Earlier I expostulated on Tolstoy's idea of Art: that Art is really NOT about Beauty, but rather, is anything that conveys emotion from the artist (who experienced it directly) to an audience.
Now that we are all agreed on that, let's move on to conquer the issue of Beauty. Even the most dissolute and stubborn optical sybarites -- and I know a few, personally -- would be willing to correct the old adage about 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder', to 'the brain of the beholder.'
But we should really say 'the mind.' Somebody needs to convince the optical sybarites that Reality and Beauty actually exist in Ideas, of which photographs (paintings, sculptures, etc.) are merely the concrete representations.
Yes, I said 'merely'. Shapes and colors, or textures and contrasts, no matter how well they tickle the eyeball, can only be "beautiful" in the same sense that gooey lacto-globular confections at a Dairy Queen can be "delicious" to a seven-year-old.
It is fundamental Truths that are beautiful; and yet, they need pictorial representation. After all, 'Man is a little lower than the angels.' We aren't disembodied intellects like those orbs that housed the mighty minds of some aliens in one of the more memorable episodes of the original series of Star Trek. We have bodies and senses. Thus it is important to find concrete representations of Ideas. But still, it is the Ideas that matter most.
I certainly don't want to endorse the iconoclastic fanaticism of the JHWH cult (Jews, Muslims, and bahbll Protestants). Lucky for the Christians that they absorbed some of the intelligence of the Greeks, and their appreciation for the representation of Ideas.
Now that we are all agreed on that, let's move on to conquer the issue of Beauty. Even the most dissolute and stubborn optical sybarites -- and I know a few, personally -- would be willing to correct the old adage about 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder', to 'the brain of the beholder.'
But we should really say 'the mind.' Somebody needs to convince the optical sybarites that Reality and Beauty actually exist in Ideas, of which photographs (paintings, sculptures, etc.) are merely the concrete representations.
Yes, I said 'merely'. Shapes and colors, or textures and contrasts, no matter how well they tickle the eyeball, can only be "beautiful" in the same sense that gooey lacto-globular confections at a Dairy Queen can be "delicious" to a seven-year-old.
It is fundamental Truths that are beautiful; and yet, they need pictorial representation. After all, 'Man is a little lower than the angels.' We aren't disembodied intellects like those orbs that housed the mighty minds of some aliens in one of the more memorable episodes of the original series of Star Trek. We have bodies and senses. Thus it is important to find concrete representations of Ideas. But still, it is the Ideas that matter most.
I certainly don't want to endorse the iconoclastic fanaticism of the JHWH cult (Jews, Muslims, and bahbll Protestants). Lucky for the Christians that they absorbed some of the intelligence of the Greeks, and their appreciation for the representation of Ideas.
Comments
If the sky is blue, the air is clear, the flowers are blooming, well, a perfect moment on a perfect day. The forces of nature smile on us, provide what we need to live and love. So often caught in movies as well.
If the sky is overcast, glooming, the winds are churning, dangerous, threatening, well, that is representing the challenges of life. A wrong step and it's over. It represents the part of living where we are but a speck and outer forces would blow through us and never care nor ever look back.
It's always symbolic.
http://www.ted.com/talks/denis_dutton_a_darwinian_theory_of_beauty.html
James Gurney's book "Color and Light" was selling for 4 times the cover price when it first came out until he got wind of it and fixed the situation. I just mention this to make the point it's an excellent book. I think if you want to get a sense of all the tools and techniques that go into making something beautiful whether it's a painting or a photo this book is one of the best.
www.motionista.com
http://motionista.blogspot.com/
http://theperplexity.blogspot.com/
You once expressed a lack of appreciation for the Mona Lisa, a sentiment which I agreed with. So, that appreciation is in the eye of the beholder, the mind of the beholder, whatever, it's all the same since whatever is behind it, "idea," symbol, beauty, well, it's all the mystery of the thing.
We think in concepts but a concept is already at least once removed from the phenomena we are attempting to describe. That's the hidden mystery of art, I guess, it attempts to express what words cannot.
"The hidden mystery of art?" Gee, I thought Tolstoy did a pretty good job of demystifying art in his book, "What is Art?"
Said the bluebird to the cats and squirrels: "It is the sky that is beautiful; and yet, one must have somewhere to land and to build nests, so one needs earth and trees. But still, it is the sky that matters most."
A simple but powerful fact is that humans differ in their innate temperaments, and therefore in many of their innate values, aesthetic and moral.
A conceptual thinker finds ultimate beauty in elegant and fundamental ideas. A man of action finds ultimate beauty in risk and danger and performance. A man of practical administration finds ultimate beauty in order and predictability and tradition and routine. A man of poetry and emotional intensity finds ultimate beauty in naked, lyrical intimacy.
Some find fundamental truths beautiful. Others neither associate nor experience, with fundamental truths, any beauty at all. Instead, they yawn and hope the lecture will soon be over or the conversation topic will change...so they can find "real" beauty, as they experience it, in the senses, or the emotions, or in the logistics of orderly living.
To safeguard our accuracy of understanding, we must always be vigilant against the tendency to project our intuitions or preferences onto humanity, or onto objective reality, overall.
Or so it seems to little ol' me.