Landscape Research
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Can a landscape be a work of art?: an examination
of Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe's theory of aesthetics.
Ian Thompson
To cite this article: Ian Thompson (1995) Can a landscape be a work of art?: an examination
of Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe's theory of aesthetics., Landscape Research, 20:2, 59-67, DOI:
10.1080/01426399508706457
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Published online: 24 Feb 2007.
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Can a Landscape be a Work of Art?: an
examination of Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe's
theory of aesthetics.
Ian Thompson
Introduction
In a profile of Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, written for the Royal Academy Magazine, Rowan Abstract
Moore suggests that virtually alone he has "resurrected landscape design as a serious The article focuses on the
art form, as something to be treated on a par with painting" (Moore, 1993). He has theory of landscape design
done this not just through his design commissions but also through his writing in put forward by Sir
which he puts forward a theory of landscape design. Many admirers of Jellicoe's Geoffrey Jellicoe. Central
designs, including many practising landscape architects, confess that they do not to this is the extent to
understand his theories. What follows is not intended to be another critical which a designed
commentary on Jellicoe's oeuvre. Its focus is narrower, in that it attempts to summarise landscape can be
Jellicoe's main ideas and to subject them to a philosophical examination. Does what considered a 'work of art'.
Jellicoe has to say make sense? How do his ideas relate to other theories in philosophical Jellicoe makes connections
aesthetics? Do they mean that we should be practising landscape architecture in a between landscape design
particular way?
and the projection of the
psyche
into its natural
Jellicoe's main contention is that landscape architecture is, or can be, a form of art.
In order to justify this he must offer an aesthetic theory which explains what art is. environment, and thus it
The particular theory he elaborates can be classified as a communication theory of art seems appropriate to relate
and, as such, resembles the theory offered by Tolstoy at the end of the nineteenth his exploration of the
century and is open to similar criticisms. Similarities may also be found with some subconscious to Jung's
of the ideas propounded by the American philosopher, Susanne Langer in her 'psychological system'.
influential book Feeling and Form (1953), for as we will see, Langer is much concerned The theories of Tolstoy
with the issue of how an art object can be said to embody or express feeling and, like and Langer are also used
Jellicoe, emphasises the symbolic function of the art work, but her theory avoids some as critical reference points
for the analysis of
of the pitfalls of the crude communications theory approach.
There is not the space in a single paper to consider every aesthetic theory ever Jellicoe's theories.
proposed. I have chosen to focus upon the theories of Tolstoy and Langer because Although Jellicoe's theories
they seem to offer the best vehicles for an examination of the strengths and weaknesses appear to be flawed, it is
of Jellicoe's ideas.1 In the penultimate section, however, I shall argue that all attempts concluded that he is right
to define art in terms of the necessary conditions for its existence or creation are to maintain that landscape
architecture can produce
misguided.
works of art, and that his
limitations
as a
Jellicoe's Theory
Jellicoe has never written a full and direct treatise upon his theory of landscape design. philosopher do not
We have instead the three volumes of his Studies in Landscape Design (1956, 1966,diminish his design
1970) which collect together papers based upon various lectures and addresses given achievements.
in the course of his career. The Guelph Lectures on Landscape Design (1983) provide
another important source. Jellicoe's ideas are woven through these studies as The author is a lecturer in
incomplete threads. Part of my purpose is to see whether these can be woven together the Department of Town
to form a rope sufficiently strong to haul landscape architecture alongside the and Country Planning,
recognised fine arts.
University of NewcastleThe first point to make about Jellicoe is that he is concerned with meaning rather upon-Tyne
than mere beautification. In Landscape from Art, a speech given to the Institute of
Contemporary Arts in 1961 and reproduced in Studies in Landscape Design Volume II
(1966) he writes "We have in this country at last reached a point when seemliness Keywords
as an objective is no longer enough; we can and should make landscape as meaningful communication theory
as painting" (p.l). What is it then that most painting possesses but much landscape modernism
design lacks?
Jungian symbolism
Jellicoe's answer is bound up with his Modernism, which owes more to artists like Tolstoy
Hepworth and Nicholson than to architects like Gropius or Corbusier. He is less Langer
Landscape Research 20(2) 1995 59-67
59
concerned with functionalism than with the exploration of the subconscious, as a later
passage from the same essay reveals. Talking about modern art he says that "the
literary or intellectual meaning of a picture as seen photographically by the eye was
subdued and even eliminated in order that the instincts should predominate. This is
the basis of abstract art" (pp 3-4).
What then are these instincts? Jellicoe's answer is not very clear. He suggests that:
"The arts are preoccupied firstly with the new dimension of time and space that has
been with us from the start of the century, and secondly with our own primitive origins
in relation to these dimensions" (p 4).
Subsequently, in the Introduction to his Guelph Lectures on Landscape Design (1983)
he suggests that landscape design is "a projection of the psyche into its natural
environment" and he provides a model of the way the mind is organised which is
related to stages in human evolution.
Jellicoe suggests that the psyche has levels, which he calls "transparencies", an
analogy which suggests that the earlier and deeper levels are not entirely hidden by
the shallower and more recent ones. Our emotional responses to landscape can be
accounted for by our evolutionary history as a species.
Hence, at the "scarcely perceptible" primaeval level there is Rock and Water,
"without a known influence on the psychology of the present day". A positivist would
surely protest that if this level is undetectable and without effects, it is no more than
an imaginative elaboration. Above this is the transparency that Jellicoe calls the
Forester, which is identified with the time that our ancestors spent in the sub-tropical
forest and which accounts for all that is sensuous and tactile in our appreciation of
landscape, including our love of flowers.
Next is the level he calls the Hunter, which was formed on the African savannah
and accounts for our liking of the sort of parkland created by "Capability" Brown. This
element of his theory seems to have been taken directly from the Savannah Hypothesis
propounded by Gordon Orians. On top of this we find the Settler, which represents
our transition to an agricultural existence and accounts for our love of mathematical
order. A formal garden like Versailles appeals to our instincts at this level.
The Forester, Hunter and Settler are all straightforward enough and seem to make
sense intuitively. The fifth level, which according to Jellicoe is a contemporary
addition, is more problematic. He calls it the Voyager and suggests that mankind is
currently on a journey of discovery, but he is thinking not of an outward journey, but
of the kind of inward exploration begun by Freud and taken further and deeper, some
would say, by Jung. Surely if this is a journey into the unconscious mind, it is going
to involve a descent through all previous levels, right down to Rock and Water? Jellicoe's
metaphors seem mixed here, for how can a level or a "transparency" also be a journey?
Jellicoe and Jung
It is never very clear what Jellicoe expects to find in the subconscious, and this is not
perhaps very surprising. After all, the delvings of Freud and Jung seemed to produce
very different subconscious contents. It is clear from Jellicoe's references to "analytical
psychology" (a term coined by Jung and distinct from psycho-analysis) that he believes
in Jung's idea of the "subjective unconscious", a storehouse of primitive symbols
common to all humanity. In The Landscape of Symbols, in Studies in Landscape Design
111(19 70), Jellicoe discusses the history of the cross, the circle and the spire, admitting
in a footnote his debt to Jung's Man and his Symbols (1964).
It is not clear how the transparencies are supposed to relate to Jungian concepts;
Jellicoe seems to imply that we must make a journey down through the levels of our
mind, but just what we are supposed to find at the level Rock and Water, if this is our
ultimate goal, is unclear.
We might expect some of the symbols identified by Jung to have found their way
into Jellicoe's designs. The publication of Michael Spens' The Complete Landscape
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Landscape Research 20(2) 1995 59-67
Designs and Gardens of Geoffrey Jellicoe (Spens, 1994) makes it very easy to look for
them. Spens divides Jellicoe's work into three periods. In the early period, 192 7-1960,
we find a mixture of Neo-classicism and Modernism, but we also find the emergence
of animal forms, which in the Jungian interpretation of dreams are said to represent
aspects of the self. The "prehistoric animal form beneath" the hills in Jellicoe's scheme
for the Cadbury's factory at Moreton, Cheshire (1954) and the serpent-like shape of
the lake at Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire (1957-59) could therefore be classed as
Jungian.
In the second phase, from 1960-1980, we have the hills at the Rutherford High
Energy Laboratories, Harwell, Berkshire (1960) which Jellicoe refers to as "a frolic into
the expression of a deep-rooted and sinister idea" (Spens, 1994, p 86). The frolic
consisted of naming the hills after the Greek gods, Zeus, Themis and Klotho. Jellicoe
believes that in doing this he was playing upon the subconscious emotions through
association of ideas, but it is surely not much more than a shallow labelling. We also
have from this period the Kennedy Memorial at Runnymede (1964-65), where the
allegory is derived from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which conceivably is open to a
Jungian interpretation. Jellicoe refers to a "journey of life, death and the spirit".
However, considering that this is the period during which Jellicoe published the three
volumes of Studies in Landscape Design and during which he was working out his
philosophy of design, the evidence of successfully implemented Jungian landscapes
appears rather thin.
The evidence is stronger in the late period, which Spens calls the Full Flowering or
Master Period (from 1980). We find it in particular in the designs produced for Stanley
Seeger at Sutton Place, Surrey. Here Jellicoe found a wealthy client who would support
his artistic vision and he was able to create a grand allegory of "creation, life and
aspiration." Jellicoe explains the symbolism at work at Sutton Place thus:
"Behind each part with its seductive delights lurks an idea that reflects, or is intended to
reflect, either a lighter or a darker mood of the subconscious. Some of these ideas may
seem self-revealing. Thus Pluto's grotto is recognisably a return to Greek myth, yet the
subconscious appeal is not the myth itself, but the direct analogy with man's place in
the cosmos. Similarly, all can see that the lake is in the shape of a fish, but few that the
hills around are composed as the man. woman, child complex immemorial in art; and
that the whole concept - water into hills into sculpture - is an analogy of the emergence
of civilisation" (Spens, 1994, pp 162-63).
At the same time as Jellicoe was working on Sutton Place he produced designs for
public parks in Moderna and Brescia in Italy, neither of which have been implemented.
At Moderna Jellicoe attempted to integrate landscapes based upon his "transparencies", while at Brescia the fish motif appears again in the design of a series of lakes.
However, the capping achievement of Jellicoe's long career will be the Moody
Gardens, which are currently under construction at Galveston, Texas. Spens writes:
"Jellicoe was conscious of the fact that, while at Moderna he was dealing with the
collective subconscious (in Jungian terms), while at Sutton Place he was concerned with
reaching for the individual subconscious. Now at Galveston he found it possible to link
the two Jungian concepts together in striving to express the ultimate unity of man's
existence" (Spens, 1994, pp 183).
There are many aspects of Jung's psychological system which do not appear in
Jellicoe's work. I have found, for example, no reference to the anima or the animus,
or to archetypes like the Shadow, the Magician, the Great Mother, or the Wise Old Man
(Jung, 1953, pp 90-113). Jellicoe does, however, emphasise the intuitive and
mysterious side of the design process and, at the very least, shares Jung's respectful,
even reverential, attitude towards symbolism and its place in human life.
There is perhaps something of the Emperor's New Clothes in the critical acclaim
Landscape Research 20(2) 1995 59-67
61
poured upon the designs of Jellicoe's late flowering. Jungian symbolism is an openended bucket, out of which just about anything can be produced. Jung's ideas are
sufficiently woolly and mystical that they can be used to support any kind of symbol
or allegory. Commentators seem to accept everything Jellicoe has to say about his work
as true. No doubt we can find enough plausibly Jungian symbols to support Jellicoe's
identification with the psychologist's ideas, but the real question is not whether or
not Sir Geoffrey is a good Jungian. On that let us take him at his word. The question
is whether the rest of us must be, if we are to produce landscapes that are worthy of
the name of art. In Landscape From Art this seems to be exactly what he is suggesting.
We might feel justified in asking why this Jungian subject matter should be so
important to landscape design?
Jellicoe's answer comes in Towards a Landscape of Humanism where he writes:
"It would seem that to project into the environment the whole and not merely part of
the mind of man, individual or collective, is the highest objective in the creation of
landscape as an art." (Jellicoe, 1984).
And if we need to be convinced that this is important Jellicoe writes elsewhere that:
"the effect upon human beings is the ultimate objective of all landscape design, whether
rural or urban. To obtain this impact we have already established that it is necessary to
have subconscious as well as conscious appeal" (Jellicoe, 1966, p 7).
In The "Movement" Movement in Art and Landscape (Jellicoe, 1973) we find the
further thought that this effect on human beings is to be therapeutic. It reconciles the
unchanging tempo of our bodies to the increasing tempo of modern life. For landscape
design to achieve this, the rational design process must be accompanied by a shadowy
process which taps the subconscious.
This is how it works in all art, not just in landscape design that aspires to be art.
The artist must somehow penetrate his or her own consciousness, then the results of
this exploration must somehow be represented in the work in such a way that they
can be communicated to an audience. The distinction between the individual
unconscious and the collective unconscious need not detain us. In some cases, the
artist will attempt to communicate something from his or her personal unconscious.
At other times, the artist will succeed in reaching the deep substratum which Jung
believed human beings held in common, in which case the recipient of the
communication may recognise something already known at the deepest level.
A Necessary Condition
Jellicoe does not merely suggest that sometimes when landscape design achieves the
status of art, such communication of subconscious contents occurs. It is clear that
Jellicoe thinks that in successful art it must always occur; in other words he regards
such communication as a necessary condition for making landscape designs that are
to be considered as art.
It is less clear whether he is saying that the occurrence of such a process provides
a sufficient condition. Is it possible for an artist or a designer to effect such a
communication and yet fail to make a work of art? Jellicoe is not very rigorous about
the way he uses the term. Sometimes he seems to be using it in a classificatory way
(dividing artworks from other objects), in which case there can be such a thing as bad
or poor art; often, however, he uses art as a term of approbation - if something is art
it is good, in which case the idea of bad art is self-contradictory. He does not seem
to have considered the possibility that a piece of landscape design may communicate
something from the subconscious, thereby (according his own theory) qualifying as
a work of art, yet still be poor or indifferent.
I am in sympathy with Jellicoe's wish to see landscape architecture included in the
pantheon of the arts, but in seeking to justify its inclusion by reference to a
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Landscape Research 20(2) 1995 59-67
communications theory of art, he has simultaneously produced a very restricted
notion of what art may be.
Jellicoe and Tolstoy
As I have suggested, there is a strong parallel between Jellicoe's theory and that
advanced by Leo Tolstoy in his book What Is Art? (Tolstoy, 1930). Tolstoy's answer
was that an object was a work of art if and only if (i.e. a necessary condition) it caused
its audience to experience feelings it was intended to by its creator, and its creator had
personally lived through the experiences so aroused. In Jellicoe's case what is
transmitted is not emotion but some message from the collective unconscious.
The first problem with Tolstoy's theory is that there seem to be many works of art
which do not seem to embody strong feelings, for example elegant sonnets or
meticulously constructed chamber music. Tolstoy would have to say that these could
not be considered works of art. If some of Jellicoe's statements are taken at face value,
he seems to be regulating landscape architecture in a parallel way. If a design does
not tap into the subconscious, we should not call it art.
At the time Tolstoy put forward his theory he was a fervent Christian. He
supplemented his theory with a second necessary condition; not only must works of
art communicate emotions, these emotions have to be worthwhile ones which
promote the brotherhood of man. Pride, sexual desire and world weariness will not
do. If we were to accept Tolstoy's theory, many of the paintings in the world's galleries
would have to be removed from the walls. Giving this sort of weight to the subject
matter of art is dangerous; something similar actually happened in Soviet Russia but
with a different ideological justification.
Geoffrey Jellicoe's humanist ideals are, of course, very far removed from Tolstoy's
fundamentalist dogmatism, but the form of his mistake is the same. Jung's theory of
the collective unconscious may be a rich and illuminating idea, but for Jellicoe to make
it the sole yardstick against which landscape architecture is judged as art is surely
wrong; there will be some landscape design which we want to call art, but which has
nothing whatsoever to do with Jung, the unconscious, archetypes or whatever.
Moreover, Jellicoe's theory about communication from the unconscious is untestable.
Even if landscape architecture really can communicate in this way, how can we know
that the communication is reliable? If we were listening to a radio transmission we
could check it against the script, but what is the equivalent of the script here? Jellicoe
says that people who visit landscapes created in his particular way will come to realise
a few days later that they have been in the presence of something altogether deeper
than they realised at the time. But how can they know that something has been
communicated} It is safer surely to explain this phenomenon as a simple causal
relationship between the visit and the subsequent thoughts and feelings.
I do not wish to suggest that Jellicoe is wrong to believe in the subconscious, nor
even to adhere to the Jungian version. I do not even think he is wrong to make this
a corner-stone of his personal vision; it has, for him, produced memorable work. I do
think he is wrong to make it into the rigid foundation of a theory of art, which in turn
must support a theory of landscape architecture.
Jellicoe and Langer
Susanne Langer's theory is altogether more sophisticated than Tolstoy's, but it also
seeks to establish a sole criterion by which we may identify works of art. Langer
believes that language is a poor medium for the expression of our emotional lives and
that works of art function as "non-discursive" or "presentational" symbols - they
somehow capture and articulate some aspects of our experience which cannot be
expressed in words.
Langer first developed her ideas in relation to music, which she considered to be
"a tonal analogue of emotive life". Music is able to function in this way, she suggests,
because "there are certain aspects of the so-called "inner life" - physical or mental which have formal properties similar to those of music - patterns of rest, of tension
Landscape Research 20(2) 1995 59-67
63
and release, of agreement and disagreement, preparation, fulfilment, excitation,
sudden change, etc." Music shares a logical form with human feelings, therefore it
"articulates forms which language cannot set forth" (Langer, 1957, p.233)
From a particular theory about music, Langer went on to create a general theory
applicable to all the arts. "Art," she wrote "is the creation of forms symbolic of human
feeling" (Langer, 1953, p 40), and thus she maintained that architecture is concerned
with the symbolic expression of human life - "the image of life which is created in
buildings" (Langer, 1940, p 99).
Langer made no reference to landscape design as a distinct branch of the arts, but
it is clear from the following passage, in which she quotes with approval from an article
by Otto Baensch, that she recognised the potential for feelings to be expressed
symbolically by landscape.
"The mood of a landscape appears to us to be objectively given with it as one of its
attributes, belonging to it just like any other attribute we perceive it to have...We never
think of regarding the landscape as a sentient being whose outward aspect 'expresses'
the mood that it contains subjectively. The landscape does not express the mood, but
has it: the mood surrounds, fills and permeates it, like the light that illumines it, or the
odour it exhales; the mood belongs to our total impression of the landscape and can
only be distinguished as one of its components by a process of abstraction"(Baensch,
1923, quoted in Langer, 1953, p 19).
One difficulty that Langer has to address is that different people will have different
feelings when confronted with the same piece of art. This can be as true of a landscape
as it is of a painting of a landscape or a Beethoven Sonata. Her way out of this is to
suggest that works of art are "unconsummated symbols" that convey something about
the morphology of a feeling but do not have determinate content. Charlton likens this
to the formal apparatus of algebra:
"the same piece of music can be used by different hearers on different occasions as a
vehicle for the conception or intuition of different emotions; in this way the elements in
a piece of music are rather like algebraical symbols or functions in the mathematical
sense than like numerals: a piece of music might be compared with 2( )3 + ( ) which
we can fill with our own arguments" (Charlton, 1970, p 26).
Once again it is easy to see how Langer's theory could be extended to cover
landscape design, for certainly designed landscapes produce emotional reactions in
those who visit them, but equally certainly these are different reactions for different
individuals or even different occasions. Langer offers us a different account from
Jellicoe for the way in which things - including some landscapes - can become works
of art. They are analogues for our emotions rather than communications from the
unconscious.
Langer thinks that even utilitarian objects can become works of art. A craftsman
produces goods, but if those objects are also able to function as non-discursive symbols
of the inner life, they can also be works of art. Buildings and landscapes can also be
seen in this way. The functional landscapes associated with Jellicoe's Settlers, for
example, come to have a symbolic import beyond their merely productive role.
The similarity between Langer's theory and Jellicoe's lies in the fact that both
require the work of art (whether it be painting, musical passage or landscape) to
perform a symbolic function, but Langer's view is more sophisticated than a naive
communications approach. For Langer the primary purpose of a symbol is not to
communicate, but to give form; the ability to create symbols is a vital part of
apperception.
The similarities, but also the crucial differences, between Langer and Jellicoe become
more apparent when we consider that Jungian symbols are also non-discursive. This
is something which Langer herself points out, but she quickly qualifies the observation:
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"... psychoanalysis is not artistic judgement, and the many books and articles that
have been written on the symbolic functions of painting, music and literature actually
contribute nothing to our understanding of 'significant form' " (p 240)2. Langer is
aware of the narrowness and reductive nature of psycho-analytical explanations.
Jellicoe makes communication a necessary function of art and asserts that the
content of this communication should be something from the unconscious. Langer,
on the other hand, insists that an artwork must be a non-discursive symbol, but since
the symbol is "unconsummated" it can have different contents and these can be drawn
from the full range of our emotional inner lives. For Jellicoe the work of art is a message;
for Langer it is a vehicle.
Langer's theory is less mystical than Jellicoe's, more rooted in everyday emotional
life, and less exclusionary, in that a greater range of objects are likely to qualify as
works of art under her criterion than under Jellicoe's. It would be an interesting project
to add a chapter to Feeling and Form extending Langer's theories specifically to
landscape architecture, working out in detail how the devices of the designer (rhythm,
occult balance, framing etc.) might be used to "articulate what is verbally ineffable the logic of consciousness itself (Langer, 1953).
Langer's theory, like Tolstoy's, has had its critics, however. It has been pointed out
that if an artwork gives form to a previously inconceivable element of experience,
artists cannot know what they are making until they finish, but this is hardly borne
out by psychological investigations into the nature of creativity. Her theories also run
into severe difficulties when they are applied to literature, for to be consistent she must
allege that the discursive symbolism (i.e. the language) used in literature gives no
insight into human emotions, and that the import of literature lies in the nondiscursive aspects of its form - a conclusion which strikes many commentators as
absurd. Like so many general theories in aesthetics, Langer's has ultimately been
found wanting.
A Misguided Endeavour
It will be clear from the above that I am more sympathetic towards Langer's aesthetic
theories than to Jellicoe's. However, the entire search for a single criterion by which
we can divide works of art from other things may be a mistaken enterprise.
Wittgenstein disagreed fundamentally with all attempts at essentialist definitions
(Wittgenstein, 1953). Taking the concept of a tool, he asked what quality all tools had
that everything that was not a tool did not have? Was it the ability to cut? What about
a hammer? Perhaps it was the ability to alter materials? What about a ruler? And so
on. He concluded that in the place of a single quality there was a criss-crossing network
of similarities which he called "family resemblances". This has proved a very powerful
analytical notion which can be applied in all sorts of areas. It can certainly be applied
to the concept of art.
There is likely to be a whole family of similarities between those things we choose
to call works of art. Some will stir feelings, some will not. Some we may call beautiful
or sublime, others not. Some may be non-discursive symbols of feeling, but perhaps
not all. Some may, quite possibly, reach into the many layers of our subconscious or
unconscious minds - but some will not. There may be many ways in which an object
can come to be considered a work of art. Some will have stronger claims than others.
In terms of landscape, we may feel that Stourhead, which involves the creation of an
idealised landscape and includes an allegory drawn from Virgil, has a very strong
claim, that the careful arrangement of landform and planting around a reservoir has
a weaker claim, and that a screen of cotoneasters around a car park has little to
recommend it as art at all.
In Art or Bunk (1989), Ground suggests that "Works of art are not simply artefacts
which have been deliberately made in order to provoke aesthetic interest. They are
artefacts, the essential interest of which consists in this fact." It is not enough for an
object to be aesthetically interesting; to be a work of art it must also be aesthetically
intelligible, which is to say there must be possible answers to questions about why the
Landscape Research 20(2) 1995 59-67
65
work was made to look the way it does. Such answers may include explanations in
terms of the communication of emotions or subconscious contents, but they will not
be restricted to such explanations.
Where does all this leave us?
The focus of this paper has been deliberately narrow; it has examined Geoffrey Jellicoe's
ideas far more closely than it has examined the body of his design work. Many would
judge Jellicoe to be an outstanding designer, but my contention is simply that being
an outstanding designer does not make him an outstanding philosopher. I am willing
to concede that it is rather harsh to judge theories presented in talks and articles
written over a lifetime as if they were rigorously argued in a journal of philosophical
aestehtics. Nevertheless, it should be said that Jellicoe's ideas are seriously flawed. In
particular he is wrong to make the communication of subconscious contents a
necessary condition for creating works of art. Nor can such communication be
regarded as supplying a sufficient condition.
Jellicoe's ideas are wrong, but they are not pernicious. They are unlikely to cause
any harm in the world, and have served him well enough in his own art. Seen as a
personal philosophy rather than a general theory in philosophical aesthetics, they
have value. It is naive to expect great artists, whether they be composers, poets or
landscape architects, to be profound or consistent thinkers.
Second, though Jellicoe's theories do not make complete sense, and in some respects
are plainly wrong, he is surely right to maintain that landscape architecture can
produce works of art. My purpose in this paper has not been to evaluate Jellicoe's
landscape designs, but I would not disagree with the view that many of his own designs
would count as art.
Third, we will never find a single criterion against which to judge those things that
aspire to be works of art, and we are mistaken to look for one. It will probably benefit
landscape architecture if at least some of its products are considered to merit the
appellation "work of art". To this extent its status is more than an academic question.
There is not, however, one right or guaranteed way of producing such work. Some
will see that as a problem, others as a liberation. Which schemes are works of art,
which are not, and which lie on the borderline, will always remain matters of
judgement and debate.
Notes
l.The book I have found most valuable in preparing this paper has been Philosophical Aesthetics
edited by Oswald Handing for The Open University (1992). I would recommend it to anyone seeking
a fuller discussion of rival aesthetic theories.
2.The term "significant form" used here by Langer was coined by the critic, Clive Bell, in his book Art
(1915). There has not been the space within this paper to consider Bell's formalist theory of art.
Essentially he took "significant form" to be the defining quality of all works of art. It was to be
recognised by the presence of a particular kind of aesthetic emotion. Bell's theory has been severely
criticised as an example of vicious circularity. If the only thing that makes form significant is that it
evokes a particular sort of emotion, we are entitled to ask how we recognise this aesthetic emotion.
The unsatisfactory answer is by the presence of significant form! The two ideas are defined in relation
to one another. Moreover, Bell's theory over simplifies the nature of aesthetic experience, for it is not
really possible to throw a cordon around formal properties and say that they are all that matters in
art. Considerations of the symbolic meaning of a work, its context, its place in the artist's canon, its
connection with human affairs, must all be given their weight. I have argued in this paper that all
attempts at essentialist definitions of art are misguided, an argument which applies just as much to
Bell as it does to Langer, Tolstoy or Jellicoe.
66
Landscape Research 20(2) 1995 59-67
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