Contradictory Modernities:Conceptions of Nature in the Artof Joseph Beuys and Gerhard RichterMatthew GandyDepartment of Geography, University College LondonInthis paper,I explorethetensionbetweendifferent intellectual traditions concerningtherelationship between nature and modernity as they are manifested in the work of postwar Germanartists Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter. I show that they represent contrasting intellectual andaesthetic traditions. For Beuys, nature holds innate meanings capable of guiding human thoughtand action, whereas for Richter, nature is simply a screen onto which we project our own culturalimprints. I conclude that these differing perspectives help to elucidate contemporary intellectualconcernsover therelationship betweennature-basedideologiesandthe ecological critiqueofmodernity. By extending our understanding of social nature to the cultural arena, we can discernnew ways of exploring relations between society and nature. Key Words: nature, landscape, aesthet-ics, modernity, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter.In April 1995, I attended a symposium on theGermanartist JosephBeuys at the NewSchool for Social ResearchinManhattan,New York City.1 Speaker after speaker conveyeda sense of certainty and optimismsurrounding histransformativesocial sculpture,andthefewvoices of dissent were met with a mix of suspicionand disdain. Some fifteen blocks northwest of theNew School sits the Dia Centre for the Arts in agentrified corner of Chelsea just a few yards fromthe Hudson River. In it was an exhibition of anon-going installation by another German artist,Gerhard Richter, entitled Atlas.2 This collage ofmany hundreds of photographs provided a starkcontrast withtheideasandimages associatedwith Joseph Beuys. In the place of Beuyss empha-sis on natural order lay a sense of isolation anddisorientation; instead of timeless quasi-religiouscertainties there was a chronological sequence ofhard-edged images spanning a myriad of themesincludingNazism, terrorism, andthemassim-agery of consumer capitalism.This paper has emerged from my response tothese two very different aesthetic and intellectualexperiences. I have developed the contrast be-tween these artists work in order to explore therecurring tension between nature and modernityin Western thought.3 By focusing on nature, I amconcerned here with the cultural representationof nonhuman nature, in this instance primarilythrough painting, photography, performance art,and sculpture. Though a number of scholars havemisleadingly placed bothBeuys and Richter intheGerman romantic tradition, simply by virtue ofthe importance of nature and landscape to theirart and ideas, I argue here that there are a seriesof important differences between their work.4 Iintend to stress the way in which aesthetic re-sponses to nature informcontrasting conceptionsof the interrelation between nature and culture,whichinturnpermeate political discoursethrough various discursive strategies for ideologi-cal legitimation.The idea of nature is inherently ambiguous. Onthe one hand, the term is routinely used to en-compass a descriptive categorization of physicalrealityextendingfromourbodiestothemostdistant stars and galaxies. This is the knowablerealm of objects, the world that has been utterlytransformed through the advance of science andthe impact of human activity. On the other hand,nature is persistently perceived as something be-yond the disclosures of scientific inquiry, a deeperlevel of reality co-present with the modern world.This is metaphysical nature, the unknown, theessence of something beyond comprehension yetinvoked for the justification of worldly belief. Thisis the nature that is called upon to guide us, toimpress order, andtoresist thehistoricityofknowledge. To make sense of contemporary envi-ronmental thought, weneedtoworkthroughsome of the tensions and contradictions inherentAnnals of the Association of American Geographers, 87(4), 1997, pp. 6366591997 by Association of American GeographersPublished by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK.in the idea of nature. In this paper, I have focusedon the cultural representation of nature in orderto expose the interrelationship between the ideaof an autonomous aesthetic sphere, separate fromwider society, and the relevance of this distinc-tion to the ideological power of nature in envi-ronmental thought. I contend that the discoursesof naturecannotbeneatlydemarcatedintoaseries of specialist arenas whichrestrict us toseparate spheres of knowledge andunder-standing. To fully appreciate the scope and com-plexityofthechangingrelationships betweensociety and nature under modernity is to drawthese disparate threads together in order to ex-posethediscursivestrategies, epistemologicalweaknesses, and practical implications of envi-ronmental discourse.The paper begins by exploring the ambiguousroleof nature-basedideologies inrelationtobroader critiques of modernity and the exhaus-tion of Enlightenment rationality. I outline howthe extension of geographical analysis into thefield of cultural production necessitates an en-gagement with dialectical approaches to under-standing changing relations between society andnature. Examining the work of Joseph Beuys, Ithen describe how ecological concerns emergedasacentralelement in Beuyss project for therelease of creative energies in society. I focus indetail on a performance piece entitled Coyote: ILike America and America Likes Me (1974), whichprovided a point of convergence for several of hiscentral preoccupations as an artist: the search forholistic and interdisciplinary forms of universal-ity, the need for reconciliation and communica-tion with nature as a prerequisite for personal andsocial healing, and the belief that art should playa didactic and socially transformative role in so-ciety. Beuys is a particularly interesting figure forany exploration of the political import of culturalrepresentations of naturebecauseof his closeinvolvementintheemergenceof theGermanGreens inthe1970sandhiscentralitytothereemergence of romanticisminpostwar Europeanculture.Finally, I contrast the stance of Beuys withthatof Gerhard Richter. I suggest that Richters workis best conceived as stemming from an anthropo-centric intellectual tradition, wherein traditionalmotifs drawn from nature bear an ironic ratherthan a literal relation to contemporary culturaland political discourse. For Richter, cultural formsexistinadynamicrelationtonatureandarerootedintheirsocial andhistorical context. Iexamine his ongoing installationpieceAtlas(1964 to date) to explore a series of themes de-veloped in his art and writings: the problematicsearch for aesthetic autonomy within consumercapitalism, the symbolic role of nature and land-scape in the recovery of historical memory, andthereworkingof traditional aestheticidiomswithinthecontext of radical epistemologicaldoubt.Nature, Modernity and the Fieldof Cultural ProductionThe worsening scale of environmental degra-dation over the twentieth century has provided acritical focus for geographers struggling to find arationale for their discipline in the postcolonialera. Yet much of this environmental scholarshipremains trapped in a variety of nondialectical andahistorical research paradigms that are at vari-ance with the social production of nature. HenriLefebvre (1991:30) reminds us that what we canmeaningfullyterm(physical)natural spaceisdisappearing,leavinginits wakeanever-ex-panding horizon of social space. A similar obser-vationis made by Margaret FitzSimmons(1989:106) who laments the very limited applica-tion of radical geographical scholarship to whatshe terms social Nature, based around an ex-plicit recognition of the geographical and his-torical dialectic betweensocieties andtheirmaterial environments.Adialectical concep-tion of nature can transcend the empty polaritybetweenvarious social constructivist conceptionsof nature and the predominance of purely bio-physical andessentialistconceptionsof naturethat permeate political discourse in wider society.In this paper, I shall give particular emphasis tothe ideological power of essentialist conceptionsof natureasreflectedinwhatPierreBourdieu(1996) terms the field of cultural production.Essentialist discourses of nature are distant ech-oes of a premodern era, yet these mythical strandsof meaning persist because of the innate complex-ity of relations between society and nature underlate modernity. Nature is not merely a physicalbackcloth to human history but also forms part ofa psychological metastructure in perpetual ten-sion with the critical and reflexive discourses ofmodernity.Natureisdeeplyingrainedinthiscultural unconscious because of its role in thematerial reproduction of human societies. It isthe widening gulf between environmental knowl-Contradictory Modernities 637edge and action that feeds the mystification ofsocial nature and the power of ideology in envi-ronmental discourse. Nature-basedideologieshave consistently played a powerful role withinthe cultural discourses of modernity, yet the veryconcept of ideology is laced with ambiguity rang-ing from the distinction between ideas of trueand false cognition to a more dynamic emphasison the general function of ideas within sociallife(Eagleton1991:3). Weareperhapsbetterserved by John B. Thompsons understanding ofideology as the way in which meaning (or signi-fication)servesto sustain relationsof domina-tion (quoted in Eagleton 1991:5). I shall use thismeaningof ideologytoexploretheextent towhich Beuyss social sculpture reinforces ratherthan challenges the dominant structures of powerinWesternsocieties bypresentinguswithanimaginary resolution to the social and ecologicalmalaise of late modernity.The principal ideological theme I want to ex-plore here is the romantic attachment to variousforms of aesthetic autonomy as a means to pro-mote universalist conceptions of nature that ob-scure the historicity of environmental change.5The idea of aesthetic autonomy is crucial to ourunderstandingof theideological importoftheromantictraditionfor contemporaryenviron-mental discourse. Thenotionof somekindofaestheticautonomyfeaturesprominentlyinaseries ofon-goingdebates concerningvariouskinds of truth in philosophy, the natural sciences,and the arts. Aprincipal theme here is the capac-ityof art not todisclosetruththroughthemimesis of higher orders of truth revealed bythe physical and mathematical sciences, but toreveal aspects of reality that would otherwise beoverlooked (Bowie 1990). This, in effect, is a callfor methodological autonomy from purely cogni-tive and instrumental forms of reason. The ro-mantic tradition has consistently afforded art aprivileged status as a means to access primordialand universalist sources of meaning that shapehuman existence. This dimension underlies theideological implications of nature-basedart,which lays claim to invariant sources of truth, aswe shall see in the case of Beuyss social sculp-ture. In contrast, if the methodological distinct-iveness of art is allied with a recognition of theinnateindeterminacyof aestheticmeaning, assuggestedbyAdorno, thentruthissomethingnever to be resolved with any degree of certainty.In this respect, the art of Richter presents us witha very different conceptionof aesthetic autonomythat leads to recognition of the provisional andintersubjectivedimensionsof meaningderivednot from higher levels of truth but froman explo-ration of material themes rooted in intersubjec-tive understandings of ethics and rationality.Geographical scholarship onrelations betweensociety and nature has begun to make significantinroads into the cultural field, enabling a range ofnew dialogues with other disciplines.6 My con-cern in this paper is not to explore the normativeeffect of art (though this is precisely the rationalefor Beuyss social sculpture) but rather to em-phasize the unique insights provided by the meth-odological challenge of art criticism. I use leadingexamples of late twentieth-century art in order toinvestigate the problematic place of nature in thecrisis of cultural modernism. The subject matterof this paper is undoubtedly somewhat unortho-dox for a geographical journal, but the strangestof cultural artifacts can often be the most reveal-inginpromotingnewinterpretationsof socialchange(Darnton1984).At amethodologicallevel, I want to explore theories which are nour-ishedless by purelytheoretical confrontationwith other theories than by confrontation withfreshempirical objects(Bourdieu1996:178).Thisinvolvesasensitivitytotherichnessandheterogeneity of the field of cultural productionand entails an abandonment of the kinds of ex-planation that reduce social reality to the flat-t ened l andscapes of pure descri pt i on,enumeration, and structural determinism.Joseph Beuys and the Solaceof NatureJoseph Beuys was born in Krefeld, Germany, in1921. During the Second World War, he servedas a German fighter pilot and was shot down andinjured in the Crimeaan experience that wasto prove central to the postwar development ofhis art. During the 1940s, Beuys pursued inde-pendent scientific studies (the relation betweenart and science was to be a recurring preoccupa-tion) and also visited the Nietzsche Archive inWeimar, where he studied Rudolf Steiners an-throposophical ideas. In 1947, Beuys enrolled atthe Dsseldorf Art Academy and was eventuallyappointedtoa professorshiptherein1961.Through much of this period, he developed hisartandideas inrelativeisolationfromwiderpolitical and cultural developments. This was tochange dramatically, however, in the early 1960s638 Gandyafter Beuyss involvement with Fluxus, an inter-nationalavant-gardemovementled by GeorgeMaciunas, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, and oth-ers, which sought an anarchic extension to theideaof theart object toencompass everydaymaterials andsituations (Blume1994; Crow1996).7Theriseof FluxusandPopArtmoregenerally in the 1960s was to have crucial signifi-cance for Beuys in two respects: first, the openingupof aestheticdiscoursetomassculturegaveimpetus to his insistence on art and creativity asforces dispersed throughout society rather thanresiding in a cultural elite and its institutions; andsecond, the shattering of the notional aestheticautonomy of high modernism was to introducenew possibilities for greater artistic engagementwith explicitly political themes.8Beuys placedhimself unambiguouslyat theforefront of these new developments by his pro-motion of all creative activity as a form of revo-lutionary political action, thereby dispensing withclaims for the aesthetic autonomy of high mod-ernism (see Bonnett 1992; Brger 1986; Germer1988). Hisworkhasfeaturedprominentlyindebatesoverpostmodernaesthetics, wherehisinterdisciplinarity andcrossingof boundarieshave been widely read as indicative of postmod-ern pluralism (see Duncan 1995; Kuspit 1995).9Scholars have interpreted his work as integral tothe dissolution of cultural modernism through itsradical reinterpretationof therelationshipbe-tween art and society:Every human being is an artist . . . The essence ofman is captured in the description artist. All otherdefinitions of this term art end up by saying thatthere are artists and there are non-artistspeoplewho can do something, and people who cant doanything (Beuys quoted in Nairne 1987:93).By the early1970s, Beuys wasengagedin avariety of political projects such as the Organisa-tionfor Direct Democracy throughPlebiscite, theOrganisation for Non-Voters, and the Free Inter-national University. As a result of these politicalactivities, he was dismissed from his post at theDsseldorf ArtAcademyin1972. Thisledtowidespread public consternation, provoking massdemonstrations in his support. The publicity sur-roundinghisdismissal servedtoenhancetheperceivedimmediacyandradicalimport ofhispolitical concerns and his calls for the creation ofanart-basedFifthInternational.Inthelate1970s, hebecameacofounderof theGermanGreens andalsostoodunsuccessfully for theEuropeanParliament. In1979hehadhisfirstmajor international retrospective at the Guggen-heim Museum, New York, followed by a series ofmajor shows in Berlin, Zrich, Madrid, and Paris.At thetimeof his deathin1986, Beuys wasprobably the most influential postwar Europeanartist, yet the significance of his legacy and thesource of his aesthetic power remain enigmatic.Beuyss sculptures and installations made ex-tensiveuseof arelativelysmall rangeofbasicmaterials such as stone, felt, lard, blood, honey,and wood (Figure 1). These materials were usedto emphasize innate tensions between heat andcold, birth and death, organic and inorganic, andmasculineandfeminine(thesedualisticmeta-phors running throughhis workhave beenscarcely remarked uponin the scholarly litera-ture). For Beuys, theuseof organicmaterialsrevealed the dynamic nature of his art throughprocesses of fermentation, desiccation, and de-cay, in order to emulate biophysical processes innature (see Beuys 1980; Mennekes 1995;Stachelhaus 1989). Though he denied any clearconnectionbetweenhis war-timeexperiencesandhis approachtosculpture, his workdoesappeartobebothpersonallytherapeuticandsymbolically autobiographical, with its emphasison personal and social healing and his publiclyadoptedroleinassistingtherehabilitationofpostwar German culture (Kuspit 1991). His ex-tensiveuseof feltandfat, forexample, high-lightedhiswar-timeexperienceintheCrimeawhere he claimed to have been wrapped in thesematerialsbyTartarnomadsin ordertoaid hisrecovery from injury.10 Many studies of the artisthave tended to go along with Beuyss own assess-mentofthe innateoriginality ofhis workandhaveconsequentlyplayeddownthedegreeofinfluence or dialogue with other contemporariessuchas Carl Andre, George Maciunas, YvesKlein, andHenryDunant. Of thefewartisticinfluences that Beuys has himself conceded, thesculptor WilhelmLehmbruckfeatures promi-nently. Inkeepingwiththemystificationthatsurrounded any interpretation of his own work,Beuys argued that Lehmbrucks sculptures couldnot be comprehended in visual terms but onlythrough intuition and especially through hear-ing, since the work contained categories thatnever previously existed, rooted in the medita-tive dimensions of a completely new theory ofsculptural creativity in the future (Beuys 1986:60). I will showduring the course of this paper thatthis tendency towards aesthetic exceptionalismContradictory Modernities 639Figure 1. Joseph Beuys, Fat Chair [Fettstuhl] (1964). This is one of Beuyss best known sculptures using everydayobjects and materials. The extensive use of fat in his work was an oblique autobiographical reference to his war-timeexperience in the Crimea. Source: The Strher Collection, Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt. Courtesy of EvaBeuys-Wurmbach.640 Gandyhas been fundamental to Beuyss attempt to de-flect the opportunities for critical appraisal of hisart and ideas. Considering his status within thedevelopment of postwar art, it is surprising thathis work has not been subjected to much in theway of sustained critical or scholarly attention. Inthispaper, Iintendtosetupamorerigorousexamination of his work than has hitherto beenthe case by focusing on the centrality of nature tohis discursive power and rhetorical appeal. I arguethat his aesthetic project, as it has evolved sincethe 1960s, has been predicated on an ecologicallybasedanti-rationalism.Furthermore, Isuggestthat his revival of nature-based genres is a signifi-cant element in the broader dissolution of cul-tural modernism with far-reaching implicationsfor environmental discourse.Reworking the Romantic TraditionBeuyshasbeenoneof theleadingpostwarexponents of themes drawnfrom the northernEuropean romantic tradition. We can also find inhis work a degree of aesthetic continuity with theRenaissance and early European modernity. Hisrepeated emphasis on the search for mystical andtranscendent meanings in nature finds resonancewith the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century writings of Goethe, Schiller, and Novalis,while his interdisciplinary concerns with buildingbridges between the arts and the sciences havebeen likened to the Renaissance ideals of da Vinciand Drer (Schster 1986). His art and ideas bearsimilarity with the counter-discourses of Enlight-enment thought which stress the mystical, irra-tional, andmyth-basedelements tohumanexperience. Muchof his workhas involvedachallenge to the ostensible rationality of postwarindustrial societythroughaquestioningof itsintellectual and institutional foundations. Duringthe 1960s, Beuyss aesthetic and ecological con-cerns became fused together through his preoc-cupation with nature as a basis to transcend thestrictures of Enlightenment rationality. ForBeuys, his concerns withnature mirror hisbroader interdisciplinary project of an aestheticuniversalism through the release of innate crea-tive energies rooted ina series of invariant naturallaws.Beuys integrated his ecological concerns intohis art principally through his choice of materialsand iconic symbols, in combination with his ownextensive expositions on the meaning of his work.His close association with what might be termedthe ecological avant-garde is derived from twomainsources: first, his performance art or creativeactions[Aktionen],of whichhecarriedoutmore than 70 after his enrollment at the Dssel-dorf Academy; and second, his large-scale sculp-tures using organic, crystalline, and even livingmaterials. In his numerous performance pieces,his so-called Aktionen, audiences were transfixedwith a theatrical display of objects and symbolscombinedtogether inadidacticspectacle. InFigure 2, we see the artist during the course ofAktion, Eurasia (1966). Familiar symbols from hiswork were brought together here: a dead hare (achildhood imagepertaining to the problems oflanguage, thought, and the consciousness of ani-mals), the crossing of sticks (an allusion to theCeltic cross and pagan mythology), and above all,thephysical presenceof theartist himself, toenhancethepersonal poignancyandauthorialauthority of the performance. The central themerunning through Eurasia was a reconciliation of aseries of divisions between material and spiritualexistence, between humankind and nature, andbetween Europe and Asia. For Walter Benjamin,this resolution between a series of tensions is arecurringcharacteristicof romanticart, wherenature forms the focal point of pantheistic spiri-tuality rooted in a state of intense contemplation(see Roberts 1982).Thegrowthof ecological politics sincetheearly 1970s provided Beuys with an ideal oppor-tunitytodevelophis social sculpturemuchfurther. The culmination of his ecological con-cerns was to be the project 7000 Eichen [7,000Oaks] inaugurated at the Documenta 7 exhibi-tion in Kassel, Germany, in 1982 (Figure 3). Forthis piece, he began planting 7,000 trees through-out the city. Each of the trees was planted nextto a small basalt column about four feet high. ForBeuys, the primary purpose of this mass sculpturewas to raise ecological consciousness:The planting of seven thousand oak trees is thusonlyasymbolicbeginning. Andsuchasymbolicbeginning requires a marker, in this instance a basaltcolumn. The intention of such a tree-planting eventis to point up the transformation of all of life, ofsociety, and of the whole ecological system (Beuysquoted in Stttgen, 1982:1).This mass sculpture drew widespread public in-terest and was installed at a time of intense con-cernwiththeeffects of acidprecipitationonGerman forests. The work proved hugely popular,Contradictory Modernities 641Figure 2. Joseph Beuys, Aktion, Eurasia (1966). These and other creative Aktionen placed Beuys at the forefront ofnew artistic developments in the 1960s. This particular performance took place at Gallerie 101 in Copenhagen.Courtesy of Eva Beuys-Wurmbach.642 GandyFigure 3. Joseph Beuys, 7,000 Oaks [7,000 Eichen] (1982). This extensive mass sculpture involved planting 7,000oak trees. The political salience of the sculpture was heightened by public concerns with Waldsterben (tree death)attributed to acid precipitation. This photograph was taken in Kassel in 1987. Courtesy of Caroline Tisdall.Contradictory Modernities 643skillfully tapping into the ecological concerns ofthe German public and confounding the warinessof sceptics. Yet evenif Beuyshadsuccessfullyextended art outside the institutional space of themuseum, his work was still fully backed by galler-ies, dealers, and the money of the art world. Hisecological sculptures remainedcomfortablywithin the appropriative scope of mainstream artand posed little real threat to those institutionsand interests that benefited from the pollution ofthe German countryside. With 7,000 Oaks, Beuyshad not only addressed contemporary ecologicalanxieties but had also tapped into nationalisticconceptions of Germanheritageas awoodedlandscape. Historians have suggested that onlysince the sixteenth century has the symbolic per-ception of forests altered in reflection of a newlyemerging national identity that sought to differ-entiate a specifically German landscape and cul-ture from that of southern Europe (Wood 1993).Inrevivingaforest theme, Beuys reworkedalong-standing tradition articulated in the Germa-nia of Celtis, the folk traditions and sylvan ver-nacularofJohannGottfriedHerder, andmorerecentattemptstorevivetheorganicGemein-schaft of FerdinandTnnies (Schama 1995).Since Beuyss project had a normative politicalaim, his work cannot be satisfactorily interpretedwithout consideringthewayinwhichnatureaesthetics has beenrepeatedlycombinedwithnationalist sentiment inEuropeanenviron-mental discourse.11Talking with Nature: Beuys and the CoyoteRunning through Beuyss work we find a con-stant tension between nature and reason: natureis used time and again as a bulwark against En-lightenment rationality. His fusionof radicalecologism and postmodern aesthetics is not onlypredicated on the blurring of boundaries betweenhigh art and popular culture but also lacks anymeaningful distinction between humankind andthe rest of nature. One of the most extraordinaryconfrontations between nature and modernity inpostwar art is undoubtedly Beuyss well-knownactionentitled Coyote: I Like America and AmericaLikes Me (1974). For this creative action, Beuyshad himself locked in a cage with a coyote forthree days at the Ren Block Gallery in New York(Figure4).Toaddtotheair of mysteryandexcitementsurroundingthis action, Beuyswastransported to the gallery on a stretcher by am-bulance directly fromJohn F. Kennedy Airport. Inaddition to the coyote, Beuys had with him a feltblanket, a cane, a triangle, a stack of hay and fiftycopies of the Wall Street Journal. For most of thetime, he remained hidden beneath his felt blan-ket, using the cane as a kind of antenna or limbto provide movement. For Beuys, the critical sig-nificance of his performance involved its focus onthe coyote as a sacred animal in North Americanmythology.12 In this instance, Beuys sought notmerely to highlight the breakdown in relationsbetween people and animals but also to draw onnative-Americancultural heritage. Central tothis performance was Beuyss claim to have com-municated with the animal world in order to tapinto innate and primordial sources of meaning.Coyote was to be a historical reconciliation be-tweenbothwesternandnonwesterncultures,and between human and nonhuman nature:I believeI madecontact withthepsychologicaltrauma point of the United Statess energy constel-lation: the whole American trauma with the Indian,the Red Man. You could say that a reckoning had tobe made with the coyote, and only then can thetrauma be lifted (Beuys quoted in Kuoni 1990:142).Many critics were similarly unconstrained in theirassessment of the significance of Beuyss perform-ance. For Wilfried Wiegand (1986:7), all kindsof remarkable confrontations resulted, whereasCaroline Tisdall found the performance infusedwitha magic of timing, light andrhythm(quoted inKuoni 1990:14). MarylinSmith(1995:180) goes even further:LikeSt Francis withthewolf of Gubbio, Beuysbefriended and conferred with his coyote brother.He presentedhimself as fisherman, shepherd,teacher, healer, martyr and miracle-worker. Thesecharacteristics struck ancient chords at the roots ofour understanding, so deep and so universal thatthey bound artist withaudience inrecognitionof thecontinuum, while placing the artist in a vulnerableposition.Few other performances by Beuys have elicitedsuchuncritical adoration. YetCoyotemaywellserve an ultimate role in provoking a wider assess-ment of Beuyss work and his relationship withbroader developments inEuropeanthought. Ishall develop my critique of Coyote by focusing onthree issues: the problematic notion of nature-basedaestheticautonomy,his relianceonanantirationalist ontology, and the historical rootsand ideological implications of Beuyss ecologicaldiscourse.644 GandyFigure 4. Joseph Beuys, I Like America and America Likes Me (1974). For three days Beuys was locked in a cage witha coyote at the Ren Block Gallery in New York. Beuys claimed to have achieved a historic reconciliation betweenhumankind and nature. Courtesy of Caroline Tisdall.Contradictory Modernities 645Beuyss resistance to the critical scrutiny of hisideas stemmed in large part from the romanticistaura of mystery that surrounded his work. Just asBeuys concealed himself behind a felt blanket inCoyote, heconsistentlysought tosubvert thepossibilityof critical appraisal for his workbylinking it to a philosophical totality beyond his-torical and political discourse. His role was to bea messenger or interpreter: a humble purveyor oftruth to the rapture and delight of his audienceandtheinternational art market. Central toBeuyss discursive strategy was his privileging ofspeech and action over other forms of communi-cation. For TerryAtkinson(1995a:6), this al-lowedBeuys topresent his owntestimonyassovereign in matters of interpretation, wherebyart becomes a kind of permanently live recordingof theartistpermanently, presentlyspeaking.This emphasis on the artistic voice as the centralsource of cultural authenticity places Beuys firmlywithin the historical tradition of Schiller, Novalis,and the German romantics. Far from reachingout to the transcendental instinct that is timelessanduniversal as Tisdall (1995:112) claims,Beuys reworkeda historical traditionina contem-porary context by suppressing the social and his-torical basis of his work. Beuyss radical inversionof the political import of the modernist avant-garderepresents notafurther radicalization ofmodernity but its precise opposite: a reclothing oftraditional genres in the kaleidoscopic garb of thepostwarcultureindustry. Justasthedrabandalienating public housing projects of the postwarera became symbolic of the exhaustion of culturalmodernism, Beuyss performance art can be inter-pretedas arhetorical codatothemodernistavant-garde.ArecurringdiscursivestrategyemployedbyBeuys was his ambivalence towards iconic clarityand the use of deliberate mystification in order toallow the courting of incomprehensibility. TheShaman earth divinity model he adopted beliedareal fearof rational intellectualtraditionsinWesternthought, andthepossibilitythat histheatre of hubris might be exposed to criticalscrutiny (Atkinson1995a). Inseeking tounify thedividebetweenhumankindandnature, Beuysinvoked a pre-Cartesian and antirationalist on-tology embodied in his occultist claim to be ableto communicate profound philosophical and his-torical truthswithanimals.13Theyearningtounderstandandcommunicatewith natureisapersistent element in Western environmental dis-course: both Addison and Bolingbroke, for exam-ple, argued that the differences between speciesin the great chain of being would be lessened ifweknewtheirmotives(Soper1995:24). YetBeuyss claims to know the consciousness of oth-ers, even nonhuman others, must be placed in thecontext of rationalist objections that we cannotknowwhatitisliketobeacoyote(Atkinson1995a).14 The recent upsurge of interest in oc-cultismandits interrelationshipwithvariousstrands of environmental thought is widely docu-mented and forms part of the contemporary dis-solutionof faithinscience, rationality, andEnlightenment. Yet this is not to say that suchsentiments formpart of abroadercritiqueofsociety: just as Beuyss performance art has beenenthusiasticallybackedbytheartmarket, theupsurge of interest in New Age spirituality, per-sonal healing, and bioconsumerismis fully backedby capital. Indeed, one might argue that the pre-ciseimportof Beuysslegacyistosubvertthepossibility for rational environmental discourse,to shift attentionaway fromthe underlying causesof environmental degradationandsocioeco-nomic polarization, and to highlight a realm ofmythandtranscendence inhis theatre ofesoterica.Despite repeated public pronouncements ontherelationshipbetweenart andpolitics, thephilosophical rootstoBeuyssvisionarerarelyexamined in any detail in the art historical litera-ture. He presented his world viewas transcendingboth the political right and left, in parallel withmany green political thinkers involved in thedevelopment of western environmentalism sincethe 1970s. His political project contained diverseelements: traces of nineteenth-century utopiananarchism,thesymbolsandbeliefs of Celtishmythology, theearth-basedanthroposophyofRudolf Steiner, as well as various ecological dis-courses drawnfrombioregionalismand ecologism(Adams 1992; Alexander 1990; Bellman 1995;Bramwell 1989; Kockel 1995). Beuyss ecologicalvision has also drawn on a specifically Germanvariant of early twentieth-century environmentalthought, where antiurbanismand antirationalismwere combinedina reactionary synthesis(Dominick 1991; Grning and Wolschke-Buhl-man 1987). He presented the essence of Germancultureasanoral,nature-basedtradition, aninvariant essence disturbed by the intrusions ofanindustrializedmodernity. Consequently,Beuyss sympathy for radical ecologism as a formof cultural redemptionisbothdisquietingandunsurprising(Michaud1988).BeyondBeuyss646 Gandyvernacular and regional ecologismlies his holisticconception of quasi-spiritual interconnectednessas a radical alternative to the modernist disen-chantment of nature. This has its counterpart inglobal environmental discourses concerned withbringing the biosphere back under the control ofnaturallaws. Thiswhole-earth imagery, sopervasive in Western environmental thought, isitself a totalizing discourse with its own historydeeply(andsomewhatironically)imbeddedintheEuropeanmodernist tradition(Cosgrove1994:290). The ecological supremacy espousedby Beuys is really a form of cultural supremacy indisguise (Atkinson 1995b:171). When Beuys andhis followers demand a return to an ecologicallybased society, they are calling upon a specific setof historical and political traditions in environ-mental discourse: a conception of social realitywhichsits comfortably withinthe dominantpower relationsthat structure the current pat-terns of global resource use and the acceleratedcommodification of nature.Gerhard Richter and the EmptySpaces of ModernityIf we move to a radically different point in thespectrum of cultural representations of nature,weencounteraquitedifferentaestheticandintellectual experience. In the art of GerhardRichter, wearepresentedwithabewilderingarray of subjects and styles, routinely shiftingbetweenphotorealismandabstraction, be-tween sculpture and painting, yet always per-vaded by a sense of doubt, an eschewing of anyideological systemthat conceals thecontin-gency and diversity of meaning. The possibili-ties and limitations of postwar art are expressedin all their fullness and contradictions, posingquestions rather than answers, subtlety ratherthansimplicity. Central toRichters artisticdilemma has been the place of nature and land-scape in postwar art: how are we to reconcileaesthetic pleasure in nature with the historicalandmetaphysical trappings of nature-basedcultural discourses? As a young artist, Richternoted his intellectual unease with the romanticaffinity for nature-based sources of cultural in-spiration. In 1962, he recorded in his diary howthe idea that art copies nature is a fatal mis-conception. Art has always operatedagainstnatureandforreason(inRichter1995:11).For Richter, nature does not have any innatemeaning, it is neither good nor evil; neitherfree nor directed towards a purpose; the tracesof romantic symbolism within his work are thusborne out of a mixture of nostalgia, irony, andan aesthetic predilection for beauty:Of course, my landscapes are not only beautiful ornostalgic, with a Romantic or classical suggestion oflost Paradises, but above all untruthful (even if Idid not always find a way of showing it); and byuntruthful I mean glorifying the way we look atNatureNature, which inallitsformsisalwaysagainst us, because it knows nothing and is abso-lutelymindless: thetotal antithesisof ourselves,absolutely inhuman . . . Every beauty that we see inlandscapeevery enchanting colour effect, or tran-quil scene, orpowerful atmosphere, everygentlelinearity or magnificent spatial depthor what-everis our projection; and we can switch it off atamoments notice, toreveal onlytheappallinghorror and ugliness (Richter 1995:124).Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden in 1932.From 1952 to 1957, he studied fine art and muralpaintingat theDresdenArt Academy, thenemigrated to West Germany in 1961, just beforethe completion of the Berlin Wall. In the early1960s, he founded a German variant of Pop ArtalongwithSigmar Polke. Earlyinfluences ofRichters include the Fluxus Movement (withwhich Beuys was closely associated), along withthe abstract paintings of Jackson Pollock andLucio Fontana.15 From 1961, he studied at theDsseldorf Art Academy with Karl Otto Gtzandbegantoincorporate photographs andother fragments of mass culture into his work.In 196465, he had his first solo exhibitions inMunich, Dsseldorf, and Berlin, and by 1971,he had been appointed professor at the Dssel-dorf Art Academy. By the mid-1990s, he hadenjoyedmajorinternational retrospectivesofhis workinLondon, Paris, Madrid, Toronto,and Chicago and is now one of Europes leadingartists, both in terms of his critical acclaim andcommercial success. Most of the scholarly at-tention devoted to the art of Gerhard Richterhas focusedonhis extensiveuseof imagerydrawn from mass culture. Comparatively littleattention has been given to his repeated use oftraditional motifsdrawnfromnature: moun-tains, forests, clouds, andotherfragmentsofnature are ubiquitous inhis work. Insomeinstances, the presence of nature is merelyhinted at, as in his abstract pictures, whereas inother cases, classic figurative imagery is directlyreproduced in the form of photographs.Contradictory Modernities 647Indeterminacy and AbstractionGerhard Richter is best known for his paintingswithin the idiomof abstract expressionism. Yet hehas developed his abstract art in an era radicallydifferent from its post-war heyday epitomized bythe art of Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock.For Newman, the creation of abstract art was tobe devoid of the props and crutches that evokeassociations with outmoded images, both sublimeand beautiful (Newman 1948, quoted in Harri-son and Wood 1992:10). The autonomous aes-thetic of postwar abstract expressionism soughtto create a form of social transcendence in dis-tinction to the nature-based forms of transcen-dence associated withthe romantic legacy. By thelate 1960s, however, the golden age of abstractexpressionism had disappeared through a combi-nationof developments withinart itself(thetheoretical implosionof theputativeaestheticautonomy of cultural modernism) and changeswithinwidersociety(theappropriationof theavant-gardeby the artmarket andthe cultureindustry).From their initial formulation in the mid-six-ties onward, Richters abstract paintings soughtto confront the circumstances that had devalor-izedabstract artunderthe demiseofculturalmodernism (Buchloh 1993:50). In Forest [Wald](1992), we find a complex layering of form andtexture (Figure 5). We can discern some continu-ity between the romantic preoccupation with in-trospection and the power of the unconscious,but these are radically detached from any figura-tive resemblance to the nature-based iconogra-phy of the past. Hints of figuration are discerniblethat resemble the enlarged fragments of a photo-graphicnegative. Theeyeisdrawnrepeatedlyacross the canvas in search of meaning or patternin order to make sense of the image yet the overalleffect remains tranquil and calming. The illusionofdeepspacetypical of figurativelandscape isreplaced by the infinite and heterogeneous spaceof the human imagination. When talking abouthis abstract paintings, Richter has explicitly re-jected the notion of any natural or transcendentorder; the comparison withnature is derived fromhis conception of the randomand chance ele-ments in the creative act of painting.16We canargue that Richter uses chance in abstract paint-ingbothasananalogyfor natureandasanemulationof therandomprocesses of change(which contrasts with spontaneously ordered no-tions of nature and evolution). Whereas Beuyssholistic scientific vision owed much to the naturaltheology and pantheistic spirituality of the eight-eenth century, Richters conception of ecologicalsciencelies closer tothecontemporarychaostheories of James Gleick. AchaoticnatureisirreducibletoafewNewtonianlaws but is amorphology of the amorphous, emanating froman evolving and multilayered kaleidoscope of in-teracting elements (Porter and Gleick 1990). Inhis abstract paintings, Richterhas developedways of expressing a recognition of the limits toknowledge and understanding, thereby eschew-ing any simplistic iconic basis to representation.For Richter, his abstract painting is the makingof ananalogy for something nonvisual andincom-prehensible: giving it form and bringing it withinreach(Richter1995:100). Itisthisthemeofuncertaintyandthelimits toaestheticrepre-sentation that leads us to his definitive artisticstatement contained in the on-going installation,Atlas.The Ironic LandscapeIn its recent showing at the Dia Center for theArts inNewYorkCity, Atlas has grownintoalmost 600 panels with some five thousand pho-tographs, including a variety of sketches and de-tails from his own work. The first few panels aredrawnfromtheearly1960sandarepredomi-nantlycomposedofmiscellaneouspicturesde-rivedfrommagazines (mass-producedimageryfeaturesprominentlythroughout), interspersedwith various family and holiday photographs (weseedour andlaughingfaces, childhoodbeachholidays, views of mountains and historic sites).Then something quite unexpected occurs: min-gled with advertisements for jewelry, swimwear,andother blandishmentsof thepostwar con-sumer boom, we are confronted by a juxtapositionof images drawn from Nazi concentration campsandhardcorepornographyRichter confrontsourapathyaspassiveconsumersof imagesbyprovokingamixtureof prurienceandunease.LikeAdorno, Richter clearlyfears themind-numbing and propagandizing effects of mass cul-ture: onemustbeeveralerttoartasamereinstrument of ideological power. In the next sec-tion, there are several hundred photographs ofhistorical figures drawn primarily from the worldof art, science, andphilosophy: theirpresenceunderlyingourincomprehensionof theearlierimages. There is also an increasing emphasis on648 GandyFigure 5. Gerhard Richter, Forest [Wald] (733) (1990). Since the mid-1960s, Richter has developed an increasinginterest in purely abstract paintings. By the 1990s, he has largely dispensed with his extensive use of photomontagein nonfigurative art. The title Forest may be suggestive of Richters interest in the continued poignancy of the ideaof nature in art, not simply in terms of recognizable iconic forms, but as a metaphor for creative activity. Courtesyof the artist.Contradictory Modernities 649sketchesanddetailsfromRichtersownwork,suggestive of his attempt to recover the capacityof art to engage with wider society and the prolif-eration of mass produced imagery.The next series of images, drawn from the late1960s onwards, is of a series of aerial photographs,plans, and maps. The pictures are of real placesinterspersed withdesigns and models produced inthe imagination of planners and architects: thereis an eerie similarity between the vistas of postwarreconstruction and the miniature models of high-risehousing projects andmultilanehighways(Figure 6). Then we abruptly turn back to a mixof images drawn from nature and history: moun-tainranges, Hitler, Munich, landscapesof theCanary Islands, unidentifiedlandscapes, NewYork, Nuremberg, Venice, Greenland, the nightsky, forests, trees, Dsseldorf, more unidentifiedlandscapes, clouds, and seascapes. Awhole seriesof images is presented as if we are looking throughwindows, or standing in a room; in some cases,the room is presented as a vast arena with pano-ramic glimpses of clouds at impossible angles. Thedepictions of landscape in Richters Atlas provideamulti-perspectival vistainterspersedwitharange of other seemingly unconnected figurativeand abstract elements. The landscape panels re-semble a flickering bank of television sets or per-haps even the fragments of a half-remembereddream (Figure 7). Elements of alpine imagery sobeloved of the transcendent eye in the mountaingenreof Europeanaesthetics are overlaid withlargely abstract painterly motifs and textures. Theuseof photomontageserves todestabilizethephotographic naturalism of dramatic landscapes.The extensive use of photomontage and photore-alismaddresses the ambiguous place of mass-pro-duced imagery in the formulation of our aestheticand intellectual sensibilities. The complex oscil-lationbetweenpainting andphotography inRichters work plays at the very core of his artisticdilemmabetweenaredundantfigurationandthe inflated subjectivism, idealismand existentialweightlessnessof variousformsof abstraction(Osborne 1992:104; see also Koch 1992). Photo-graphicimagesareusedtodenoteaspects ofcontemporary reality, as a means to work withina dialectic between mass culture and the elitistand esoteric conditions of high culture (Koch etal. 1995; Zweite 1990; Richter 1995: 152).Richter presents us with an ironic landscape inwhichhe recognizes the continuedpoignancy, yetmetaphysical redundancy of landscape motifs. Hehas referred to these pieces of nature as cuckooseggs, an appropriate analogy for their superficialresemblance to the classic imagery of the roman-tic period (quoted in Butin 1994:461). There isno attempt here to reproduce a direct experienceof nature, asinthenineteenth-centuryartofCasparDavidFriedrichandCarl Blechen(seeKoerner 1990; Vaughan 1994). The presence ofnature does not form a symbolic continuity witha larger system or idea, as in the work of Beuys,and is not attached to any claim for innate origi-nality.17 Richter attempts to divest nature-basediconographies of their ideological import by sub-verting our aesthetic sensibilities towards nature.The rhetorical power of Richters Atlas is derivedfromitscontextual conjunctionof diverseim-agery in order to radically rework the relationshipbetween art and mass culture. If, like Richter, wecan find no innate or universal meaning in na-ture, beyond that which we project onto it, therelationship between nature and culture becomeshistorically contingent and socially mediated. In-steadof communing witha transcendental naturethat severs material relations, thedialecticofnature is retained throughout. Fragments of na-ture become stimuli to memory and interpreta-tion and serve to emphasize existential concernswithhumanephemeralityandthecenterlesscharacteristics of contemporary intellectual dis-course.His worklies neither intherealmoftraditional claims for aesthetictranscendenceanduniversality, sopervasiveintheworkofBeuys, norwithinthemorecynical andself-serving idioms of slavish adaptation to the cul-tureindustry. Atlas challengesanylingeringpresence of the universal or disinterestedviewer and speaks for contemporary concernswith the dissolution of western humanism andthe struggle to find an adequate epistemologi-cal andethicalbasisfortheestablishment ofany shared meaning.ConclusionThe increasing engagement of art with nature-based sources of inspiration from the late 1960sonwards is one of the most subtle, yet profoundindications of contemporary unease towards theradical separation of culture from nature underthe impetus of twentieth-century modernity. Bythe early 1970s, nature-based art had diversifiedinto a multiplicity of different forms, ranging fromthe earthworks of Robert Smithsontotheephemeral gesturesof RichardLong, fromthe650 GandyFigure 6. Gerhard Richter, Stdte [Cities] (1968). This panel taken from Atlas depicts one of many panoramic city scapes derived from aerial photographs, plans, andmodels that Richter has used in his work since the 1960s. In some cases, he has extensively reworked the images with paint as if to highlight the memory of the wartimedestruction of cities, with their eerie landscape of skeletal half-standing buildings. Courtesy of the artist.ContradictoryModernities651Figure 7. Gerhard Richter, bermalungen (1989). Taken from Atlas, this over-painting of photographs taken in a naturalistic setting illustrates the complex interaction oficonographic symbols and painterly techniques in Richters art. Courtesy of the artist.652Gandymammoth installations of Robert Christo to thenew public spaces of Nancy Holt, not to mentiontheburgeoningof murals, community gardens,andcountlessothernewculturalengagementswith nature (Beardsley 1991; Krauss 1985; Ross1993). Within this proliferation of cultural repre-sentationsofnature, theapproachesofJosephBeuys and Gerhard Richter occupy radically dif-ferent positions. Beuys has played a key role sincethe 1960s in revitalizing the romantic tradition inWestern art. He has used nature as a powerfulmetaphor in order to challenge cultural modern-ismand rationalist discourse. In contrast, Richterhas attemptedto retainanaesthetic dialogue withnature and landscape in the absence of any link-age tometaphysical traditions inEuropeanthought. Theecological critiqueof modernityarticulated by Beuys leads back to nature and theillusory certainties of holistic universalism,whereas for Richter, the crisis of modernity stemsfrom the effects of terroristic ideologies and theinadequaciesof arttorepresentthecenterlesscharacteristics of Western thought.Since the 1960s, the destruction of nature hasemerged as an ideological point of reference forwider social and political discourses concerningthe transformation of society. We can argue thatthe contradictory dynamics of modernist aesthet-ics have been repeatedly expressed through na-ture.Indeed, thesuppressionor exaltationofnature can be read as one of the defining tensionsinmodernintellectual discourse. Tothrowofftradition is to rework nature, to invoke the pastis to returnto nature. For Clement Greenberg andthe guardians of high modernism, the wish to-return to the imitation of nature was an ever-present danger, a retrograde step signaling a lossof aesthetic autonomy and a reversion to themore primitive and unsophisticated art of thepast (Greenberg 1940:45). Inthis respect,Greenberg was mistaken since the presence offigurativenature-basedformsinart doesnotnecessarilyinvolveanaestheticregressiontothe past. In Richters Atlas, we saw how nature-based motifs can play a role in the search fornewformsof representationadequatetothechanging relations between high art and massculture.At a superficial level, the contrast between theworkof BeuysandRichtermirrorsaseriesofintellectual tensions betweenmodernity andpostmodernity: whereas Beuys works within theromantic traditionbased around universalist con-ceptions of value, Richter emphasizes the frag-mentary, partial, and multi-perspectival dimen-sions tosocial reality. Yet if Beuyss romanticutopianism places him at odds with the postmod-ern critique of Enlightenment ideals, his art hasnonetheless beenat theforefront of boththeecological critique of modernity and the postwarchallenge to the institutionalized spaces of highmodernism. The lack of any clearly demarcateddistinctionbetween modernity and postmoder-nity is also reflected in Richters continuing at-tachment toaseries of ostensibly outmodedaesthetic strategies ranging from collage to ab-straction. In questioning the possibilities for ro-mant i c ut opi ani s mt hr ough hi s i roni cengagement with nature-based themes, Richtercontributes to the on-going internal critique ofmodernity that has developed since the earlierexplorations of Benjamin and Adorno (see Well-mer 1991).Recent years have seen important advances inscholarship on the cultural depiction of natureand landscape: John Barrell has unearthed thesocial and economic realities that lie behind thepastoral faade; Charles Harrison has addressedthefallacyof aestheticautonomythroughtheseparationof landscapeart fromitsintendedaudience; W.J.T. Mitchell has explored the pres-ence of colonial and class-based iconographies intheEuropeanlandscapetradition; andGillianRose has explored the pervasive anthropomor-phic representation (and reception) of landscapeas a female body. In this paper, I have sought toexploretheideological implicationsof nature-based claims for aesthetic autonomy and histori-cal transcendence. I have developed myargument by emphasizing the need to locate therelations between nature and culture in the his-tory of environmental discourse. I argue that acritical reworking of the discourses of nature leadsto an aesthetic acceptance rather than suppres-sion of the human presence in nature. As John B.Jackson (1984:xii) reflects:the longer I look at landscapes and seek to under-standthem, themore convinced Iam that theirbeauty is not simply an aspect but their very essenceand that their beauty derives from the human pres-ence. For far too long we have told ourselves thatthe beauty of a landscape was the expression of sometranscendent law: the conformity to certainestheticprinciples or the conformity to certain biological orecological laws.Implicit within the development of cultural mod-ernismwasacelebrationof theurbanpresentovertheruralpast. Thenewurbanvistas ofContradictory Modernities 653skyscrapers, bridges, andfactories, ofswirlingcrowds, of social transformation, were to increas-inglydominatecultural andpolitical life. Theantinature transcendentalismof De Stijl, the newurban landscapes of Le Corbusier and the Futuristglorificationof machines andtechnology allsought to break free of nature (Rosenblum1991).Yet throughtime, modernistaestheticswastobecome increasingly separate from the progres-sive impulses of modernism more generally: ear-lier architectural innovations weretobecomesubsumedintopostwarcorporatemodernismand mass housing projects. The radical impulse ofmodernist art was to become lost in the autono-mous aesthetic of abstract expressionism, and theavant-gardes political futility was to be ever moresharply revealed in the face of the capitalist artmarket.Anaestheticreconciliationwithnaturehasemerged as a prominent element in new culturaldiscourses since the 1960s. The shifting ofboundaries between audience and artist has in-volved a rearrangement in the classificatory can-ons and relative status of different genres (Crow1993). Yet the postwar recovery of an aestheticdialogue with nature remains profoundly contra-dictory. In one sense, it is simply a reflection ofthe emerging crisis in nature-society relations. Inanother sense, it is indicative of a radical openingoutanddiversificationofmodernistdiscourses(Berman 1982). In Richters art, nature and land-scape have served as stimuli and points of refer-ence to enhance the capacity of art to becomeboth the object and process of historical mem-ory (Buchloh 1993:48). In Richters dialecticalnature, the relation betweenpast and present andbetweenthe artist and his subject is laidbare. Thiscontrasts with Beuyss use of nature in order todispel history and revive the realm of myth. If wehold onto a dialectical understanding of the rela-tionshipbetweennatureandculture,wecanarticulate a dynamic interactionthat is negotiableand historically specific. If we dispense with anyhistorical or dialectical conception of nature, wehave no means to make sense of the relationshipbetween nature and culture. We drift into a realmof arbitrary nature-based ideologies in conjunc-tionwithconceptions ofaestheticautonomywhere the human presence is rendered uncertain.Amythicnaturecaneasilydegenerateintoamere instrument of power whereas a dialecticalor social nature is opentocontestationandchange.AcknowledgmentsAn earlier version of this paper was presented to the1996 annual meeting of the Association of AmericanGeographers in Charlotte, North Carolina. I would liketothankTerryAtkinsonandtherefereesfortheirhelpful comments on an earlier draft.Notes1. The symposium Considering Joseph Beuys washeld at the Vera List Center for Art and Politicsin the NewSchool for Social Research, NewYork,April 38, 1995. The symposium drew together adiverse array of contributors, including Terry At-kinson, Germano Celant, Mario Kramer, DonaldKuspit, David Rieff, Berenice Rose, Edward Lu-cie-Smith, FriedhelmMennekes, JohannesStttgen, Marcia Tucker, and Armin Zweite.2. GerhardRichtersAtlaswasshownattheDiaCenter for the Arts in New York from April 27,1995 until the spring of 1996. Begun in 1964, theAtlas installation was first exhibited in Bremer-haven and Utrecht during 1972 and has also beenshowninKrefeld(1976), Munich(1989), andCologne (1990).3. The term modernity is widely used to refer to aneraof unprecedentedhistorical transformationsincethesixteenthcentury(laterorearlierinsomeaccounts) (seeGiddens1991;Williams1989). Modernity is also used in a more specificsense to refer to the emergence of cultural mod-ernism as a particular aesthetic sensibility. This isfrequently traced to the late nineteenth-centuryandis widely considered tohave reachedits zenithunder the abstract expressionism of the immedi-ate postwar period (Clark 1985; Kern 1983). Inpractice, however, these meanings tend tobecomeblurred. When one talks of the ecological cri-tique of modernity, there is invariably a confla-tionof concernabout theaestheticimpactofmodernity with more generalized indictments ofrationalist epistemologies, and the radical separa-tion of society from nature in the twentieth cen-tury.4. There is a tendency toplace artists whouse imagesor motifs drawn from nature within the realm ofthe romantic tradition in European thought re-gardless of the extent to which their art is actuallyfounded in pantheistic and metaphysical readingsof nature. Hubertus Butin (1994), for example,questions the simplistic placing of Richters workwithin the tradition of German romanticism by avariety of scholars including Robert Rosenblum,MichaelDanoff, MichaelShapiro, Jean-PierreCriqui, and Werner Spies. A weakly developeddifferentiation of aesthetic approaches to natureis problematic since some scholars suggest that654 Gandyany aesthetic interest in nature is simply an exten-sion of wider aesthetic sensibilities learned in so-ciety (these kinds of arguments are contained inWollheim [1980] and Savile [1982]). In contrast,other scholars stress innate differences betweenaesthetic responses to art and nature and contendthat nature is simply a reflection of different waysof seeing (see, for example, Danto 1981, 1988;Goodman 1984).5. The concept of ideology has also been used torefer to the technical rationale of secular socie-ties inthewritingsof CliffordGeertz, AlvinGouldner, Nicos Poulantzas, and Jrgen Haber-mas (see Eagleton 1991). If we were to adoptthis more restricted understanding of the term,thenthe ecological formulations behindBeuyssart would be better considered quasi-religious than ideological.6. Inrecent years, therehas beenanincreasingdialogue between geographers, philosophers, andart historiansconcerningtheaestheticrepre-sentations of nature and landscape. Examples in-clude Cosgrove and Daniels (1988); Duncan andLey (1993); Kemal and Gaskell (1993); Mitchell(1994); and Wrede and Adams (1991). Anotheremerging areaof interdisciplinaryscholarshipconcerns the aesthetic tensions between natureand modernity (see Gandy 1996a, 1996b; Matless1992; MatlessandRevill 1995; Rollins1995).Geographers have now begun to respond, albeitonly tentatively, tothe broader implications of thecritiqueof modernityfortheunderstandingofenvironmental problems. Central to this projectis a closer imbrication of geographical scholarshipwith critical discourses in European thought, adevelopment not only of relevance to the con-cerns of this paper but also to the wider historiog-raphyof thediscipline(seeJonesetal. 1993;Natter et al. 1995).7. Oneof Beuyss earliest performancepieces orAktionenwas entitledThe Silence of MarcelDuchamp Is Overrated and given as a live televi-sionbroadcastin1964. Thishassubsequentlybeen interpreted as an early attack by Beuys onthe failure of the modernist avant-garde, as epito-mized by Duchamp, to effect any real change insociety (Blume 1994). Other early actions thatcontributed to Beuyss rapidly growing notorietywithin the art world include How to Explain Pic-tures to a Dead Hare (1965), Manresa (1966) andI Am Trying to Set (Make) You Free (1967).8. The strict demarcation of modern art from massculture, embodied by the postwar development ofabstractexpressionism, is especiallyassociatedwith the influential role of Clement Greenberg.His essay Modernist Painting from 1961 tracesa direct modernist lineage between Kantian self-reflectionandabstractexpressionism asatele-ological progressionof westernaestheticsensibilities independent of wider historical andpolitical influences (Greenberg 1961). The post-war development of abstract expressionism in theU.S. is nowknowntohavebeenpart of theplanned cultural hegemony of the West during theColdWar, therebydispellingtheGreenbergianconception ofaesthetic autonomy (see Sandler1970; Cox 1982; and Guilbaut 1983).9. Gregory Ulmer insists that Beuyss performanceart represents a practical exposition of the peda-gogical project of Derrideangrammatologyfounded on the display and displacement of theliteral senseof therootmetaphorsof Westernthoughtdialectic and rhetoric, science and art(Ulmer 1985:264). Yet Ulmer never satisfactorilyshows why Beuyss performance art can be con-ceived as an exposition of textual deconstructionbecause his analysis rests on an obfuscation of theontologicalandepistemological questions thatilluminate the contextual dimensions of the artitself.10. Beuys mingledhisautobiographical experienceinto a carefully promoted art personality, com-plete with the immediately recognizable fishingjacket and felt Homburg hat, to become a personaat the center of international debate and scholar-ship (Storr 1992; Crow 1993). The veracity of hiswar-time experience has been openly questionedby the art scholar Benjamin D. Buchloh. Buchlohnotes how, in the biography of Beuys edited byGoetz Adriani et al., the artist is pictured standingnext to what is purported to be his crashed JU 87in the Crimea. Yet in the Guggenheim catalogue,edited by Caroline Tisdall, we find a quite differ-ent image also described as the wreckage of hisplane. Buchloh wonders Who would, or could,pose for photographs after a plane crash, whenseverely injured? And who took the photographs?The Tartars withtheir fat-and-felt camera?(Buchloh 1980:39).11. Duringthe SecondWorldWar, afforestationformed part of the planned Germanization oftheinvadedterritoriesparticularlyinEasternEuropeand the imposition of a landscape idealwas integral to an expansive nationalistic concep-tion of the relationship between nature and cul-ture (see Dominick 1987; Grning 1992).12. The coyote (Canis latrans) has long held a sym-bolic place in Native American mythology andculture. More recently, the coyote has been in-vokedasageneralized metaphor fornaturebyDonna Haraway (1991). Further elaboration ofthese themes is to be found in the work of JaneBennett (1993; 1994). A contrasting perspectiveon the coyote as aninterface of nature and culturecanbefoundinstudiesof urbanecology(Gill1970).13. Theextent ofoccultist influences intheartsremainsaneglectedareaof scholarshipbut isespeciallyassociatedwithnature-basediconog-raphies (see Adams 1991; Cambell 1980; MoffittContradictory Modernities 6551988). We should note, however, that occultismandnature-basedmotifswereintegral totheemergence of abstract art in the early decades ofthe twentieth century (one thinks here particu-larly of Kandinsky and Mondrian) (see Tuchmanand Freeman 1986).14. Terry Atkinson (1995a) draws on the rationalistphilosophy of Thomas Nagel andhis essay entitledWhat Is It Like to Be a Bat? (1974) in order torefute Beuyss claims for knowledge of the con-sciousnessof nonhumanothers. ForAtkinson,Every would-be mystic, every champion of everycatalogue of occult entities, every devotee of theart ontological zoo, feels empathy towards Beuyssobscurantism. It even makes them feel politicallyprogressive since it is so compulsively couched ina rhetoric of free democracy, Green demagogu-ery andanti-bureaucracy (Atkinson1995b:173).15. Other influences that Richter has alluded to inhisinterviews and writings include Roy Lichtenstein,AndyWarhol, ClaesOldenburg, BarnettNew-man, and Carle Andre (see Richter 1995).16. Richter has compared abstract painting with thebiophysical processes of nature as a nonteleologi-cal evolution of form: This plausible theory, thatmy abstract paintings evolve their motifs as thework proceeds, is a timely one, because there is nocentral imageoftheworld(worldview) anylonger: wemust workout everythingfor our-selves. . . . It also conforms to a general principleof Nature; for Nature, too, does not develop anorganism in accordance with an idea: Nature letsits forms andmodifications come,withintheframework of its given facts and with the help ofchance (1986:12829). Richter has also occa-sionally drawn analogies between the creative actof painting and musical improvisation. This lineof argument is developed by Coosje van Bruggen(1985), who contends that we can find importantsimilarities between Richter and Czanne in theirsearchfor aesthetic harmony, as a pictorial anal-ogy with sound.17. Another leading postwar interpreter of the Ger-man romanticist tradition is undoubtedly AnselmKiefer who has sought to rework romantic iconog-raphyshornofitsmetaphysical pretensions. 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