Die Natur der Kunst

Nature has been understood to be the teacher of art ever since antiquity. Art followed models as they were found in nature, and even sought to improve and enhance nature by idealising landscape or the figure. And yet at the same time, because it is not created by the human hand, nature represents the contrary of art. If art is perfect construction, then nature symbolises that which is arbitrary and non-controllable, and which lies beyond the reach of human influence. Since Classicism and Romanticism, this incomprehensible nature has been experienced to be at once sublime and threatening. Art no longer simply imitates nature; nature and art meet in that they mediate the experience of the absolute. Exhibition: Kunstmuseum Winterthur (21.10.2010-27.2.2011).