亞洲藝術與美學 6月號/2010 第4期 The Journal of Asian Arts & Aesthetics

“The Other in nature is dealt with by using nature economically, ruling over it technically, dissolving it into our social space and thus adapting it to our desires, so that it disappears as something of its own, becoming invisible.”1 As an organizer of Remote Proximity -- “Nature” in Contemporary Art (Art Museum Bonn, 2009) noted, nature is becoming more and more invisible and unnoticed. Although or even because nature is ontologically a cultural construction, art works are increasingly required to function as aesthetical stimulative, to further develop our perceptional possibilities and visualize nature.

A video installation of Marie Jos? Burki featuring an owl’s face was one of the key works to the exhibition introduced above. Owl has been since the ancient times a symbol of wisdom, both feared and venerated by our ancestors. It was as if the owl was watching people -- staring into them like a prophet. Contrary to this mythical owl, those captured in cages at zoos -- owls we see as “ordinary” -- show that their mythology has been totally vanished and “otherness” brought under the control of man. Or nature is functioning as marketed product in Rosemary Laing’s, groundspeed [Red Piazza]: a beautiful forest abundant with trees and flowers -- however, if we take a close look, we are astonished to see that earth is covered by a carpet decorated with elegant flowers. Or we see an extreme landscape of snow, in the midst of a vast boundless space, on which the artist confronts with his canvas (Barnaby Hosking, Snow Painting Once Removed). These are only few examples of artwork making the nature “visible” and “perceptible” as the owl I have referred to.

[Nature and Landscapes]
The Art of the Landscape as Aesthetic Object
/Raffaele Milani
Nature Artifacts
/Krystyna Wilkoszewska
Re-consideration on the Beauty of Nature in Modern Aesthetics
/Cheng-Ji Liu
Gardens in Ottoman Culture
/Jale Nejdet Erzen
Art in Berlin’s Urban Spaces before and after 1989 -- Public Formations in the Socialist East and the West
/Hans Dickel
Reflections on an Exhibition in Nagoya: Contemporary American Artists and Environmental Concerns
/Gail Levin
Aesthetic Strategy of Sound Art -- How Could it be Public?
/Shin Nakagawa

[Research Article]
On the Theory of “Borrowing Views” in Yuan Ye
/Shi-Kui Li

[Conference Papers]
The Problems and Prospects of Art Education in Cambodia after Democratization
/Isao Ohashi, Manami Tanaka
The Reception of Suikoden (Tales of Water Margin) in Japan and its Visual Interpretation: Expansion of Visual Environment in Japan
/Naho Ohnuki
Designing Kyoto’s Scenery Plan: Kyo-machiya Developing as a Design Standard for the Entire Townscape
/Tsuyoshi Tamura
The Pursuit of Natural Culture in Finnish Outdoor Chair Design
/En-Qin Wu
Tradition and Modern World: Questions of Symbolism
/Hitoshi Yokomichi

[Art Critic]
The Sentimental Cubism -- Chen Chao-pao’s World of Image
/Fan Pan