Archive for the ‘Essence’ tag
On Beauty
I was asked in a recent class to talk about my “personal” definition of beauty. Contrary to the requested personal, particular and subjective definition, below is my quest of a definition of “beauty” that is not subject to the particular or the relative.
The attempt to define beauty in the western culture has a history as long as the origin of western philosophy. Aristotle thinks we are able to perceive beauty because there’s a “universal quality” inherent in things that makes an object beautiful. To simplify, an object is beautiful only if it carries such a universal characters within its existence. In a different period of time, however, Spinoza questioned, “is it because the object itself is beautiful or is it that we like the object we see so we feel it’s beautiful?” The possibility of the sense of beauty therefore has two opposing theories?objectivism and subjectivism. In an extreme case, beauty may be considered entirely individual, subject to one’s like or dislike. In a cultural setting such as contemporary art world, beauty becomes either relative or unquestionable academic formula.
What does beauty mean to me? Before I can define beauty, it’s necessary to acknowledge that there must be an object and a viewer, i.e., there must be a “seer” and “seen” relationship. Hence my point is both the objective (the object and its constituent structure) and the subjective (me, the seer, my individuality) have equal importance in the formation of my sense of beauty. I assume an object is beautiful because there’s certain quality essential to its existence that is capable of arousing my admiration and an inclination of appreciating its existence. The “quality” of that beautiful “object”, I agree with Aristotle, must be innate to its existence and not contingent which would otherwise make its beautifulness accidental. And that innate quality as crucial as it determines the beauty of an object must be “embodied” or “manifested” either on the surface or the orientation or simply the form of that object in order to be perceived. Thus the essential quality of a beautiful object is itself both material and abstract.
On the other hand, even though I as the seer has complete and normal sense organs and am capable of perceiving beautiful things, does that grant me the privilege that whatever I feel beautiful is beautiful? I think the minimal requirement for me to judge that one thing is beautiful and the other is not must because I’m able to carry out my sense organs’ full potential in perceiving the beautiful.
As we often think an artist is “more” capable of seeing the beauty than others, it’s not just because we have sharp sensitivity since we may apply our sharp sensitivity to the wrong situation. What makes a sensitive seer capable of sensing the beauty an object presents to us is the “receptiveness” of that sensitive seer’s mind and body. We all carry a series of personal history in our life and that constitutes part of our subjectivity. We need to be open and receptive enough in our eyes, ears, and our mind in order to recognize the signal of beauty “embedded” in things. We need to be open enough yet without loosing our sense of “direction” to conclude that anything goes; we need a direction and if necessary, the discipline of how to penetrate the innate structure of an object visually in order to recognize what makes it beautiful.
