As is clear from a few days' ago's post, it's pretty hard to really get a good handle on what real beauty is--human or otherwise.
I'm pretty sure that this isn't it, though. Nor is it this, GM's homage to the ugliness of war, and finally, I'm pretty sure that it doesn't have much to do with modern fashion (like body piercing, ouch).
And so we're left with trying to infer from a sin-marred creation; difficult at best, of course. But let's try anyways; what about starting with proportion, balance, and vitality?
It would at least explain, for example, why we might consider this Mercedes to be beautiful, but a Ferrari or Lamborghini (glorified tractor!) to be gaudy, no? Why we consider Mozart to be sublime, but mercifully grow out of most pop, and why adults with a developed aesthetic sense cringe to see the results of plastic surgery (the "Barbie" look) and bodybuilding.
Not to mention, of course, modern fashion. You want to keep your kids (yourself?) out of hiphugger jeans and such? Help them, and yourself, develop an aesthetic sense.
Know Your Lifts: The Romanian Deadlift (RDL)
-
In the Know Your Lifts series, we’ve covered the high-bar back squat, the
low-bar squat, the power jerk and split jerk, and the overhead press. It’s
been...
11 hours ago
5 comments:
Along these lines, the other night I attended an event at my daughter's high school. During the presentation, a modern Broadway song was performed by a young lady of the school, in a most bombastic, dramatic, Whitney-Houston-cum-Ethel-Merman-wannabe style. When she was done, I thought that the performance showed a great deal of talent put at the service of something other than beauty, or, in Austenian terms, "excellence in execution without a particle of taste." The performance had a great deal of demonstrated ability, and not a bit of aesthetic merit.
Oh, specifically how it relates is that it gave me the same feeling as a Hummer of foreboding hue or that Chinese building: there was a lot of SOMETHING that went into designing them that provokes a certain amount of admiration, but whatever that something is, it isn't beauty.
Beauty and aesthetics begin to part ways when we decide to please ourselves first instead of doing or creating something that brings pleasure to others (and brings us pleasure in the process). This could be in a piece of art we create, a song we sing or perform - or in the clothes we wear to the grocery store; when we say "look at me" instead of "let's share this moment."
"Bad form" (as the Brits say) is when - as performer, spectator or participant - we make it all about us. That can be the prima donna, or at a very common level, wearing a prom dress as a guest at a wedding or my gardening clothes to a funeral. It's the type of attitude and behavior that says "my glory" or "my comfort" is more important than anyone else's - and is at the heart of any artistic excess.
In art, music, poetry, design or whatever, is the artist saying, "feel my pain" or "let's share this moment"? Not that it can't be ultimately beneficial and poignant to induce a common sense of loss or outrage through the work, but again, are you tapping into the power that comes from a common (if fleeting) vision, or merely seeking to glorify your own suffering?
This does not mean exalting the "collective" as superior to the individual because unless you are an individual you really can't recognize the pleasure of, for a few moments, feeling a common bond of appreciation, of being able to say of a performance or even a sentence, "Yes, I know what you mean!"
Yes, I know what you mean! That was extremely well said, Night Writer.
My uncle sent my mom some pics of body piercing that makes that one of the lady with her finger through her tongue look tame. Unbelievable stuff. Then my mom deleted it and my uncle doesn't seem to have them anymore. I am hoping to get them again. Just so we can get an idea of the extremes people are going to out there.....for the sake of "beauty!"
Post a Comment