Making sense of environmental beauty. An analysis of beauty discourse in Noord-Holland

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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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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

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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-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,

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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,

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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

Making sense of environmental beauty. An analysis of beauty discourse in Noord-Holland

Making sense of environmental beauty

Table of contents

1

Introduction

2

Beauty and preference