that
together inform the aesthetic experience, and subsequently, the susceptibility of these components
to beauty discourse. Because of stories and accounts influencing our aesthetic experience by
mediating the aesthetic experiences of others, common sense pushes towards the suggestion that
cultural constructs such as these are only one of the many that inform the aesthetic experience.
This suggestion immediately begs the question whether or not our aesthetic experiences are
prone to be influenced by beauty discourse. No matter the character of the aesthetic experience, it
seems that the product of beauty discourse – ‘cognitive prejudice’ – is a most important factor:
“Contemporary cultural criticism, building on work that has been done over the past century, has shown how deeply and pervasively our cognitive preconceptions direct and color our experience and understanding. Despite perceptual sensitivity, a lively imagination, wide experience with aesthetic matters that extends beyond one’s native culture, and the educational background to focus and direct that experience, the influence of cognitive prejudice may be more pervasive and powerful still.” (Berleant, 2012a, p. 5)
Although I have been expecting it, this outcome is still surprising to me. As we have seen in the
previous chapter, beauty discourse is a key factor in the formation of subjective aesthetic preference.
Apparently aesthetic preference – yet another kind of aesthetic knowledge (‘cognitive prejudice’)
and gathered through all kinds of beauty representations, including two-dimensional images viewed
off the screen – is in turn believed to be heavily influencing the aesthetic experience. To refer back to
the hermit one last time: his aesthetic experience of the environment of the windmill would probably
be different than ours. More generally speaking; the aesthetic experience of someone who has not
been susceptible to beauty discourse will be different than the aesthetic experience of someone who
has.
What are the practical implications of the realization that we are being influenced by beauty
discourse during both the formation of aesthetic preference and the aesthetic experience, and,
moreover, that beauty discourse is indifferent whether or not you are an expert? Is the impact of
beauty discourse on both the formation of aesthetic preference and the aesthetic experience more
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significant than the difference between them? What does that say about the difference between
expert’s and lay people’s aesthetic knowledge? And where does that leave us in terms of the
aesthetic experience of Noord-Holland in the wake of a possible break of beauty discourse? These
questions and their implications will be discussed in the next chapter, which shall form the synthesis
of all the previous subjects.
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4 Concluding discussion
In the introduction I have described two societal developments that I noticed during my internship:
the Dutch design control sector going through a change of practice, and an increasing amount of
screen minutes we all daily live through. These developments, I posed, could result in societal
conditions that allow for a break of beauty discourse in the Netherlands. The line of reasoning was as
follows. First, if the design control sector yields aesthetic control to the people – democratizes the
oversight of environmental beauty in self-regard – the vernacular sense of environmental beauty will
become increasingly important in environmental decision-making and in the politics of
environmental beauty. Second, since ‘we the people’ spend more and more time looking at screens –
through which beauty representations are constantly mediated to us – the vernacular sense of
environmental beauty must increasingly being constructed by these beauty representations.
A simple reasoning, and merely meant to be the speculative framework for the main
research question of this thesis: how is our sense of environmental beauty being established, and in
the context of the described societal developments, what could that imply for the environmental
beauty of the future? Two common themes cut across the others. First, and coming forth out of the
first reason, the opposition between experts and lay people was investigated. Second, and relating to
the second reason, the concept of beauty discourse was invented to be able to analyse both our
susceptibility to – and the possible influence of – beauty discourse. The analysis was split into two
chapters representing two approaches to environmental beauty. In chapter 2 the establishment of
our sense of environmental beauty was approached through an investigation of the formation of
aesthetic preference. In chapter 3 the establishment of our sense of environmental beauty was
approached through an investigation of the aesthetic experience.
The distinction between aesthetic preference and aesthetic experience also roughly
coincided with the difference between being in front of a screen and being physically present in an
environment. What insights has this analysis produced? Because of the subject’s complexity and for
the sake of discussion a short summary will follow.
Looking at screens. We all do it ever more frequently. At the same time we (sub)consciously
adhere to what we see; we will inevitably come to aesthetically prefer the beauty representations
that are presented to us for a significant part of aesthetic preference is subjective. It has been
demonstrated that beauty discourses of various degrees of influence and at work on various societal
levels are heavily influencing our idea of beauty. Moreover, authority is being exercised through
beauty discourse – a social aspect. The collective (‘objective’) liking of certain environments turns out
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to be rooted in both an evolutionary programmed biological aesthetic behaviour, and in a socially
learned cultural aesthetic behaviour. Whether a collective aesthetic preference is biologically
programmed or culturally learned is not always clear for beauty discourse can ‘objectify’ subjective
aesthetic preference. Also, it has become clear that in the formation of aesthetic preference by the
beauty representations of others the visual component of the perception of environmental beauty is
heavily emphasized.
This seems to be completely different when the environment in question is not a two-
dimensional screen but a three-dimensional space which we can physically enter. Nature, and with it
an evolving notion of landscape (ending up in the notion of environment), has been the reason for a
different approach to environmental aesthetics. By focusing on the aesthetic experience instead of
on objects or environments, we have found a general aesthetic theory that nonetheless accounts for
the diversity of individual experience and divergent cultural factors in confrontation with different(ly
composed) environments. The aesthetic experience is then based on a participatory aesthetics: we
somatically engage – and immerse ourselves in – the environment using multi-sensory perception,
(aesthetic) knowledge, and emotion. The aesthetic experience is by definition erfahren and
conducted in situ. An aesthetic judgement based on aesthetic experience is therefore radically
different from an aesthetic judgement based on an aesthetic preference that was formed by beauty
representations on a screen. Moreover, the new participatory aesthetics can be applied by anyone
and therefore breaks through the experts’ monopoly on environmental aesthetic judgement.
However, despite its radically different establishment, the aesthetic experience is still being heavily
influenced by beauty discourse.
The first part of the main research question has been answered by means of the analyses in
this thesis. In what follows I will consider the second part of the main research question. Bearing the
above in mind, what could be the implications of a break of beauty discourse for the future notion of
environmental beauty in the Netherlands? As has been posed, the design control sector is going
through a change that could possibly result in future environmental beauty policy being increasingly
based on lay people’s aesthetic judgement. Moreover, expert aesthetic judgement will more and
more be considered in perspective to lay people’s aesthetic judgement. Vernacular beauty discourse
will therefore have an ever larger influence on future environmental planning.
In what is vernacular beauty discourse different than expert beauty discourse; i.e. what would an
increased environmental expression of vernacular beauty discourse entail? It seems that vernacular
beauty discourse and expert beauty discourse are to a great extent the same. That is not surprising
considering that experts participate in – and are prone to – the image culture that informs vernacular
beauty discourse too.
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The conservative conception that experts can switch off the aesthetic preference they have
picked up from various beauty discourses – and therefore are better able to aesthetically judge with
a less biased perception – has been proven wrong. We are all susceptible to beauty discourse, both
in the formation of our aesthetic preference as during the aesthetic experience. Beauty discourse is
not only consciously but also unconsciously interwoven with our sense of environmental beauty.
Moreover, experts are not necessarily trained aestheticians. It is (often) a misconception that
professional education conditions to aesthetically experience the right way. Indeed, the experts in
the design control commissions who judge building applications are not employed for their
education, but for their aesthetic Erfahrung which they built during their professional careers.
Due to beauty discourse having influence on both lay people and experts, it tends to
increasingly inspire designed environments. Vernacular beauty discourse is therefore increasingly the
beauty discourse of lay people and experts. Exemplary are designed environments that radiate the
same visual stimuli as environmental beauty representations do on the screen. The visual language of
the designs of, for instance, malls, airports, or expensive shopping districts, such as Fifth Avenue in
New York, is based on the same two-dimensional displays. Vernacular beauty discourse has
increasingly been expressed in environments for decades already. And that trend is expected to
continue for the amount of time we are exposed to two-dimensional beauty representations is
increasing as well.
The two-dimensional image culture is not only visible in urban environments but in the
construction of ‘nature’ as well. Nature is increasingly being framed as a product for tourist
consumption and is therefore advertised to be entertaining and attractive. These two-dimensional
beauty representations heavily influence the way we look at natural environments. It seems that the
picturesque mode of appreciation has never disappeared and is – with an increasing amount of
screen minutes – more being applied than ever. Indeed, the collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland is
exemplary for the continuation of the picturesque in contemporary image culture: three-dimensional
environments which were submitted for their beauty are for reasons of display reduced to two-
dimensional beauty representations.
If vernacular beauty discourse – causing the trend to look at environment as if it were a two-
dimensional beauty representation – is already so firmly embedded into society, what, then, are the
implications of an overall increase in screen minutes? An overall increasing amount of screen
minutes implies an increasing amount of time in which we are exposed to two-dimensional beauty
representations. We are therefore prone to be even more influenced by the image culture – not
because we are becoming more susceptible but simply due to the longer period of exposure. It must
be unambiguously stated that man has always been exposed to beauty discourse, ever since there
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was a sense of beauty and the possibility of social contact. Also, exposure to two-dimensional beauty
representations has been around since the first images were mediated.
That being said, the amount of time spent in two-dimensional environments has been – and
still is – increasing since the beginning of public access to all sorts of screens. Whether or not an
increase of screen minutes results in a decrease of minutes spent in three-dimensional environments
is not clear. We can, however, deduct that two-dimensional environments are relatively pushing
forward. If this trend continues it could very well result in epistemological change; the circumstances
under which we get to know the beautiful (environment) are shifting. The posed conditions that
guarantee a genuine aesthetic experience (to engage, participate, physically immerse oneself in an
environment and to experience what we perceive as an obtrusive foreground) will therefore
generally less and less be met in the future.
Where does that leave us in terms of the future construction of our sense of environmental beauty
and, moreover, the very notion of environment itself? If the formation of our sense of environmental
beauty will be organized differently – will develop more and more by what is viewed on screens
rather than by real-life aesthetic experiences – we could be anticipating an upcoming break of beauty
discourse indeed: in the next épistème environmental beauty will predominantly be an expression of
a two-dimensional visual image culture. Subsequently, by seeing two-dimensional representations on
the screen and by getting used to their expression in real-life three-dimensional environments, we
will come to perceive of environment differently. Our comprehensive notion of what an environment
is will therefore be constructed differently.
It is here that the importance of the aesthetic experience in the fashion of the aesthetics of
engagement must be emphasized. In fact, all-comprehensive environments, such as Noord-Holland,
are essentially three-dimensional spaces that must be experienced in the fashion of the aesthetic of
engagement. As has been analysed above, however, the aesthetics of engagement is a new
participatory aesthetics that even experts not necessarily apply. Their application is a method – a
mode of aesthetically experiencing – that is not yet widely embraced. Instead, the picturesque mode
of aesthetic appreciation – connected to the visual two-dimensional character of the image culture –
has been around for ages and is expected to become the dominant environmental beauty discourse
in the near future. We are therefore on the verge of fully institutionalizing a mode of aesthetic
appreciation that is unfit for the aesthetic experience of environment.
We should go the other way and institutionalize an experiential aesthetics instead. This is not
meant to be a direct recommendation for the design control sector (since the sector’s issues are
mainly an administrative matter and therefore not in my area of expertise), but rather a
recommendation for anyone who is concerned with environmental beauty. Academics, in particular,
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should lead the way by conducting more interdisciplinary research on environmental aesthetics –
connecting theoretical disciplines such as aesthetical philosophy to the more practical domains of
design and administration – and by introducing these new insights into the professional sector and to
the rest of society.
Society’s potential is high for anyone is able to aesthetically experience in the fashion of the
aesthetics of engagement. As far as can be argued, it is aesthetic zest in general that incites people to
go out and immerse themselves in any environment. To end this discussion, I want to share two
observations that may offer leads for the future. First, there is something extraordinary about the
environments we directly live in, our habitats. It is the association of these environments with the
notion of place, the aesthetics of everyday life, that automatically leads to a more engaged
aesthetical experience. If any, these are the environments in which we participate and in which we
should be able to apply a participatory aesthetics. People’s aesthetic experience of their direct
environments should be subject to further research for these experiences may hold the key for the
encouragement of a genuine vernacular aesthetical experience.
Second, people can be taught to experience environments as obtrusive foregrounds
relatively easy. I lively remember the first day of an excursion to The Ardennes when I was studying
earth sciences. One of the teachers told us that from then on we would never look at outcrops (bare
rock) the same way; from then on we would always be perceiving geological layers, foliation, and
degrees of metamorphism. Although his speech felt a little weightily at the time, he could not have
been more right: outcrops have never been an unobtrusive background to me again. In regard to the
aesthetic experience of environment it must be the same. Having learned to aesthetically experience
in the fashion of the aesthetics of engagement, you will probably never lose that ability.
When one betakes oneself to the domain of aesthetical philosophical speculation it is all too easy to
get lost. In this thesis it has been attempted to remain scholarly and to limit speculation to the
discussion. Although this research has provided me with so many new insights, it has at the same
time evoked even more questions. Some of these are the questions I started my research with (being
a Heritage and Memory Studies student): the issues I encountered led me in another direction. In my
opinion this thesis’ issues are the necessary steps towards a subsequent part of research that would
inter alia be based on the original questions. Beauty discourse is indeed connected to the heritage
canon – heritage discourse – for their mechanisms, depending on perception, are akin. I would point
the focus of contingent future research towards the following subjects, which are moreover closely
related:
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The politics of beauty. Is it important to live in a beautiful environment? Are there people
that profit from this widely endorsed conviction? Who are those people?
Environmental beauty’s connection to identity. What is the importance of beautiful
environments in the performance of place-based social identities? And the other way
around: to what extent does place-based social identity ‘beautify’ environments?
Following the Australian professor of Heritage Studies Laurajane Smith’s notion of
Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD), which exposes the predisposition of heritage
professionals for tangible, elite ‘heritage’ and the associated widespread belief that heritage
can only be properly interpreted by experts; what are the differences and similarities with
this thesis’ results? Moreover, what would be the importance of beauty discourse both in the
process of heritagization and in the conservation of the heritage canon? Do we live in a
‘heritage bubble’?
There are a lot of studies that have analysed heritage value typologies. Fredheim (2016) has
provided us with an overview.12 In almost all of these studies aesthetics are a factor in the
construction of heritage value. Is beautiful heritage valued differently than heritage that is
not beautiful? Is heritage excluded that is valuable but not for its beauty?
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Notes
1 Translated from Dutch (Interview with B (architect) and O (client) conducted on
March 7th 2016):
Primo “Hadden jullie liever het originele plan?”
B “Ja, maar we kunnen ons ook goed vinden in het herziene plan. We dachten eigenlijk
dat het originele plan op meer steun van de Welstand had kunnen rekenen, vandaar
dat we dat hadden ingediend.”
Primo “Vindt u het vervelend dat u rekening moet houden met de Welstand?”
O “Ik vind dat wel vervelend, maar in het grote geheel vind ik het wel logisch.”
Primo “Kunt u dat uitleggen?”
O “Ik ga liever m’n eigen gang, maar als we dat met z’n allen doen wordt het een
rommeltje.”
Primo “Denken jullie dat als het plan eerder voor de commissie was gekomen, er eerder
een akkoord was bereikt?”
B “Ja. Ik heb met eerdere plannen gehad dat ik vragen kon stellen aan de gemeente. Zo
kan je sneller voldoen aan de geschreven en ongeschreven eisen van de Welstand.”
2 On the occasion of the 18th Jan Wilslezing which was held in Alkmaar on 02-12-2016. 3 Foucault defined two épistèmes: Classical (1650-1800) and Modern (1800-
undefined). At the time of writing – 1966 – Foucault anticipated a break of discourse. 4 Mythological story told in Plato’s Phaedrus. 5 Translated from Dutch: “Mooi reserveer ik uitsluitend voor die uitingen waarbij ik
wordt aangesproken door het wereldbeeld, wanneer dat het mijne versterkt of verruimt.” (Eerhart, 1980, p. 32)
6 The collection and the submission form are still online and can be viewed at www.collectiemooi.nl. The collection was developed in co-operation with Rob van Leeuwen.
7 Bourassa writes about modes of ‘aesthetic experience’. In this thesis, however, aesthetic preference and aesthetic experience are disentangled for the first calls upon cultural, biological and personal factors that lead to the behaviour itself and the second calls upon the exhibition of this behaviour in the context of real environments. The distinction is between the conceptualization of experience as being accumulated knowledge and being an act.
8 Articulated by Tadhg O’Keeffe during a lecture he gave at the University of Amsterdam on 12-4-2015.
9 Note that aesthetics as a discipline is a prime example of beauty discourse for since its conception it has defined rules that describe how to appreciate and, what to appreciate, and in the case of landscape even to appreciate.
10 A paradigm indeed for the shift occurred within a discipline and did not generally effect lay people’s epistemological relationship with beauty.
11 Sometimes the engagement during the aesthetic experience is the source of the perception of beauty. In the collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland are included some hundred submissions of children around the age of eleven (not used for the analysis
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in chapter 2), and it seems that for them the possibility to be active in the environment not only characterizes the aesthetic experience, but the very perception of beauty itself.
12 Fredheim, L., M. Khalaf. (2016). “The significance of values: heritage value typologies re-examined”. International Journal of Heritage Studies 22 (6), pp. 466-481.
13 Translated from Dutch: “Het verschil tussen de inzendingen zal groot zijn: van bankje, brug, voordeur, huis, kantoor, stal, tot plein, erf en landschap. Alle inzendingen worden op de website geplaats. Het is geen competitie – de collectie bestaat uit louter topstukken. Met de toelichting creëert de curator van OVERMOOI tags waarmee deelcollecties kunnen worden gemaakt […]. Elke inzending draagt daar aan bij; de collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland is een museum met vele routekaarten en steeds meer zalen.” (MOOI Noord-Holland, 2016)
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Figures:
Figure 1 (http://isites.harvard.edu) Description: “Do It Yourself Architectural Dialogue. Table mockingly suggesting that it enables lay people to speak ‘architect’.” Figure 2 (Morgan Stanley Research, 2014) Description: “Global shipments of desktops, notebooks, smartphones, and tablets between 1999 and
2013. Data by NPD Display Search (2004-2013 data) and Philips (1999-2003 data).”
Figure 3 (Milward Brown AdReaction, 2014) Description: “Average screen minutes in 2014. Survey asked respondents “Roughly how long did you spend yesterday… watching television (not online) / using the internet on a laptop or PC / on a smartphone or tablet?”. Survey respondents were age 16-44 across 30 countries who owned or had access to a TV and a smartphone and/or tablet. The population of the 30 countries surveyed in the study collectively represent ~70% of the world population.”
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Figure 4 (Collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland, www.collectiemooi.nl) Description: “Nature and Water. Nieuwe Hondsbossche Duinen – Schagen.”
Figure 5 (Collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland, www.collectiemooi.nl) Description: “Polder and Meadow. Mijzen Polder, Ursem – Koggenland.”
Figure 6 (Collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland, www.collectiemooi.nl) Description: “Treeline and Bulbs. Venhuizen – Drechterland.”
Figure 7 (Collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland, www.collectiemooi.nl) Description: “Windmill and Dike. Oostdijk – Heerhugowaard.”
Figure 8 (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989) Description: “The Preference Matrix. Landscape characteristics that determine the availability of information.”
Figure 9 (Own creation, created on 23-04-2017) Description: “Graph schematically displaying the three domains of aesthetic behaviour and indicating which domain is susceptible to discourse.”
Figure 10 (MOOI Noord-Holland, 2016) Description: “Map of Noord-Holland showing its diverse landscape. The classification is decided on by Rob van Leeuwen and of course arbitrary: (1) dunes and sand-ridges; (2) aandijkingen (polders), ‘De Noordkop’; (3) marine clays, ‘West-Friesland’; (4) moraine, partly covered by sand, ‘‘t Gooi’; (5) peat bogs; (6) reclamations.”
Figure 11 (www.ifthenisnow.eu) Description: “Map of De Beemster of 1658.”
Figure 12 (www.regiocanons.nl) Description: “Map of the Anna Paulownapolder by H.P. Eskes (1856). Natural features as the Oude Veer and the shape of the surrounding polders clearly shaped the polder-design.”
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Appendix A
The collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland was commissioned by MOOI Noord-Holland and created by the
landscape architect Rob van Leeuwen and myself. Our job was not only to give examples of
environmental beauty, but also to set examples that could later on be used by MOOI Noord-Holland
to advice customers. In spite of that agenda we tried to set up the collection as unbiased as possible.
The submission form – which is still online (www.collectiemooi.nl/inzendformulier-collectie) –
consists of three simple questions (what?; where?; why?) which were designed to leave as much
options open to the submitter as practically possible. The only two conditions for submission were
that the submitted exists or existed, and is or was visible from a position in public space. Heading the
submission form is this text:
“What is the most beautiful place (landscape, building, object) of the province Noord-Holland? This is an invitation to be a co-creator of the collection MOOI in Noord-Holland. Your object can be big or small, it can be a park or a garden, a shed or a canal. It can be a place which is just beautiful for its own characteristics, or a place that symbolizes what has been: a personal memory or our collective history. But it can be something of the future too, something new that should be a trendsetter in the years to come.” (Collectie MOOI in Noord-Holland, www.collectiemooi.nl)
It is important to note that the submitters probably all had visited their places of beauty prior to
submission. Although the images they submitted are two-dimensional beauty representations, the
aesthetic experience of the submitters that led to submission probably meets the conditions for a
genuine aesthetic experience as defined in chapter 3.
After submission the submitted places of beauty were published online. However, before we
did, they were complemented with ‘tags’ (i.e. keywords connected to the image) by the use of which
a great many sub-collections can be created by the visitor of the online collection. In the project plan
we wrote:
“There will be great difference between submissions: from a bench, a bridge, a front door, a house, an office, and stables, to a square, a courtyard, and a landscape. Without exception the submissions will be published online. It is not a competition – the collection solely consists of showpieces. On basis of the explanation and the image that go with the submission, the curator of OVERMOOI creates tags with which sub-collections can be selected […]. Every submission is therefore important; the collection MOOI in Noord-Holland is a museum with many route maps and ever more rooms.”
13 (MOOI Noord-Holland,
2016)
It is important to note that by the creation of tags, categories were consciously created as well. Is
that bias? I think not for the tags were created – and multiple times revised – according to what was
submitted. The categories of ‘nature’, ‘water’, ‘polder’, ‘meadow’, ‘treeline’, ‘bulbs’, ‘windmill’, and
‘dike’ – which are the titles of the in chapter 2 presented images – are thus coming forth out of what
was submitted.
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Is this categorization influenced by beauty discourse then? Yes it is. The tags were created on
basis of what we saw in the images. It can therefore not be denied that the categories are the result
of our personal mode of perception. As has become clear in this thesis perception is consciously and
unconsciously being influenced by beauty discourse. Moreover, by creating the tags on basis of what
was viewed on the screen, we participated in the two-dimensional image culture that has inter alia
been analysed in this thesis. Although the tags were not created to categorize beauty (but merely the
contents of environment – the objects and their associations), we still invented them on basis of the
perception of two-dimensional environments. It is therefore all the more possible that when we
would have visited the submitted environments in person, the system of tags and the resulting
categories would have been different. However, it must be noted that the ‘results’ of the collectie
MOOI in Noord-Holland are in this thesis appropriated to compare them with the results of
environmental preference studies. These studies were conducted in the same fashion: by showing
people two-dimensional images of landscape and by asking them which ones they aesthetically
preferred (Howley, 2011; Kalivoda et al., 2014; Strumse, 2001).
