There is a tale that once the Shah of Iran wanted to find out whether the Greeks or the Chinese were the better artists. He arranged a test by ordering construction of a long corridor in his palace. The walls were to be bare. He then had a curtain suspended down the centre of the corridor and brought in teams of Greek and Chinese artists. The Greeks were assigned to decorate one side of the corridor, the Chinese the other. When they were finished, the curtain could be dropped giving an immediate comparison.
Both teams of artists got busy and after some time finished their work. The curtain was dropped. The Chinese artists had painted fantastically beautiful images of gardens, forests, mountains, fanciful creatures. It was incredible. The Greeks had polished their wall so well that it perfectly reflected the Chinese wall.
This clarified a contention I had yesterday at the Art Basel exhibit in Miami. I passed a woman who was by all accounts, stunning, pretty and sexy. She could have graced the cover of a magazine.
Still, as much as I was attracted to her, there was something off. From your essay it is apparent: her enhanced lips, the augmented breasts the color toned hair were and the fashion accessories were not in line with true beauty. They were ordered, and they were not lacking, but they were excessive.
It becomes a caricature or even mildly vulger for both men and women to push certain attributes over the top.
There is an old saying that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." There are many things that most people agree are beautiful, but I would suggest that beauty requires our attention. There are things - buildings, art, people, etc. - that have a form that attracts our attention, and as we notice them carefully, we see beauty. There are other things that we simply pass by, paying them little or no attention, but when, for some reason, we pause to consider them carefully, we realize they they have a form of beauty as well.
Sadly, there is a lot of ugliness as well, but even there, an attentive eye can sometimes discern beauty, or at least the potential for beauty.
I love that our current discussion on Beauty is generating so many interesting insights! How important it is to pay attention to the beauty in one's life...
I think beauty is subjective and can be viewed differently by each civilizations around the world.
For example, the Igbo who reside in western Africa, we believe beauty as the visible sign of harmony between a person, their community, and the divine order.
We also believe that good action produces beauty. Doing well, being industrious, caring for others brings a kind of radiance.
Such an interesting high level summary of how in general the two hemispheres developed the different cultural directions embodied in their arts. One might also see similar correlations in the philosophical and religious differences between the East and the West.
And ultimately societal. Manifest Destiny seems to follow the rigidity of the Greeks' with it's homogeneous worldview.
My first reaction is that the concept of “beauty” is too complex to be contained within one word. Objects that encompass any of these definitions (harmony and order, emotive and subjective, impermanent and incomplete) may be “beautiful “to me. I have no suggestion, I’m afraid, for how to distinguish these in our language.
In italian “buono” means “good tasted”, “good behaviour” and sometime it’s accompained with “bello” that means “beautiful”. For both “bello” and “ buono” exist a single word in ancient greek “kalokagathia”. I think it’s beautiful the way words shape our reality, like also ethnology and language are art
- Language certainly influences our thoughts, perceptions, and memories. It must be interesting to be fluent in more than one language but I have only English. Learning others was the one academic subject I was no good at.
I think beauty is symmetry and balance in form. The rest of what we see are adjuncts (color, shading, size, etc). Not all can see color and humans only see a small range compared to others in the animal kingdom, but symmetry is, I think recognized by most. It appears to satisfy our minds as we see it, and certainly musically when we hear it. Nature abound in symmetry; it may be a universal good. Beauty also suggest that the visual weight is balanced. Unbalance scenes disturb us and urg3 us to fix it and look elsewhere.
Hello Anya: I have enjoyed very much reading your essay today on Beauty ("The Tale of Two Violins") and the other day when you wrote a superb piece entitled "Eight Ways Egypt Influenced the Classical World." I've always enjoyed your writing, musings, and editing, but I think these two articles knocked it out of the park! As regards Beauty, I really do think it's ultimately in the eyes (and ears!) of the beholder. But, as you close the article ("What is Beauty"), your questions ("harmony/order," "emotive/subjective," "impermanent & incomplete") would best be answered as both/and. It is all of those things.
We owe a great debt to the classical world (especially the Greeks) for their emphasis on great Art of all types - music, poetry, drama, literature, and the great and always challenging art of thinking (through philosophy).
As regards Egypt vis a vis Greece, no doubt the Greeks were influenced by all of their neighboring cultures, especially Egypt. The Egyptians built a truly remarkable society over the centuries; no question. The Greeks traded with all of their neighbors, as well, and over time (so long as their local governments were open to free trade) prospered because of that. Their intellectual arts prospered as well, building from their inheritances from neighboring civilizations.
In America, there used to be a line of thinking (very bad thinking) that the Greeks somehow "stole" everything they accomplished from the Egyptians. Ridiculous, of course. Your essay smooths over this line of thinking very, very well, noting the fluid give and take over time and paying proper respect to both great cultures.
I really think the Greeks took things several steps beyond though, especially as witnessed by the advances in scientific thinking spurred on by the pre-Socratics (the "First Philosophers"). The big difference is that, in most all of the pre-Socratic thinkers, they didn't allow religious strictures to bind their thinking and pondered the Universe from the starting point of Reason alone. (What/Why/How?) This is the major reason they made so much scientific progress in their day.
It looks like it is Volume I of a carefully edited, scholarly 1829 Leipzig edition of the comedies of Aristophanes, printed by Carl Tauchnitz, containing Plutus, The Clouds, and The Frogs. I'm not sure if it's valuable - it would depend on the quality of the book! But I'm no expert...
Traditionally, beauty is considered an objective perception, like the good, the true, and ultimately divine.
Dietrich von Hildebrand writes from this perspective in his studies of Aesthetics. As a phenomenon, beauty can be unconventional and dynamic. An example of this type would be the architecture by Frank Gehry, including such works as the
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. Beauty is a concept which, like love, deserves more careful attention.
There is a tale that once the Shah of Iran wanted to find out whether the Greeks or the Chinese were the better artists. He arranged a test by ordering construction of a long corridor in his palace. The walls were to be bare. He then had a curtain suspended down the centre of the corridor and brought in teams of Greek and Chinese artists. The Greeks were assigned to decorate one side of the corridor, the Chinese the other. When they were finished, the curtain could be dropped giving an immediate comparison.
Both teams of artists got busy and after some time finished their work. The curtain was dropped. The Chinese artists had painted fantastically beautiful images of gardens, forests, mountains, fanciful creatures. It was incredible. The Greeks had polished their wall so well that it perfectly reflected the Chinese wall.
This clarified a contention I had yesterday at the Art Basel exhibit in Miami. I passed a woman who was by all accounts, stunning, pretty and sexy. She could have graced the cover of a magazine.
Still, as much as I was attracted to her, there was something off. From your essay it is apparent: her enhanced lips, the augmented breasts the color toned hair were and the fashion accessories were not in line with true beauty. They were ordered, and they were not lacking, but they were excessive.
It becomes a caricature or even mildly vulger for both men and women to push certain attributes over the top.
There is an old saying that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." There are many things that most people agree are beautiful, but I would suggest that beauty requires our attention. There are things - buildings, art, people, etc. - that have a form that attracts our attention, and as we notice them carefully, we see beauty. There are other things that we simply pass by, paying them little or no attention, but when, for some reason, we pause to consider them carefully, we realize they they have a form of beauty as well.
Sadly, there is a lot of ugliness as well, but even there, an attentive eye can sometimes discern beauty, or at least the potential for beauty.
I love that our current discussion on Beauty is generating so many interesting insights! How important it is to pay attention to the beauty in one's life...
I think beauty is subjective and can be viewed differently by each civilizations around the world.
For example, the Igbo who reside in western Africa, we believe beauty as the visible sign of harmony between a person, their community, and the divine order.
We also believe that good action produces beauty. Doing well, being industrious, caring for others brings a kind of radiance.
Intersting that a behavior can be beauty like art. I never thought about that, thank you for your comment
I would suggest that of all the gifts given to us by the Creator of all, beauty is the most sublime.
Such an interesting high level summary of how in general the two hemispheres developed the different cultural directions embodied in their arts. One might also see similar correlations in the philosophical and religious differences between the East and the West.
And ultimately societal. Manifest Destiny seems to follow the rigidity of the Greeks' with it's homogeneous worldview.
My first reaction is that the concept of “beauty” is too complex to be contained within one word. Objects that encompass any of these definitions (harmony and order, emotive and subjective, impermanent and incomplete) may be “beautiful “to me. I have no suggestion, I’m afraid, for how to distinguish these in our language.
In italian “buono” means “good tasted”, “good behaviour” and sometime it’s accompained with “bello” that means “beautiful”. For both “bello” and “ buono” exist a single word in ancient greek “kalokagathia”. I think it’s beautiful the way words shape our reality, like also ethnology and language are art
- Language certainly influences our thoughts, perceptions, and memories. It must be interesting to be fluent in more than one language but I have only English. Learning others was the one academic subject I was no good at.
I think beauty is symmetry and balance in form. The rest of what we see are adjuncts (color, shading, size, etc). Not all can see color and humans only see a small range compared to others in the animal kingdom, but symmetry is, I think recognized by most. It appears to satisfy our minds as we see it, and certainly musically when we hear it. Nature abound in symmetry; it may be a universal good. Beauty also suggest that the visual weight is balanced. Unbalance scenes disturb us and urg3 us to fix it and look elsewhere.
There's an Italian saying: L'occhio vuole la sua parte," or, beauty should always accompany functionality, no matter the context.
I have no idea what Beauty is, but I know it when I see it.
Hello Anya: I have enjoyed very much reading your essay today on Beauty ("The Tale of Two Violins") and the other day when you wrote a superb piece entitled "Eight Ways Egypt Influenced the Classical World." I've always enjoyed your writing, musings, and editing, but I think these two articles knocked it out of the park! As regards Beauty, I really do think it's ultimately in the eyes (and ears!) of the beholder. But, as you close the article ("What is Beauty"), your questions ("harmony/order," "emotive/subjective," "impermanent & incomplete") would best be answered as both/and. It is all of those things.
We owe a great debt to the classical world (especially the Greeks) for their emphasis on great Art of all types - music, poetry, drama, literature, and the great and always challenging art of thinking (through philosophy).
As regards Egypt vis a vis Greece, no doubt the Greeks were influenced by all of their neighboring cultures, especially Egypt. The Egyptians built a truly remarkable society over the centuries; no question. The Greeks traded with all of their neighbors, as well, and over time (so long as their local governments were open to free trade) prospered because of that. Their intellectual arts prospered as well, building from their inheritances from neighboring civilizations.
In America, there used to be a line of thinking (very bad thinking) that the Greeks somehow "stole" everything they accomplished from the Egyptians. Ridiculous, of course. Your essay smooths over this line of thinking very, very well, noting the fluid give and take over time and paying proper respect to both great cultures.
I really think the Greeks took things several steps beyond though, especially as witnessed by the advances in scientific thinking spurred on by the pre-Socratics (the "First Philosophers"). The big difference is that, in most all of the pre-Socratic thinkers, they didn't allow religious strictures to bind their thinking and pondered the Universe from the starting point of Reason alone. (What/Why/How?) This is the major reason they made so much scientific progress in their day.
Warm Regards,
Dave Hooker
Anya, I have a book that I believe is written in Greek.
I think the title is Aristophanes
Comoediae.
Under that is:
A D
Optimorvm Librorvm Fidem
Accvrate Editae.
Editio Stereotypa.
Tomvs I.
Plutus, Nubes, Ranae.
Lipsiae
Svmtibvs Et Typis Caroli Tavchnitii.
1829.
Can you tell me anything about this book? I know it is in regards to Aristophanes Comedy. Does it have value? Thank you!
It looks like it is Volume I of a carefully edited, scholarly 1829 Leipzig edition of the comedies of Aristophanes, printed by Carl Tauchnitz, containing Plutus, The Clouds, and The Frogs. I'm not sure if it's valuable - it would depend on the quality of the book! But I'm no expert...
Thank you 👍
On reading todays essay. I am inspired to suggest my interpretation of beauty.
It is in the unending limitlessness of the world that surrounds us;
It is the words that touch a cord in us, the flight of a hawk as we pass by, the smile of a stranger. It is that which touches us in the ever present.
Traditionally, beauty is considered an objective perception, like the good, the true, and ultimately divine.
Dietrich von Hildebrand writes from this perspective in his studies of Aesthetics. As a phenomenon, beauty can be unconventional and dynamic. An example of this type would be the architecture by Frank Gehry, including such works as the
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. Beauty is a concept which, like love, deserves more careful attention.