the theory of beauty

[xoet]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty

All life is beauty. The way a society values its individuals is also the expression of beauty. The Value of expressing beauty involves more then the interaction between societies themselves. When this is the emphasis then beauty is sometimes lost. Beauty of civilizations occur in their values concerning their lives. The difference between value and quality of substances and instances in civilization's cornucopia of points of view evolves all their lives into their own form beauty. Structuring ideas into perfections of thought that can be spoken of as beautiful becomes an endlessly developing paradigm.

this is my "theory" of beauty what is yours?

[Jason Rainville]

I know I'm not the sharpest lightbulb in the drawer, but your view seems really vague.

[HunterKiller_]

I know I'm not the sharpest lightbulb in the drawer, but your view seems really vague.

I think you mean brightest.

I'm not so well made in the upper department either, so I don't understand your theory.
I don't think physical beauty has anything to do with this civilization you keep bringing up.
Recognition of physical beauty is a primal instinct. A baby can tell a beautiful person from an ugly one. :)

[Jason Rainville]

I think you mean brightest.

Hence the joke :)

[HunterKiller_]

^ Oh, now I get it. :tihi:

[sweetoblivion314]

i like it when things are pretty :)

[xoet]

Yes so vague indeed the fact that in creating a theory one should be vague enough yet concise enough and yet not full of it,, enough ....

The concept that I had explained as a theory is given the criticism that it is too POV like and should not be entered as the English wiki's idea of the theory of beauty in place of which they just leave the dang thing blank... i.e. there is no theory to "what is Pretty" ... Who knows maybe nothing is pretty and everything is really just pretty ugly??

(POV is point of view not persistence of vision)

I know we have a wiki at concept as well as the net wiki in general. The nets wiki needs a theory for beauty as that they do not like my POV so hey group efforts are better off left for cooking goulash but I just want to see if we can possibly find a unified theory for beauty.??

(thanks in advance --0)

[Hyskoa]

Photoshop + lots of shadow.

[DanielC]

I think beauty is completly personal.
So, to me, nobody or nothing's ugly or beautiful. They just don't fit to my traits.
The more those traits are similar to mine or more than familiar to my point of view or expectation, the more it's beautiful to me.

[daveneale]

Beauty....is in the eye of the beholder, nothing is intrinsically beatifull-it depends on an opinion, be it your own, or of another

[Justin.]

Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.

[Jason Rainville]

Visual beauty

Beauty is a concept created in the mind of the person beholding that deals with aesthetic principles that create a sense of joy upon viewing. These principles vary from person to person (usually because of differing personal experiences), but due to natural inborn instincs some broad similarities are usually present;

men enjoying the naked female form;
contrast and full value to create rich variations in tone;
seeing rotten flesh usually evokes a different response, again, from instincs.

What we usually see as beautiful is what nature intended us to see as beautiful. A small child is adorable, so we protect it. A woman is shapely, so we love her. A landscape is picturesque and bountiful, so we settle it. Very rarey do we choose what we see as beautiful. Though again due to personal experiences and variations in brain chemistry there are differences;

some men may like tall slender women;
some may prefer dada over baroque;
some may like dark earthtones, others bright pastels.

There's my personal, least-confusing-as-I-could-make-it theory on visual beauty.

[xoet]

...that all life is beauty, such that, the value of beauty increases as the POVs become more alike and/or the closeness of that predictable idea that said POV holds for that likeness of the idea or paradigm(pattern of thought) becomes symmetrical to the given POV.

why stop there? what of a non-POV theory out side the box and unconcerned if Schrödinger's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat) cat even exists

[in.essensce]

I agree partially, but personally i think society ruins beauty e.g the counrty side being destroyed by society, it has its downfalls.

[Jason Rainville]

Holy shit, we can have pics in our sigs now!

Yes, that's all I've gleaned from this topic so far.

[Duq]

neh, davi disabled it some hours ago

[Katfayheirti]

One word: Aesthetics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics)

[xoet]

I should find it interesting, discerning or upsetting that my religious philosophy which is the study of the philosophy of value should not appear in aesthetics since as it was said that Aesthetics is a philosophy concerning value being SGI or Soka Gakkai International that loosely translates into value judgment society from the Japanese and that particular sect of Buddhism. all that aside not that it is an aside for me but possibly for someone else.

But I believe there still is a possible non-POV idea that mirrors life's beautiful parts and forms a theory about just that the beauty of "it all."

[dbclemons]

As it so happens, there's a rather interesting book on the subject of beauty, art, and it's relevance to society by Umberto Eco called "History of Beauty (http://www.amazon.com/History-Beauty-Umberto-Eco/dp/0847826465)."

[Jason Rainville]

xoet, I'm sorry to say but your theories sound like a lot of psuedo-philosophic double talk mixed with obscure references and oodles of run-on sentances, possibly to try to make it confusing for us to read and hide the fact that either what you have to say means nothing, or what you have to say is so basic you have to dress it up a little.

Not to say that it IS, I can't really tell. I'm just saying it sure sounds like it.

If you are talking about the ideas behind beauty, what it means to our society etc, this might be better for a philosophy forum. This is a visual arts forum, that deals with literal subject matter. This means that we think and talk in quite literal ways IE ways that aren't so completely confusing that other members can't follow along. There are clearly defined guidlines that can maximize visual beauty. It's less of a mystery than the ideas and philosiphy of beauty itself.

So either you're completely outclassing me with your philosophical thinking and should relocate this topic to a more suitable forum, or you have a very flimsy theory, one that you're unable to back up concretely, and want to make it seem like you're a wizard of words so there will be no opposition.

But I'm not so ignorant to say what you are doing. So, prove my little theory wrong and explain it all a little more clearly.

[xoet]

this seems to always happen that I am attacked and the concept that I am needing help with is overlooked - I am looking for POV of theories that can explain beauty

thank you dbclemons I will look into that book...

I will read up on aesthetics today also...

The eye of the beholder beholds their POV yet I am still wondering if there is a common pov for the theory of beauty?

[Ilaekae]

One compounding problem with any definition of beauty is that it can only exist as an "alternative."

THIS is beautiful because the rest of the crap piled around it is subjectively uglier than it is. By this standard, an oil slick that is slowely poisonng everything for 500 miles in all direction can be beautiful in a certain light, even though the overall perception is ugliness to an extreme.

There is also the problem of experience affecting the perceived beauty...which explains probably why cute young females can be attracted to ugly older men--IF they're rich and successful/powerful. The concept here of beauty becomes tied/filtered/adapted mentally by the future implications of the moderating factors.

It also works the other way--a drop-dead gorgeous model can be very unattractive if she is perceived as condenscending or elitist and beyond reach while the sort-of-cute girl across the street is definitely massaging your hormones. One is reachable beauty, the other is less beautiful because we mentally make it so for our own self-worth. "She won't talk to me, so she's a shallow plastic ugly bitch caked with makeup..."

This does not mean that all models tend to be NOT beautiful and all rich guys tend to be AUTOMATICALLY attractive. It's just another filter (for want of a better word) that we're using to ascertain what WE think is beautiful.

When we get to the artist's level, beautiful colors that are seen generally as beautiful by others fall in the range of purity and brightness that make us feel good psychologically because they remind us of "pretty things we've experienced/seen," but because of this subjective reaction determined by the surrounding visual environment, an arrangement of dull earth colors and grays can also be beautiful when contrasted with even duller and less attractive color combinations.

There is also a "selective memory" at work when determining beauty...

Cam shots of your kid's birth can gag a maggot, but the selective filtering of some birth imagery hooked to feelings of love/ success/ relief/ accomplishment/pride can be some of the most beautiful memories/images a human being can imagine.

The "imagine" here is the key word...we as a species CAN imagine...and that process is the greatest determiner of beauty we possess. Yesterday, I "celebrated" my 37th wedding anniversary (we both pretty much ignored it :$ ), but the life experience we shared for so long has colored our subjective perception of each other to such a degree that the beat-up overweight slob and his skinny wrinkly lady friend are still the two kids we were nearly four decades ago...at least in our mind's eye...

All of this mental confusion caused by societal pressures, memory, our own subjective preferences and the way they have been altered over time by other forces come together to allow us--artists--to approach "beauty" in a way that the average person would have trouble handling. What it boils down to is that the more child-like we are (EVERYTHING is beautiful), and ironically the more intelligent /educated we become without losing that childish innocence, the more we see beauty in things that others disregard as swill...

[StompinTom]

Photoshop + lots of shadow.

haha! i hear sexy scantily clad women also help.

[xoet]

the pretty soapbox posts in red today?

One compounding problem with any definition of beauty is that it can only exist as an "alternative."

the perfect mirror will still not be the original object that is an important point ... I am glad you started with it.

THIS is beautiful because the rest of the crap piled around it is subjectively uglier than it is. By this standard, an oil slick that is slowely poisonng everything for 500 miles in all direction can be beautiful in a certain light, even though the overall perception is ugliness to an extreme.

these are POV problems to the theory that everything is beautiful to a baby yet the baby still cries?

There is also the problem of experience affecting the perceived beauty...which explains probably why cute young females can be attracted to ugly older men--IF they're rich and successful/powerful. The concept here of beauty becomes tied/filtered/adapted mentally by the future implications of the moderating factors.

this could be considered a learned form of the idea of beauty.

It also works the other way--a drop-dead gorgeous model can be very unattractive if she is perceived as condenscending or elitist and beyond reach while the sort-of-cute girl across the street is definitely massaging your hormones. One is reachable beauty, the other is less beautiful because we mentally make it so for our own self-worth. "She won't talk to me, so she's a shallow plastic ugly bitch caked with makeup..."

Both I think go into the thought of what beauty is and not the theory of what beautiful is likened to in the mirror of words as per your previous comment

This does not mean that all models tend to be NOT beautiful and all rich guys tend to be AUTOMATICALLY attractive. It's just another filter (for want of a better word) that we're using to ascertain what WE think is beautiful.

//so we think we know what is beautiful then comes the goal for the given artist to create that in all its variations till what they die trying ??aside//

When we get to the artist's level, beautiful colors that are seen generally as beautiful by others fall in the range of purity and brightness that make us feel good psychologically because they remind us of "pretty things we've experienced/seen," but because of this subjective reaction determined by the surrounding visual environment, an arrangement of dull earth colors and grays can also be beautiful when contrasted with even duller and less attractive color combinations.

I think that when an artist starts to lie about something or other then they create a trap that opens the door to the abyss of misinformations that will lead to dispare... //another aside//

There is also a "selective memory" at work when determining beauty...

I think selective memory becomes a trap as well when an artist lets it have too much influence and does not do the new or interesting for themselves but just for everyone else

Cam shots of your kid's birth can gag a maggot, but the selective filtering of some birth imagery hooked to feelings of love/ success/ relief/ accomplishment/pride can be some of the most beautiful memories/images a human being can imagine.

till of course they become senile and it all looks the same...

The "imagine" here is the key word...we as a species CAN imagine...and that process is the greatest determiner of beauty we possess. Yesterday, I "celebrated" my 37th wedding anniversary (we both pretty much ignored it :$ ),

much envy being my wife left and more or less does not think our marriage was important although that is another long post for a different forum altogether.

but the life experience we shared for so long has colored our subjective perception of each other to such a degree that the beat-up overweight slob and his skinny wrinkly lady friend are still the two kids we were nearly four decades ago...at least in our mind's eye...

much relating to there as well on my part but my wife was not imagery minded as I am

All of this mental confusion caused by societal pressures, memory, our own subjective preferences and the way they have been altered over time by other forces come together to allow us--artists--to approach "beauty" in a way that the average person would have trouble handling. What it boils down to is that the more child-like we are (EVERYTHING is beautiful), and ironically the more intelligent /educated we become without losing that childish innocence, the more we see beauty in things that others disregard as swill...

And then back to the object of the pretty soapbox what makes the box so pretty is it because the box is "clean" it is a soapbox right?

still researching aesthetics in the real world.. for the next possible post here...

[Pau1Winslow]

"I should find it interesting, discerning or upsetting that my religious philosophy which is the study of the philosophy of value should not appear in aesthetics since as it was said that Aesthetics is a philosophy concerning value being SGI or Soka Gakkai International that loosely translates into value judgment society from the Japanese and that particular sect of Buddhism. all that aside not that it is an aside for me but possibly for someone else.
"

I've gone cross eyed :S