‘Producing like a plant’: Artistic simplicity and environmental understanding

This article examines how artistic simplicity can provide environmental understanding. Focusing on aesthetic distillation , a basic kind of simplification in representational and non-representational art that involves isolating and amplifying the core aesthetic features of a source of inspiration, I argue that artistic simplicity can embody an understanding of the sort of organic fertility or vitality in nature that fascinates artists ranging from Jean Arp to Andy Goldsworthy. Historically, the use of simple geometric or biomorphic forms in abstract art has often been linked to an ideal of participating in natural processes, versus depicting them. In this light, I argue that aesthetic distillation offers understanding of organic fertility by exemplifying it – or, as Arp says, ‘producing like a plant’. This suggests a distinctive kind of naturalism: artists like Arp and Goldsworthy use aesthetic distillation to reveal how artistic creativity and aesthetic impact are continuous with nonhuman environmental processes, self-referentially displaying the naturalness of their work. Finally, I extend this framework to better account for abiotic nature, concluding that aesthetic distillation can equally be used to exemplify processes of concentration and amplification in the inorganic environment. This naturalistic understanding, embodied in artistic simplicity, counteracts human exceptionalism and disregard for nonliving nature.