A Walk in the Park: Kinesthesia in the Arts of Landscape is a deep, thoroughly detailed philosophical discussion of the theory of perception in landscape art and in the other fine arts. Its 325 pages consist of six parts comprising 29 chapters with 38 figures that illustrate the philosophical discussion. The author, Susan Pashman grew up in New York City and positions herself a philosopher with a diverse background in law, having worked as an attorney on Wall Street before studying landscape design in London and earning a PhD from Stony Brook University. She has taught Landscape Aesthetics at Harvard University and the Boston Architectural College and is the author of books and articles based on several philosophical realms (https://susan-pashman.com/). The writing style is both persuasive and academic, supported by the text’s theoretical vocabulary, philosophical underpinnings, and ample use of sources.
The book presents a case for including landscape art among the fine arts—alongside sculpture, architecture, painting, music, and dance—with kinesthesia, the whole‐body perception of movement, having a central role in the perception of feeling and emotion in the arts and with landscape engaging a combination of philosophical, physical, and perceptual theories. After setting the stage with a thorough background review, the author presents a new theoretical definition of landscape art, building on the role of kinesthesia in the perception of the fine arts and bringing landscape art into that context. The book presents its case in six parts, the first four of which present the background theoretical foundation and the final two of which develop a new theoretical vision.
For some, the topic of kinesthesia in art and landscape appreciation is theoretically fascinating. A Walk in the Park is unique in affording leadership in the theoretical discussion. A scholarly search of the literature using the keywords “landscapes,” “senses and sensation,” and “muscular sense,” provided by the publisher’s page in the book, returned only one academic journal article (Veder, 2013). Adding the key phrase “kinesthesia in art appreciation” resulted in four more articles (Kupfer, 2003; Sheets‐Johnstone, 2022, 2012; Vukadinovic & Markovic, 2022). The articles address aspects of issues around kinesthesia in the appreciation of art and designed landscapes but do not cover these issues as completely and wholistically as does A Walk in the Park. The literature review and this reviewer’s experience have turned up no books of similar content.
The Introduction starts with the author’s experience growing up in New York City and making numerous trips and strolls through Central Park. She describes the park as a masterpiece of art that is designed to be experienced through movement with the designer, Olmsted, as the master choreographer. In the discussion, she introduces fine art, nature as art, and landscape’s medium as immersive movement in kinesthesia. Recent advances in neuroscience have revealed neural receptors in muscles and connections to mirror neurons that create a whole‐body perceptive experience in landscape art and other fine arts.
Part 1, “The Double Problem of Landscape,” is composed of five chapters that philosophically explore the current definition and practices in landscape art (design). From the Western, ocularcentric perspective, vision is the chief source of knowledge and aesthetic appreciation. This ocularcentrism neglects the three‐dimensional medium of landscape and fails to capture the complete aesthetic experience created by movement.
The book’s critique of design limitations primarily focuses on plan views and draws on examples from the French and English styles as well as more recent work by Olmsted and James Corner, who regularly practiced fine‐tuning landscape design on site. Plan views, while good construction communication tools, are detached and limited in their ability to communicate the experience of being in the spaces the plans represent. Pashman discusses theories of landscape perception and the aesthetics of prospect and refuge along with ideas around interested and disinterested observation of art and the experience of locomotion and the sensation of bodily movement through the landscape.
The last chapter of part 1 presents theories of engaged aesthetics and the need for participatory engagement in landscape and art. It finishes with discussions of environmental aesthetics, nature as art, and the need for participatory art appreciation and engaged aesthetics. Then it discusses the Chinese experiential approach to landscape arrangement as quietly contemplative and the feminist approach to landscape as a full‐body, immersive experience.
In the five chapters of part 2, “Kinesthesia: The Key to Understanding Landscape’s Medium,” the foundational theories of kinesthesia as the sixth sense are presented. Landscape’s expressive medium is the three‐dimensional structure and form of the natural environment. Landscape perception suggested by environmental aesthetics is experienced by whole‐body movement through a volume of space, whether natural or designed. Perception through movement is complex, involving sensory receptors in muscles and throughout the physical regions of the body that are activated by movements such as flexing and stretching. This whole‐body perception of movement, and our memory of movement through differing environments, this kinesthesia as a sixth sense, is central to our perception of the environment and our sense of depth when we experience landscape as an art form.
Part 3, “From Motion to Emotion,” has four chapters that discuss current neurological theory of body movement. The perception of body movement and position relies on receptors in muscles, tendons, and joints. Yet, emotions can influence how this sensory feedback is processed. Early philosophical distrust of emotions is examined along with more recent philosophical connections with neuroscience leading to an evidenced empirical link to kinesthesia. Research on pure visual stimulation focuses on findings of retinal stimulation causing tensions and their electrical signals to the brain. Research on mirror neurons and the kinesthetic correlation of movement and muscle tension derived from posture and gestural movements shows how these factors contribute to emotional feelings. By choreographing the movement and posture of the walker through the landscape, the landscape artist can create a directed experience as a work of art.
Part 4, “Kinesthesia Lies at the Core of Artistic Expression,” presents the current state of theory in artistic expression that addresses the questions of form, beauty, and expression of feeling. Four established philosophical theories of artistic expression are examined, each addressing the question of why different forms and colors elicit different feelings. The theory of “Forms of Feelings,” articulated shortly after World War II, focused on looking at art as not directly representational but based on properties of form and structure. “Sympathetic Modeling” theory, from the 19th century, proposed responses to architecture that were not primarily ocular but rather rooted in the body and memories of muscle tensions that were created in the perceptual experience. “Gestalt Aesthetics” is presented as having its roots in visual perception and electrical fields sent to the brain by the visual cortex and relating to similar stimuli in the muscles through bodily tension. The fourth theoretical approach is “Naturalistic Aesthetics,” where, simply put, art expresses feelings to the viewer by applying elements that resonate by drawing from memories of experienced feelings in the mind and body. When kinesthesia becomes central to the concept of landscape perception, a new way of thinking about landscape as art opens up and presents the need to consider a new empirical theory of artistic expression, “Kinesthetic Aesthetics.”
Part 5, “Landscape as Art,” is divided into three chapters discussing expressivity in the landscape and considerations of landscapes as fine art. The previous sections examined movement and kinesthesia as sources of felt emotion. Here a working definition posits that landscape art “shapes the experience of moving through immersive volume as a structured sequence of both kinesthetic and visual perceptions to produce a continuum of specific feeling.” The section illustrates how the landscape is experienced kinesthetically to produce emotional feeling and presents reasons for and against landscape art’s inclusion among the fine arts.
Part 6, “Kinesthesia Is the Basis of All Artistic Expression,” explores each of the fine arts of sculpture, architecture, painting, music, dance, and cinema in ten chapters. Discussion of each of the arts is presented to demonstrate that each art form’s expression relies on kinesthesia at the source of its felt emotional expression. Through this summary exploration, movement is demonstrated to be at the foundation of expression in all the fine arts. The chapters of part 6 compare each of the fine arts with landscape art and finish with a specific discussion of landscape as fine art.
Sculpture, especially when site specific, is an immersive experience that is often a part of the landscape. While a part of the experience is visual, the viewer also has kinesthetic experiences of muscle tension while viewing different parts of the sculpture and while walking around it. This kinesthetic experience can involve both sensations and mirroring expressions from the sculpture.
Architecture as art can be much like sculpture, but it bears the burden of function. It can also resemble landscape as immersive and three‐dimensional, particularly in interior spaces during movement through a building. Both architecture and landscape can produce a kinesthetic response by directing the body in a choreography of movement.
Painting elicits retinal image tensions. Depth perception in painting reflects the experience of distance and memory of motor perceptions of movement. Many other feelings from painting are derived from memories of previous kinesthetic experiences.
In music, we hear notes and somehow feel movement through their combination into melody. It is experienced not in part but as a whole, leading to sympathetic muscle modeling and tensions created by the composition. Kinesthesia is felt through the movement of the composition through time similar to the movement through landscape.
Dance is felt differently by the spectator and the dancer. For the spectator, dance is often felt as a whole through neural mirroring of the choreography. Dance for the dancer is more directly related to muscular and bodily movements and the sensations they bring. Symbolic movement creates a feeling in the dancer that is mirrored by the spectator. Lawrence Halprin wrote about the connection between dance for the dancer and movement through a landscape. Dance, like landscape and music, is also perceived kinesthetically as a whole event composed of a series of movements.
Cinema has all the elements of landscape, dance, and movement. To these is the added dimension of camera movement while filming. The result is an intensified kinesthetic feeling of mirroring by the audience.
In landscape art, the artist can immediately shape perception by directing the walker’s movement to a whole‐body kinesthetic landscape experience. Landscape is a “Gesamtkunstwerk” combining the fine arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture into an experience of dance by directing the participants’ movement and therefore muscular movements into a kinesthesia aesthetic. Like a composer, the landscape artist uses landscape paths, views, and elements to kinesthetically choreograph the perception of the composition, the work of landscape art.
A candid review of a book for a journal dedicated to the discipline and practice of landscape architecture would be remiss if it did not point out weaknesses along with the study’s strengths. In the book’s introduction, the name of the renowned creator of New York’s Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted, is cited as “William Law Olmsted” and referred to as a “landscape designer” rather than a “landscape architect,” even though he is credited with naming the profession (Newton, 1971). This was likely a simple editorial oversight. Another issue is that the author mostly calls Olmsted and other prominent contemporary landscape architects landscape artists. The professional world of landscape architecture might take issue with this and prefer that their professional title of “landscape architect” be used.
A Walk in the Park is an engaging, deeply philosophical, detailed, and quite thorough work on the theory of landscape aesthetics and the fine arts connecting perception to whole‐body movement in kinesthesia. It builds a strong case for kinesthesia’s role in the perception of aesthetics and for landscape art’s inclusion within the fine arts. This short review can only imperfectly begin to address the tremendous scope of philosophical theory presented in the book. While some may find it difficult to digest the detail and depth of its theoretical analysis, for those interested in this line of inquiry, the book is enjoyable, relevant, and provocative. Having some background in perception, health, and active living as applied to landscape architecture, I found the theories well presented and thoroughly supported.
The book should make a substantial contribution to the philosophy and theory of both the discipline and profession of landscape architecture, but it is likely to prove more relevant to theoretical academic discussions of landscape architecture and art. A substantial barrier to its adoption could be its cost, which may be found limiting even to graduate students in many of our Tier 1 academic institutions. With that barrier set aside, it has the potential to find a place as a central text in advancing the theoretical role of landscape architecture in the design of the built environment and its place among the fine arts.
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