What Gardens Mean FROM THE PUBLISHER
Are gardens works of art? What is involved in creating a garden? How are gardens experienced by those who stroll through them?
In What Gardens Mean, Stephanie Ross draws on philosophy as well as the histories of art, gardens, culture, and ideas to explore the magical lure of gardens. Paying special attention to the amazing landscape gardens of eighteenth-century England, she situates gardening among the other fine arts, documenting the complex messages gardens can convey and tracing various connections between gardens and the art of painting.
What Gardens Mean offers a distinctive blend of historical and contemporary material, ranging from extensive accounts of famous eighteenth-century gardens to incisive connections with present-day philosophical debates. And while Ross examines aesthetic writings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including Joseph Addison's Spectator essays on the pleasures of imagination, the book's opening chapter surveys more recent theories about the nature and boundaries of art. She also considers gardens on their own terms, following changes in garden style, analyzing the phenomenal experience of viewing or strolling through a garden, and challenging the claim that the art of gardening is now a dead one.
Showing that an artistic lineage can be traced from gardens in the Age of Satire to current environmental installations, this book is a sophisticated account of the myriad pleasures that gardens offer and a testimony to their enduring sensory and cognitive appeal. Beautifully illustrated and elegantly written, What Gardens Mean will delight all those interested in the history of gardens and the aesthetic and philosophical issues that they invite.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Ross (philosophy, Univ. of Missouri, St. Louis) asks whether a garden can be a work of art. Beginning by surveying recent theories about the nature and boundaries of art, she then devotes a chapter to the history and sources of 18th-century English landscape gardens, questioning whether they can be considered works of art. She investigates why gardening did not develop the same organizational structure as other arts, resulting in royal academies such as those formed in France and England for the visual arts. Ross writes in an academic style that makes her book read like a doctoral dissertation, with lists of points to be proven or disputed and extensive definitions of terms. Except in her innovative last chapter, in which she posits that gardens transmuted into 20th-century earthworks and environmental art, Ross limits her discussions to large landscape gardens. Within this strict limitation, her observations are insightful, especially about English landscape gardens, but this book is more a study of aesthetics than of gardens. For academic libraries only.Daniel Starr, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Booknews
Ross (philosophy, U. of Missouri-St. Louis) evaluates our attraction to gardens, situating them among the other fine arts, particularly painting, and describing the complex meanings that gardens can convey, paying special attention to the astonishing landscape gardens of 18th-century England. Contains b&w photos, with a few color plates. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
Mara Miller
A fascinating and original study of the history of gardens, and the aesthetic and philosophical issues they raise. With sound scholarship Stephanie Ross beautifully integrates garden and art history, philosophy, psychology, and literature. -- Mara Miller
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
A wonderful book. What Gardens Mean is a fascinating and original study of the history of gardens, and the aesthetic and philosophical issues they raise. — Mara Miller
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