This handsomely produced volume contains 22 contributions from international scholars, which were originally presented at the 2000 Conference of the International Society for Phenomenology, Fine Arts, & Aesthetics. The papers center around the theme of gardens and include a wide range of topics of interest to phenomenologists but also, perhaps, to gardeners with a philosophical bent. A sampling of topics: Leonardo's Annunciation Hortus Conclusus and its reflexive intent; hatha yoga--a phenomenological experience of nature; the Chinese attempt to miniaturize the (...) world in gardens; conflating and compressing time in commodified space and architecture; constructing the deconstructive landscape (the ruin aesthetic); and a phenomenological-anthropological aproach to Zen gardens. The volume is lightly indexed by name (mostly philosophers). Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com). (shrink)

Both landscape and aesthetics are all too often considered disengaged categories associated with leisure and contemplation. This book establishes landscape as a key concept in contemporary thought and rethinks aesthetics in political and activist terms. In order to do so, it challenges the dualism of "the environment" as the space inhabited by humans and the province of the natural sciences about which philosophy has little to say. (This separation is evident even in the name of the (...) recent field of environmental humanities.) In a holistic view, landscapes are at the intersection of environment and human, place and people, and nature and culture, and aesthetics provide an immersive and engaged approach to them. Landscapes are ways of being in the world and aesthetics practical means of inhabiting them. Utilizing a pragmatist, antiessentialist lens, Alberto L. Siani characterizes landscapes (as opposed to environments and territories) as concrete, experienced habitats, performative ways of making sense of the world, while aesthetics (following Dewey) identify values and ordering criteria that permeate them. He addresses issues such as temporality, environmentalism, justice, education, and interdisciplinarity within this framework and in conversation with scientific positions. A coda gives three phenomenological accounts of intensely experienced and inhabited landscapes. (shrink)

Abstract:This article draws on the later work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to develop an onto-phenomenological approach to landscape aesthetics. Specifically, by closely examining the natural, cultural, and artistic history of the French mountain, Mont. Sainte-Victoire, I explicate Merleau-Ponty's critique of the anthropocentric bias in modern landscape aesthetics that something has aesthetic significance only where a higher-order subject (i.e. human) reflects on and appreciates it. By contrast, I argue that Merleau-Ponty retrieves the ancient Greek notion of aisthesis as (...) the coming-into-appearance of the sensible world. In this move from a subjective ground to an ontological ground, I argue that landscape aesthetics might better be understood as the generative creation of the sensible world, a creation that is co-constituted by natural, cultural, and artistic forces. (shrink)

In perceptions of their landscapes the Latvians have denied the existence of the sublime, elevating rural and natural aspects as beautiful and good. While Latvian landscape aesthetics and ethics are based on the profound transformation of nature-landscape attitudes that occurred in Europe during the second half of the 18th century, when ideas of the beautiful, sublime, and the picturesque were debated, the existence of sublime characteristics within the borders of Latvia has not been recognized. In part the (...) attitude derives from the lack of dramatic topography in Latvia. Part of it is due to historic contrasts of sublime wonders in foreign lands with the simple rural beauties and virtues of Latvia. Travelers' observations of rural beauty in specific places reinforced such attitudes. But it is also bound up with the complex history of Latvians as an underclass during colonial rule that began during the 13th century and did not truly end until 1991. As during the 19th century, Latvians began to develop their own national traditions; they used a voluminous collection of rural folk songs on which to build subtle literary and other artistic interpretations of what is moral and beautiful in rural life, work, and landscapes. A particularly important motif in Latvian writing is earth. The ethics of work, social responsibility, and care for living things are a powerful theme. If the sublime is mentioned, it is brought into the compass of the rural and the tame. Sublime elements of nature occur as metaphors for human actions. Thoroughly imbued with the above traditions, the author, at first unselfconsciously, discovered sublime aspects in Latvian landscapes and nature during the course of the past 11 years. It is his belief that as Latvians distance themselves from past colonial rule, they will begin to see their land in a less narrow fashion and recognize its sublime characteristics. (shrink)

In this article, I want to understand the nature of aesthetic experiences of landscapes. I offer an understanding of aesthetic appreciation of landscapes based on a notion of a landscape where landscapes are perspectival observer-dependent entities, where the 'creator' of the landscape necessarily happens to be the same person as the spectator, and where her scientific (and other) knowledge and beliefs matter for the appreciation to be complete. I explore the idea that appreciating a landscape in this (...) sense has quite a lot in common with taking and appreciating a photograph. On our way, we will see how imagination plays a crucial role in the story. (shrink)

This article compares Alexander von Humboldt 's and John Ruskin's writings on landscape art and natural landscape. In particular, Humboldt 's conception of a habitat's essence as predominantly composed of vegetation as well as judgment of tropical American nature as the realm of nature of the highest aesthetic enjoyment is examined in the context of Ruskin's aesthetic theory. The magnitude of Humboldt 's contribution to the natural sciences seems to have clouded our appreciation of his prominent status in (...) the field of art history. In addition to his position as scientist, Humboldt 's role as aesthetician is demonstrated in this paper. Unlike Ruskin, who comfortably resides in the canon of art history relative to his minor significance in the field of geology, Humboldt has not been recognized for his impact on the world of art; his tremendous scientific importance seems to have overshadowed an appreciation of it. (shrink)

This book brings together two experienced educators from the fields of teacher education and arts education. The authors Richmond, a photographer, and Snowber, a dancer and poet, see aesthetic education as aiming to extend creativity, appreciation of the arts and nature, and the sensuous qualities of everyday life, to gain a more intimate understanding of the self and the world. They include poetic, narrative, philosophical, and artistic ways of writing to support a more embodied and holistic aesthetics. Landscapes of (...) Aesthetic Education has significance for educators, scholars, students, and artists, and for all who would like to explore the connections between the arts, aesthetics, and transformation. (shrink)

The famous definition of landscape by Joachim Ritter unmistakably names the aesthetic act of construction that makes landscape vision possible: “Landscape is nature that is aesthetically present in the sight for a feeling and sensing observer”. Landscape is an aesthetic construct, in whose act of construction, however, social, cultural, individual and other constitutional factors flow. Following Karl Popper’s 3-world theory, a physical landscape (world 1), an individual landscape (world 2) and a social landscape (...) (world 3) can be distinguished. In each case, aesthetic and other constitutional factors are interconnected in a complex and complicated way. In addition, this situation is aggravated by the fact that different scientific basic positions (essentialism, positivism, constructivism) find their way into corresponding analyses (partly unreflected) and make scientific understanding difficult. Finally, this scientific starting position produces different paradigms, theories and terminology, which are often played off against each other and can lead to unfruitful dissent in science. The lecture counters this with a “neopragmatic” approach that can show that and how different paradigms, theories and conceptualisations can be related to each other in such a way that unfruitful dissent can be avoided and instead the advantages of the scientific plurality of theories, concepts and paradigms can be used and made fruitful for concrete research goals. (shrink)

The development and nature of environmental aesthetics -- Aesthetic appreciation and the natural environment -- The requirements for an adequate aesthetics of nature -- Aesthetic appreciation and the human environment -- Appreciation of the human environment under different conceptions -- Aesthetic appreciation and the agricultural landscape -- What is the correct way to aesthetically appreciate landscapes?

The continuum between nature and artefact is occupied by objects and environments that embody a relationship between natural processes and human activity. In this paper, I explore the relationship that emerges through human interaction with the land in the generation and aesthetic appreciation of industrial farming in contrast to more traditional agricultural practices. I consider the concept of a dialectical relationship and develop it in order to characterise the distinctive synthesising activity of humans and nature which underlies cultivated environments. I (...) argue that a more harmonious relationship, and greater aesthetic value, may be located within traditional farming landscapes. This position is supported and illustrated through a discussion of two agricultural practices in the UK, hedge-laying and stonewalling. (shrink)

The paper discusses some relationships between aesthetic and non-aesthetic reasons for valuing rural landscape, i.e., landscape shaped by predominantly non-aesthetic purposes. The first part is about the relationship between aesthetic reasons and considerations of utility and argues for an intimate connection between them. The next part considers the relationship between aesthetic and other non-instrumental reasons for valuing landscape and argues that there are important contingent but no essential connections between them. The third part considers the strength or (...) weakness of aesthetic reasons for resisting landscape changes that would result from changes in land use. (shrink)

Proceedings of a symposium held in the University of Hull, 17-19 September, 1976. Rural Planning Services Publication no. 7.

The roots of environmental aesthetics reach back to the ideas of eighteenth-century thinkers who found nature an ideal source of aesthetic experience. Today, having blossomed into a significant subfield of aesthetics, environmental aesthetics studies and encourages the appreciation of not just natural environments but also human-made and human-modified landscapes. _Nature and Landscape_ is an important introduction to this rapidly growing area of aesthetic understanding and appreciation. Allen Carlson begins by tracing the development of the field's historical background, (...) and then surveys contemporary positions on the aesthetics of nature, such as scientific cognitivism, which holds that certain kinds of scientific knowledge are necessary for a full appreciation of natural environments. Carlson next turns to environments that have been created or changed by humans and the dilemmas that are posed by the appreciation of such landscapes. He examines how to aesthetically appreciate a variety of urban and rural landscapes and concludes with a discussion of whether there is, in general, a correct way to aesthetically experience the environment. (shrink)

After the so-called Hegelian verdict, Adorno is the first philosopher who devotes such an intense attention to natural beauty within his aesthetic speculations. This central – although unfairly bypassed – moment could be fruitfully analysed through the figure of landscapes, thematized throughout Adorno’s constellation of texts. In this framework, the landscape represents more than a mere backdrop, but rather a significant theoretical spot to concretize the connection between the aesthetic performativity and the beauty of nature. Therefore, by means of (...) a careful reading of Adorno’s various formulations on the topic, this paper aims to show how the philosopher overcomes the traditional and immediate antithesis between nature and culture or even technique. More importantly, it will be investigated how a genuine aesthetic experience of nature – also in the image of a landscape – should be configurated, in order to hopefully feel its now mutilated silence again. (shrink)

This book proposes an original philosophy of nature, contributes to our understanding of two of America’s greatest philosophers, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles S. Peirce, and examines the philosophical expressions of the art of nineteenth-century American landscape painting.

The article considers the possibilities of the function and constitution of aesthetic value in the contemporary, ambivalent notion of landscape. It begins with a preliminary analysis of three key concepts central to current discussions – namely, nature, landscape, and environment. It presents one of the dominant models of contemporary ideas about the aesthetics of landscape – the natural environmental model –, and in particular its ambition to accommodate both the true character of today’s relationship between man (...) and his habitat and our aesthetic experience and understanding of it. Mainly, the essay points out the theoretical difficulties implied in this. In conclusion, the article suggests the hidden ethical dimension of our possible relationship to our environment. (shrink)

Abstract:Energy landscapes are entangled with technological infrastructures. Interrogating these infrastructures is a critical move for the environmental humanities, as these infrastructures carry ideas as well as power across the landscape. One of the main ways in which infrastructures can be interrogated is through aesthetics, particularly the visual perception of the infrastructure but also the lived experience of the place. Technologies in landscapes direct the gaze of observers and promote a particular mindset and a way of inquiring. The modern (...) landscape of energy embodies a tension between what is perceived as natural (often linked to the wild and primitive) and what is perceived as technological (often associated with modern and progressive). This article introduces a collection of articles that together are a joint journey through the energy landscape beyond oil, which is often singled out as the “bad” energy source, to reveal the complex assessments and contradictions in energy landscapes of many different types. (shrink)

This essay examines the possibility of developing a more complete evolutionary aesthetics that can be used to appraise both natural landscapes and works of landscape architects. For the purpose of this essay, an “evolutionary aesthetics” is an aesthetic theory that is closely connected to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Two types of Darwinian evolutionary aesthetics seem possible; a theory of evolved tastes, such as that developed by Dennis Dutton, and an aesthetics of evolving nature based on (...) Carlson’s positive aesthetics. After, exploring both theories, I argue that, while the two positions approach aesthetics from different directions, they support similar aesthetic judgments concerning landscapes, and this suggests that the two positions might be incorporated into a broader theory of evolutionary aesthetics. That theory is briefly outlined and applied to both natural landscapes and parks. (shrink)

Many environmental aestheticians—most prominently, Allen Carlson—have drawn a distinction between “arts-based” and “nature-based” approaches to the aesthetics of nature and have argued that the widespread practice of using arts-based theories and categories to understand the aesthetics of nature is a mistake. This practice, they argue, should be rejected and replaced by a practice in which an aesthetics of nature based on a clear, scientifically grounded understanding of the environment is used to appraise nature. In this paper, I (...) will challenge important parts of this argument through a discussion of an example often used by these environmental aestheticians in developing their arguments: namely, landscape.. (shrink)

The time of the landscape is not the time when people started describing landscapes in poems or representing gardens in works of art: it is the time when the landscape imposed itself as a specific object of thought. This object of thought was constituted through quarrels about how gardens were to be arranged, through accounts of travels to solitary lakes and remote mountains, or through evocations of mythological or rustic paintings. Jacques Rancière retraces these narratives and quarrels, showing (...) how they gave rise to a form of sensibility capable of modifying the existing configuration of modes of perception and objects of thought. The time of the landscape is the time when both the harmony of arranged gardens and the disharmony of wild nature contributed to a revolution in the criteria of the beautiful and the meaning of the word ‘art’. It coincided with the birth of aesthetics, understood as a regime for the perception of and thinking about art, and also with the French Revolution, understood as a revolution in the very idea of what binds a human community. The time of the landscape was the time when the conjunction of these two upheavals brought into focus, however hazily, a common horizon: that of a revolution that no longer concerns only state laws or artistic norms, but the very forms of sensible experience. This brilliant and wide-ranging book will be of interest to students and scholars in philosophy, literature, the visual arts and the humanities generally, and it will appeal to anyone interested in critical theory and philosophy. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of a qualitative investigation into the ethical and aesthetic values held by late- and mid-career landscape architects in the UK. It identifies the dominant discourses within three value areas, the aesthetic, the social and the environmental. Within the web of value discourses, some are clearly conflicting, while others are compatible or mutually supporting. The most prevalent values are those associated with 'technocentric accommodation'. A 'trivalent' approach to design is advocated which combines values from the (...) three main areas. (shrink)

My thesis is that there is an aesthetic dimension of nature that is metaphysically significant, qualitatively pluralistic, and artistically creative, and that this accounts for the sensuous complexity of experience, as well as the possibility of discovering new qualitative features about the world and expressing them in novel forms, as exemplified in art. I call the philosophy that endorses the reality of this dimension Transcendentalist Aesthetics. The term "Transcendentalist" recalls the philosophy of New England Transcendentalism with its core in (...) Ralph Waldo Emerson, and which influenced the philosophical writings of Charles S. Peirce and the art of the nineteenth-century American landscape painters of the Hudson River School and Luminism. The primary overall goal is to present and argue for a Transcendentalist Aesthetics by making use of the philosophy of Emerson and Peirce, together with the writings and landscapes of the painters. More specifically, Emerson's claims about nature and art and the painters' representations of nature provide various poetic observations of nature that provide an empirical starting point concerning the rich aesthetic complexity of the world. This complexity finds a theoretical ground in Peirce's metaphysical cosmology, which presents a rationally coherent account of the greater structures and processes of the universe while possessing important aesthetic consequences for lived experience and art. The landscape paintings also have a role in that they are expressive of the Transcendentalist philosophy itself, serve as case studies for theoretical interpretation, and are concrete evidence that new qualitative features about the world may be discovered and realized in novel artistic ways. (shrink)

Listening to the landscape means hearing the world differently, this article contends. Since its theorization in the pictorial figuration of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, landscape has been conceived as a spatial extent delimited by the gaze of a spectator. In the late 1960s a more complex and sensitive approach to landscape, including reflection on its sound and acoustic aspects, began to emerge. Despite this new focus, a certain oculo-centrism still persists. The ecosophical approach — which complicates (...) and goes beyond the antitheses of subject/object, ethics/aesthetics, nature culture — that is put forward here promotes a new aesthetic dimension focused on listening. Based on the notions of presence, holism and non-separation, this approach makes it possible to combine the individual and the collective imagination with social relations and natural processes. (shrink)

This paper explores the use of art to recreate violent mythological landscapes in Roman domestic ensembles. Focusing on the Niobids found in two imperial horti it argues that the combination of sculpture and landscape exerted a powerful imaginative effect over ancient viewers, drawing them into the recreated mythological world. Mythological landscape paintings also offered a view out onto a mythological realm, fostering the illusion of direct access to the spaces of myth. However, these fantasy landscapes need to be (...) seen in the light of the associations which natural landscapes held in the Roman imagination. Recreations of mythological landscapes in domestic art express the desire to incorporate the natural world into the domestic sphere but through the presence of violent events they also highlight the inherent powers of those landscapes and the gods who frequent them. They speak to a yearning to immerse oneself in myth and the natural realm, yet also warn of the perils of such a desire. (shrink)

Entangled with the interconnected logics of coloniality and modernity, the landscape idea has long been a vehicle for ordering human-nature relations. Yet at the same time, it has also constituted a utopian surface onto which to project a space-time 'beyond' modernity and capitalism. Amid the advancing techno-capitalization of the living and its spatial supports in transgenic seed monopolies, fracking and deep sea drilling, biopiracy, geo-engineering, aesthetic-activist practices have offered particular kinds of insight into the epistemological, representational, and juridical framings (...) of the natural environment. This book asks in what ways have recent bio and eco-artistic turns moved on from the subject/object ontologies of the landscape-form? Moving from botanical explorations of early modernity, through the legacies of mid-twentieth century landscape design, up to artistic experimental recodings of New World nature in the 1960s and 1970s and to present struggles for environmental rights and against the precarization of the living, the critical essays and visual contributions included in Natura attempt to push thinking past fixed landscape forms through interdisciplinary encounters that encompass analyses of architectural sites and artworks; ecocritical perspectives on literary texts; experimental place-making practices; and the creation of material and visual ecologies that recognise the agency of non-human worlds. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Grand Manner Aesthetics in LandscapeFrom Canvas to CelluloidEmily E. Auger (bio)Popular films about the environment and related human and material resource issues, particularly colonialism, tend to enhance the appeal of their subject matter by aesthetically transforming it according to audience preferences and tastes. Such mediating strategies are perhaps too familiar to contemporary artists of all types who would prefer to work beyond the limits of what their readers (...) or viewers are prepared to tolerate as entertainment, but the particular emphases and accommodations made by film artists to convey messages about the environment are little changed from those strategies used by painters over the past three centuries to a similar end. The methods by which environmental issues are aestheticized in late-twentieth-century film is directly and historically related to those established for grand manner painters by Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665) and taught at the French academy from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. That these fundamentals were part of the training of artists who would be willing and able to enhance the glory of Louis XIV's absolutist monarchy seems not to have undermined the popular enthusiasm their association with the "classical" past generated outside of France. Thus, the grand manner ideal was repeated, elaborated, and adapted by subsequent British and American artists, teachers, and aestheticians, both amateur and professional, including Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), president of the British academy; theoretician Edmund Burke (1729-97); and such American painters as Benjamin West (1738-1820), Thomas Cole (1801-48), Frederic Church (1826-1900), and Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902).Examples of filmic adaptations of grand manner aesthetics considered here include English director John Boorman's The Emerald Forest (1985) and Anglo-French director Roland Joffé's The Mission (1986), both British productions; Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves (1990) and John McTiernan's [End Page 96] Medicine Man (1992), both American productions with American directors; and Australian director Bruce Beresford's Black Robe (1991), a Canadian/Australian production based on Irish-born, Canadian novelist Brian Moore's best-selling novel of the same title (1985). While it might be argued that these films merely show the adaptation of academy-based grand manner ideals and principles to new imperialist interests, this article demonstrates how they educate and draw public sympathy to global environmental concerns, albeit with reference to a recognizably Western aesthetic tradition. Thus, the interest of this study to educators and students of the visual arts is twofold: first, it demonstrates the continued adaptation and application of aesthetic principles originally developed in the seventeenth century to a technology-based medium; and second, it shows how those aesthetic principles are currently applied in film to direct and modulate public opinion on matters well beyond the domain of pure or theoretical aesthetics.The grand manner aesthetic, first defined with reference to seventeenth-century painting and still apparent in twentieth-century film, is largely attributable to Poussin since he was an artist who wrote—and wrote well—about his understanding of artistic quality and priorities. He was deeply committed to classicism; he thought the elements of a painting should be idealized rather than realistic and particularized, that those elements should be clearly delineated in a linear manner, that exotic subjects and excessive color should be avoided as both appeal too much to the senses and not enough to the mind, and that figures should always predominate over landscape. Poussin's ideals became the model for students training at the French Academy, an institution officially formed in 1648 under the direct control of the government. Aspiring academicians were exhorted to produce images that were usually composites of the better, and sometimes imagined, aspects of the appearance, character, and deeds of the fictional and historical people, events, and locations that were their subjects. They were never allowed to forgot the hierarchy of value that placed genre painting forever below history painting, yet it cannot have escaped their notice that a certain number of well-executed examples of the lowly still life, domestic interior, and picturesque landscape on the exhibition walls made the "grandness" of more ambitious works more apparent by contrast.The French Academy soon became the envy of foreign upper-level bureaucrats cognizant... (shrink)

This book discusses qiyun aesthetics in Chinese painting formulated by leading sixth to fourteenth-century intellectual elite. In light of Kant’s account of artistic genius, it considers the role of the mind in creating a painting replete with qiyun, thereby both demystifying qiyun aesthetics and illuminating some limitations in Kant’s aesthetics.

As environmental concerns rightly take a greater role in the critical reevaluation of the American philosophical tradition, it behooves us to return again to the often slippery notion of “nature” to ask if it can be redeemed as not merely the canvas on which human endeavor is depicted but an active element of the diverse and distinct philosophical perspectives that make the tradition. Indeed, there is a great need to depict the potentially subversive ways that human and nature can be (...) understood as radically connatural, in intimate ecological and constructive relations that make nature not just the instrument for the exertion for human wants and desires but also thoroughly and... (shrink)

Allen Carlson's aesthetics of nature contends that a deepening in the scientific knowledge of natural objects and environments is required to achieve an appropriate aesthetic appreciation of them. This 'scientific cognitivism' is often presented as supporting the emergence and development of environmental awareness as well as a theory consistent with the requirements of environmentalism that have been set out by Carlson himself. But Carlson's view about the aesthetic appreciation of contemporary agricultural landscapes gives more relevance to their functional fitness (...) for human purposes than to scientific cognitivism. It will be shown here how this different treatment weakens the link between Carlson's work and his requirements of environmentalism. (shrink)

In this paper the concept of knowledge in seen as embodying dialogue and learning in a shared practice. Sharing a practice involved sharing representations of practice. This necessitates the sharing of experiential knowledge at various levels and in various forms. It is proposed that participatory design can therefore be seen as consisting in dialogue and learning for the development of future practices and representations. The discussion in this paper is situated within the domain of landscape architecture. A study is (...) made of their co-operative practices, which are evolved, in order to show the need for participatory embodied activity (whether expressed verbally or physically) in sharing practical knowledge (e.g. of aesthetic judgement). (shrink)

The great popularity of homelessness as an artistic theme in the twentieth century and beyond may be explained by the frequency by which the everyday image of homeless persons impacts upon the passerby’s aesthetic perception of the urban environment. Nonetheless, as yet, homelessness has not been included in the field of the aesthetics of everyday life. This article is meant to fill this void. Being inspired by frequent personal encounters with homeless persons and drawing on parallels between the effort (...) of aesthetically appreciating mainstream artworks and the effort to cope with the negative aesthetic impressions generated by the homeless body, I argue that homelessness may not only be appreciated negatively but also may trigger lasting positive aesthetic experiences. (shrink)

Some artworks are called sublime because of their capacity to move human imagination in a different way than the experience of beauty. The following discussion explores how Van Gogh’s The Starry Night along with some of his other late landscape paintings accomplish this peculiar movement of imagination thus qualifying as sublime artworks. These artworks constitute examples of the higher aesthetic principles and must be judged according to the cosmological-aesthetic criteria for they manage to generate a transition between ethos and (...) phusis and present them in unity. Here, referring to Heraclitean, Kantian, Nietzschean and Heideggerian metaphysics and aesthetics, I propose that the principles of motion and transition be the new cosmologic-aesthetic categories for the judgment of sublime artworks as well as for the understanding of the world (Weltanschauung) they represent. (shrink)

Abstract:Geodiversity is defined as “the natural range (diversity) of geological (rocks, minerals, fossils), geomorphological (land form, processes) and soil features. It includes their assemblages, relationships, properties, interpretations and systems.” This very physical definition is enlarged by a holistic point of view associated to cultural geomorphology which embraces social and artistic representations of landforms, sometimes considered as a geo-heritage. In this point of view, coal mining memory is symbolized by heap and mine's galleries which are anthropogenic landforms. With abandonment, their appearance (...) has changed through time and in the North of France, the “black gold” became “green gold.” This paper aims to reconstitute the landscape trajectories of these recently rediscovered “coalscapes” and focuses on European coal landscapes, particularly on the Atlantic Front. The studies of the iconography of the National Work Archives compared to present landscapes shows that new heritage statuses focus on picturesque landscape but also reveal an evolution of this model: after having included ecology, (geo)heritage coalscapes make the picturesque model change by taking into account environmental changes, new touristic practices (eco and geo-tourism) and new perceptions of industrial and mining landscapes. In a broader sense, this perception of landscapes refers to the anthropocene times, where human artifacts such as mining features represent human prints on the environment. This paper questions European coal landscape as symbols of migrating landscapes that linked, scientifically and aesthetically, old and modern Europe. (shrink)