Is this beautiful?



Or this?



Or this? (Zdzisław Beksiński)



Or this? (Nicolas Roerich)



Or this? (Piet Mondrian)

(1)I see a beautiful person and become attracted to them.
(2)I see a beautiful architectural structure and praise its form.
(3)I see a beautiful sky and revel in its hues and clouds.
(4)I see a beautiful flower and am entranced by its colors and shape. — River

Beauty is a representation that enables the experience of pleasure and thus happiness; when many people find the same thing 'beautiful' one wonders whether conforming with and ultimately being approved by others itself is the source of this pleasure and happiness rather than the experience itself. It is fundamentally subjective, but the Form of Beauty itself.

I love flowers. In particular pink flowers. The Lily of the Valley is intoxicatingly beautiful because it has an amazing scent, but it can be highly poisonous unless planted under the right conditions and even rarely so, its petals can become pink as though when controlled, the Lily can transform from a pure and dangerously untouchable wild flower to a symbol of something beautifully gentle and poetic.

Is beauty the actual state of nature, or is it the symbol that represents the state of nature? Is it finding a woman sexually attractive that makes her beautiful, or is it the representation of who that woman is that you find attractive?

It's in the eye of the beholder. Then the beholders breed, and the field of beauty diverges. It expands into more, but narrower fields, as the beholders multiply.

There is natural beauty and man made beauty, one of the things they share is that both are more than what they are, they transcend what they are as objects. I think that this transcendence manifest itself to us as insight, an illumination that opens up a 'space' in our imaginations revealing possibilities that did not exist prior to our experience of the work.

I don't think beauty is equivalent to loveliness, the ugly can be beautiful, take a look at some Lucien Freud's portraits. Beauty's power is more like an emotive/cognitive explosion, something that stops us in our tracks, transfixes us and can give us a new way of experiencing reality.

I think that this transcendence manifest itself to us as insight, an illumination that opens up a 'space' in our imaginations revealing possibilities that did not exist prior to our experience of the work... Beauty's power is more like an emotive/cognitive explosion, something that stops us in our tracks, transfixes us and can give us a new way of experiencing reality. — Cavacava

(Y) A type of awe and admiration that pulls us into a different but better or more improved direction.

What makes something beautiful? — River

Alberti explained the transcendent quality of beauty as it relates to painting composition and musical composition in terms of harmonic proportion.

"I am every day more and more convinced of the truth of Pythagoras's saying that Nature is sure to act consistently, and with a constant Analogy in all her operations: From whence I conclude, that the same Numbers, by means of which the agreement of sounds affects our ears with delight, are the very same which please our eyes and mind. We shall therefore borrow all our rules for the finishing of our proportions from the musicians"

Leon Battista Alberti, The Ten Books of Architecture, Book IX, Chapter V

Harmonic proportion

The truth.

I like Lucien Freud's technique, but this particular composition has little regard for the harmonic divisions (intersections) in the armature of the rectangle (diagonal lines drawn between rectangle corners and opposite side midpoints) or in the rectangle roots (lines drawn from rectangle corners perpendicular to the two main rectangle diagonals).

Key image elements should be located at, or be aligned with, the harmonic divisions.

His disregard for good composition could very likely be intentional in this case (e.g., conveying an unsettling quality about the subject). It would be interesting to examine his other portraits in this regard.

I think many of his works are like the portrait I posted, he has no regard for harmonic proportion, I think his works are an overt refutation of the harmony proportion thesis of beauty.

He is a hyperrealist who is able, by means of his technique, to convey an emotive sense into his works that I think is beautiful. His brush work, the way he forms figure using light, shadow and color conveys a sense of emotion and character that's almost erotic and perhaps impossible to achieve in any other medium such as photography or cinema, maybe in sculpture.

I agree that his technique and use of colour are superb, but I couldn't look at this particular work for very long because of its dissonant composition.

(1)I see a beautiful person and become attracted to them.
(2)I see a beautiful architectural structure and praise its form.
(3)I see a beautiful sky and revel in its hues and clouds.
(4)I see a beautiful flower and am entranced by its colors and shape. — River

Whenever I hear or see something or someone that is "beautiful", there are always other aspects of the object or person that come into play. For instance, a person who is "beautiful" might also be very sexual in ways which, taken alone or applied to someone else, would obscure physical beauty. Sexual appeal sometimes is not beautiful, it's on an altogether different wavelength.

A beautiful building needs to also be visually interesting. If it isn't interesting (in it's visual form) it probably won't be beautiful. The trouble with some modern, international style office buildings isn't that their forms, claddings, and settings are not attractive, they are just not very interesting. They are too smooth, too regular, too similar to other buildings of the same style.

Take these four buildings: Inland Steel in Chicago, Prudential in Boston, and the Seagrams and Lever buildings in New York -- all outstanding examples of their style:




Compare the Seagrams Building and Lever Building (New York). Both are definitely attractive (they were fairly early examples of their style), they are faithful to the urban, international style (maximization of usable space, minimal decoration, regularity of design, and so on. I like both of these.

Take the Prudential building in Boston. Privileged to stand alone out on a previously industrial/railroad site between Boylston and Huntingdon Avenues in the back bay, it had no visual or social competition for two or three decades. It's just a concrete box, and up close it is decidedly not beautiful--it's attractive only at a distance. It is probably even less lovely now, but I used to like the building, because I liked the area.



The Inland Steel Building in Chicago features very shiny stainless vertical elements and green-tinted glass. It's a striking building, day or night. I find it very interesting, but it's effect is corporate-cold, whether seen in January or July.



Is the Eiffel Tower beautiful? Billions have warm feelings toward it because it represents Paris, and it curves upward, rather than rises like a spike. It's structurally complex (ornate?). I haven't seen it first hand.

The thing is, whether it's music or buildings or poetry or people, is "beauty" one aspect of the whole, or is a summation of the whole? There are many pieces of music I love, but "beauty" isn't first in line. Sometimes it is power, or intricacy, or inspiration (as in, inspired instrumentation and melody, say). The Choral finish of Beethoven's 9th is beautiful, but as a summation of many aspects--melody, harmony, massing of voices, instrumentation, rhythm, text, etc.

Ultimately the answer is simply because your brain works in the particular way that it does. "Beautiful" is just a term for something being strongly attractive to you or strongly resonating with you. Why something is strongly attractive to you or strongly resonates with you is ultimately a peculiarity of your individual brain responding in the right way to sensory stimulation, and surely part of the equation is just what sensory stimuli trigger some combination of dopamine, serotonin, etc. for you.

It's trivially obvious that the same sensory stimuli can have very different effects in different people.

If you're willing to be systematically analytic enough about it you can peg a number of common features that have the right effect for you, but it's important to remember that those features will not necessarily be generalizable for anyone else re beauty reactions. For example, I know in some detail just what sorts of features tend to work with me for music (I probably know that in the most detail, as I have a professional necessity for knowing this), for visual art, for visual design and architecture, for fictions, for women's faces and bodies, for personalities, for landscapes, etc. But what triggers the "beautiful" reaction for me might not be at all similar to what triggers it for someone else. In fact, sometimes it's diametrically opposite particular other persons' triggers. Historical environmental influences are surely part of it, too. All of this turns out to basically be doing a sort of statistical analysis/survey for particular individuals.

Yeah, definitely boxy architecture is not at all beautiful to me. Although a skyline composed of primarily boxy architecture can be--it depends on the exact relations + the angle I'm viewing it from.

Yes, all those boxy building blocks massed together become visually more spectacular.

Beautiful is a very fuzzy word, but maybe a necessary condition for something to be "beautiful" in common parlance is that it correlates with engendering a good mood or feeling.

Well said.

That song you posted, "He was beautiful." Goodness, I am an avid music lover, but I'd never heard it. It is exquisite, or rather—beautiful. But why? Noble Dust's post of the song "Heir apparent" is not pleasant—at all—to me. However he makes up for it with Mondrian.

it is lovely indeed.

"Cavatina" is a 1970 classical guitar piece by British composer Stanley Myers written for the film The Walking Stick (1970). Widely popularised as the theme from The Deer Hunter some eight years later.

The piece had been recorded by classical guitarist John Williams, long before the film that made it famous. It had originally been written for piano but at Williams' invitation, Myers re-wrote it for guitar and expanded it. After this transformation, it was first used for the film The Walking Stick (1970). In 1973, Cleo Laine wrote lyrics and recorded the song as "He Was Beautiful", accompanied by Williams.

It has been very popular (sometimes you can underestimate people's taste).

Following the release of The Deer Hunter in 1978, Williams' instrumental version of "Cavatina" became a UK Top 20 hit. Two other versions also made the Top 20 in the same year: another instrumental recording by The Shadows, with an electric guitar played by Hank Marvin, released on their album String of Hits with the name "Theme from The Deer Hunter" (number 9 in the UK singles charts and number 1 in The Netherlands); and a vocal version (using Cleo Laine's lyrics) by Iris Williams. (This is all Wikipedia; I didn't know all this.)

(1)I see a beautiful person and become attracted to them.
(2)I see a beautiful architectural structure and praise its form.
(3)I see a beautiful sky and revel in its hues and clouds.
(4)I see a beautiful flower and am entranced by its colors and shape. — River

1)Biological hardwiring to pick up signs of good health.
2) In awe of size and context - mediated by what one perceives others to think.
3) Only if you are in a good mood already!
4) In awe of "natural wonder"

The thing is, whether it's music or buildings or poetry or people, is "beauty" one aspect of the whole, or is a summation of the whole? There are many pieces of music I love, but "beauty" isn't first in line. Sometimes it is power, or intricacy, or inspiration (as in, inspired instrumentation and melody, say). The Choral finish of Beethoven's 9th is beautiful, but as a summation of many aspects--melody, harmony, massing of voices, instrumentation, rhythm, text, etc.

I've been to the to of the Prudential Sky Bar to watch the lights go on over the city at dusk, fantastic views.

Great question BC, but you have not mentioned the interior space (or the between spaces, like the ice rink at Rockefeller Center ) of these buildings. The codes, the cost, and the interior requirements in sum the utility of the structure as a whole must be taken into account otherwise...Maybe you are looking for beauty in all the wrong places [to borrow a line]?

The thing is, whether it's music or buildings or poetry or people, is "beauty" one aspect of the whole, or is a summation of the whole? There are many pieces of music I love, but "beauty" isn't first in line. — Bitter Crank

Interesting, I think that people generally use the term "beautiful" to describe something that they happen to like, but that they wouldn't stand behind that statement if they where asked if they really believed that the object (or whatever) had beauty.

Moreover, I would say that beauty is a quality that some things, or situations, performances etc., have that we can recognize through a feeling within us. Immanuel Kant's concept of beauty is an interesting idea that I like. However, I don't agree with him when he says that everyone equally able to see beauty in the same objects. I rather believe that the experience of beauty is the same, but that a certain thing that some people find beautiful won't have the capacity to arouse that same feeling in everyone. I would argue that cultural differences, personal taste and so on will stand in the way in a much more profound way than Kant said it does.

Also, I think that beauty comes in levels and things are not beautiful or not, they are more or less beautiful depending on how strong feeling they provoke in us.

Like with movies...

There are films that I have seen that have dreadful content but are terrific films. The Godfather, for instance, is about criminals, and their criminality isn't hidden. But the film is "beautifully acted and filmed". Films that endure tend to have that quality -- excellence in production and acting, whatever the content is. Opera often lavishes beauty on tragic scenes, where Mimi dies in La Boheme, or where Madam Butterfly longs for the American navy officer who will (we know) cast her aside (and does).

Un bel di vedremo:



An "ugly film" usually has "ugly" content -- scenes that are difficult to watch -- without top notch quality in acting in and production.

Nature (and our interpretation of it) often provides beauty that we can feel. Hardwood forests turned red and yellow in the fall are beautiful, whether one is walking in them or looking at them from a distance. A swamp is just as natural, but often involves scenes (dead trees from being smothered in water) which we don't like looking at. Are any of us charmed by stagnant sloughs?

Are any of us charmed by stagnant sloughs? — Bitter Crank

I'm sure that each slough would present a narrative deemed to be "beautiful" by those who study them.I don't think Nature does beauty - it is only us.

The thing is, whether it's music or buildings or poetry or people, is "beauty" one aspect of the whole, or is a summation of the whole? There are many pieces of music I love, but "beauty" isn't first in line. Sometimes it is power, or intricacy, or inspiration (as in, inspired instrumentation and melody, say). The Choral finish of Beethoven's 9th is beautiful, but as a summation of many aspects--melody, harmony, massing of voices, instrumentation, rhythm, text, etc. — Bitter Crank

I think beauty is something that's expressed in any one of those things you've observed in a piece of music: "power, intricacy, inspiration". Those are all qualities that engender a sense of beauty in the experience. As a musician, I'm a sucker for "pretty" harmonies and melodies as much as the next guy (well...), but prettiness isn't beauty. It can be an aspect of it; it elicits a certain emotion in us. I personally think beauty is an expression of the divine, so there's a "terrible" quality to beauty as well. "Holiness" means "set apart"; the offering that's set apart for the god; the god is set apart in the shrine. Holy originally signified the divine and daemonic at the same time, and I think beauty is an expression of that totality of holiness. I realize I'm probably in a minority (of 1) here, but think about those different aspects: power, intricacy, inspiration. There's a "holiness" to those aspects.

I'm working on learning this piece right now. I was only classically trained through part of high school, so it's totally kicking my ass. Power? Yes. Intricacy? God, yes. Inspiration? Yes. Beauty? All of the aspects of this piece make it beautiful.

Ha! Exhibiting a score as musical "beauty" is surely tantamount to mathematicians touting e to the I pi = -1 as beauty.

Eh? Is this is a response to my post? Click the link, it's a recording of the piece, including a score. Feel free to follow along if you can, or not.

For me a similar Debussy piece would be "beautiful".

Which one? (Use the "reply" button so people know you responded to them).

Thanks for the practical info Noble.

errmm which Debussy piece?Please
orgive my memory for names but I'm thinking of the Fawn Prelude - something impressionistic anyhow.