Aesthetics has been ambivalent to the beauty in nature. Natural beauty dropped off the agenda and was repressed. Wholly human made, the autonomous work of art is radically opposed to nature. It is artefact versus nature.

Gary Sauer-Thompson, Robe, 2006

Natural beauty had nothing to do with the freedom of the autonomous subject; the lone subject in an instrumentalized and mutilated world ravished by utilitarian pseudo-progress. So we have the subject seeking solace as a tourist in stone walls, old buildings, and ruins, lamenting what is passed, forgetting the suffering in constructing the walls and buildings, and viewing nature through a prism of fear.

And yet the aesthetic appreciation of nature continued. Nature was beautiful. What was elided from this appreciation was the domination of nature to ensure progress, and the subject's instrumental sway over nature. The destruction of nature was buried in our historical memory as nature was increasingly commodified from being cultivated by human beings for pastoralism, farming and irrigated agriculture.

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