What makes something beautiful?
Horribly broad question—I know. Let me give you some examples:
(1)I see a beautiful person and become attracted to them.
(2)I see a beautiful architectural structure and praise its form.
(3)I see a beautiful sky and revel in its hues and clouds.
(4)I see a beautiful flower and am entranced by its colors and shape.
These are basic examples, though they get the meaning across. I understand this could be considered somewhat of a psychology-field related question, and I'm not against that, but I'd still like opinions/thoughts on this. Feel free to answer from one of the four examples listed, or all, or add some.
(1)I see a beautiful person and become attracted to them.
(2)I see a beautiful architectural structure and praise its form.
(3)I see a beautiful sky and revel in its hues and clouds.
(4)I see a beautiful flower and am entranced by its colors and shape.
These are basic examples, though they get the meaning across. I understand this could be considered somewhat of a psychology-field related question, and I'm not against that, but I'd still like opinions/thoughts on this. Feel free to answer from one of the four examples listed, or all, or add some.
Comments (99)
Is this beautiful?
Or this?
Or this? (Zdzis?aw Beksi?ski)
Or this? (Nicolas Roerich)
Or this? (Piet Mondrian)
Beauty is a representation that enables the experience of pleasure and thus happiness; when many people find the same thing 'beautiful' one wonders whether conforming with and ultimately being approved by others itself is the source of this pleasure and happiness rather than the experience itself. It is fundamentally subjective, but the Form of Beauty itself.
I love flowers. In particular pink flowers. The Lily of the Valley is intoxicatingly beautiful because it has an amazing scent, but it can be highly poisonous unless planted under the right conditions and even rarely so, its petals can become pink as though when controlled, the Lily can transform from a pure and dangerously untouchable wild flower to a symbol of something beautifully gentle and poetic.
Is beauty the actual state of nature, or is it the symbol that represents the state of nature? Is it finding a woman sexually attractive that makes her beautiful, or is it the representation of who that woman is that you find attractive?
I don't think beauty is equivalent to loveliness, the ugly can be beautiful, take a look at some Lucien Freud's portraits. Beauty's power is more like an emotive/cognitive explosion, something that stops us in our tracks, transfixes us and can give us a new way of experiencing reality.
(Y) A type of awe and admiration that pulls us into a different but better or more improved direction.
Alberti explained the transcendent quality of beauty as it relates to painting composition and musical composition in terms of harmonic proportion.
"I am every day more and more convinced of the truth of Pythagoras's saying that Nature is sure to act consistently, and with a constant Analogy in all her operations: From whence I conclude, that the same Numbers, by means of which the agreement of sounds affects our ears with delight, are the very same which please our eyes and mind. We shall therefore borrow all our rules for the finishing of our proportions from the musicians"
Leon Battista Alberti, The Ten Books of Architecture, Book IX, Chapter V
Harmonic proportion
I like Lucien Freud's technique, but this particular composition has little regard for the harmonic divisions (intersections) in the armature of the rectangle (diagonal lines drawn between rectangle corners and opposite side midpoints) or in the rectangle roots (lines drawn from rectangle corners perpendicular to the two main rectangle diagonals).
Key image elements should be located at, or be aligned with, the harmonic divisions.
His disregard for good composition could very likely be intentional in this case (e.g., conveying an unsettling quality about the subject). It would be interesting to examine his other portraits in this regard.
I think many of his works are like the portrait I posted, he has no regard for harmonic proportion, I think his works are an overt refutation of the harmony proportion thesis of beauty.
He is a hyperrealist who is able, by means of his technique, to convey an emotive sense into his works that I think is beautiful. His brush work, the way he forms figure using light, shadow and color conveys a sense of emotion and character that's almost erotic and perhaps impossible to achieve in any other medium such as photography or cinema, maybe in sculpture.
I agree that his technique and use of colour are superb, but I couldn't look at this particular work for very long because of its dissonant composition.
Whenever I hear or see something or someone that is "beautiful", there are always other aspects of the object or person that come into play. For instance, a person who is "beautiful" might also be very sexual in ways which, taken alone or applied to someone else, would obscure physical beauty. Sexual appeal sometimes is not beautiful, it's on an altogether different wavelength.
A beautiful building needs to also be visually interesting. If it isn't interesting (in it's visual form) it probably won't be beautiful. The trouble with some modern, international style office buildings isn't that their forms, claddings, and settings are not attractive, they are just not very interesting. They are too smooth, too regular, too similar to other buildings of the same style.
Take these four buildings: Inland Steel in Chicago, Prudential in Boston, and the Seagrams and Lever buildings in New York -- all outstanding examples of their style:
Compare the Seagrams Building and Lever Building (New York). Both are definitely attractive (they were fairly early examples of their style), they are faithful to the urban, international style (maximization of usable space, minimal decoration, regularity of design, and so on. I like both of these.
Take the Prudential building in Boston. Privileged to stand alone out on a previously industrial/railroad site between Boylston and Huntingdon Avenues in the back bay, it had no visual or social competition for two or three decades. It's just a concrete box, and up close it is decidedly not beautiful--it's attractive only at a distance. It is probably even less lovely now, but I used to like the building, because I liked the area.
The Inland Steel Building in Chicago features very shiny stainless vertical elements and green-tinted glass. It's a striking building, day or night. I find it very interesting, but it's effect is corporate-cold, whether seen in January or July.
Is the Eiffel Tower beautiful? Billions have warm feelings toward it because it represents Paris, and it curves upward, rather than rises like a spike. It's structurally complex (ornate?). I haven't seen it first hand.
The thing is, whether it's music or buildings or poetry or people, is "beauty" one aspect of the whole, or is a summation of the whole? There are many pieces of music I love, but "beauty" isn't first in line. Sometimes it is power, or intricacy, or inspiration (as in, inspired instrumentation and melody, say). The Choral finish of Beethoven's 9th is beautiful, but as a summation of many aspects--melody, harmony, massing of voices, instrumentation, rhythm, text, etc.
It's trivially obvious that the same sensory stimuli can have very different effects in different people.
If you're willing to be systematically analytic enough about it you can peg a number of common features that have the right effect for you, but it's important to remember that those features will not necessarily be generalizable for anyone else re beauty reactions. For example, I know in some detail just what sorts of features tend to work with me for music (I probably know that in the most detail, as I have a professional necessity for knowing this), for visual art, for visual design and architecture, for fictions, for women's faces and bodies, for personalities, for landscapes, etc. But what triggers the "beautiful" reaction for me might not be at all similar to what triggers it for someone else. In fact, sometimes it's diametrically opposite particular other persons' triggers. Historical environmental influences are surely part of it, too. All of this turns out to basically be doing a sort of statistical analysis/survey for particular individuals.
Yeah, definitely boxy architecture is not at all beautiful to me. Although a skyline composed of primarily boxy architecture can be--it depends on the exact relations + the angle I'm viewing it from.
Well said.
"Cavatina" is a 1970 classical guitar piece by British composer Stanley Myers written for the film The Walking Stick (1970). Widely popularised as the theme from The Deer Hunter some eight years later.
The piece had been recorded by classical guitarist John Williams, long before the film that made it famous. It had originally been written for piano but at Williams' invitation, Myers re-wrote it for guitar and expanded it. After this transformation, it was first used for the film The Walking Stick (1970). In 1973, Cleo Laine wrote lyrics and recorded the song as "He Was Beautiful", accompanied by Williams.
It has been very popular (sometimes you can underestimate people's taste).
Following the release of The Deer Hunter in 1978, Williams' instrumental version of "Cavatina" became a UK Top 20 hit. Two other versions also made the Top 20 in the same year: another instrumental recording by The Shadows, with an electric guitar played by Hank Marvin, released on their album String of Hits with the name "Theme from The Deer Hunter" (number 9 in the UK singles charts and number 1 in The Netherlands); and a vocal version (using Cleo Laine's lyrics) by Iris Williams. (This is all Wikipedia; I didn't know all this.)
1)Biological hardwiring to pick up signs of good health.
2) In awe of size and context - mediated by what one perceives others to think.
3) Only if you are in a good mood already!
4) In awe of "natural wonder"
I've been to the to of the Prudential Sky Bar to watch the lights go on over the city at dusk, fantastic views.
Great question BC, but you have not mentioned the interior space (or the between spaces, like the ice rink at Rockefeller Center ) of these buildings. The codes, the cost, and the interior requirements in sum the utility of the structure as a whole must be taken into account otherwise...Maybe you are looking for beauty in all the wrong places [to borrow a line]?
Interesting, I think that people generally use the term "beautiful" to describe something that they happen to like, but that they wouldn't stand behind that statement if they where asked if they really believed that the object (or whatever) had beauty.
Moreover, I would say that beauty is a quality that some things, or situations, performances etc., have that we can recognize through a feeling within us. Immanuel Kant's concept of beauty is an interesting idea that I like. However, I don't agree with him when he says that everyone equally able to see beauty in the same objects. I rather believe that the experience of beauty is the same, but that a certain thing that some people find beautiful won't have the capacity to arouse that same feeling in everyone. I would argue that cultural differences, personal taste and so on will stand in the way in a much more profound way than Kant said it does.
Also, I think that beauty comes in levels and things are not beautiful or not, they are more or less beautiful depending on how strong feeling they provoke in us.
There are films that I have seen that have dreadful content but are terrific films. The Godfather, for instance, is about criminals, and their criminality isn't hidden. But the film is "beautifully acted and filmed". Films that endure tend to have that quality -- excellence in production and acting, whatever the content is. Opera often lavishes beauty on tragic scenes, where Mimi dies in La Boheme, or where Madam Butterfly longs for the American navy officer who will (we know) cast her aside (and does).
Un bel di vedremo:
An "ugly film" usually has "ugly" content -- scenes that are difficult to watch -- without top notch quality in acting in and production.
Nature (and our interpretation of it) often provides beauty that we can feel. Hardwood forests turned red and yellow in the fall are beautiful, whether one is walking in them or looking at them from a distance. A swamp is just as natural, but often involves scenes (dead trees from being smothered in water) which we don't like looking at. Are any of us charmed by stagnant sloughs?
I'm sure that each slough would present a narrative deemed to be "beautiful" by those who study them.I don't think Nature does beauty - it is only us.
I think beauty is something that's expressed in any one of those things you've observed in a piece of music: "power, intricacy, inspiration". Those are all qualities that engender a sense of beauty in the experience. As a musician, I'm a sucker for "pretty" harmonies and melodies as much as the next guy (well...), but prettiness isn't beauty. It can be an aspect of it; it elicits a certain emotion in us. I personally think beauty is an expression of the divine, so there's a "terrible" quality to beauty as well. "Holiness" means "set apart"; the offering that's set apart for the god; the god is set apart in the shrine. Holy originally signified the divine and daemonic at the same time, and I think beauty is an expression of that totality of holiness. I realize I'm probably in a minority (of 1) here, but think about those different aspects: power, intricacy, inspiration. There's a "holiness" to those aspects.
I'm working on learning this piece right now. I was only classically trained through part of high school, so it's totally kicking my ass. Power? Yes. Intricacy? God, yes. Inspiration? Yes. Beauty? All of the aspects of this piece make it beautiful.
Eh? Is this is a response to my post? Click the link, it's a recording of the piece, including a score. Feel free to follow along if you can, or not.
Which one? (Use the "reply" button so people know you responded to them).
errmm which Debussy piece?Please
orgive my memory for names but I'm thinking of the Fawn Prelude - something impressionistic anyhow.
Are you familiar with the range of his music? Do you consider this piece beautiful in the same way as Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun?
Got any more links plz?:)
Here's a nice logical progression from what I've posted so far:
Mid-late Symbolism:
Early Modernism:
Minimalism:
Post-Minimalism:
If you can't make it through all of it, skip ahead to the last piece (John Adams) for some truly wigged out piano music (four hands).
Is pleasant synonymous with beautiful? Maybe Opeth is an extreme example. But take this song instead (make it at least 3 mins in to see what I mean. But you really need to hear the whole track to get the context):
Another aspect of apprehending beauty is being willing to experience things outside of your comfort zone or preference for genre. You don't have to "like" Opeth or the progressive death metal genre, but is it possible for this music to have beauty in it?
If it profoundly disturbs?
Can you think of no example of any artwork that is both disturbing and beautiful? "Disturbing" is closer to an emotion anyway. The proper dichotomy would be more like "beauty and ugliness". I think they can exist together; something can have both qualities.
Now, in regards to an earlier comment you made, to me pleasant ? beautiful. However, I feel that word beautiful does include a tangible slice of pleasantness, it encapsulates it in a way, but supersedes it most definitely.
Did you get past the 1 minute mark in "Deliverance"? The point I was trying to make with that song is that "ugliness" (the first minute) can exist alongside beauty (the next minute). But I digress, I'm not trying to get you to like Opeth. I don't really listen to them much anymore, but I thought they would be a good talking point in this discussion.
Quoting River
So where exactly are we drawing the line of what makes something beautiful, then? As I showed with Preludes Book II, Debussy evolved tremendously not only harmonically, but structurally. What about Book II still counts as beautiful? Is Shoenburg beautiful?
Quoting River
No, where should I start?
Quoting River
I am, but I was never a true metal head. Just had a slight metal phase. Opeth has always stuck with me.
Quoting River
I guess I agree with this if we use a different word than "pleasant"; the connotation there to me is more sensual; a pleasant touch on the arm, a pleasant aroma of fine wine, a pleasant afternoon with Mozart playing in the background. The positive association we have with beauty is more akin to "right feeling", or a form of "pleasure" that is very pointed and specific. It connects to other aspects of the human experience that come up in things like philosophical investigation, religious experience, human intimacy of all kinds. So it's a specific sort of positive association or experience.
You seem to have an ear for the whole tone scale and cluster chords!
The atomic/nuclear mushroom cloud.
That's not art, unless you're of the "everything is art" persuasion. But assuming you didn't mean that, so you're saying the use of the bomb is horrible, but the visual is beautiful? Doesn't the visual become associated with the horror of the act, though? I don't find the mushroom cloud particularly beautiful.
Maybe it is ....
I think there's a moral aspect of beauty, what I called "right feeling" earlier. I don't know how exactly to describe it, but predictability I see as something morally neutral; the predictability of an atomic bomb, for instance is a neutral aspect to a tool that has wreaked mass murder on populations (something morally abhorrent). Beauty, on the other hand, is not morally neutral. If you find mass murder beautiful, for instance, then you have a twisted perspective on what's beautiful. The predictability of using a bomb for mass murder is just a neutral function of the tool, the use of which is decidedly not beautiful in any way. If, on the other hand, you're referring to something like scientific "elegance", I agree that it has it's own beauty to it; but the beauty of scientific elegance is more akin to a mystical or religious beauty; seeing scientific principles flawlessly work together like cogs in a machine is not unlike seeing Brahman in everything, for instance, or Christ being "all and in all". So, in my view, those are all aspects of beauty. Predictability seems different.
It's been very rewarding.
It is true that "ugly" content can make a beautiful movie. What you say is that beauty is often in high quality movies, but hte question is is it the quality that makes them beautiful? There are plenty of high quality films that I wouldn't call beautiful, Fight Club for instance. Therefore, I don't think that quality is what makes them beautiful, rather quality is necessary to enable beauty to be present.
Most of us probably agree that we can see beauty in a landscape or a flower. Is it then the same type of beauty as in The Godfather? The question then becomes, what does the flower share with the film? Again, Kant does provide a solution when he says that beauty is the feeling we experience when we experience something and reason and imagination plays freely within us.
Both have a surface, an aesthetic, and both are made: by nature, by man (as if man is different, unnatural, mediated versus immediate, as if his cognition/mediation raises him above nature). Man learns from nature and tries to replicate the beauty he sees in it, without the beauty man finds in nature beauty itself is suspect (Hegel did not get this). Nature is Kant's ideal of purposeless purpose, it is unconsciously eloquent, it says more than it is.
What I meant was, what is it in the flower and in the film that makes them both beautiful? I like your point because it shows how we can look at the two in similar ways (in some way) but the fact that they both have a surface and so on does not make them beautiful. The way that they both arouse the same feeling within us might be what makes them beautiful.
According to Kant, as I understand it, the purpuseless purpose lies within the notion of beauty. When we look at something beautiful we also feel that the object has a purpose, eaven though we know that there is none. It is the same as with the categorical imperative, we know thorugh our rationality that something is "the right thing to do" since it is "the right thing to do", we don't need a because that relates to some further reason.
The beauty of the film or the flower is in its aesthetic, its surface. This is what strikes us, what draws us to the flower, or to the film. So yes, but without that surface there would/could be no discussion of beauty.
So then the question becomes what draws us to them. If all objects have matter & form, then there must be something in the composition of beautiful objects that draws us to them, that enables them to be more than they are as objects.
I think the Beautiful thrust itself at us, it thrust itself into the ways we understand our self (our taste) the many narratives which we tell our self. The relationship between matter and form becomes intense in the Beautiful, which opens up the possibility of new narratives, new ways of experiencing things.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/79034
I would almost say the opposite: I've aways felt, through experience, that beauty has a hidden quality; beauty is everywhere, but most of us don't have the right eyes to see it. Beauty is like light glancing off things; it's possible to perceive shades of it in nearly everything, and that's just the thing: we can't even take all of it in. If I take myself as an example, I'm usually too busy being annoyed, depressed or distracted to even see a hint of the beauty that's around. I tend to just get concentrated doses of it when I play or write music, at best.
You are a musician, what you hear is the same as what I hear, but perhaps because of your training, experience, and practice you hear more than what I can hear, what you find beautiful in the music you find beautiful is more than my unsophisticated taste. That what is hidden from me is not hidden from you the sounds that entrance you may not affect me.
I'm not talking specifically about music, though. And I'm saying I'm as blind to the beauty in the world as anyone else, just that I've had moments where I realize how much of it I don't see, which lead me to that thought about it's hiddenness.
But when I first saw Michelangelo[s Pieta, Picasso's Guernica , Van Goth's Starry Night or read Huckleberry Finn, For Whom the Bells Tolls...I was astonished by their beauty, drawn into them, they intruded themselves on me, and how I experienced them change me.
You're right, I agree. I've had those experiences too. Probably just my contrarian nature rearing it's head. But I think both experiences of beauty are possible; intrusive beauty and hidden beauty; exoteric and esoteric.
Yes, but I think what we find, what is hidden is only available to us based on our understanding of the narratives surrounding what we experience. You might find 12 tone beautiful because it appeals to some theoretical conceptualization that you understand and thereby can find beautiful, but I have a hard time with it.
(Y) thank you!
I see what you mean here (12 tone being a hidden form of beauty? Not readily apparent?) But I'm thinking in much simpler terms, actually. It has more to do with your state of mind than anything else. I live in a large city; there's countless beautiful, fleeting human interactions to witness as you walk down the street, but I tend to just be annoyed by the crowd.
I'm not into 12 tone music by the way. I am into some weirder harmonies, and I love noise, distortion, and weird sounds in music. I think that's more of an acquired taste than a hidden form of beauty.
I don't know if I'd agree with that . . . but just because the stuff that other folks are calling "ugly" I'm not going to think is ugly if the work overall is beautiful in my view. It's kind of like I don't agree with the "so bad it's good" meme re films. I feel those films are just good, not bad.
That's way off re my reactions. I don't think that anything has a purpose--at least not an objective purpose. Purposes are simply a way that some people think about some things. Paintings, pieces of music, landscapes, etc. are not people thinking about something.
?? I don't think about morality at all in connection with beauty.
?? I do.
I agree, the ugliness can contribute to what makes a piece beautiful. They aren't necessarily so binary.
Okay, so you're just telling us something about yourself and not beauty in general then?
That's interesting for what it is, but it's difficult for me to even imagine associating morality with beauty.
But I'm saying it wouldn't be ugly to me in that context.
No, you were doing that with your response to my comment on morality and beauty. That comment was in the context of a larger paragraph where I explained a little bit of my thoughts on beauty/morality.
Quoting Terrapin Station
So if "the work overall is beautiful in [your] view", then the ugliness isn't ugly to you? Or what does "overall" indicate in that sentence?
Whether something is ugly or beautiful or whatever is subjective. I'm saying that when I think something is beautiful, I don't think that parts of it are ugly.
I suppose it wouldn't be impossible for me to think about something, "This would be beautiful if it weren't for such and such part (which I think is ugly)," but then I'm mentally separating that part from the beautiful part.
So you don't think an ugly aspect can contribute to something's beauty? Think about Guernica.
Guernica isn't one of my favorite Picasso paintings, but this is, for example:
The point is that there's nothing at all ugly about that painting to me. Maybe to other people, yes, but not to me.
There's nothing at all ugly about Guernica to me, either. But it's just not a favorite, and it's not really beautiful in my opinion, either.
My opinion on beauty is; (among other things already mentioned skimming through the replies) lack of understanding.
For example, growing up I listened to all kinds of music, jazz was my favourite. A younger version of myself found those chords and melodies and time signatures a thing of beauty. I couldn't fathom how playing a handful notes at specific times evoked an emotion in me, be it happy or sad or excited or relaxed. Now that I've spent years practising the piano, taken lessons, studied music in college, I understand how to make those sounds on my own. And although I may take myself by surprise sometimes and play something I think sounds beautiful, for the most part I am acutely aware of what i'm doing, and most of the beauty is in the ear of the listener rather than the person making the noise.
That's exactly why I don't study sunsets, I think I'd rather not know and just look at it instead.
So do you think an ugly aspect of a piece can contribute to it's beauty or no?
To me, no.
I don't know why it's so difficult to communicate this. For me, "ugly" and "beautiful" are opposites.
Like this!:
Quoting Terrapin Station
But I disagree, there's certainly a yin/yang relationship between them, but that's exactly it: they require each other. So saying "there's nothing at all ugly" about a painting you like doesn't resonate with me. Pure beauty is like getting sick on sweets.
What do you find ugly about Ravel's Sonatine No. 3, for example?
The chord structure from 1:29 to 1:54 in that video I posted has some "ugly" elements, but it's beautiful at the same time. Ugly isn't really the best word to be honest. But again, I don't see beauty and ugliness as binary categories. There's beauty and ugliness in those chords. That piece isn't particularly ugly though. The more I say that word the more I realize I don't actually think about ugliness in art, it's just the way the word has come up in this discussion. I'm arguing that there's a spectrum to beauty...it's hard to describe; language starts to not work with this topic. Ugliness and beauty aren't binary to me, that's the best I can do.
Maybe it's more that things can be beautiful in different ways or for different reasons. For example, with musical harmony, there's beautiful consonance and beautiful dissonance.
Sure, I think we're just thinking of it from opposite spectrums. To me there's a continuum of beauty; consonance and dissonance for instance. Beauty can exist anywhere on the spectrum, so beauty by default contains all those elements. Maybe we're saying the same thing, I don't know.
I don't think that you can be better at finding beauty through training. What you are talking about is rather appreciation for the work behind the piece, and that derives from a deep knowledge of music. I believe that beauty is something else, a more subtle quality that is there and doesn't depend on complexity. Beauty does not come with taste, and you cannot train yourself to find it, mabye to create it, but not find it. Moreover I think beauty is often confused with other feelings, for instance pleasentness or attraction.
Quoting Noble Dust
I agree, sometimes you have to focus and really take things in in order to find beauty. But I dont think you have to think about the object you focus on using words, rather just taking it in and letting it affect you.
Would beauty exist without us humans, or is it through our perception that things become beautiful?
Okay, I was a bit sloppy in my writing. What I meant was that almost always there is a reason for us liking it. For instance, we find other people sexually attractive BECAUSE our biology tells us to. We enjoy a fast car BECAUSE it gives us a thrill when we go at high speeds. With beauty, we can't (and this is quite Kantanian) say why something is beautiful, it simply is.
I'm not sure whether beauty is made. It seems fairly clear, however, that beauty is found under various or varying conditions. Sometimes regularly, such as when there is symmetry, but regular beauty can fade away, as in becoming redundant. If there ever was a 'what' that made someone or something beautiful yesterday it might not succeed today nor in the future. But beauty can always be found, and re-discovered.
Quoting River
Their beauty is not made by your experiences, you find their beauty by experiencing them. The reason that you see, become attracted to, or entranced by someone or something is their beauty.
I think in learning, training and experiencing we broaden the connections (in our imagination) and that affects how we experience what we experience, connections that we would be difficult to imagine otherwise. The beauty that strikes us in a work of art depends on how sensitive we are to what we are experiencing and that sensitivity can be learned, trained and broadened in most cases (it is normative). If someone is tone death, no amount of training will enable them to sense the beauty in Ravel's music
The biologic/somatic component is a necessary part of beauty. Matter's ability to enable us to see new possibilities must be driven emotively and intellectually. The more we learn, experience and understand the broader our ability to be affected what is beautiful. Taste is developed, fine tuned, & cultivated, it is not available in the same measure to all; even the most knowledgeable may lack the somatic sensibility of some much less knowledgeable. It is why I am not a fan of Thomas Kinkade "Painter of Light".
Does thinking require words?
Quoting UngeGosh
There's really no real answer; so the best answer is an experiential answer, not a logical answer. The human perception of beauty, in all it's manifest forms, feels like a notion of something metaphysical; it seems almost ontological. Beauty is part of the fabric of reality. So, beauty exists with or without human experience. What's my evidence for that statement? None, or rather, only experience.
I didn't see a complete answer to this question. One of the reasons why Adorno railed against Toscanini is that he accented the 'beautiful parts' of musical works, the flourishes over the rest of the work. (Adorno was an opinionated snob, but an absolutely brilliant theoretician).
A musical work, work of poetry, film or some other processional work of art has parts, and some parts may be beautiful and other parts ugly as pointed out. Nietzsche thought the ugly is the source of the beautiful, which may be why we might find it scary. I think it may be more of a dialectical relationship.
Among School Children
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Full poem here
The last stanza of the poem is fantastic in my opinion. The poem takes off slow in the beginning and it reaches a kind of vast crescendo at the end....(ha)
VIII
You feel that things are beautiful also "because your biology tells you to." Something being beautiful is simply your brain being in a specific subset of states in response to that thing.
I disagree strongly with this. That something is beautiful is our reaction to it, and our reaction only. It's not a property of the thing in itself.
It's a reaction often to things that we perceive.
[quote="Noble Dust;79589"]Why did it take humanity so long to decide that this sort of music was beautiful?[/QUOTE]
It seems like you answer your own question. Because that sort of music didn't exist yet. Why didn't it exist yet? Well music evolves gradually, and it took us a while to figure out how to make instruments and then to develop polyphony, counterpoint, the well-tempered tuning system etc.
So then there can't be any rights or wrongs when it comes to beauty? If beauty only is a reaction caused by our biology, then we can't have disussions with other people about what is beautiful?
It all depends on what the things mean to the person and how the person looks at them at that moment.
Everyone has their own definition of beauty. What's beautiful in my eyes might not be beautiful in yours.
You don't know what the person has been through, you don't know what's on his/her mind.
For example, Quoting River
not everyone likes flowers. They are cliche, some may say.
This Romantic personal experience is always a factor, but it is not the only, or even the primary, factor.
Morel like everyone has their own relation to the objective beauty of the material world as well as to the cultural ideology that mediates their relation to that objective beauty and to their objective body perceiving it and the ideology.
Personal experience isn't always romantic.
Quoting Thanatos Sand
Well of course it's not the only factor. When you see something that you have never seen before, then there's no personal experience involved.
But it can be one of the primary factors. What something means to you can somehow link to your personal experiences. (Not in all cases, as I just explained, but most cases)
Let's say a lady, she got what every woman wants. When people see her, people will say she looks beautiful. But maybe something has happened between me and her in the past, and in my eyes, she's no longer beautiful.
Personal experience still somehow determines the beauty of something.