SP w7 Beauty is in your DNA

What is beauty and pleasant to look at was another question that came up during the weekly session because I placed my images in groups being pleasing, disturbing and alienating.

I said in a post this week and during the live moment with Clare that the “pleasant” to look at images I made all had a certain familiarity to it; things everybody would recognize and therefor where good to look at because we could give it a place. This was my instinct reaction to the question. The colors and color psychology are a factor to take into account of course is what I mentioned. We were discussing the idea that this interpretation would be different for different viewer.

I saw some talks about beauty and the one of Denis Dutton was really good, and recognisable because he mentioned exact the same “familiarity”.

The first question being is beauty in the culturally conditioned eye of the beholder? Is what is considered beauty a personal relationship between the person and the art and what moves you personally? Is it just subjective? Al people tell you different views.

Art is subjective but if you ask people to react on it they come up with reasons and that are objective criteria such as the colors, the contrast, the light and the placing. So to decide if something is beautiful we can ask an expert. The expert has to have a proven delicacy of taste, practice, has to have seen enough to make a good comparison; he has to be non-prejudice (what is hard, being human) and good sense to know what the message is.

Leonarda da Vinci was researching beauty and in the measuring of the golden ratio and that is something that comes back in nature. This theory therefore goes back to the familiarity and therefor the pleasant to look part of my statement. For Leonarda art was science.

It is Denis Dutton personal believe that beauty experience with is emotionally; intensity in pleasure belongs to the involved human psychiatry. The experience of beauty so he says is one component of Darwinian adaptations. Beauty is an adaptive effect, which we extend and intensify in the creation and enjoyment of art and entertainment.

In the evolution there are two ways to evolve. The first one is natural selection. Normally beauty is nature’s way of acting at a distance. “You don’t want to eat a rabbit because it looks so cute.” People all over the world happen to like the same kind of landscape whether they are used to seeing it or not.

Hand axes

The second one is based on sexual selection. For art his theory is that the first pieces of art are hand axes made by the Homo erectus. They are symmetrical, attractive and show craftsmanship and are therefor beautiful, “works of art”.

Making these tools were signs of intelligence, fine motor control, planning ability, conscientiousness, and sometimes having access to rare materials.

The home erectus disappeared 100.000 years ago and we now have the homo sapience that uses language. With that language we have other tools, ways to amuse and amaze as each other such as telling jokes or storytelling. Today we are creating imaginary worlds in movies and fictions. Or express intense emotions with music or dance.

Still we find something beautiful if we see a skilled performance, something done well. His conclusion is that we see beauty with our mind; to find something beautiful as a gift from our ancestors. Therefore my direct, intuitive made statement that we find something beautiful when it is familiar to us fits this theory.

DNA, waves

Looking up the diffinition of art:

"The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power".

Koenen woordenboek (very pottic in its subcriptions and therefor my most used ones):

The ability to create beauty and arouse aesthetic pleasure

How I ended up seeing the ted talk of Simone Giertz about making useless things and how that is related to this subject but kind of fits in? I am not sure yet, wtill procesing what see tells but sure there is a link and otherwise I have to make up one because I liked the story.

You know when you have looked at some movies how other “related ones” pup up. Her talk made me laugh and some of the things she said made actually sense: being the to of your field is not hard if it is a small field” and if you want to have success and looking for failure or useless things than that is more easy. The most important part is being enthusiastic. I was after seeing her talk. Do we have to have an explanation for everything, onderstand everything or is het possible to enjoy things that you don't understand like magic. Is the process not as important as the end result. Although being at an art show I like to see thinks that I find visual attractive one way or the other. But be careful; I do not say things have to be beautiful.