The changing nature of beauty. Stravinsky

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The changing nature of beauty.Stravinsky
The Rite of Spring (1914)Jazz
Jackson Pollock Eyes in the Heat (1946)
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Pruitt-Igoe Before AIA Award (1952) After
demolished (1972)
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• 2. How is nature beautiful?

For the Romantics, priority was given to
natural beauty over the beauty of art. (Osborne,
26) The artist was inspired, not by some
external force that channeled through him, but by
the unconscious part of his own being. The
word unconsciousness was used in the literature
of the Romantics well before it entered into
formal psychology. It was used by Wordsworth.
Carlyle, distinguishing between artificial and
natural, or inspired poetry, said The
artificial is the conscious, mechanical the
natural is unconscious, dynamic. And he says
Unconsciousness is the sign of creation
consciousness at best that of manufacture
(Osborne, 1968139)
Joseph Mallord William TurnerThe Junction of the
Thames and the Medway, 1807Widener Collection
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3. Is beauty in the object itself (objective)
or in our perception of the object (subjective)?
Does it relate, then, to an analysis of the
objects organization, composition? (this, of
course, rarely relates to natural objects. We
cannot talk about the composition of the
sunset.) Or, does it relate to our appreciation
of it in other words, the emotions that we
bring to it?
Further, what is that object? Consider a play or
a piece of music. In what way are these objects
at all? Each of these works of art require the
interpretation not only of the audience but of
the director or the conductor, the actors or
musicians who themselves interpret the words or
notes of the artist. In such cases, of course,
the art object the play or symphony will be
different every time it is performed. So, just
what is consistently being perceived that we can
then refer to it as a work of art?
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• Can an object of beauty be separated from its
  utility?
• Buildings create and perpetuate environments
  for social interaction. In this, they are more
  similar to bodies of law than to paintings. And
  although one might scruple to condemn a still
  life on moral grounds, such legal acts as the
  fugitive slave law are readily censured. Why
  not, then, the plantation architecture that was
  as integral a part of slavery as the laws
  supporting it? We have been taught to hesitate
  on the grounds that art is somehow above moral
  judgment a modern view that would have sounded
  as strange to ancient ears as its contrary does
  now. (Stephen Kurtz, Wasteland, pg. 5)

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• This same argument can be applied to architecture
  that fails to meet standards of sustainability (
  like a gas guzzling car).
• Learning from Las Vegas is an example of this
  kind of divorced thinking.
• Is it possible even to look at these things both
  formally and socially and, on the one hand, call
  it beautiful and, on the other, reprehensible?
• The Greeks did not separate art from its
  utility. They considered works of art as
  artefacts made for a purpose. They are regarded
  as successful according to their effectiveness
  for their purpose . . . (Osborne, 196915) The
  discussion of the arts related more to their
  educational function and their social impact. .
  . .Was a work of art effective for its purpose
  and was the purpose a good one? Of these two
  questions, the latter was more important. In
  this, the Greeks were followed by the Marxists in
  their assessment of artistic activity being
  subordinated by social value.
• Under such circumstances does fine art become
  trivialized? What social value does a Beethoven
  quartet have? A poem? If we cant elicit some
  social value out of it, is it meaningless?
• The notion of beauty being related to its utility
  or function was, of course, taken up later by the
  American sculptor, Horatio Greenough who spoke of
  the relation of form to function. This notion
  was echoed by the American architect Louis
  Sullivan who originated the famous phrase Form
  follows function. Le Corbusiers variation on
  that theme was that the house was a machine for
  living in.
• However, as Herbert Read pointed out in 1934,
  the mistake is to assume that the functional
  efficiency is the cause of beauty because
  functional, therefore beautiful. That is not the
  true logic of the case.

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• 5. What is the difference between the
  pleasures of the senses and aesthetic pleasure?

In the former, says Santayana, we gratify our
senses and passions. In the contemplation of
beauty we are raised above ourselves (p. 24).

• THREE VALUES
• Sensory values generated by pleasurable
  sensations. The higher senses (sight and
  hearing) are more important to the aesthetic
  appreciation of an environment
• Formal values the order of sensory material
  structure, patterns
• Expression or associational values aesthetic
  practical and negative.

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• 6. Can we define beautiful as that which
  brings us closer to the sacred? To the mystical?

• Plotinus the beauty of art and nature is a
  manifestation of the unity of being.
• Plotinus ascends from the unity of individual
  souls to the unity of the general or world soul,
  and from that to the intellect thinking itself.
  Ultimately all dualities of knowing and known,
  subject and object, are overcome by the
  self-identity of the self-reflective thought. It
  is to this wholeness that all orders of creation
  aspire, and from it that all have been created.
• Clearly this concerns more than analysis of
  composition. Beauty then could be seen to
  achieve at least two things
• To understand or perceive the world in a new and
  enriched way
• To move us outside ourselves
• That concept can lead us in two directions
• The relationship between the beautiful and the
  good the path of architectural determinism
• The relationship between the beautiful and the
  sacred the discussion of sacred places