| Abstract: | The influential evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), well‐known as a highly disputatious defender of Darwin's work, sought to unite science, philosophy, ethics and art in an all‐embracing world view that he called ?monism“. In this essay his ideas and reflections on aesthetics in nature and their application are reviewed. According to Haeckel, art should be based on motifs that are to be found in the diversity of life forms, which represent, in his opinion, the highest imagineable specification in aesthetics. Beauty in nature should open men's way to nature, and man must not place himself in opposition to nature. Haeckel himself, who was also a gifted artist, helped find the way to such an attitude by publishing thousands of drawings of organisms, mostly microscopically small marine species. His illustrations made organismic structures accessible that a broader public was previously almost unaware of. With these representations he was most influential in almost all areas of art around the turn of the century, including architecture, interior design, painting, glass art and furniture design. |
