Lecture 05 - A Question of Beauty

7/29/2019 Lecture 05 - A Question of Beauty

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A QUESTION OF BEAUTY


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


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A key division:

Experience in the eye of the beholder

Social value


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A key division:

Experience in the eye of the beholder

Social value an objective thing


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A property? Somethingin 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


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A property? Somethingin 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


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Beauty as a historical concept

*proportion

*that which is loved

*moderation / harmony / symmetry

*that which causes conflict, that which stays the

arm


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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


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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


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An example:

The Judgment of Paris

A trial of beauty where the judgment leads to rivalry and war


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Lucas Cranach

The Judgement of Paris

1514


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The second example:

Beauty acts it makes the Greek king, Menelaos spare his wife,

Helen


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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)?


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Greek artistic expressions of beauty:

*the ideal schema body and building alike

*the static form where a fragment of action finds repose

and equilibrium


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

Like a building, the nude represents a

balance between an ideal scheme and

functional necessity. p. 17Kenneth Clark, The Nude, 1956


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Miron

Discobolus

460-450 BC


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Andrea Palladio

Villa Rotonda, Vicenza

1550


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Notre Dame cathedral, rose window,

1163-97


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How does proportion change?

(The

rules

of proportion, what is correct proportion?)


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(The

rules



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(The

rules



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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


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Naomi Wolf








appearance

Beauty part of an economy but not linked to objects but to self-

worth


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Naomi Wolf








appearance

Particular behaviors and attributes that are considered desirable

change through history


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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 inwell-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


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three elements:






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three elements:






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three elements:






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


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Bacchus

Caravaggioc.1595


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vs.

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

sensual obliteration (the loss of volition)


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A modern version

Form follows function.

The beauty of that which fulfils its function (with least fuss)


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A modern version

Form follows function.

The beauty of that which fulfils its function (with least fuss)


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Beauty as Good

Aquinas:

Spiritual beauty consists in the fact that the conduct and thedeeds 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; andconsequently goodness is praised as beauty


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Beauty as Good

Aquinas:

Spiritual beauty consists in the fact that the conduct and thedeeds 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; andconsequently goodness is praised as beauty


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Imaging the good as beautiful


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Imaging the bad as ugly


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Leni Riefenstahl & visualising the perfect body a

distinct political project


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From Beauty as value

to a question of a norm

A scale by which we are valued


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Is beauty something which we

must workat

(Not an eternal thing)


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William Butler Yeats

Adams 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


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William Butler Yeats

Adams 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?


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Once one talks of beauty, one always finds 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 (itfails)

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


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Once one talks of beauty, one always finds 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 (itfails)

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


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Diane Arbus


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Helen Chadwick

Loop My Loop

1991


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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


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Mary Douglas:



systems




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Mary Douglas:



systems



Andres Serrano

Piss Christ

1987


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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


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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


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Twentieth Century responses to beauty:

A split

beauty found (and refined) in media images

*the body

*the commodity

*the cultivation of taste (design, style, marketing)

a critique or distrust of beauty is found in fine art practices

*The primitive (against the classical)

*The machine (against the organic or the expressive)

*Excess (convulsive beauty)


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El LissitzkyThe Constructor1924

L i Hi


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Lewis Hine

Power house mechanic

1920


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Marcel DuchampFountain 1917


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Andr Breton:

Beauty will be convulsive

(in his Nadja)

Convulsive beauty will beveiled-erotic, fixed-explosive,

magical circumstantial or will not

be (in his LAmour Fou)

Man Ray, Fixed-Explosive, 1934!


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Miles Aldridge


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Helmut Newton,Nova, 1973, Paris


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Guy BourdinUntitled1978


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Hans BellmerGuy Bourdin


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Return(s) to beauty

Dave HickeyThe 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 thefair: the

equitable and the empathic thejustice of fair distribution


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Conclusion:

Beauty is a subjective experience (it is particular to ones own

situation)

BUT

This experience takes place in a particular cultural context which

has its own pressures and influencing values

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Lecture 05 - A Question of Beauty