The Symbolism of Habitat: An Interpretation of Landscape in the Arts

When architects create a landscape or building, when artists depict a landscape, and when poets write of nature, they recreate certain aesthetic elements observed in nature. Jay Appleton asserts in an insightful analysis that these aesthetic values in landscape are not found in an elevated philosophy of aesthetics or in a culturally bound artistic symbolism but in the biological and behavioral needs that we share with other animals. Thus, the aesthetics of landscape may be approached through other areas of human experience and science, especially the natural and behavioral sciences. They are expressed in symbolism drawn from a primal habitat in which all animals seek survival.

The symbolism we consciously recognize in the arts is of a purposeful religious, mythological, or other culturally specific type. But in the landscape that lies beyond, behind, and around the human, animal, or artifactual subjects exists another symbolism. Appleton believes we should consider the possibility of a natural symbolism representing elements that are crucial to survival in the habitat of living creatures. We need no special education or cultural conditioning to appreciate these symbols, because they speak to our basic biological and behavioral needs.

Appleton also proposes terminology for describing the aesthetic elements in landscape. Going beyond concrete nouns--desert, jungle, mountain--he suggests abstract terms indicating features that increase the likelihood of survival: prospect, which allows an animal to see from an elevated place; refuge, which allows it to hide; and hazard, which stirs a feeling of being threatened and wanting to escape. The perception of these elements in a depicted landscape both verifies an individuals ability to survive and elicits an emotional response similar to that felt when they encountered the natural environment.

Appleton’s natural symbolism of habitat has applications in the visual, architectural, and literary arts. Besides explaining the appeal of depicted landscapes and constructions, he provocatively proposes that no artist (or architect or landscape architect) can ignore these natural elements in creating a pleasurable landscape or created environment. His concluding chapter is an analysis of several paintings, a series of drawings, photographs of landscapes and street scenes, gardens, commercial facades, a high rise building, a row of cottages, and a play structure in terms of his proposed symbolism of habitat. The results are intriguing for anyone interested in landscape design, architecture, and the philosophy of aesthetics, not to mention all who have been moved by a painter’s landscape or by a nature poem.