A QUESTION OF BEAUTY

Umberto Eco, On Beauty Dave Beech (ed.), Beauty

To question beauty To ask what is beauty? Any thoughts?

A key division: Experience in the eye of the beholder Social value

A key division: Experience in the eye of the beholder Social value an objective thing

A property? Something in an object / person / thing? Something which we bring to the equation? Wendy Steiner: Beauty is an unstable property because it is not a property at all. It is the name of a particular interaction between two beings, a self and an Other Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth Century Art, 2001

A property? Something in an object / person / thing? Something which we bring to the equation? Wendy Steiner: Beauty is an unstable property because it is not a property at all. It is the name of a particular interaction between two beings, a self and an Other It is not a quality but a type of communication Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth Century Art, 2001

Beauty as a historical concept *proportion * that which is loved *moderation / harmony / symmetry *that which causes conict, that which stays the arm

Sappho: I think beauty is what you fall in love with Plato: the fairest bond is that which makes the most complete union of itself and the things which it combines; and proportion is best adapted to such a union

Sappho: I think beauty is what you fall in love with Plato: the fairest bond is that which makes the most complete union of itself and the things which it combines; and proportion is best adapted to such a union

An example: The Judgment of Paris A trial of beauty where the judgment leads to rivalry and war

Lucas Cranach The Judgement of Paris 1514

The second example: Beauty acts it makes the Greek king, Menelaos spare his wife, Helen

Does looking at beauty make the object of the gaze a passive thing? Does the act of looking at beauty have consequences for the viewer (does it make them passive)?

Greek artistic expressions of beauty: *the ideal schema body and building alike *the static form where a fragment of action nds repose and equilibrium

Like a building, the nude represents a balance between an ideal scheme and functional necessity. p. 17 Kenneth Clark, The Nude, 1956

The Temple of Hephaistos in Athens, the bestpreserved Doric temple in Greece, 449-415BC The Kritios Boy, ca 480 BC

Miron Discobolus 460-450 BC

Andrea Palladio Villa Rotonda, Vicenza 1550

Notre Dame cathedral, rose window, 1163-97

How does proportion change? (The rules of proportion, what is correct proportion?)

How does proportion change? (The rules of proportion, what is correct proportion?)

How does proportion change? (The rules of proportion, what is correct proportion?)

Naomi Wolf The Beauty Myth, 1991 The quality called beauty objectively and universally exist. Women must want to embody it and men must want to possess women who embody it. The qualities that a given period calls beautiful in women are merely symbols of the female behavior that that period considers desirable: The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behavior and not appearance

Naomi Wolf The Beauty Myth, 1991 The quality called beauty objectively and universally exist. Women must want to embody it and men must want to possess women who embody it. The qualities that a given period calls beautiful in women are merely symbols of the female behavior that that period considers desirable: The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behavior and not appearance Beauty part of an economy but not linked to objects but to selfworth

Naomi Wolf The Beauty Myth, 1991 The quality called beauty objectively and universally exist. Women must want to embody it and men must want to possess women who embody it. The qualities that a given period calls beautiful in women are merely symbols of the female behavior that that period considers desirable: The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behavior and not appearance Particular behaviors and attributes that are considered desirable change through history

Beauty as conformity with the purpose An act in accordance with an idea Proportion as an ethical dimension the moral beauty Beauty as a mutual collaboration between things Thomas Aquinas: Beauty consists of due proportion, for the senses delight in well-proportioned things three elements: -integrity / perfection (against incomplete / deformed) -proportion / harmony (against excess / dissonance) -clarity / splendour (against chaos / darkness) Spiritual beauty consists in the fact that the conduct and the deeds of a person are well proportioned with the light of reason

Beauty as conformity with the purpose An act in accordance with an idea Proportion as an ethical dimension the moral beauty Beauty as a mutual collaboration between things Thomas Aquinas: Beauty consists of due proportion, for the senses delight in well-proportioned things three elements: -integrity / perfection (against incomplete / deformed) -proportion / harmony (against excess / dissonance) -clarity / splendour (against chaos / darkness) Spiritual beauty consists in the fact that the conduct and the deeds of a person are well proportioned with the light of reason

Beauty as conformity with the purpose An act in accordance with an idea Proportion as an ethical dimension the moral beauty Beauty as a mutual collaboration between things Thomas Aquinas: Beauty consists of due proportion, for the senses delight in well-proportioned things three elements: -integrity / perfection (against incomplete / deformed) -proportion / harmony (against excess / dissonance) -clarity / splendour (against chaos / darkness) Spiritual beauty consists in the fact that the conduct and the deeds of a person are well proportioned with the light of reason

Beauty as conformity with the purpose An act in accordance with an idea Proportion as an ethical dimension the moral beauty Beauty as a mutual collaboration between things Thomas Aquinas: Beauty consists of due proportion, for the senses delight in well-proportioned things three elements: -integrity / perfection (against incomplete / deformed) -proportion / harmony (against excess / dissonance) -clarity / splendour (against chaos / darkness) Spiritual beauty consists in the fact that the conduct and the deeds of a person are well proportioned with the light of reason

Apollo Belvedere After Leochares c120-140, copy of a bronze original c 350-325BC

Bacchus Caravaggio c.1595

A graceful moment! (the projection of will / a moment of repose) !

vs.

sensual obliteration (the loss of volition)

A modern version Form follows function. The beauty of that which fulls its function (with least fuss)

A modern version Form follows function. The beauty of that which fulls its function (with least fuss)

Beauty as Good Aquinas: Spiritual beauty consists in the fact that the conduct and the deeds of a person are well proportioned with the light of reason Beauty and goodness in a thing are identical fundamentally; for they are based upon the same thing, namely, the form; and consequently goodness is praised as beauty

Beauty as Good Aquinas: Spiritual beauty consists in the fact that the conduct and the deeds of a person are well proportioned with the light of reason Beauty and goodness in a thing are identical fundamentally; for they are based upon the same thing, namely, the form; and consequently goodness is praised as beauty

Imaging the good as beautiful

Imaging the bad as ugly

Leni Riefenstahl & visualising the perfect body a distinct political project

From Beauty as value to a question of a norm A scale by which we are valued

Is beauty something which we must work at (Not an eternal thing)

William Butler Yeats Adam s Curse 1903 To be born a woman is to know Although they do not talk of it at school That we must labour to be beautiful

William Butler Yeats Adam s Curse 1903 To be born a woman is to know Although they do not talk of it at school That we must labour to be beautiful

Beauty: ! a property or a labour?!

Once one talks of beauty, one always nds the ugly That thing without: proportion (it has the wrong scale) form (it is formless, a stain or out of place ) conformity with an ideal / purpose (it fails) clarity or distinction (it is indistinct or hybrid) The ugly object is an object which is in the wrong place Mark Cousins, The Ugly , AA Files, 1994

Once one talks of beauty, one always nds the ugly That thing without: proportion (it has the wrong scale) form (it is formless, a stain or out of place ) conformity with an ideal / purpose (it fails) clarity or distinction (it is indistinct or hybrid) The ugly object is an object which is in the wrong place Mark Cousins, The Ugly , AA Files, 1994

Diane Arbus

Helen Chadwick Loop My Loop 1991

The ugly and dirt / disgust Mary Douglas: dirt (and disgust) is not about inherent properties but systems dirt not as inherently dirty but as matter-out-of-place

The ugly and dirt / disgust Mary Douglas: dirt (and disgust) is not about inherent properties but systems dirt not as inherently dirty but as matter-out-of-place

The ugly and dirt / disgust Mary Douglas: dirt (and disgust) is not about inherent properties but systems dirt not as inherently dirty but as matter-out-of-place

Andres Serrano Piss Christ 1987

Visually: A beautiful image Symbolically: A dissonance between the arrangement of things Beauty is not only about the visual but is linked to symbolic arrangements

Andres Serrano Piss Christ 1987

Visually: A beautiful image Symbolically: A dissonance between the arrangement of things Beauty is not only about the visual but is linked to symbolic arrangements

Andres Serrano Piss Christ 1987

Twentieth Century responses to beauty: A split beauty found (and rened) in media images *the body *the commodity *the cultivation of taste (design, style, marketing) a critique or distrust of beauty is found in ne art practices *The primitive (against the classical) *The machine (against the organic or the expressive) *Excess (convulsive beauty)

El Lissitzky The Constructor 1924

Lewis Hine Power house mechanic 1920

 Marcel Duchamp Fountain 1917

Andr Breton: Beauty will be convulsive (in his Nadja ) Convulsive beauty will be veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive, magical circumstantial or will not be (in his L Amour Fou )

Man Ray, Fixed-Explosive , 1934!

Miles Aldridge

Helmut Newton, Nova, 1973, Paris

Guy Bourdin Untitled 1978

Hans Bellmer Guy Bourdin

Return(s) to beauty Dave Hickey The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty 1993 Elaine Scarry On Beauty and Being Just 1999 *Beauty has a democratic appeal but it is also always changing it is not a set value but something we do *Beauty, as proportion, can be thought as a relation to the fair: the equitable and the empathic the justice of fair distribution

Conclusion: Beauty is a subjective experience (it is particular to one s own situation) BUT This experience takes place in a particular cultural context which has its own pressures and inuencing values