Hi Platt, Rod, Squonk, others,
I started a rather boring reply to your new theme on beauty, Platt, but have
scrapped it. Life is too short for boring argument.
Is beauty independant of our cultural training? Yes and no. Research on
ideals of human beauty have revealed a profound prejudice towards symmetry,
for example. Morphing a number of different photographs into a composite
generally produced an outcome considered more beautiful by observers.
I have already mentioned the cultural change in what is considered beautiful
in Western art that is epitomised in the work of Van Gogh. Undoubtedly there
is a cultural element at work here. Paintings considered ugly less than a
century ago, are now (as prints) adorning the walls of countless westerners.
My favourite sculpture, the Ambum stone, discovered in a cave in Papua New
Guinea and eventually becoming the prize exhibit of the Australian National
Gallery's collection, has recently been dated to 3,500 years BP. It can be
seen at the following address, since it became famous a year or two back
when it was broken while on loan to a French Museum.
www.smh.com.au/news/0005/11/national/national10.html
Having seen the stone on display, there is no doubt to me that the artistic
sensibilities of this stone age artist were not very different to my own. I
had a strong feeling that that the production of this work, which must have
been very labor intensive, was also a labor of love. The strong symmetry of
this piece no doubt picks up on the human preference for symmetry in human
(or animal)forms, but the surface treatment is what convinces me that it is
a work of high art. This certainly offers more evidence that some elements
of art transcend cultures. The cave art of France is further testimony to
this.
Rod raised the interesting point about elegance. I personally think the word
beauty is misapplied to such things as mathematical solutions, and elegance
is indeed the higher value. My own artistic style is heavily influenced by
'elegance' as epitomised in the Japanese concepts of 'wabi' (elegant
simplicity) and 'sabi' (simple quietude), which flow from the same Buddhist
value system as Zen. I also have consistently argued for beauty as "an
essential, if hard to define, quality of art" (Quoting from the card that
accompanies my sculptures.) When I wrote this about 12 years ago, it was
considered rather unfashionable, almost daring, to associate beauty with
art. It is pleasing to see the pendulum swing, though not, I hope, to mere
prettiness! For anyone interested, some photos of my work can be seen on my
rather crude home page at
home.austarnet.com.au/beasley
Squonk raises an interesting point in his quote from Plotinus. While I would
like to have seen more of the context, I am assuming that to Plotinus beauty
is a distraction from the good. It seems that Plotinus is viewing beauty as
a quality of the egoic self, the pursuit of which only maintains the
illusory "pleasure mixed with pain" which is characteristic of the usual
state of humanity. For the mystic, though, pursuit of the good or the true
leads to a different source of values, where beauty is not specifically
discriminated, possibly because the mystic perception no longer
discriminates good and bad in the way required to describe the beautiful and
the ugly. If this is so, and I am keeping an open mind on it, then beauty is
a fundamentally flawed candidate for a 5th level.
(I am reminded of the Indian mystic, U.G. Krishnamurti's, comment that since
adopting the mantle of enlightenment, he has found Beethoven's music, which
he apparently once enjoyed, reminds him of the wailing of cats. He also
asserts that most people would not find his state enjoyable. I am somewhat
cynical of U.G., as he is commonly known, since he also claims that his
visits to Australia are enriched by his enjoyment of our thickened cream,
which he considers the best in the world. The last point may be true, but I
am suspicious of someone whose spectrum of quality includes the gustatory
but not the auditory.)
Finally, I am a great fan of Christopher Alexander's, since reading a little
book
he co-authored called 'Community and Privacy' many years ago, and using some
of his ideas when working on a Development Control Plan for our local area
some years ago. I certainly will want to see his new opus, mentioned in the
'Call of Beauty' site you provided, Platt.
Regards,
John B
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