Aesthetics, also spelled esthetics, is the philosophical study of beauty and taste. To define its subject matter more precisely is, however, immensely difficult. Indeed, it could be said that self-definition has been the major task of modern aesthetics. We are acquainted with an interesting and puzzling realm of experience: the realm of the beautiful, the ugly, the sublime, and the elegant; of taste, criticism...Encyclopedia Britannica Article
Wikipedia states that,"Beauty is the phenomenon of the experience of pleasure, through the perception of balance and proportion of stimulus. It involves the cognition of a balanced form and structure that elicits attraction and appeal towards a person, animal, inanimate object, scene, music, idea, etc...
BEAUTY AND THE BODY.
"It is impossible to conceive of beauty in the absence of the body and its perception or sensation of the beautiful...
Linda Pavati explores the nature of beauty on her blog,"Beauty Matters," various other authors explore the psychology of beauty, beauty in the creative arts, the body, hair, fashion, cosmetics, and culture.
"Beauty", as they say, is in the eye of the beholder. What is beautiful to an artist of ancient Greece is very different from the beauty perceived by an indiginous African. Picasso's sense of beauty was influenced by the African aesthetic, but many people from his own culture are divided as to whether they find his work "beautiful". What role does beauty play in your appreciation of art?...
The VERNACULAR OF BEAUTY.
BOOKS:
Comments about "The Invisible Dragon" from Publishers Weekly:
Modern art, say those in the know, isn't so much about beauty as it is about instruction. Art appreciation is considered, in our culture, a consequence of sophistication, taste and learning--the property of the learned elite, the rich and famous. Even for sympathetic contemporary art lovers, there is something terribly precious about the intense politicization that animates much contemporary artistic practice. But can beauty replace pedagogy in art? In essays on gender and beauty, Robert Mapplethorpe, art institutions and beauty's "vernacular," art critic and teacher Hickey prompts a consideration of aspects of the rhetoric of beauty in Western art. "The vernacular of beauty, in its democratic appeal, remains a potent instrument for change in this civilization," Hickey asserts. But he goes on to say that what stands in the way of change are the museums, universities, foundations and the like "mandated to kidnap an entire province of ongoing artistic endeavor from its purportedly dysfunctional parent culture," to dissect and neutralize the power of images. One could argue with Hickey that new mass art audiences' responses to beauty are helping change both art's institutional framework and its position in our culture. But Hickey is on to something: beauty's reemergence as a coveted value challenges the art professional's role as art custodian. And from the standpoint of those who value democratic culture, this is all to the good. Illustrated.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
This link provides excerpts from, Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime (Aesthetics Today).
This link provides excerpt from The Abuse of Beauty: Beauty and the Philosophical Definition of Art.
The Terrible Beauty of Nazi Aesthetics, Acknowledging the Role of Art in a Spectacular Act of Barbarism
SEMINAL WORKS IN THE AREA:
"Works of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out:: with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work. Artistic production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult. One may assume that what mattered was their existence, not their being on view. The elk portrayed by the man of the Stone Age on the walls of his cave was an instrument of magic. He did expose it to his fellow men, but in the main it was meant for the spirits. Today the cult value would seem to demand that the work of art remain hidden..."
"The human gaze has the power of confering value one things; but it makes them cost more too..."
"So my current idea of a chair refers only externally to an exiting chair. It is not the chair in the external world, the chair that i percieved earlier; it is not that chair of straw and wood that allows me to distinguish my idea from ideas of table or of inkwell.Nevertheless, my current idea is the Idea of chair...
"...But souls which are pregnant —for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls than in their bodies—conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive or contain. And what are these conceptions?—wisdom and virtue in general. And such creators are poets and all artists who are deserving of the name inventor. But the greatest and fairest sort of wisdom by far is that which is concerned with the ordering of states and families, and which is called temperance and justice. And he who in youth has the seed of these implanted in him and is himself inspired, when he comes to maturity desires to beget and generate. He wanders about seeking beauty that he may beget offspring—for in deformity he will beget nothing—and naturally embraces the beautiful rather than the deformed body; above all when he finds a fair and noble and well-nurtured soul, he embraces the two in one person, and to such an one he is full of speech about virtue and the nature and pursuits of a good man; and he tries to educate him; and at the touch of the beautiful which is ever present to his memory, even when absent, he brings forth that which he had conceived long before, and in company with him tends that which he brings forth; and they are married by a far nearer tie and have a closer friendship than those who beget mortal children, for the children who are their common offspring are fairer and more immortal....
..."But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty—the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life—thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simple and divine? Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble life?’...
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