2025/06/27 by David Fenner · 1 voice
Engineering · Environmental Science · Arts and Humanities · #Architecture, Modernity, and Design #Environmental Philosophy and Ethics #Landscape and Cultural Studies
paper · doi:10.1093/aesthj/ayaf027
openalex publication_date 2025/06/27 · openalex created_date 2025/11/20 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Abstract Can a garden be a conceptual work of art? If we grant that some gardens are works of art, can there be gardens that are like conceptual artworks created by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Tracey Emin, and Maurizio Cattelan? The answer is that there are no gardens like this today, and the unlikelihood of finding or creating any is based on the realization that for gardens to be separable from ungardened nature, they must possess certain objective features, most notably human design. So, it would seem we have three options: (1) The Garden is not an artform, if we expect that artforms will include works that run the full gamut of artistic character, including the capacity to be fully conceptual; (2) we must redefine what it is to be a garden so that some are eligible for being conceptual works of art; or (3) The Garden is an artform, just one that—at least so far—does not include the capacity to be fully conceptual, and, given the need for a means to differentiate gardens from ungardened nature, likely will not.