Art and nature

John Berger said that art stages man's search for a more reliable response from nature.

MORE RELIABLE THAN NATURE

Undoubtedly, nature has a variable, merciless, and impermanent structure. As Berger says, "it means energy and struggle. Nature is everything that exists without promising us anything. (…) It should be considered a realm that carries both good and evil." Against this structure, humanity seeks permanence in nature, seeking meaning; this stems in part from its desire to perpetuate its existence. Art's being more reliable than nature isn't actually due to nature's unreliability; it relates to humanity's desire to secure its own existence. Art, then, is the embodiment of this desire; the enduring expression of humanity's faith not in nature, but in its own creativity. Perhaps precisely for this reason, in its search for a more reliable response from nature, art cannot be content with simply imitating nature. Indeed, it is not content; with the forms humans consciously create, it is not merely an imitation, but a creative act. Thus, the fleeting hope nature offers humanity has been multiplied, validated, and socialized. Berger, in other words, approaches the issue from a simple perspective. Simple yet sharp. He sees art as a consequence of the inevitable conflict between humanity and nature. If art had been merely an act of reflection from the outset, it would have been expected to be content with merely imitating nature. Berger's observation is significant in the way it clarifies this point. For if art is a consequence of the nature-human conflict, what else is it but the aesthetic expression of man's desire to make sense of this conflict and to reproduce nature for his own purposes?

BEYOND IMITATION

When we speak of imitation, it becomes inevitable to return to the beginning, to the origin. In Aristotle's Poetics, the word imitation is not merely a reflection; it is a form of understanding that addresses the essence of existence. Imitation is not simply copying nature as it is; it is reconstructing nature's possibilities in human thought. Mimesis, therefore, is less about nature itself than about the meaning humans ascribe to it. Doesn't the fact that art is "more reliable than nature" also refer to the historical depth of this attribution of meaning? Mimesis has been understood as the essence of art since Aristotle. But this essence, while some may render it stagnant, is not a static definition: On the contrary, it has always transformed throughout history. In fact, one could even say that transformation is a significant part of its essence. Emulating God's creativity—the ideal of perfectly reflecting nature in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance—is the power of man to create his own reality in the modern era. Therefore, art is not about copying nature, but about transcending it; it is about inscribing one's own image on what exists. It is a second form of nature, that is, as Lukács says, the “second nature” of man.

SECOND NATURE

This second nature is not an anomaly from the form of social consciousness. For in transforming nature, humans also transformed themselves. They created the first tool to transform nature. Berger argued that the first condition of existence is shelter from nature. In other words, the very condition of human existence was formed against nature. Engels wrote that human goals are possible by transforming nature. Marx made a similar point in Capital. By harnessing his natural powers, humans pitted themselves, a force of nature, against nature. Doesn't every work of art first confront nature? Doesn't humans, pursuing their own goals, create aesthetic forms with their memories and emotions to reproduce nature and give it its own meaning?

Necessity and Freedom

The form of human existence vis-à-vis nature intersects with art's reason for existence, and this intersection is reflected in the essence of art. For as humans establish their own conditions of existence against nature, they also frame the conditions for art's existence. Every tool, every thought, every shelter constructed against nature is an expression of humanity's desire to perpetuate its own existence. Art is the most conscious, most refined form of this desire. Humanity began by transforming nature by placing itself against it, but in this transformation, it also created itself. Every work of art, then, is an echo of humanity's contradiction with nature: on the one hand, a quest for freedom against nature's imperatives, and on the other, an effort to correctly understand those imperatives from within. Art, in the contradiction between humanity and nature, on the line between necessity and freedom, is the aesthetic form of humanity's quest for existence and its power of design; the compulsion of human consciousness, as if breaking down nature's boundaries and doors, is the admiration for nature's power, while simultaneously bearing witness to the resistance to that power. For every work of art is a second nature constructed by humans against nature; it is the memory of transforming itself while transforming nature. Perhaps this is the “more reliable response than nature” that Berger speaks of: It is the human being transforming his own existence, his own meaning, his own self into form.

Until man resolves his contradiction with nature, art will always respond to his search for a more reliable response from nature.