ABSTRACT
Recognizing that the arts are a salient part of every culture may lead us to wonder about their features and may make us curious about how and why the arts of other cultures differ from what we find more familiar. Cultural factors influence how we enter into association with art objects. Our experience is every bit as much an outcome of our somatic involvement when we engage in an aesthetic exchange. At the same time as different cultural traditions in the arts have become increasingly familiar, ethnic tradition has emerged as a powerful force in cultural identity. The influence of culture on art, indeed the formative power of culture, is even truer of environment. The environmental implications of culture are embedded in the very word, for the term 'culture' derives from 'agriculture'. An environmental aesthetic thus becomes a cultural aesthetic, an analogue of the cultural landscape of which anthropologists and geographers speak.
