More on Beauty and Value

[lhynard]

Now if beauty is what causes, "all at once, pain and longing and adoring," something isn't quite right, for I do not have any desire or longing for every work of art that I might find beautiful. But perhaps this is no conflict at all. Perhaps it is what is beautiful in the painting -- some abstract ideal -- that I long for, not the painting itself

Comments

[lhynard]

I am not so sure that there is a real difference. Certianly, the average man is more in tune with the visual than the other senses, but this is only a factor of how observant they are toward particular beauty, not if different beauty appeals to them once they are aware of it. I also think that what men might consider preferences are perhaps hard-wired in because of culture. If a man thinks he sees beauty in another man, he might be called homosexual. Women don't seem to have a problem recognizing another beautiful woman. If they do, it is also because of culture, which teaches them that men want a particular kind of woman, which is not necessarily even the case. So both men and women, I think, confuse beauty with what culture teaches them they should find appealing, but I think recognition of beauty is built in to us all somehow, men and women the same. Just as some people are better at recognizing patterns than others, however, I think some people are not as talented at recognizing beauty. Such people, I think, tend to find simpler beauties more noticable and, hence, "prefer" simple beauty. Until I was taught something about music, I was not able to appreciate the beauty of some of the more complicated music I heard, because those beautiful things slipped right past my observation.

I definitely agree that a person's beauty should find its source from within.

A really long post about beauty (and culture and teaching)

[sadeyedartist]

I disagree that all beauty is linked to culture. I think that bigmister's comment about beauty and gender is really interesting. I would like to think about that more.

I've heard that beauty is linked to culture about 493184175749750 times (give or take a few) and am still not sure that I agree. Sure, in China, heavier women were once thought of as beautiful because it meant that they were rich (was that really beauty or was that just the love of money?) and now supermodels are "supposed" to be anorexic, but I don't really think that has anything to do with beauty in a true sense.

Nonvisual though I might be, (being female and without a visual memory) I still look at the world around me, and am still not impressed by what culture says that male beauty is "supposed" to be. (I choose this as my example because I can categorize it easily.) I have, for example, never understood the cultural ideal that men should be "big". I live(d) with a very hansome brother whose goal it was to be as broad as possible. He was a wrestler with a legitimate need for muscle. He would often try to impress me by his new bicepts or tricepts or whatever other cepts he happended to be broadening at the time and I was never sure quite how to be impressed. I understood its functional use and desirablity, but I could not understand the aesthetic appeal.

(Which contradicts the Darwinist belief that beauty equals whatever we instinctively know to be best for creating stronger, better offspring. If we go by "survival of the physically fittest", my tastes are to my children's detriment.)

It may just be that my associations wtih the culturally acceptable contradict what I'm interested in (The priorities of the all-American football type don't tend to line up with mine.) but I'm not sure that that explains everything. Although the characteristics of a slimmer, gentler looking guy (steriotypically more studious and thoughtful) tend to match my own, it still doesn't explain the aesthetic appeal. For while I do tend to be drawn to character qualities first, it still doesn't explain why I am turned OFF consistantly by the impressively muscular--the cultural ideal.

If anything, cultural mandates probably keep people from thinking about beauty. Often, people will adopt what is SUPPOSED to be culturally acceptable, but this does not really come from them. For example, many girls obsess about their figures because of what females are SUPPOSED to look like. I have often heard girls compare themselves to a culturally idealized person, but I have rarely heard them express THEIR OWN ideas about beauty. It begs the question: do these girls really see fashion model A as pretty, or do they just adopt the standard, regardless of what they might otherwise think? If we are to have a true discussion about beauty as either individual or universal, we have to consider that maybe, beauty is not DEFINED by culture, but maybe culture GETS IN THE WAY of any true belief or discussion.

I recently had a discussion with one of my students about art to be put in an art show. I took out all of her work and put it onto the table in front of her. One piece of her work was clearly better than the others, and I had fully intended on choosing it, but I wanted her to think about her own work, so I asked her what piece she thought we should put into the show. Immediately, she chose the one I did, but she was hesitant. When I asked her, "Why did you choose that?" she immediately changed her mind. When I pressed her to explain her first choice, she gave very good answers (which were exactly right) but she kept changing her mind because she was unsure of what I wanted to hear. In the end, I gave my reasons for agreeing with her in the first place but this proves in some ways my point. There was something inherently good about this work. It was, in fact, inherently better than her other work. (And clearly so.) Dispite art being subjective, bla bla, the artist, teacher, and several classmates all agreed individually (and immediately) that this was the best work. What made the artist (and the others) hesitant to acknowledge this was nothing in the work itself or in the individuals, but in what they were AFRAID to say because of what they EXPECTED to hear in responce.

Re: A really long post about beauty (and culture and teaching)

[lhynard]

"If anything, cultural mandates probably keep people from thinking about beauty. Often, people will adopt what is SUPPOSED to be culturally acceptable, but this does not really come from them. For example, many girls obsess about their figures because of what females are SUPPOSED to look like. I have often heard girls compare themselves to a culturally idealized person, but I have rarely heard them express THEIR OWN ideas about beauty. It begs the question: do these girls really see fashion model A as pretty, or do they just adopt the standard, regardless of what they might otherwise think? If we are to have a true discussion about beauty as either individual or universal, we have to consider that maybe, beauty is not DEFINED by culture, but maybe culture GETS IN THE WAY of any true belief or discussion."

This paragraph expresses exactly what I was trying to express in my reply. Apparantly, I failed to do a good job at that. As far as gender, I think that any gender "differences" can be explained as "cultural mandate", not actual differences.

Yeah, the "Darwinist" idea on beautyu is pretty stupid....

Re: A really long post about beauty (and culture and teaching)

[sadeyedartist]

Yeah, the "Darwinist" idea on beautyu is pretty stupid....
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Ironically, I used precicely the word "stupid" to describe that at first "The stupid darwinist idea..." but had to edit it out when my reply was too long. (Did you know that we had a limit? I had to cut over a thousand characters.--Maybe I just write too much.)

Re: A really long post about beauty (and culture and teaching)

[lhynard]

Yeah, I learned that when I tried to explain my story world to an anonymous poster....