The article considers the possibilities of the function and constitution of aesthetic value in the contemporary, ambivalent notion of landscape. It begins with a preliminary analysis of three key concepts central to current discussions – namely, nature, landscape, and environment. It presents one of the dominant models of contemporary ideas about the aesthetics of landscape – the natural environmental model –, and in particular its ambition to accommodate both the true character of today’s relationship between man and his habitat and our aesthetic experience and understanding of it. Mainly, the essay points out the theoretical difficulties implied in this. In conclusion, the article suggests the hidden ethical dimension of our possible relationship to our environment (that is, nature-in-landscape).
The article considers the changing status of natural beauty in the twentieth century. This situation is presented with reference to extreme changes of interest connected with this field of value. The article begins by exploring some current theoretical presuppositions concerning this field (primarily the problem of making a distinction between artistic and natural aesthetic value considered within one aesthetic field). The focus of the following sections is on a pioneering text, which ended a long period of indifference to natural beauty – namely, Ronald W. Hepburn’s “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty” (1966). This famous essay is considered in relation to both the general problem of the distinction and the subsequent development of models of the aesthetic appreciation of nature in the second half of the twentieth century (chiefly, the natural environmental model of Allen Carlson and environmental formalism), which were profoundly anticipated by Hepburn.