Turning to Beauty
Andres Serrano. 1987
Programme Details
• Download Course Programme
• Dates, times, location, assignments for
assessment, synopsis of lecture, key and
suggested readings, seminar tasks, bibliography
• You can also Download Lectures and
Assessment Criteria
• Four lectures in total
• Guest Lecture. Brian Grassom. Mon 21
November
• All in SB42 at 1.00pm Monday
Key and Suggested Readings
• Key readings underpin the lecture theme
• Both Key and Suggested readings are listed. All indicate
which texts in the bibliography are most relevant to
which topics
• Do you need to read the Key readings before the
seminars? Ideally yes. These are also core and act to
direct you to relevant research
• Key or Suggested readings must be used for Stg 2
presentations which require you to ‘reference one or
two readings’
• Key readings – original to be placed on shelf outside
GP20. Photocopy and replace
• All texts are on the Academic Reserve and can be
photocopied. Remember time limits
Seminars & Assessment
• Groups on Noticeboard
• 2 Tuesday / 3 Thursday. See
Noticeboard and Programme
• Stage 2. Short presentation in pairs. Short
written assignment. See Programme.
• Stage 3. Written assignment of 2500-3000
words. See programme.
TUESDAY - Stage 2
• Where do you personally find Beauty and
do you consider it objective or subjective?
• Come prepared to question and discuss. If
you have any images or writings you could
share, please bring them
• Check Programme for details of
everything
THURSDAY – Stage 3
• Aim to develop a critical theme of your
own choice in relation to the mini
programme, your own studio activity and
interests.
• Independent research and enquiry relating
to studio practice.
Art
Conceptual Art
18th & 19th century
European painting
Aesthetics
Beauty
Aesthetics and the theory of Beauty are not the same, because the
theory of beauty may be concentrated on objects and appearances
but aesthetics is concerned with perceptions and perceivers
Donoghue 2003
‘aesthesis’ – the senses
• Alexander Baumgarten (1714-62): first used the
term Aesthetics. He defined this as ‘cognition by
means of the senses’, later specifying the
perception of beauty within art.
• Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804): founder of modern
aesthetics
• The Critique of Judgement (1790) ‘what is
required in order to call an object beautiful?’
• He found Beauty in art and nature..
• Kant distinguished aesthetic judgement from
cognitive judgement and from other pleasures,
advancing the aesthetic response as specific
and distinct
Modern aesthetics – the perceived,
perceptions and the perceiver
The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics
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Literature
Film
Photography
Painting
Sculpture
Music
Dance
Theatre
• Taste
• Beauty
• Imagination and Make
Believe
• Narrative
• Art Expression and
Emotion
• Humour
• Fakes and Forgeries
Beauty through time
• Beauty is an option for art
and not a necessary
condition. But it is not an
option for life.
• Danto 2003
• ..what is the idea of
Beauty that dominated
the 20th century?
• Eco 2004
Subverting Swedish design
• We should make the
most of the present
interval of time – during
which Beauty can be
found to be subversive,
transgressive, even. The
crafts and decorative arts
are at the centre of this
potentiality.
Beauty and the Beast – New Swedish
Design. Crafts Council. 2004
• Allan Powers. Craft. 2004
Art
The Philosophy of Art
Design culture and creativity
Beauty
Aesthetics
Why does Beauty matter?
• Desire is simply one more
commodity to be bought
and sold.
Grant Kester 2003
Add Julian Spalding’s cover
• Modern art is
communistic because it is
distorted and ugly…Art
which does not beautify
our country in plain
simple terms that
everyone can understand
breeds dissatisfaction
Congressman George A
Dondero of Michigan c1988
By now, ‘beauty’ has joined the “body” as one of
the leading intellectual conceits of the new
millennium. One can hardly swing a dead French
theorist without encountering another conference,
anthology or exhibit devoted to one or the other of
these themes
Grant Kester. 2003
Questions such as….. What is Beauty?
Have given rise to intellectual histories of
thousands of years and to a bewildering
array of mutually incompatible
answers…..The questions are radically
open, so radically open that you can
answer them for yourselves….
Sartwell. 2003
The word for
Beauty in Greek is
‘kalos’
Kalos infers
illumination; that
which is drenched
in light
The noble soul is
the clearly
illuminated soul
and such a soul
will be beautiful
The Light of God
Piss Christ
Andres Serrano
1987
Cibachrome
photograph
5 ft x 3 ft
Encased,
submerged and
sealed in the
artist’s own urine
‘a deplorable,
despicable
display of
vulgarity’
Senator Alfonse
D’Amato. 1989
Interrogating Beauty
• How do we judge what Beauty is?
• Does Beauty arise from the senses and the
emotions alone?
• Is it the object that is beautiful? Does Beauty
arise from form and appearance?
• Do we only need to see and feel to apprehend
beauty?
• What is the role of the intellect, of knowledge
and reason in creating our sense of Beauty?
• Is there a universal understanding of Beauty –
do we all agree on what is Beautiful?
• Or is Beauty a subjective value - a matter of
personal taste?
Where is Beauty?
A short list of values would include
these: life, love, truth, virtue, justice
and beauty
D. Donoghue. Speaking of Beauty. 2003
Beauty varies infinitely. We
desire and our beauties are
as plural and unpredictable
as we are
Sartwell 2004
Six Names of Beauty. C Sartwell
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Beauty; the object of longing (English)
Yapha; glow, bloom (Hebrew)
Sundara; holiness (Sundara)
To Kalon; idea, ideal (Greek)
Wabi-Sabi; humility imperfection (Japanese)
Hozho; health, harmony (Navajo)
Sixteen theories of Beauty
Ogden Richards & Wood. 1922
• Possesses the simple
quality of Beauty
• Has a specified form
• Is an imitation of Nature
• Results from successful
exploitation of a medium
• Is a work of Genius
• Reveals Truth, the Spirit
of Nature, the Ideal, the
Universal or the Typical
• Produces illusion
• Leads to desirable social
effects
• Is an expression
• Causes pleasure
• Excites emotions
• Promotes a specific
emotion
• Involves processes of
empathy
• Heightens vitality
• etc
• etc
D Donoghue. Speaking of Beauty. 2003
“its diverse manifestations”
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Beauty as a property of the object in question
Beauty as a quality – “genius” - of the artist
Beauty as an experience of the perceiver
Beauty valued for some further or extraneous
reason
Beauty as a Property of the Object
in Question
To Kalon
He had been told that
life was beautiful. No!
Life is round
Bousquet, J
Plato. The Eternal Forms
• What then shall we imagine to be the aspect of
supreme beauty itself, simple, pure,
uncontaminated with the intermixture of human
flesh, colours and all other ideal shapes
attendant on mortality (Symposium)
• And the ratios of their (the cube, triangle…)
numbers, motions and other properties,
everywhere God, as far as necessity allowed or
gave consent, has exactly perfected and
harmonised due to proportion (Timaeus)
Numbers embody Reason and Truth. 2 x 2 is always 4
This is an absolute; it is always and infinitely true,
thereby partaking of Truth
Absolutes are constant and eternal, representing
perfection, the infinite and the Ideal
The realm of the Ideal, is the kingdom of the Gods
(Heaven). Numbers, as representative of the absolute
are therefore associated with Heaven
The realm of the Gods, or Heaven, by definition, also
includes Goodness
Numbers therefore partake of the absolutes of Truth
and Goodness
Greek Beauty, therefore, embodies Truth and Goodness
through numbers
Beauty does not lie in the individual elements but in the
harmonious proportion of the parts
Galen. 2nd century AD
The Parthenon. Phidias. 447-32 BC
The Doryphorus. The Canon of
Polyclitus. 450 BC
To Kalon: The principles of Greek Beauty as
a property of the Object
• Simplicity
• Purity
• Perfection of form through:
– Mathematics, geometry and measurement
– Acute visual perception
• Balance, poise, restraint
• Truth, goodness and nobility
Beauty as an experience of the perceiver:
Locke, Hume and Kant
Caspar David Friedrich
The Wanderer Above the
Sea of Fog. c1818
John Locke (1632-1704
David Hume ( 1711-76 )
• ‘Beauty is no quality in things themselves’
but merely a ‘sentiment’ in ‘the mind that
contemplates them’. J Locke
• Some particular forms or qualities, from
the original structure of the internal fabric,
are calculated to please…and if they
fail….it is from some apparent defect or
imperfection in the organ. D Hume
Kant. A Critique of Judgement. 1790
Subject
I consider the
object beautiful
Object
Agreement that the object is
beautiful is not guaranteed
Will everyone agree? No, so there is not general
agreement about what constitutes Beauty in the
object, but there is agreement about some things
Will everyone understand what I mean by beautiful? Yes,
so there is general agreement that Beauty exists. It is
universally communicable. Therefore, how do we recognise
it if we see it differently?
For Kant, Beauty can be both personal and universal. Roses generally elicit
agreement. Beauty therefore is not simply a matter of personal taste. It is
prompted by subjectivity but it also has an objective application to the world
‘The state of mind is universally
communicable’
• Aesthetic judgement or ‘the judgement of
taste that something is beautiful
• Distinct from all other judgements
involving pleasure
• It is ‘disinterested’; free from any other
interest or concern
‘thoughts that lie too deep for tears’