Good or bad aesthetics is defined by the degree of beauty of an object or place. Beauty is defined as "a combination of qualities that give pleasure to the mind". When addressing the aesthetics of something, what determines that degree of beauty? At what point is it beautiful or not? If its just personal preference then there is no common definition of beauty. But if there is some universality to people's perception of beauty then personal preference becomes a cultural issue, not an aesthetic one.
No matter the style, something beautiful must be interesting,and possess clarity and the perception of wholeness or totality. Things are interesting when there is change. Or said the other way, if there is no change then there is only sameness and no interest. It must be interesting in order to attract people's attention so they'll look at it. Clarity allows the brain to decipher the constituents of a composition. Unity comes from the relationships among the different constituents of an array. If the parts have no relation to each other then they will not be seen as parts of a whole. And if there is no clarity among the different parts then the mind will become frustrated looking for that clarity.
For there to be change there must be at least two discernible parts and because they're discernible those parts must be in some way different from each other. The number of parts, their differences and their positions relative to each other determine the level of interest. A few parts, closely resembling each other have less interest than a composition with many disparate parts.
Clarity is the degree of difference among each of the parts in an array. When the mind cannot decipher the different parts of an array it will tire of the search and move on to something it can understand. When the elements of a composition are clear the mind will order their importance and decipher their relationships.
For there to be change there must be at least two discernible parts and because they're discernible those parts must be in some way different from each other. The number of parts, their differences and their positions relative to each other determine the level of interest. A few parts, closely resembling each other have less interest than a composition with many disparate parts.
Clarity is the degree of difference among each of the parts in an array. When the mind cannot decipher the different parts of an array it will tire of the search and move on to something it can understand. When the elements of a composition are clear the mind will order their importance and decipher their relationships.
Beauty is interesting and one reason is because it's pliable to some degree. It can change over time and depends on circumstance and life experiences.
ReplyDeleteYou may not start out thinking that women with large rear ends are attractive, but if your girlfriend or wife gains weight slowly over time and her rear end expands, you find yourself liking (or not minding) large rear ends more, and not just on her.
You may not like a song on the radio very much the first time you hear it, but if it keeps getting air play, it usually grows on you.
The brain works this way even outside the realm of aesthetics. Prisoners of war or abductees sometimes start identifying with their captors (Patti Hurst comes to mind).
So I think there is a relationship between beauty and brain-washing (to put it perhaps too bluntly). There is usually a limit to how far you can stretch it, and that seems to vary from person to person depending on their degree of exposure and "training" and their natural disposition.
Something you said about the importance of "interest" to beauty is worth elaborating. There is a difference between something that is beautiful in an ordinary, mundane way and something that is beautiful in an attractive, exotic way.
ReplyDeleteTake a beautifully featured, symmetrical female face. Now change something slightly in the symmetry - put a dimple on one side and not the other, or make the left eye smaller or slanted at a different angle. Now you have something to stare at - your brain is trying to find out what's "wrong" with this face. It's not terribly wrong, mind you, it's still beautiful, but now it's captivating as well.
Sometimes all you have to do is tweak the scale. Take a familiar design and make it bigger. Think of Hummers. Skyscrapers. Waterfalls. Simply making things bigger than their typical size causes excitement and fills people with feelings of awe, danger, power.