Being ‘At’ the Art: An Environmental Aesthetic of Environmental Art

This paper reexamines the critique of environmental art in general as “aesthetic affront” by presenting an alternative interpretation of the aesthetic status of such art through Heidegger’s conception of art and the aesthetic. Applied to the tradition of environmental aesthetics, Heidegger’s vision of the work of art as the tension between world and earth can help place works of environmental art beyond dichotomies of artifact and nature and thus articulate the unique positive aesthetic relations with nature that such works could help us cultivate.