Beauty

[Mark]

Do I mention your religion when you post things?

You'd have a job: I don't subscribe to one.

And for the record, David (and others) are right. Your interpretation of beauty - and specifically, sunsets and music - DOES suggest that a person is in possession of ALL their physical senses. Just because some people aren't, doesn't mean they can't appreciate beauty.

[knight66]

I think it was Socrates who debated the proposition that the back of a woman was more beautiful than the front. He was such a great orator that he convinced his audience. He promptly then took the opposite stance and successfully persuaded them that the front was the more beautiful.

A woman with a plate through her lips is not my idea of beauty, but it is to some people of her culture. The issue is rather more complex than merely making sweeping statements about what all people must find beautiful.

I love Bach, most of the world is indifferent to him, but they undoubtedly have concepts of beauty. Some study insects and find enormous beauty there, I am not in that band, but that does not invalidate their reactions.

It is lazy thinking to suggest that everyone will have some kind of similar reaction to a stimulus, natural or manufactured.

Mike

[George]

I think it was Socrates who debated the proposition that the back of a woman was more beautiful than the front. He was such a great orator that he convinced his audience.

Socrates, the original gangsta rapper.   

[pjme]

Oh...beauty in art, you say?  How about:

Hmm, for some this comes close to kitsch....well crafted, well painted,but kitsch.

Peter

[longears]

Hmm, for some this comes close to kitsch....well crafted, well painted,but kitsch.

I guess some are unfamiliar with the work of J.W. Waterhouse and the pre-Raphaelites with whom he's associated.

[knight66]

Heck...are we still on Beauty?

Mike

[dtwilbanks]

Heck...are we still on Beauty?

Arr. Let's move on to booty, ya scurvy Scot.

[karlhenning]

"Pieces of eight . . . rawwk!"

[greg]

this thread sux.... let's talk about ugliness.

has anyone ever crushed a HUGE spider with something and then see little babies come running out, so many that you can't even count them, probably a hundred or 2 hundred? That's happened 3 times at my house in the last month or so, the first time it was me, the last two times, my dad, and the last time, the huge spider was inside the house. And the last 3 days straight i've had to kill a (smaller) spider wandering in my room, i wonder if they're the babies getting bigger?.....

[pjme]

Give the spiders back to mother nature. They really are harmless creatures - well, most of them . Take a glass or a cup,put it over the spider, slide a piece of carton or paper under it: voilà! Then go into the garden and release the animal.
Spiders are usefull creatures.

Peter

[Lethevich]

Hehe, this has to prove the impossibility of defining beauty, as I don't like the pre-Raphaelites either. They are painted with great skill, in the case of the painting quoted, with almost photographic accuracy, but the overall package I find sugary and not enjoyable.

Ditto Saul's sunset theory, I can think of a lot more things that I enjoy before sunsets (which I, offhand, cannot consider recall ever doing more than glance at).

Edit: Corrected some dumbness.

[Mark]

Pre-Raphaelites I like a good deal - I prefer my paintings to look like something, rather than just squiggles. And I prefer sunrise to sunset: there's a beauty in the freshness and renewed optimism of a new day.

[longears]

I don't like the pre-Raphaelites either...sugary and not enjoyable.

Too bad.  The world is full of beauty; appreciating only a thin slice of it cheapens one's experience of life.  You're right that it's impossible to define--at least, broadly enough to satisfy most while still meaning something.

[Saul]

I guess some are unfamiliar with the work of J.W. Waterhouse and the pre-Raphaelites with whom he's associated.  Here's another, probably his most famous painting:

Magical

[Kullervo]

Too bad.  The world is full of beauty; appreciating only a thin slice of it cheapens one's experience of life.  You're right that it's impossible to define--at least, broadly enough to satisfy most while still meaning something.  Other beauties I like, some of which you might enjoy, include:

I think this belongs in the Art That You Like thread.

[longears]

Sorry.  I've removed the offending images.  I'm still learning the rules around the reconstituted GMG.

[Kullervo]

Sorry.  I've removed the offending images.  I'm still learning the rules around the reconstituted GMG.

Well, I wasn't offended, nor am I a moderator, so you have no reason to listen to me.

[karlhenning]

Sorry.  I've removed the offending images.  I'm still learning the rules around the reconstituted GMG.

FWIW . . . I do enjoy all three of those images (the first and second rather more than the third);  but "beauty" is not the first noun that comes to mind with respect to any of them.  This remark is not a dismissal;  I just don't think that the beauty::ugliness axis is the principal axis governing any of them.

[karlhenning]

I guess some are unfamiliar with the work of J.W. Waterhouse and the pre-Raphaelites with whom he's associated.

Again, without saying at all that there is "no beauty" in this painting, my own response to it does not have any accentuation on the adjective beautiful.  (Obviously — or, I hope that it is obvious — I am here discussing my own 'read' of the work, and not proposing that my view is at all normative for the world.)

[longears]

Oh, well...at least those posts seem to have shifted the discussion of beauty away from half-clothed images of starlet bimbos and Saul's ethnicity towards a somewhat more elevated discourse...which was one of my intentions.