Beautiful Things
Some things I think are beautiful.
I'd like for others to participate. I'd like to keep this to visual beauty. Not wonderful, beautiful. Grandchildren and cats are welcome, but only if they are beautiful, even if it's only to you.
Let's keep it to very few words. Let the beauty speak for itself. Captions would be nice, but optional.
I intend this as serious, so no snark. Playful or even funny is good, as long as it's beautiful.
Incan architecture. Machu Piccu:
By Martin St-Amant (S23678) (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Cusco:
By Martin St-Amant (S23678) (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
I'd like for others to participate. I'd like to keep this to visual beauty. Not wonderful, beautiful. Grandchildren and cats are welcome, but only if they are beautiful, even if it's only to you.
Let's keep it to very few words. Let the beauty speak for itself. Captions would be nice, but optional.
I intend this as serious, so no snark. Playful or even funny is good, as long as it's beautiful.
Incan architecture. Machu Piccu:
By Martin St-Amant (S23678) (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Cusco:
By Martin St-Amant (S23678) (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Comments (428)
Clare Danes in "Romeo and Juliet."
Roger's Brothers Oval Thread silverplate
The Australian sky at night when there is no light pollution.
Sunrise at Wadi Rum in Jordan. Blew my mind away.
Evie Hammond from V for Vendetta.
Street art in Tel Aviv
Very powerful (Y)
Quoting TimeLine
*shakes head*...
Show us some of your own.
The liberals in Tel Aviv are beautiful to me in what would otherwise be an intense demographic.
:’( I really don't have any. Almost never take photos, except crappy ones lol.
Crappy is fine, as long as it is crappily beautiful. Or beautifully crappy. Also - none of the pictures I showed are my own. I took them off the web and tried to attribute them if I could.
Our new pup Redi. Adorable, right? and so conscientious about his food.
Weird bird I saw at the beach the other day. Check out that pecker.
I’m guessing this guy’s a plumber. Not classically beautiful, I grant you.
California wildfire smoke last month.
Wildfire smoke as seen from county line (near Malibu).
[s]Very nice.
How do you get photo files from your computer or phone to load as visible images on a post rather than as files you have to click on to see? Sometimes I can get it to work. Sometimes not.[/s]
Edit - Figured it out.
Not pushing, but personal is fine if you want. For example.
My grandfather's farm on the Chesapeake Bay near Easton, Maryland, USA, where I was born. Sold in mid-1980s. From Google Earth:
If she finds out I posted this, it will end 50 years of friendship:
How? Lol, I'm the most tech illiterate millennial of all time.
Start the post.
Click the paperclip at the top of the box.
Use the box that opens to go to the directory where the picture file is.
Double left click on the file.
The file should now show up at the bottom of the post.
Click "insert" next to the file.
Ta Daaaa.
I think you have to be a subscriber for it to work. Not sure.
From the archive.
Art project debacle.
Oh man, pay to play, eh?
My roommate Carl:
This drop of water:
Walking On Water, by Makoto Fujimura:
Redi is adorable. I'm slowly, begrudgingly, becoming a dog person. I still could never own one, though.
Surely you can think of something beautiful to contribute. :)
Ever wonder what it looked like to live back in the Hay Day!
Hell Freezes Over at the Ranch
What are these "books" of which you speak?
Found it. Finally!
Holy smokes. I looked up River Alph and Xanadu - that's bullshit, it says it's in Antarctica. Those are trees and flowers. Then I read down and it says it is in an ice free area. That's amazing. I never knew such a thing existed. Thanks.
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43991/kubla-khan
Then why is it in Wikipedia?
They're strange little curiosities which I purchase regularly for the sole purpose of beginning but never finishing. There's a fine line between ambition, masochism, and denial.
When my children ask me what I want for Christmas, I tell them "something orange." These are gifts from my younger son.
I bought this for my wife a long time ago. She didn't care for it. I love it.
It makes me feel good just to look at these things.
Cool frog but it looks hazardously positioned.
I just asked her to sit there for the picture.
Beautiful steam engine
Beautiful radio
Beautiful table lamp
Beautiful orange steam engine. Love, love, love, love, love. May I please have it.
Yes, the others are beautiful too.
The RCA Skyscraper model 115.
When I had a serious car accident several years ago, my situation worsened physically and mentally months after I actually had it and by lucky chance through the transport commission, I was given the opportunity to fly out to Italy. It was after visiting Cafe Florian, the Dolomite mountains, Florence and San Gimignano that I slowly started healing again and it has taken me a good two years to really bring myself together again. Seeing Caravaggio (in particular St. Jerome writing) who is one of my favourite artists at the Villa Borghese (also Bernini and Titian) and everything about my time in Italy is beautiful to me for that reason.
Your photos of Italy made me think about the trip to Europe I made with my brother in 2014. On the trip, after 10 days together, sharing rooms most nights, I found out that, after 67 years of being brothers, it turns out we are also friends. Whoda thunkit.
My favorite photo. Lunch in the Black Forest. I'm not scenery person, but I could feel the Black Forest in by my gut. In Europe, the food looks beautiful and tastes wonderful. Ich mochte einen trockenen Weißwein, Bitte. 45 year-old college German.
The Mosul River in Germany before it becomes the Moselle in France. Vineyards and fortresses. You can feel the history while people go about their business as if it were normal:
Tilted shale deposits on the Meuse River in Germany. Some of the worst fighting of World War I took place in this area.
The Mosel wine region is home to the steepest slopes with vine plantings in the world; some of the worst vineyard accidents occur there.
Please tell me you drank some Mosel riesling while you were there.
Pretty amazing. The most beautiful part is when they are unfurling.
The slopes were amazing - almost 45%. There were old men 100 feet up the slopes cultivating and picking grapes. They had small monorails to transport people up the slopes and people and grapes down. I didn't take a picture, so here's one I got off the web. Probably not Germany.
As I said in my post - Ich mochte einen trockenen Weißwein, Bitte. I would like a dry white wine please.
Glad you liked it.(Y)
I'm glad you enjoyed some dry Mosel riesling, but the secret is that German riesling runs the gamut from bone dry to dessert-level sweetness, and, from a good producer, they're all world-class wines. It just takes a little bit of homework to decipher the labels.
The wine we drank was from the grapes growing right near where we were. No labels. No choices. Just Weiswine - troken or susse (dry or sweet). Dry was not real dry, which is the way I like white wine.
I'm jelly.
Ah yes, the beauty of German wine. Trocken is a loose term.
It also took me 10 days in Italy to become friends with me. It is those memorable stories, the relationship between you and the experience that makes something beautiful. The rug you liked, the orange bowl, these are fragments of your existence that I am thankful you are sharing, an image with an essence. I find that abovementioned statement beautiful.
When I was younger, I went on a school excursion to the rainforest and the smell of the wet ferns remains pierced into my senses that till this day I love trekking through rainforest. I loved going on school excursions as a child (and excursions as an adult!); I remember going on one and seeing a giant opal encased in a stone. Till this day, I am entranced by opal gemstones.
Why not wonder about the role perception plays in the way we view beauty?
I know...:D
My wife and two eldest children went to Europe in the late 1980s to visit my brother and his wife who were working there. We went to Paris, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. The Netherlands is wonderful. A country built by engineers. Civil engineers. I still think about that trip all the time. It's like a bank account. Everything's stored away but right there whenever I want it.
My family went to Rehoboth Beach Delaware on our summer vacations for about 10 years. That's about 45 minutes from the town I grew up in. Atlantic Ocean beach with waves and a boardwalk. French fries, greasy subs, ice cream. Then my kids got older and my wife didn't want to make the 8-hour trip any more, so for the last 6 or 7 we've gone to Cape Cod. Much more quaint than Rehoboth. No boardwalk. Great fried scallops though. No waves at the beach though. What's the point of a beach if you don't get knocked down?
I have all those memories stored. They get jumbled up and mixed together - Which year was that? I think vacations are as much for later as they are for when you're there.
These are glasses I bought for my daughter as a Christmas present year before last. Now I've bought them for everyone I can think of. When I look at them, I can feel them in my hand, against my teeth and tongue. They're made of very thin glass.
What do you mean by framed?
I went and visited on Google Earth. It's a pretty forbidding place. The photo is beautiful. Did you visit?
Crow in a tree. Here's what Bob Frost says:
The way a crow shook down on me
A dust of snow from a hemlock tree
Has given my heart a change of mood
And saved some part of a day I had rued.
Yes, I know it's not a hemlock tree.
I remember watching a blue jay swooping and attacking squirrels. I don't know why it was doing it.
I also remember a mockingbird driving a cat crazy by imitating a cat call. It looked like she was just doing it for fun.
Choo-Choo 2u?
Apologies for delayed reply. By framed I mean we perceive beauty as some thing within borders, and by that therefore composed. In other words, we compose a thing of beauty. Some thing seen or heard is plain enough to have borders. I guess a smell might be more challenging, yet the same principle applies. A particular smell of beauty is composed within our brain by filtering out the other smells. Within our brain, we are composing beauty. We convert the chaos of signals received by our brain through composition into beauty. Artists simply (or not so simply) externalize this composing process.
He was the big boss in the coal gas company it was made for, so the named it after him. I only found out about it just before my dad died so there is not much I know about it except what is on line. When I get rich I might go take a ride on it.
Do you know much else about him, about the coal gas company itself, his role, influence or was everything thrown on you when your father was unwell? And why do you need to be rich?
Don't make me come down there. Do not mention that name in relation to this discussion!! I showed you my orange rug!!!
A distant cousin of my fathers has dug up most of the family history as far back as about 1700. He has a local Yorkshire bigwig and politician. He was even the mayor in the city for a while.
There is more about the machine here http://www.south-tynedale-railway.org.uk/locomotives-stock/
Quoting TimeLine
Traveling is expensive and I do not want to go back to England without having plenty of money to spend. That probably means I will never get to see it.
Is it a magic flying rug? I want a ride too.
But this forum is full of so many "incredible thoughts"...
It is well known that TimeLine looks exactly like Hermione Granger when she was 11.
You are so coy.
Bewitching?
Those are the eyes I see whenever you loose your wrath on me.
Correct approach.
And a little backyard greenhouse where I can grow flowers. Gosh, I hate being poor.
Do not worry, you are in the very best of company.
Can you imagine what it took to paint one of these for the first time. The people who first drew these were geniuses; da Vinci, Gutenberg, Morse, Bell, Marconi, Edison, Turing, Jobs all rolled into one.
For me, your yellow door brings it all back to the beginning.
Prince "Bailey" Von Riesig
I can hear it - here Prince "Bailey" Von Riesig, here boy. Sit Prince "Bailey" Von Riesig.
Do you have to make the quote signs when you call him.
I guess I shouldn't be discourteous to royalty.
What an awesome event to attend together!
And btw you are a very good looking gentleman. Don't sell yourself short! ;)
I just realized today is the anniversary of the march.
And thank you. She wanted to get the Capitol in the photo, even if it meant only getting half of me.
Not very interesting philosophically however as beauty can be found in almost anything. Attractive is a more interesting term philosophically speaking. Beauty does n`t exist, it is a perception, however, I`d argue that attractive does exist. It is not an important commodity, perhaps, but I believe that it does at least objectively exist.
I disagree. If you've read all the posts in this thread, you can see it has had a strong effect on me. It's clarified what the word "beautiful" means. I hadn't really thought about it much until I began the discussion and started paying attention to the things I find beautiful. What I found is, for me, beauty reflects something that is deeply part of who I am. I look over the pictures I posted and each gives me the same sense of peace. A feeling of being home. What could be more philosophical than that.
I don't think anything has affected me more intellectually and emotionally since I began on the forum. That's not what I expected when I started the thread. I just thought it would be fun. And it has been.
Which isn't to say that a discussion of attractiveness wouldn't be interesting. Just to point out though, this is intended as a discussion where people show us things they think are beautiful, not discuss beauty and related ideas.
I like a good dust cover. What would you say the 'golden age' of book covers was? 1950s? 1960s?
An instagram posting from a former friend or maybe way more than that. Real life American beauty:
I'm no expert, but the ones I posted are my favorites, and they're 60's/70's. The covers to the Lord of the Rings edition that I posted in that photo are probably my favorite book covers of all time. Those covers fueled my imagination as a kid long before my parents actually read the books to me for the first time. They come in a box set, and the box is equally amazing. I recently purchased my own copy on abebooks, but The Fellowship is already falling apart. I need to cough up the big bucks on a set that's in great condition.
Summit of Mauna Kea. Despite the difficulties with the climb and my inability to acclimatise properly to the high altitude, reaching it was just phenomenal. I also went to see the volcanoes and trekked back at dusk and the crunching sounds of my feet on the surface of the lava at night with the stars above and the milky way in a different position to what I see here in Australia actually gave me goosebumps.
These are mine.
I disagree. I'd be happy to talk about it. Why don't you open a new discussion.
Mt. Lagazuoi, Italy
Boulder, Co.
Mt. Lemmon, Tuscon, Az.
I love these photos, are they yours. There is something about rock stratigraphy that moves me. It's one of the reasons I love the Inca structures I showed in my first post on this thread so much. They feel as if they were laid down in layers over millions of years.
Oh really? >:O
I find that animals hold the most beauty for me. Mostly mammals. The grace and strenght of movement exhibited when higher quadrupeds enter in motion is my personal definition of the sublime.
For who?
I'm not really an animal person, but standing next to a large mammal, a horse or cow, and putting my hand on their flank. Feeling the warmth, muscles, size. Life. Like mine but separate and different. That is a feeling of beauty for me. It makes me feel a part of the world.
Amazing animals in their natural glory. We had just finished a work out and were doing exactly what every animal does after a good bath. They TOTAL it by rolling in sand, dust, dirt, whatever they can find.
[url=https://postimg.org/image/qzeqisflx/]
One more of Dasher because of the Beast he is and my youngest Indian who is now attending an Aeronautical University and kicking ass at it.
[url=https://postimg.org/image/x2wb27dg5/]
He's glorious. I have to admit, horses are one of the "higher mammals" that leaves me a bit like a cold fish. They are absolutely beautiful beasts, but I can't be near one and not feel like he is one moment away from caving my skull in.
I guess I might have been on the receiving end of too many cavalry charges in my previous lifes.
Also, quite obviously : women-so-gorgeous-they-appear-almost-unreal.
I think my present-day favourites in the movie genre are Haneke films. I recently saw 'Happy End' which naturally doesn't have such an eponymous finale. His movies do not follow the structure most Hollywood movies have, they unfold elegantly and at their own pace. Happy End closes on Jean-Louis Trintignant as a senile old man, which makes a rather beautiful arc in my mind, since the first French movie I remember loving was Un homme et une femme, starring Trintignant as a widowed young man. I saw it at the Academy 1 on Oxford Street in London in the mid-60's. (Both Happy End and Homme/Femme are unafraid of dealing with death, which is much on my mind lately owing to recent bereavements)
Perhaps this post is an oblique way of saying - sometimes life seems to show you, well me anyway, a beautiful shape all of its own, just for you/me - I hope this isn't cognitive distortion but an aesthetic sense :)
When you actually attempt to grow flowers from a seed or bulb and go through the process of germination until this, learning patience and protectiveness, it is the greatest feeling. I think the beauty in nature is this very process and it is a privilege to be able to work through the process directly.
My Stargazer Lily. The perfume is just the best.
Some of them actually are. Hate tats all over the place like that, ruins the rest of her.
If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, all I need is a mirror to be happy.
What's your story?
That's pretty fucked up. :-!
j/k.. my story? Living in the moment. I am at the park, on a hot day, that happens to be a public holiday, listening to the sounds of people and kids, reading, writing on my computer and feeling completely relaxed. I think life is pretty beautiful right now.
Sure sign of jealousy there. X-)
I am trying to understand the biology of how to create a hybrid. I am planning on doing a plant breeding course; how transgenic flowers combine with my anti-GMO stance is going to be interesting and I am really eager to see whether genetic manipulation and plant breeding techniques can be achieved naturally. My neighbour showed me this amazing grafting technique where she was able to graft an eggplant and a tomato plant together.
This is wild Lily of the Valley. So subtle, beautiful, and smell wonderful. They are also poisonous, the floral femme fatale.
@TimeLine I have done some grafting with various flowers, some are easier than others. Orchids are one of my favorites~
Nascent beauty.
Nuh huh, if that was you, you would have a Swcheppe hair do. Are you sure that isn't a young picture of Fred?
I don't know what the name of the lily is. I came across it on Tumblr, and thought at first it was some sort of plastic thing, because it looked so unreal. Apparently it is a real plant, Polyethylene pamalota.
I don't get the negative obsession with tattoes. Stephanie Cornelliusen is a woman of sublime grace and beauty, someone who actually causes me existential pain to look at, and you are going to tell me this is all ruined because of a few lines of text on her back and arms?
Quoting TimeLine
I went with what makes me experience beauty in the most striking manner, so most likely my posting women before, let's say, old large librairies would have to do with the instinctual wiring that comes with mate selection aesthetics.
Men can be beautiful too, but they simply do not strike me as such like a beautiful woman does.
Quoting TimeLine
That's only incidental, it's easier and a lot less creep to find and post pictures of celebs already online than it is to secretly take a picture of the beautiful women I met everywhere all day.
Interesting, but I actually have a fondness for pastel colours, particularly pink that lightly streams though white with a gentle, fresh scent - hence peonies - along with lilies and I am even more impressed when such perfection exists in the wild. Even when I wear pink, people are always drawn to me as though the colour just works for me.
Like pastel pink cherry blossoms.
Quoting Akanthinos
I think this is the point, about whether this 'striking' feeling enables something to be beautiful or whether you are merely projecting your instinctual desires to something fleeting. Rosa Parks is beautiful because she represents something more than just this fleeting appearance, but that honour, courage, compassion elevate her to something more than just our desires, to something eternal.
Whoever decided that those three guys should go out on the runway looking like that should be taken away and not be heard of again.
I agree completely.
I agree that the images are beautiful, and the music actually contributes more to the emotional mood than the visuals do. It's a great opening sequence, and the following sequence [hide="Reveal"]where he retires the farming replicant[/hide] is incredibly done. Overall, though, the movie I thought was a let down; disappointing ending, and just a cash-cow milking of the original, which was a cash-cow milking of the PKD novel of another name.
Btw, what do you agree about? Do you think the bird knows that it's beautiful, or does it not know?
[Delete] @Baden
If that was a solid joke I'd laugh along, but for real; does the bird know it's beautiful?
Even further; how would a bird even know about "beauty"?
What?
"Belief" and "beauty" suggest abstraction. There's no reason to suppose animals possess these things (thus abstraction); I guess they'd be able to paint cave paintings or construct obelisks otherwise.
Maybe; but the nest serves a utilitarian purpose, or at least it serves our conception of what a utilitarian purpose would be for a bird. But even if the bird does derive, somehow, a metaphysical sense of aesthetics from the nest, how do we translate that? Does the bird know of it's own beauty, for instance, in the way that we know of it's beauty? The bird knows nothing of it's National-Geographic-potential beauty.
The point I try to make is that the bird isn't aware of the beauty that we see in the bird. We see something that is categorically not apprehensible to the bird. We see something more beautiful in the bird than the bird's experience of beauty for itself. And, for myself, I like to ask whether this same principle applies to us humans. Maybe not. Maybe so.
That seems fanciful; I'm taking a simple experience of the beauty of a bird, and then magnifying it one "level" higher in my analogy; primitive philosophy, maybe, but simple. Your suggestion here just seems to be a joke.
Quoting René Descartes
Because the bird doesn't see itself within the complex aesthetic system within which we see it.
Simple observation. When I see a beautiful bird, my experience of beauty is formed by all my previous, human experiences of beauty; experiences of the beauty of birds, of music, of nature, of the opposite (or same) sex, or symmetry...these experiences of beauty are human; they aren't "birdian"; at the most, we could imagine a bird seeing a member of it's opposite sex (for pro-creation), or it's children, or nature itself as being "beautiful"; but this pales in comparison to the depth and complexity of beauty that we experience as people.
And on top of that, there's a self-evident hierarchy of beauty; the bird sees its's beautiful mate, we see the beautiful bird (and the beautiful wood, or weather, etc), and then, there's the possibility that a higher form of conciousness sees the beauty in us which we cannot see.
This bird is not just beautiful but it is a bad ass for choosing it's lunch. :D
Well, I would have to disagree with calling Blade Runner 2049 a cash cow. The director, Denis Villeneuve, made it abundantly clear that the movie wasn't made to make money. Besides the original Blade Runner was a box office flop too. Many people were spellbound with the sequel, by which I mean that it was worthy of a follow up on the original. I know I loved it at least.
I am not a big dog person, but these are really beautiful. Great photography too.
I wonder if this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. A wren?
I'm not sure. Btw, I like how your participation on the forum culminated with this thread; from philosophical enquiry to pure beauty.
This thread has meant more to me than I can say. I don't even know why. It goes straight to my heart.
(Y) your enthusiasm for beauty is inspiring.
Sure, the original was not a cash cow; but it turned into a cult classic. So, to make a sequel to a cult classic that is not based on any material from the author (vs. the original being based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), is clearly a cash-in on a cult classic; a cash cow. And sure, the director (not the writers, producers, or, most importantly, exec producers) said that it's not about the money; it probably wasn't about the money for him; he was probably thrilled to make the movie. That doesn't mean it wasn't a cash cow.
If you loved the movie, more power to you. Visually, and mood-wise (the soundtrack), I thought it was well done. But the plot was severely lacking. I didn't read it as a great film.
:’(
Sometimes lunch chooses you...especially when you're a bird...
Yeah, but let's be realistic, it was a Hollywood movie.
Fair. But I've seen plenty of other Hollywood movies with better plots.
Just a personal portrait..
Torturing a hedgehog - I'm going to have to report you.
Always rayon. Never cotton.
I love the colors of the bottom shirt!
I don't want to shock you, but I am not a fashionable person. Aloha shirts are the one place I allow color into my wardrobe. I used to wear them a lot. Now, not so much.
Yes. I love the feel of rayon.
Not to worry. Nobody who saw you in the aloha shirts thought that you were. Just joking, sarcastically, as is my wont.
Now, the second shirt reminds me of a popular style of wallpaper from the art nouveau / art deco period late 19th century, early 20th to the 1930s). The ground was black, and the figures were quite bright--think of things and colors that go into salad--carrot, red bell pepper, radicchio, radish, lettuce... Not that carrots would be the figure, necessarily. Or the figures were muted bright colors, like your rayon shirt.
It would be used in stair wells, bath rooms, hallways -- where it wouldn't overwhelm one.
Actually, I have had some shirts sort of like yours that I liked a lot. And I would definitely wear the rayon shirt. A guy at a party wearing a shirt very much like the rayon item said that it was his hot weather shirt, because he could sweat in it and it didn't show.
I like to coordinate color, like a bright red shirt, black pants, black shoes, and bright red socks -- but it doesn't add up to being fashionable. I like brightly colored clothing -- not all the time, just fairly often.
Touché.
I'm shocked, shocked, that you would be sarcastic.
"Cardsharps" by Caravaggio:
"Moses" by Michelangelo:
Ceiling by Salvador Dali, located in his museum. Not sure what it's called:
[url=https://postimages.org/]
That's really amazing. I interpret it differently. She soothes us with the rainbow, then blasts us with the lightening!! Take that lowly human!! Or maybe it's just beautiful.
Fort Peck Dam, picture taken by Margaret Bourke-White, 1936. MBW specialized in industrial photography and found great beauty in the built world.
In my job as an engineer, I would be forced to bring her in off the eagle until she put on a harness and lanyard in accordance with Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations.
One thing I got out of this discussion and the Beautiful Structures one is how much of what I think is beautiful is tied up in structures like these. How important it is for people to design and build beautiful buildings, bridges, dams.... They are so public and have the ability to shape how people see their physical and social worlds.
Exactly. And the opposite is true too--neighborhoods of ticky-tacky dreck with too much traffic, dirt, and dilapidation, where decay is slithering in around the edges. Sinks. Places where one feels an urge to let loose a big berserker caterpillar to devastate block after block -- just chewing its way through the architectural manure pile.
It appears that the common elements are: (1) nature, (2) vivid colors, especially greens and purples, and (3) geometric designs. The colors and shapes seem to suggest some divine purpose. That's my take. Anyway, my goal is to create an algorithm that can generate beautiful images so that we can once and for all mechanize creativity and eliminate the final vestiges of humanity.
...that they are horrible, over-processed crap.
(There is literally not one passable picture on that whole page.)
Phillystine!! If everyone doesn't hate your art, it's no good. I rest assured in my obscure unpopularity.
Don't sell yourself short, your unpopularity is not obscure at all.
Thanks!... :grimace:
Those canyons scare the crap out of me. One little storm miles away and you're dead. They are beautiful though.
I'm more of a Chutes and Ladders or Candyland player. I did recently beat a 7 year old at checkers.
I think I’d rather eat shit & die...
But I applaud you, you're a nice father.
Love the Scandinavian Farmhouse look ever since living in Denmark, but adding hints of Bohemian and Modern elements. I love quirky but within the boundaries of sophistication, as in, it need to be breathable and open, but I am not shy of colours. I'm not at home to take some pics, but this is what I am. Everyone that sees my style always thinks it is beautiful.
If only I had my own house!!!! :cry:
You are a very observant person. I personally could hike that Canyon, which is one of the easiest hikes but I am claustrophobic and I see a lack of Oxygen, so no for me. I am a strong swimmer and I have thought about what I would do if caught in a Flash Flood through the canyon and I think my best bet for survival is to tread water and let the water level rise and allow the current to carry me out.
Then again, those who have lost their lives in the flash floods, might have thought the same.
I need a game plan and a safe way out before I try anything. Silly huh?
I cannot tell you how many people get on horses, thinking they know how to ride and the first question they ask is "So to make him go I just kick with my heels right?" The first question is NEVER how do I make the horse stop in the event he takes off with me. Never, not once. People often get so excited that they forget to ask how to get the experience to stop but never how to get it started.
Musical cymbals & drums
Congratulations! The commute is amazing! :wink:
How about a geodesic dome?
My family are all game players except me. They are more into cards and board games. I am too timid, afraid to make a wrong move, to be good or to enjoy games much.
Also - I wasn't playing checkers with my own child. My youngest is 28. It was a neighbor's grandchild.
The thing that bothers me is that something could be happening 10 miles away and you'd never know till it was too late. No, I don't think your skill at swimming would matter much. From what I've read, it's like a tidal wave.
The building is beautiful, but with domes I'm always asking myself how I could stack all my boxes against a curved wall.
Let me know when you're moving in. I'll bring over a can of yellow paint for the front door.
Mmmmmmm yes. Lovely.
By making curved shelves. The difference between one end and the other over a six foot shelf would not be too much. You would just have to learn to stack the big ones in the middle.
Not sure about the mirror. The shape fits, but the wood looks too traditional. The little chair definitely doesn't fit, but it creates a storyline, redefines the room, so I'd leave it.
One would, of course, want comfy chairs, tables, beds, baths, sinks, kitchens, and so forth but we haven't found a way of using round space that really looks good. Most of our decor is designed to fit into spaces with flat parallel walls, ceilings, and floors.
An interesting factoid I heard while visiting a colonial village was that the use of barrels was for ease of movement of stored goods prior to there being forklifts and other lifting devices. Maybe they could make furniture that way and you could sort of tip and roll it wherever you wanted to. My understanding is that you have been working on the barrel physique so that you could be moved around if need be.
No doubt you were thinking of this kind of barrel furniture.
As for my physique... after a certain age it just doesn't much matter any more, as long as one can haul one's self around. The only thing that makes old bodies attractive is being stuffed with cash.
That made me think of Christo and Jeanne Claude, who created art works that playfully forced people to see entire landscapes differently. You hear the idea - hey, we'll wrap the Pont Neuf Bridge in Paris in fabric - and you think, "Aah... more of that tooty-frooty modern art crap" Then you see it and BANG. You get it immediately.
From the bed to the office. About 10 steps. :yawn:
Hey! They sell those at the feed store! I can get you as many as you like but you might need a flame torch to cut them into those funky shapes that defeat the purpose of the barrel. Men. :confused:
Lololol that would likely work!
It's an awesome place to be! :heart:
Glorious~ :cheer: :party: Gonna have to install a coffee maker at step 5 :yawn:
Perhaps if the mirror had a detailed baroque gold leaf frame instead to bring out the colour. You need to check your teeth after dinner, surely.
How about a simple chrome frame to round out the stark, uncomfortable Scandinavian look you're going for? As long as you stack all your junk at right angles on open shelves, you can convince yourself that it doesn't look cluttered. Keep the little chair, though. It creates a warmth and thoughts of little feet pitter patting around on the uncovered wooden slats around the hard angular tables and chairs.
:angry:
Notice that Australia isn't even shown. It hadn't been discovered yet.
It is down in the right hand corner. Hiding like all shy Aussies. :wink:
From where I stand, this is a beautiful thing to read, from a beautiful soul I am just getting to know.
Oh stop your touchy feely talk and tell me how much you like my new clock. Pretty sweet, huh?
I am a really light sleeper so anything that makes a timed ticking drives me crazy, fortunately I learned it early on by stopping the hands and by default the weights of an Antique clock my Step Dad has and got very angry every time I stopped it. So I know that a clock like yours or his and me just don't get along.
Now show me a Cuckoo Clock with the little dancing ladies and gentlemen? I might woo a little.
By Harry Gruyaert.
What is that second painting?
There's so much here.
Where? Is Lenin supposed to look diabolical?
Like the first. Love the second. Drunk philosopher? No opinion.
Headquarters of the Indian communist party. Somewhere in India... Lenin was diabolical but I think masterful is more what they are going for here.
Would this work on the dome home walls?
[url=https://postimg.cc/image/4cucvo71p/]
Quick, take another picture, I want to see what it looks like on the other side of the wall.
True but ack.
Here is my dream home- a studio small enough but has everything.
[url=https://postimg.cc/image/5iycu5xtp/]
Some one bought either a money pit or a money maker, it will be interesting to see what the new owners do with it.[url=https://postimages.org/]
I have a flat wall in an place that I am going use for a TV area, that would look nice around a flat screen.
Imagine sitting outside all snug with a hot drink, talking about endless somethings that make you feel good, later checking out the stars with your Saxon 8 inch. I'm so sad today.
I can only imagine as I am in desperate need for a mental get away. :shade:
Look what I stumbled upon on my way to an inspection of an ugly apartment. :groan:
[url=https://postimg.cc/image/nsed3uhbh/]
[url=https://postimg.cc/image/i5i063c59/]
Oh, nice. :up:
I think my favorite bridges are those old late 1800s early 1900s industrial looking ones. Here's a picture of the Pulaski Skyway in northern New Jersey. I drive under it whenever I take the NJ Turnpike on my way south. That area is full of rivers, roads, houses, factories. I can just see some public works guy 100 years ago saying "Screw it, I'm just putting a bridge across the whole f...ing thing."
My wife is partial to blue.
All y'alls love for architecture is strange to me. I like certain structures, but the ones I like are more connected to personal experiences and specific life scenarios. Is that not the case for you all? For instance, I still love many different views in NYC because they remind me of when I first visited, and subsequently first moved here. But it's not an objective aesthetic standard; it's deeply personal, and architecture otherwise isn't something I'm drawn to. And back in my hometown in the midwest, the house I grew up in in which my parents still live is deeply beautiful to me, but for obvious reasons. Likewise, every time I drive past a Swenson's when I'm back home, my heart flutters a little.
Really, it's just that I have a hard time being objective or rational with something like architecture, because I find a lot of architecture oppressive rather than aesthetic. Is that just because I grew up in the midwest??
I live in the midwest; I have always lived within 100 miles of where I was born (except for 2 years in Boston).
I also like buildings and places with which I have a personal connection. There are barns, small houses, school buildings, streets, etc. that I grew up with that are very meaningful to me. The house I was born in is now gone; it was old and decayed; it was time for it to go. It was nothing special to look at but it is a part of me.
I love large structures too, like the bridge above, for their structural features out of which comes a beauty.
Compared to a Roman arch, this one is very recent but there are not many bridges around that are almost 150 years old (because this part of the world hasn't been building bridges that long).
Quoting Noble Dust
Well, that's all right. You don't have to find architecture fascinating. It's a fairly recent interest to me. It isn't just monumental buildings I like. The Student Union building at the University of Wisconsin in Madison has a small terrace in the back overlooking Lake Mendota. It is a lovely shaded area, just outside the rathskeller where one can get a beer. (I haven't been there recently, I hope it's still the same.) My small back yard is a pleasant place, also an inelegant, weedy affair. I like it, sort of.
There are sleazy bars I liked as spaces; book stores, cafes, department stores. All personal connections.
I'm not a well educated person. True, I got a couple of degrees, but there is a hell of a lot I don't know jack shit about. I've been filling in some of the more manageable holes from my previous educational efforts. Architecture is one of the things I want to know more about.
History too. And an old bridge combines history and architecture both.
Furniture design is another one. My personal taste in furniture is extremely pedestrian or maybe proletarian. But I like looking at nicely designed objects, too.
Like this art deco Zemeth Tombstone radio
or this gorgeous art deco Conoco gas station
I think I feel the same thing, maybe, at least to some extent. I'm working on the finishing touches of an album that uses some architectural aspects of the house I grew up in as a jumping-off point for metaphorical content. That's something architectural that I seem to get.
Quoting Bitter Crank
See, this to me is really the meat of it. It's just that love you have for large structures; you see it as a beauty. That's fascinating to me. I don't "not" get it, but I don't fully get it, either.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, I know, I'm just trying to suss out what makes it fascinating to you. Because your fascination is fascinating to me. I'm always fascinated by the fascinations of others that don't fascinate me. EDIT: the fascinations being the things that don't fascinate me, not the "others". Tried to make that poetic and failed.
That seems like a genuinely generous attitude toward other people's interests.
Eh it's really not, I'm just genuinely interested in other people's aesthetic interests; I'm a terrible person otherwise.
Strikes me that architecture is a mid-western kind of thing. It's social. It's art that expresses a sense of community. Midwesterners believe in working things out together. Good old civic virtue. Lion's Club. Bowling. Street signs you can actually read. Wasn't Frank Lloyd Wright a midwesterner?
Noted. I'm not sure anyone's ideas will or wont' "get me closer to getting it" (getting what?), but I'll look into it.
Eh, sounds like you're romanticizing us. We're not all that. Midwesterners just have a chip on their shoulder. That's the legitimate stereotype.
I envy the fact that music and architecture seem close to you. Music is a world to me; architecture is a foreign entity that I like, but don't understand. I file dance, for instance under the same heading. It doesn't mean I haven't encountered structures or dances that have moved me; I have. But they're foreign. If anything, as a composer, I should "get" dance, but I absolutely don't. All Iget is music, literature, and plastic art (to a lesser extent). Speaking broadly, with exceptions.
Quoting ?????????????
Hmmm. I know for a fact (via self-reflection, because I'm a hopeless nerd when it comes to music) that the music I love the most is connected deeply with my personal experiences and specific life scenarios. For instance, I've posted this piece several times on the forum. I could literally write a dissertation on why this piece means so much to me on a personal level. Steve was a drummer first and foremost...me too! He didn't like the 12-tone guys...same here. He wanted to re-introduce beauty into music. Same! Turns out, as a kid, I was exposed to a "Noah's Ark" short film that was soundtracked by Stewart Copeland, which, looking back, was heavily influenced by Reich, and even this specific movement of this piece. Deeply personal? That's an understatement.
My point being...for me, personal experience always dictates my perception of aesthetics. What does that mean philosophically? I don't know. All I know is that aesthetics is not universal.
Quoting ?????????????
That's the thing, I don't think it's too subtle to notice; or, per my own selfish perspective, for me, it's not too subtle. Noticing the personal aesthetic is intuitive. That doesn't mean it's not universal.
Reading back through your post...I don't mean to say that I don't think it's possible to "like" or have a pleasing aesthetic experience without a deeply personal experience. I may have reacted too strongly, initially. There's stuff I like that isn't deeply personal. Here's a track that my co-workers have recently turned me on to. Is it profound? No. I like it, though. But I have no personal connection to it. Is that what you're referring to? Edit: what do I like about that track? Hooks. Great hooks. Are hooks philosophically useful? Who knows?
Surely there are no cacti in heaven! Hell, yes.
:victory:
This is beautiful~ This I love~ :heart:
Edward Hopper - Room in New York.
Heads up Amsterdam! Tiff's kin are headed your way! :party:
Congratulations Tiff!
If anyone can tell me what the church looking building is? I believe it is France but I could be wrong.
France's street shortly before winning the World Cup.
I am not really convinced that this is not a California beach...
This is the most beautiful thing in the history of the universe.
Orkney Island, Scotland, UK. Skara Brae. More than 5,000 years old. Can you believe that? Do you think these people didn't care about beauty?
. You just have to recognize the beauty of Life and stop be miserable ...
. Small things can become so beautiful ... A little caring ... A little sharing ... That's what Life is ...
. You don't need to go to Machu Picchu, my friend ... To see the splendor of Life ... To see the fragrance of Life ... To see the poetry of Life ...
. The journey is back to you ... Inside you ... Not in Machu Picchu ...
. You don't need to go anywhere to become someone ... You're already that ... What you're looking for ...
I've never been and have no desire to go. It pleases me that we live in a world where such a beautiful thing exists.
"Apotheosis In Man; Apotheosis Is Man."
Georges Mathieu - Composition (1986)
These are beautiful paintings. I have never seen them before, even though I have studied a certain amount of history of art. The two pictures of the women seem very contemporary, with the whole presence of light, and the two men are very unusual looking, almost like characters from gothic fantasy.
One of my funny experiences was how when I was about 19 I had a book by Nietzsche, with a romantic painting of a naked woman on the cover. My Catholic mother thought that it was not right for me to be reading a book with this picture on the cover. She went out and bought a piece of wrapping paper and insisted I cover the book.
Yes, I guess this is strange, and it sometimes seems that Catholics, and I am sure other groups of religious people, tune into aspects of religion but not in their entirety. I feel that I have questioned Catholic views in many ways. I have chosen to keep that from my parents, partly to protect them and partly to protect myself because I need private space to explore ideas freely.
The innocent idealization of the human being is something incredible to me. The greatest virtue of art is to rationalize our instincts in such a way that we can contemplate "Beauty" while not driven by "Desire". This is something that has been lost.
Yes, I think that you have a point. We can perceive beauty and admire it but perhaps stand back in awe. Perhaps the idea of desire, especially in the realm of sexuality, creates a problem in the way we can see it as addressing our own physical pleasures. A detached sense of beauty may exist as a form of inspiration.
I believe that we have consciously abandoned our ability to act and think consciously, rationally and logically over our instincts.
We exist constantly with the shadow of our wild past influencing us. The apotheosis that I refer to at the end of the images I had posted, is our ability to feel our instincts, and, by simple and mere conscious will, deny it.
What is desire, becomes beauty; what is hate, becomes honor; what is fear becomes courage, etc...
But that had been lost...
I might be a bit of a romantic philosopher but I feel positive about what has been lost. Perhaps I grew up listening to too much music by INXS and the Doors, but I came to the conclusion that instincts are best sublimated in the form of artistic creativity. I am unsure of ideas such as hate and honour, having some experience of them, but trying to go beyond attachments. Ultimately, I see creativity as the main point which stands out beyond instincts and social goals, but I am not sure if I could justify this philosophically.
I don't know if this has worked?
Yes that's one of the pictures, thank you!
The castle is called Manzanares el Real.
It's unfathomable how curved geodesics, metric tensors and differential geometry can render an artistic truth as serene, and visually incalculable.
To get a picture to show up, copy the URL into the post. Then highlight it and click on the icon of a picture at the top of the comment. That should work. If it is a picture of your own, there is a button for uploading files - a box with an up arrow. There is also one for videos at websites - a video camera.
As I told you, my brother and I went to Europe in 2014. One of the things that struck me was the large numbers of castles and other fortresses. It seemed like there was one every couple of miles. They were the Starbucks of the 15th through mid 20th centuries. Just goes to show what a hard place to live Europe has been over the centuries.
Not random at all. If you've looked at the rest of this thread, you've seen lots of buildings, old and new.
This thread pops back up every so often. It's probably my favorite one on the forum. Thanks for contributing.
Interesting! Exactly as you remember is full of castles. Fun fact: Spain in the Middle Age was called “Castilla” which it comes from literally for the big number of castles built in the country :smile:
Here is another one I like:
It is called Buitrago de Lozoya.
Given this, what might I infer from the scientific reports of an expanding universe with each galaxy moving away, faster and faster, from every other galaxy? The universe, it seems, on the whole, is really, really ugly.
I like it too. When you said it was beautiful, I wasn't sure I agreed. I wouldn't call it a beautiful view, but it does give you a visceral feel for how cities become cities.
When I fly over cities like this, I think to myself - "How many people down there are eating oysters. How can there possibly be enough oysters? How can they possibly get all the oysters to everyone who wants them." It gives a feel for the weight, the density, that civilization brings to the world.
Also - thanks for keeping the thread alive. It's my favorite.
You are welcome and thanks for the feedback about the painting :up:
[i]"That Sultan of generosity is the Master of Reason;
He is Sanctity and the light of the eyes.
In the path of the Shah,
Khata'i sacrifices his soul.
For the kingdom, property, gold, and silver:
- Of the people!"[/i]
Serious question - Do you really find that beautiful?
Umm… it kinda depends. I mean, if I saw that in real life I’d probably puke, but I find beauty in it more so in how I interpret its meaning than just its aesthetics. I guess it’s similar to how people find stories beautiful. It has nothing to do with the way the words look. It’s about their meaning.
What does that image mean to you.
Just to be clear, I didn't mean to suggest that I don't think it belongs in this thread.
It does kind of remind me of those old Monty Python graphics.
In case anyone isn’t familiar with Whitkin’s work, he is a photographer and often uses corpses and/or body parts for his photographs. In order to do this he made arrangements with local morgues who would essentially give him any bodies that went unclaimed/unidentified. So, he never really knew what he would be getting. With this particular image, so the story goes, he was lifting this head out of the box it came in, and dropped it. He didn’t realize that it had been dissected vertically, and when it landed it came apart and landed pretty much how he ended up photographing it. I mention this to show that I don’t think there was much intent involved on the part of the artist to create something with a specific meaning.
To me, I associate the image with Narcissus, or vanity. He is literally kissing himself. Couple that with the fact that this is a dismembered head and it brings about the contrast between “loving life” and “death.” Were this picture taken of two living people, it would appear very tender and loving. So, to me it kind of captures both tenderness/love on the one hand, and disgust/death on the other. There’s something I find fascinating about the ability to transform something that’s typically, or stereotypically, beautiful and lovey-dovey, like a kiss, into something darker. And just the ability to capture these different juxtapositions in one image is kind of awe inspiring for me. But it could be read into as a sort of warning about the perils of vanity, like Narcissus. Or you could interpret it as showing that most likely this person loved his life before he died, which again brings tenderness into an otherwise morbid image. But anyway, that’s my long winded explanation.
No worries. I didn’t take your comment like that.
Wow, thanks for explaining. I was missing context, and admittedly too put-off by the image to give it more attention. I thought it was twins or trick photography or something.
:up:
Interesting. To me the first one seems like barely suppressed or symbolic violence and is striking but not beautiful, especially linked with Rossini's music, so well associated for some of us with the urban violence in A Clockwork Orange. And clowns are creepy. But that's the nature of beauty, it's very personal. I am generally unaffected by artworks, but I do enjoy antiquities. I am more likely to find music or prose 'beautiful' not so much visual works.
It surprised me that you said violence, that never crossed my mind. Now that you say it, it makes sense. For me it was just joyful. I find myself moved by big public works of art. Things that get in the way and change the way people think about their everyday world and lives. I've always loved Christo's stuff. For me, that's art that doesn't need an expert to explain it. I can feel it in my bones. Apparently people in the locations where the commercials were filmed really enjoyed the process.
It's a very nice composition.
Interesting image. The angle of the shadows changes for different objects. The light source is lower when striking the cowboy. The infrastructure visible to the left of the station is absent to the left of it. The station does not cast a shadow beyond the platform on the right.
I like how the cowboy is a Marlboro Man gone to seed when zoomed in upon.
The photo certainly seems composed (not a snap shot) and perhaps manipulated. I still like it, particularly the grey/beige/slightly green palate.
Marlboro cowboy gone to seed... He doesn't appear to be old enough to be a seedy Marlboro cowboy, though I see what you are talking about. The cigarette mascots tended to be mature men with deeply weathered faces, from years of riding, roping, and smoking. He is lanky, though, like a cowboy ought to be. Do cowboys travel with luggage? No saddle bags?
Apparently Grand Trunk is not a double rail system out west. Side tracks are used to allow for passing trains.
Yes, something very Edward Hopper American Realism about the photograph.
The photograph I posted was by Dean West at Saatchi Art. Here's another Dean West photo; this one reminds me of David Hockney (painter) based on the subject matter and colors.
Palm Springs # 2, 2015 [LAST ONE] Artist Proof 2 of 296 W x 60 H x 0.1 D inDean West
Saatchi is asking $90,750 for the pool photo.
Given the angle of the other shadows, yes, there should be a bit of darkness to the right. There is no shadow of the fence either but that could be written off as the platform being too high. If one looks at the angle taken from the height of objects to the shadow cast, the cowboy's angle is greater than the others. And what is with the lantern casting a more washed-out shadow than the others?
I think there is an Escher thing underway along with the Hopper vibe.
‘My’ Agios Nikolaos, as I call it. I am greedy. It is the town in eastern Crete, Greece, where I lived for 11 years, met so many friends— and my husband— the place that stole my heart, and so many others’ that I know.
I left in 2011. Funnily enough, I do not ever recall talking about philosophy whilst there. I didn’t even know what philosophy was until I discovered it in 2021 in Canada, of all places!
Quoting BC
I shall buy two then. One for my bayside parlor. The other for my conservatory.
Consider the wifi modem the perfect anachronistic touch.
Steve Reeves, posterboy of the silver age of bodybuilding.
The contrast of the cool blue sky with the emerald pool water is beautiful, and the palm trees sticking out give a nice assymmetry to the composition. 10/10
How defined one's muscles will be depends on type and duration of exercise, amount of sub-cutaneous fat, muscle flexing during posing, and so on. Here's a picture of McFadden as a young mn, already practicing what he preached:
Bernarr McFadden
Raw vegetables and weight lifting worked for him. He was 87 when he died in 1955.
A lot of men who post pictures of themselves on Tumblr (and elsewhere) look pretty fit, but often their musculature does not appear with sharp definition. It isn't that they haven't done the work -- I suspect they are not starved enough to get very fine resolution of every vein, follicle, muscle, tendon, and bone
I'm not criticizing them -- I'd be grateful to look half as buffed. In the summer of 92 I did a lot of training for a series of 100 mile bike rides. I had the endurance and strength but not much definition. I was too well nourished, for sure.
Most men probably do muscle building for sex appeal. Most of them are not doing it as "art", even if they achieve beauty. Ballet and modern dance performers maintain their bodies for their art -- as do some other artists--musicians for instance.
That is true if we are being realistic, though perhaps sex appeal is an art in itself.
Some people seem to be just naturally saturated with sex appeal, while others can take what they've got and make what they want, or what they think other people want. There is definitely an art to this. There are a few unfortunates who are (to most other people) sexually repellant. Usually this is not something they bear responsibility for. I'm thinking of 2 guys: one was short, had some skeletal / bone problems, very bad teeth, and had a speech impediment. He was a tax accountant. He was reasonably likable, but had zero sex appeal. The other guy was tall and very thin with wild grey hair and a long unkept beard. His nickname was Bicycle Mary -- he rode his bike to the main gay bar in all weather. In addition to looking like a crazy man, his behavior was a little crazy too. Zero sex appeal.
Those were two people out of a thousand.
Tattoos are a popular enhancements. They have come a long way since the days of the classic drunken sailor getting a tattoo he will regret in the morning. Many men are buying tattoos that are artful designs executed with skill (and quite costly). I would prefer people keep their face and neck free of tattooing, but... no accounting for taste.
Vestus virum reddit, the Romans said -- clothes make the man. The well-put-together outfit goes a long way to enhance one's appearance and presence. The guys who show up in black leather and chains are not doing anything different than the guys who show up in Brooks Brothers suits. A jacket and tie can be good bait, just as jeans with holes and a ripped sweatshirt can be.
It's all art, lower case 'a' and quite essential to human interaction.
The landscapes of Hetervig are always dreamlike. He was a boy full of melancholia, missing his parents when he was a student at Düsseldorf Arts Academy. I relate to him a lot.
By the way, I know this artist thanks to Jon Fosse. A great writer whose work I have already discussed with @Metaphysician Undercover and @Ø implies everything, for example.
Followed by Nícolo di Caverio's planisphere, also adapted from the Padrão Real, now lost to time:
They would be the basis for Waldseemüller's map, where the continent is named for the first time:
Our home irmão.
Top of Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II, by me.
We now know a bit more about Lionino... You live in Rome! - or in an Italian city -
A sublime Neoclassical monument. It makes me sad that it shows a figure that no longer represents the Italian folk: A king...
If the Italian Monarchy was a symbol of unity, why did they get rid of this honourable institution? :cry:
Ah... Politicians and historians are always making our beautiful Europe feel (let's say) disoriented.
I don't know, Rome is one of top tourist destination of the world.
Quoting javi2541997
At the end of fascism and the Allies [s](of Satan)[/s] putting their boot on the boot-shaped peninsula, there was no chance anything but a semi-presidentialist republic would be put in place.
When the incest kicks in. :vomit:
Quoting Deleted user
Ah, true. You are just a random tourist enjoying the privilege of being a member of the Schengen area!
Cool! Have fun, mate.
Nice photo, but I don't like the building. I think it's a bombastic and insensitively located monstrosity, and it reminds me of Stalinist architecture: impressive, sure, but totalitarian and tasteless.
I took this a couple of winters ago:
I don't think the building (Moscow State University) is a beautiful thing, and yet it's magnificent and photogenic. It's on Sparrow Hill, a high bank of the river, and can be seen far and wide. Looking in the other direction at the point where the photo was taken, you get a great view of the city.
You are right. The building is not beautiful, but sublime. I would have extra motivation for studying law if my university looked like that formidable architectural design.
Ma! I want to study there! Like my friends, the Brothers Karamazov! :up:
I have spent time in one of the other Stalinist skyscrapers, the Hotel Ukraine. They’re not made to be good places to study or live or work, but just to project the power of the state. Magnificent, but inhuman—downright horrible.
But yes, I guess the prestige of the institution, embodied in the building, is surely an attraction to students.
Quoting Jamal
Quoting Jamal
I find these statements curious. What makes a building "Stalinist"? Surely he wasn't the first person to come up with such an elementary style of architecture, that style being essentially a lack of one and laying bricks as they are in the simplest way? What makes a structure "beautiful"? You find these buildings "magnificent" and "photogenic", but lacking in something, "humanity" you refer to. Could you show some buildings that do quantify what you would call "beautiful" or "human"?
It seems the main difference is there types are "blocky" and squarish, lacking rounded curves such as Greco-Roman architecture incorporates. Curves are a bit pleasing aesthetically for a few reasons I could imagine. I heard once "there are no straight lines in nature" or something of that effect. Do the former-style of buildings therefore invoke a sense of uneasy artificiality, an alien structure that seemingly does not belong and exists only out of forced necessity? It seems, at least in my mind, the most stark contrast between the two types of buildings are those with rounded curves or more "personal touches" reflect the human effort, intelligence, and craftsmanship that went in them as opposed to mere angular blocks that could have been placed there by a machine without any human involvement whatsoever.
Just trying to better understand.
Start here:
https://www.rbth.com/arts/336582-stalinist-empire-style-architecture
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinist_architecture
You make a good and important point about curves, and it might be significant specifically with respect to Stalinist architecture, which (a) is curveless (aside from arches), and (b) replaced constructivism, which could be quite curvy.
A brief explanation…
Before the Stalinist style took over in the 1930s, a lot of Soviet architecture was part of a movement called constructivism, which was Russia’s early and influential form of modernism. It was experimental and progressive, and motivated by social concerns.
During Stalin’s rule, the priority was to build grand, imposing buildings like wedding cakes: buildings that took classical elements and then inflated and mixed them up to achieve the correct blend of popularity (by which I do not mean popularity with the people who lived and worked in the buildings but with patriotic people in general), power, and propaganda.
Then after Stalin’s death, architects were able to return to modernism again.
I should note that what I’ve said here is a big simplification.
Those are very good questions.
Are the beauty and greatness of a building dependent upon our appreciation?
Could it be a possibility to value an architectural design objectively?
Most of the designs of government buildings were not really thought of sharing with the people. I mean, they were built to show the greatness of a dictator to the world. Nothing else. We could agree that Tiananmen Square is actually pretty, but its lack of humanity makes it 'ugly' or sordid. Then, we are judging Tiananmen Square subjectively.
I think I came to the conclusion that it is hard to have an objective opinion on a building. If I see a Soviet building I will think of Stalin, and if I see the Coliseum I will have the bloody fights of gladiators in mind, etc.
Quoting Jamal
Interesting.
I search on Google 'Wedding Cakes' buildings in Spain, and then it showed this one as the most famous: HH Cielomar
It has some classical appeal, yes. It seems that the Catholic gambling czar had good taste regarding architecture.
It is very interesting that we could make a 'first impression' on people depending on the buildings they live in.
We could say that the Catholic gambling tsar was pompous and showy.
What should we think about the people who live like sardines in a tin in buildings like this one?
I'll wager the apartments in that building are far more spacious and varied than most of today's apartment blocks. It's a famous example of organicism--and this goes back to what @Outlander was saying--in which curves are an important element. Since it's an example of serious, thorough, imaginative architecture, the design carries through to the interiors, i.e., it's not a matter of a decorative facade with a boxy interior as in other styles of architecture.
(although it has to be admitted that this is probably the penthouse)
And here's a better image of the exterior:
https://jaimevalcarce.es/casas-de-autor-edificio-torres-blancas-en-madrid/
No image is showing up for me. I'm guessing it's this one:
It reminds me of the rich houses of the US South (Louisiana?) Maybe the appeal is its simplicity. It is not over-decorated or showy.
Why were you smoking at this house?
Absolutely. The flats are very spacious and the prices per m² are expensive there. The building is located at both Avenida América and Corazón de María, which are one of the 'top' and rich neighbourhoods of Madrid.
Oiza - the architect - said that his plan was to build a building that looked like a tree with its branches. It is one of the most iconic constructions in Madrid nowadays.
Note: I checked in the land registry and it says that each flat has an average of 127 and 200 m²
Quoting Jamal
Some say it is Brutalist too, but I don't have enough knowledge of architecture. :sweat:
Quoting Jamal
Yeah, it is iconic. But that wall made of concrete reminds me of all the buildings built on Franco's era. :lol:
Casa Mila, Gaudi. Curves :)
Yes, I'd say it fits in that category too.
Quoting mcdoodle
La Pedrera, a masterpiece. :up:
My favourite architect.
Wanna see some soul-crushing, ugly building?
Edifício Copan, São Paulo. Fitting for such an ugly city. I remember watching a documentary on it years ago, subtitles are not that bad.
Niemeyer, one of my most disliked architects.
Yes. Oh, the owner died in the 1950's. It was just a big house near where I lived back then, attached to a school. I used to walk past it a lot and sometimes stop by.
Ugly? Soul-crushing?
I get it. Brutalist architecture is not your cup of tea. But I would not call those buildings or structures ugly but unique, and this is what makes them special, at least to me.
For example, wouldn't you feel delighted living here?
It gives me a feeling of calm and chill. The neighbours say 'good morning' and everything is quiet when you come back home after a long day at the office...
***
And what do you tell me about this bus station? The trip to nowhere that we will all take one day. :heart:
A lot of star power in this picture, like an NBA superteam of thinkers!
Good choices. The second one is the bus station in Preston, Lancashire. The first one looks like the UK too.
But I’ll have to side with Lionino regarding the building in Sao Paolo. It’s not Brutalist, anyway, I don’t think. I do appreciate its sheer monumentality, though.
Oh! Wow! Thanks for telling me it is actually a bus station. I promise I thought it was an airport the first time I saw the picture!
Quoting Jamal
Yes. :smile: It is located at Park Hill, Sheffield.
https://parkhill.estate/#gallery
Ah yes, the Park Hill Estate is quite famous in Britain. Well, at least among those of us who are nostalgic for utopian social housing.
Nietzsche has the will to power, and would be a great, aggressive scorer. But he's also sort of like a Kyrie Irving, a bit of a lose canon who is going to pick up a lot of ad hominem fouls and might not play the best defense.
Socrates is clearly going to be the best guy up in the paint, engaging in close range dialectical, but you also need shooters who can drop way into the back court of abstraction and sink threes like Hegel.
Then you have Aristotle and Aquinas. They don't have the flashy prose dribbling of a Nietzsche or an Augustine. However, they are good all around, playing great D, slowing the offense down with definitions. They're not going to be exciting like a Nate Robinson, more like an Al Horford, picking up rebounds, crashing the offensive glass—but that's what wins games in the end!
You also need to consider verticality. If you don't have players like Plato and Plotinus who can ascend, you're going to get killed in the paint and on the boards.
Luminous with beauty.
I tried to search on Google for the locations, and the results were fascinating.
"Stefan cel Mare" is the neighbourhood of Mircea. A brutalist Soviet-like building, but I like it. I feel positive vibrations, and the neighbourhood seemed to be vivid and full of joy:
It is very hard to find the red windmill on Google. Mircea says that it is located in 'Dambovita'.
Yet I guess it looked like this but red coloured:
I am ready to talk about 'Divine Simplicity' with you again.
:wink:
In that period of time, early 20th century, the territory where the castle is located belonged to Hungary, and it was called Kolozsvár. But now belongs to Romanian territory, and it is called Cluj-Napoca.
Well, at least when Miklos Banffy was alive, it was sufficient to chop pieces of wood from the closest forest. But now I can't imagine how expensive the gas or power bill could be! Crazy!
[i]Girl with Peaches[/I] by Valentin Serov.
It is (probably) one of the best paints I have ever seen, and it has become my favourite now.
Thanks for keeping this thread alive.
I was thinking about it some more. Maybe the girl was playing by herself, engrossed, and then someone, maybe one of her parents, came in and she became self-conscious.
I thought something similar: The girl seemed polite, and she felt self-conscious about wanting to eat the peaches in front of the person looking at her.
It is interesting that you and I perceived the same -- The girl felt self-conscious about something. I guess the expression of her eyes and the innocent position of her hands caught our attention.
Collingwood says the purpose of art is to express the artist’s experience. Our goal in looking at art is to try to share that same experience with them.
My view of art is that it is a form of language, and the expression through painting is just another way of speaking, writing, or grunting.
The above comment therefore is a work of art, hopefully acheiving the goal of your sharing the experience I had of thinking it.
I’m not being particularly facetious when I say maybe it is language that is a form of art.
Language itself or how language is used? Do you have a favourite aesthetic experience out of poetry, painting, architecture or nature?
That's right, there was some ambiguity there. My position was that language is any form of communication and that all forms of communication are representative, metaphoric, non-specific, and infused with personal perspective. That is, the line between what we designate as poetic and literal is arbitrary and that all is poetic at some level.
That's what I meant.
Maybe that's what @t clark meant as well, although he could just be saying that certain linguistic forms (but not all) are artistic, like poetry, music or the like.
But to your question asking whether one might have a favorite aesthetic experience, I think that's a valid question, but I would go as far as to say that everything provides an aesthtetic experience. Of course, this theory of mine isn't entirely developed and it could make no sense at some level, but that's my instinctive response.
I did find these quotes from Wittgenstein, where he apparently disagrees with my analysis:
"Do not forget that a poem, although it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information."
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel
"Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry. (Philosophie dürfte man eigentlich nur dichten.)"
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value
This suggests a poem, in being for a different purpose, is a different sort of language game. I can accept that different sentences might be for different purposes, but I can't see where the poetic game must be different than the literal game in all instances. That is, a poem can be used to give information, and I don't know how to work through what counts as "information" and what doesn't.
That is, there can be more beauty in an analytical essay than a limerick.
I can get behind that. Nice idea.
I must admit it was just a passing fancy and I haven’t put much thought in it. I guess that means I don’t know.
Quoting Tom Storm
Hard to pick just one. For poetry I’ll say “The Black Cottage” by Robert Frost. For architecture — Machu Picchu.
I have made the argument that there is beauty in a set of construction specifications.
I find beauty in the diversity of personalities, including those so boring they find beauty in blueprints.
For what it’s worth, I’ve also found beauty in well thought out and well written legal decisions.
I just wrote what I consider a most beautiful work of art. It argued that the condominium covenants did not bind the association to protect against water heater leaks from individual units, but that obligation rested entirely with the individual unit owners. It was a work so maginficent, it made the Sistine Chapel look like a steaming pile of cat shit.
But seriously, don’t you ever read a legal argument or decision that you think is beautiful, wonderful? I do.
As if all you have to say is "but seriously" and that will somehow keep me on task?
But seriously, I think you're using the term "beautiful" here in a pretty broad way, so maybe a legal argument could be beautiful, but not like a sunset. This issue isn't a small one because the definition of "beauty" is obviously central to aesthetics and this whole conversation.
So, define "beauty" so that the term makes sense in claiming a legal brief is beautiful in some way as is a sunset beautiful so that the term can be applied to both. I would think the similarity would rest somewhere in the feeling evoked from both, but I'm not really sure.
What saith Collingswood on it?
Really? So, of all people, it is you who is the one who reduces such a wide and ever reaching concept to something so primal. "Visually satisfying or enjoyable." That's what beauty is now.
So a blind person can never experience something beautiful. It's just an alien concept exclusive to those who have perfect or otherwise functional vision. For shame. Hanover. For shame. And I looked up to you as a great mind, legal and otherwise. Thankfully I discovered my idol had feet of clay before it fell atop me. Note the circular ellipsis or whatever you spout on about.
Quoting Hanover
For some reason in this thread I have this post of yours quoted, so I'll include surely it only ages to show my point. For shame!
I don't see how you derived that from what I said. The blind can have feelings of beauty, but obviously not from what they see. The question was what was consistent within the term "beauty" that makes it apply across all uses of the term beauty (which could include written essays, sunsets, music, or whatever). Quoting OutlanderI really don't follow how I've been incosistent is arguing that all language offers some degree of metaphor and then in my asking for a definition of beauty that allows it to apply across diverse experiences. I might generously read in that you're suggesting if art is omnipresent in communication than beauty must also be (which might be true if all art must contain beauty), but that hardly is contradicted by my asking for a definition of art.
Quoting Hanover
Well, now you do. Or at least should.
This seems to suggest speech cannot ever amount to something visual. Which, sure, the old saying goes "a picture is worth 1,00 words." So you have that on your side. But as an absolute? Well, perhaps it's simply nothing those of us sighted can truly imagine, now is it?
Quoting Hanover
Sure, if we dictate that beauty means "that which one [perhaps greatly or transcendentally] appreciates [over what is common, if not to the individual's experience or perspective]." This is a simple (albeit crude and lacking) term that would seem to cover all. So, if this is true, how am I incorrect?
Quoting Hanover
Quoting Hanover
See, this is where I take offense (not really, just hypothetically in an intellectual "debate for debate sake" kind of way). You first claim "art" is a form of language. Meaning it can be fully, or at least sufficiently experienced by those who are limited to such (say, the blind). Yet, people who can see enjoy art and visual experiences, they consider this a staple of the human experience. Do you disagree? Regardless, art is a billion dollar industry. Visual experience is what most people consider to be fundamental to the human experience. So, unless all these people are just wasting their money and the world is full of basically adult children gazing into a simple machine like a kaleidoscope, mistaking art and visual perception as a sort of "empty nothingness" that could easily be replaced by,language, I see a bit of inconsistency. That is to say a bit of lack of thoroughness.
What I mean is that all language is a form of poetry to the extent it is an abstraction of reality highly influenced by perspective and comparitive evaluation (i.e. metaphor). Along with this expansive view of language, I accept art as language, as being a form of communication formed through symbolism to communicative thought.
Your need to isolate visual art as being of some special category of art that needs to be discussed is elusive as is your need to protect the blind from what you envision are attacks on their limitations.
Well hey, who's to say the sighted (non-blind) aren't the truly limited ones, as far as knowledge and the true depth of the universe is concerned. Sure, it's a physical world, we need to see, to eat, basically.
My "need" or rather point expressed is that, as a sighted, non-blind person, you don't know the world they experience. I thought that was the whole point of idea of philosophy in regards to qualia. Sure, the sighted people have overtaken the world, and so find blind people as relatively low priority, with nothing to offer, teach, or learn from. We look at them as some sort of pariah or outcast, masquerading as sympathy or pity or "right from wrong" since they are effectively more vulnerable than those who can see. But what of it?
Also, as a fellow lawyer-in-practice let's not ignore the fact it was you who first intended to isolate visual art with your statement "a legal argument could be beautiful, but not like a sunset". I don't know what it is you're trying to do, but you're not doing it very well. Which is out of character for you.
I'm sort of wondering why you're discussing qualia about right now, with it not having to do with anything we were talking about. I don't have a problem with tangents or even distant associations of one concept with the other, but this is entirely unrelated, like you just wanted to start arguing that the blind people are missing certain qualitative states that non-blind people are. But I'll agree, to the extent qualia exist, I would agree blind people would be missing the qualia of non-blind people, namely the stuff of seeing.
Quoting Outlander
Now we're flying over the cuckoo's nest. No one is telling blind people they are pariahs, but if you know someone who is, you ought tell them to stop bullying the blind.
Quoting Outlander
My objective, which is not that hard to decipher, was to point out the varying ways "beautiful" might be defined, which isn't terribly controversial because it forms the better part of aesthetics, which is to define beauty.
Quoting Outlander
I will try to better do what you don't know what I'm trying to do so that I can do it the way you have come to expect.
It’s a feeling I get when I read poetry or fiction. My primary aesthetic medium is the written word. I like music and visual arts, but my relationship to them is not as close. The feeling I’m talking about is the same one I get when I read anything well written—poetry, fiction, technical documents, legal documents, construction documents, philosophy, history, letters, emails, posts here on the forum. It’s the same feeling. Competence is beautiful.
Quoting Hanover
I’m not sure what Collingwood would say about beauty and I’m too lazy to go check. What he says about art is that it is a way for the artist to express their experience and share it with an audience.
This raises an interesting question: what the hell is beauty supposed to be anyway? I see it in women, but not much else. I occasionally see landscapes in nature that strike me as "visually arresting," but I wouldn’t personally call them beautiful. I am mostly indifferent to scenery. Most of the pictures on this thread, to me, are just images of striking things, some of which I find unappealing. Maybe it’s my problem, I’m not quick to find things beautiful. Perhaps music is the only exception. But I am quick to notice when something looks interesting or arresting in some way. Maybe beauty is just whatever draws your attention and gives you pleasure, which makes it a rather somewhat ambiguous, emotional category.
Of course they're not. But they live as such, only were it not for that one nagging social order we call "being a good person." If there were but one meal to eat, and it were you and a blind man, you'd eat that meal yourself fully. Yes, I know your type. Of course, not with other people around. So you'll convince yourself you might share otherwise. Yes, in mixed company, indeed you shall.
What is a man who cannot see who has nothing for you to gain if under your responsibility under punishment of suffering? A treasure. Otherwise, he is but another fixture in this world, a non-human who your ego and false sense of virtue may wish the best aloud, hoping someone would hear it. But short of that, a nobody.
Quoting Hanover
And someone else clearly did. A poem or "legal ruling" can be beautiful. But you insist "not like a sunset." So we come back to the root of the issue here. Can someone blind or perhaps unable to feel the warmth on their skin of said sunset for whatever reason know the beauty of a sunset like any normal, able-bodied person can?
These are your own words, Hanover. Not mine.
You're ridiculous.
Quoting Outlander
The reason I said that the beauty of a sunset and a legal ruling are different is because they are. You think that's because I hate blind people and that you're going to expose that hatred regardless of my efforts to conceal it. I'm somewhere between appreciating your schtick if it's intended as nonsense and wondering whether you can think straight.
In any event, I've grown tired of the nonsense, but do enjoy the rest of your day.
To the contrary, I'd bet life and limb you don't have a hateful bone in your body. Not one that was placed there by your own will or volition, at least.
I merely sought an explanation so as to alleviate my apparent ignorance. I have a problem and look to you for a solution. I didn't mean to if such endeavors are inappropriate in your eyes. Surely you can forgive me.
Quoting Hanover
Well, explain how. Once more. Not everyone is as quick to logic and fact as you are. Surely this is the beauty of life, no?
Clearly multiple people here think (or at least remain uniformed) otherwise. Why not enlighten us instead of pejorati. It's clearly within your capacity to explain. I've seen it. And how.
Of course things are different. No different than saying every person's life is unique. I simply wished to ask how a non-visual form of (perceived) beauty is irreconcilably different from a visual experience of such. Perhaps this is self-evident. But it's not to me. It's not to many. I merely assumed someone or your wit and knowledge would be able to explain such. We look toward those whom we respect or otherwise find have qualities that are respectable to gain greater insight into the world around us. That's all. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm sorry if this upsets you, it certainly wasn't meant as such. I didn't wake up this morning, or any morning for that matter, wishing to be ignorant of things, facts or understanding you take for granted as second nature. Surely you can believe that. :confused:
Perhaps I'm merely barking up the wrong tree, so to speak. Out of my league. Is that such a crime? Surely, you yourself have been in such a position, at some point. I just thought you'd have a bit more to say is all. My fault?
At least one other person recently participating in this discussion aside from myself believes beautifully written words themself can be either equal or equivalent to a visual scene of beauty. If this is false, and the other person has received adequate proof or explanation from your words as such, that's all there is to it.
Let's start over. If one was non-sighted (I.E. blind), that person would never know the beauty of a sunset, nor that it is different from an otherwise beautiful arrangement of words or rulings. This to me, leads it to believe that blind people can never experience true beauty. Is this true or false? The idea of a "difference" is obvious, no different than one drink being flavored citrus and another being flavored non-citrus, but my question is, regardless of whether one is able to detect such flavoring or not, is inability of such truly defining of the overall experience?
As you should. Quoting Outlander
You must work harder for atonement than simply asking for forgiveness.Quoting Outlander
I think you're likely right that a blind person would not know the beauty of sight, much like a non-thinking person would suffer from being unable to appreciate the beauty of thought. Quoting Outlander
Ah, yes, the age old question of trying to decipher the difference between essays and sunsets that has troubled mankind since the cave dwellers. Let's see, a sunset is natural, an essay man-made. A sunset is sensory, yet an essay intellectual. A sunset might be temporary and fleeting, yet an essay enduring. An essay requires some cultivation, the product of learning and culture, yet a sunset fairly universal (unless you're blind or perhaps wearing a sleeping mask). One is linguitic, doubtfully appreciated by dogs, cats, and mice, but it's potentially possible they would enjoy a lovely sunset. My cat does enjoy the hottest spot in the room, typically within the sun's rays. But is my cat's appreciation of a carefree day at all like my appreciation? It's hard to know what Gumbo thinks.
The question then is what does an essay and sunset have in common that might allow us to call them both "beautiful." This question, I did not realize when first posed, was deeply insulting to the blind (i.e. non-sighted), so I reask it with much trepidation. But that, all along, was the question.