Aesthetic Ecologies

Undergraduate / Graduate

What would an intellectual history of the environment look like when told from the perspective of art history writing? The geographer Friedrich Ratzel, who first began using the term "Umwelt" ("environment") in a systematic way, claimed that, up to the end of the 19th century, the idea of environment had been primarily discussed not in scientific contexts but rather in aesthetic ones, by "artistically predisposed thinkers." In this course, we will take Ratzel's claim seriously and aim to recuperate the aesthetic side of theories of environment across diverse areas such as: notions of landscape ("the picturesque"); aesthetic and biological theories of media (Haeckel's "ecology," Taine's "milieu," Uexküll's "Umwelt"); the "sculpture of environment" (Rodin and Rilke); in architectural and urban space (Camillo Sitte, Otto Wagner, Paul Scheerbart); and in modern dance's "space-body" (Rudolf Laban). We will trace evocations of air as the material space surrounding an artwork in texts that thematize the continuity between artwork as image and material object. We will also trace evocations of air in which the media-theoretical notion of medium and the biological concept of milieu and environment intersect. Additional materials include: Claude Cahun, Anaïs Nin, Hilda 'H.D.' Doolittle, Aby Warburg, Siegfried Ebeling, Alois Riegl, Wassily Kandinsky, Loie Fuller, and others. Readings and discussions in English. All students welcome!