Aesthetic Changes About The Idea Of Western Landscape

Throughout the history of natural aesthetics,scholars usually focus on the natural aesthetics.And there is rarely aesthetics theory on the landscape,the most common natural beauty in our daily life.Therefore,this article attempts to "landscape" as the object of discussion.The object of this paper is to study aesthetics of the landscape.The aesthetics of the landscape belongs to aesthetics of nature;thus the former changes are related to the later changes.The key to this study is the history of the aesthetics of nature.The development of the idea of Landscape can be understood thoroughly by analyzing the art history of the landscape.The aesthetics of landscape of artists is often ahead of the times,and the deep connection between art and nature,landscape art will guide the future development of the aesthetics of landscape and nature.Firstly,this thesis introduces the definition of landscape and discusses the history of western aesthetics of nature.Before the eighteenth century,western estheticians advocated the rationalism.Owing to Kant’s concept of “disinterestedness”,the importance of nature has been highly recognized in aesthetics.The natural aesthetics during the eighteenth century has been divided into three categories: beauty,sublimity and picturesque.Among these,the picturesque became the most popular concept during that time and affected the aesthetics of nature in the nineteenth century and the 20 th century.Due to the destruction of the ecosystem and environment,the aesthetics focused on the nature aesthetics in the last three decades of the twentieth century,during which the aesthetics of nature was also known as the environmental aesthetics that includes the cognitive aesthetics and the non-cognitive aesthetics.At the beginning of the twenty-first century,estheticians tend to combine these two kinds of aesthetics concepts and extend the aesthetics category from the natural world to the artificial environment and daily life.Secondly,this paper discusses the aesthetic history of the landscape.Comparing the history of landscape art with the history of the aesthetics of nature,I report that the idea of the landscape develops with the development of the aesthetics concept,and the aesthetic idea of the artists always precede the development of aesthetic theory.Finally,the article demonstrates the relationship between nature and art.According to Carlson’s critique on the concept of the picturesque,this paper compares the nature aesthetic process between the artist and the public.And the importance of the aesthetic order is discussed.The aesthetics of nature should be an independent aesthetic category which is not rely on art,and the creation of art work should base on the aesthetics of nature.The conclusion of this article can be supported both by the artist’s aesthetic practice and by the Chinese classical aesthetic concepts.Therefore,the development of the theory of the landscape art can be used as the benchmark of landscape aesthetics and the aesthetics of nature.