Is art has to do with beauty?

While nature favors the 'norm', except where mutations of distortion or extremes occur, the norm is the rule and not the exception. People tend to think their own family traits are more beautiful than other people. The 'norm' is variety. Unattractive or people with distortions are usually attractive to someone and marry and are successful sometimes more so than what is considered the norm. While attractiveness is generalized by these observations, people tend to be attracted to others for many reasons. It is quite normal to see a very handsome male or very pretty female with an unattractive person. It is also normal for one to initially find someone attractive or unattractive but after spending time with them they become the opposite. (pretty becomes ugly - ugly becomes pretty)

That may all be true or not, I have little evidence either way. In any case my observations were only about facial attractiveness, which, as you point out, is only one component of attractiveness.

I saw a documentary on television several years back in which Anthropologists did research on what characteristic if any has the quality of being universally attractive to males. They discovered one female feature that males of all different cultures respond to positively. In fact it could be mostly an unconscious attraction. It should be no surprise that it is the waist-hip ratio of females. The smaller the waist-hip ratio irregardless of other features, the more the attractiveness. Marilyn Monroe had that particular characteristic as well as other movie stars.

On the other side of the coin, there is an universal attractiveness feature on the part of males also. I believe it is shoulder size or something like that.

I saw a documentary on television several years back in which Anthropologists did research on what characteristic if any has the quality of being universally attractive to males. They discovered one female feature that males of all different cultures respond to positively. In fact it could be mostly an unconscious attraction. It should be no surprise that it is the waist-hip ratio of females. The smaller the waist-hip ratio irregardless of other features, the more the attractiveness. Marilyn Monroe had that particular characteristic as well as other movie stars.

On the other side of the coin, there is an universal attractiveness feature on the part of males also. I believe it is shoulder size or something like that.

Or perhaps something lower.

It's the hormones which decide.

I saw a documentary on television several years back in which Anthropologists did research on what characteristic if any has the quality of being universally attractive to males. They discovered one female feature that males of all different cultures respond to positively. In fact it could be mostly an unconscious attraction. It should be no surprise that it is the waist-hip ratio of females. The smaller the waist-hip ratio irregardless of other features, the more the attractiveness. Marilyn Monroe had that particular characteristic as well as other movie stars.

On the other side of the coin, there is an universal attractiveness feature on the part of males also. I believe it is shoulder size or something like that.

Or perhaps something lower.

I think you're both confusing beauty with animal attraction. While I would agree facial beauty, probably associated with symmetry, is existent one's inclination, when observing the human body is so tied to sexuality that beauty in any pure sense has little to do with one's judgment.

Hi Handson,

I agree. Attractiveness may or may not include beauty. Attraction may or may not include beauty. Animal attraction is more about ones own need for orgasm than about what a target looks like. ?

beauty and art are 2 separate issues. an artwork can be ugly and scary (halloween stuff), nasty (an sculpture before the job is done and dust is every where), 5 hours of 35 mm film on the desk of an editor who is confused how to cut 90 minutes of of that pile, however we still call them art work but not a beauty. as a matter of fact I can count more number of artworks that are NOT beautiful as opposed to being beautiful but since we like the joy and comfort of beautiful things, we try to ignor ugly and dirty artworks while they have the same value of artwork as beautiful stuff have. that is why in OSCAR we see editing, sound mixing, make up, special effect which many of them deal with non-beautiful stuff get award because they are art even if they are not beautiful (the outcome is beautiful but the process is ugly and they win the award for their effort in the process)

Making art is making things that have meanings apart from any practical uses.Meanings are not necessarily beautiful although they may be.

The phrase 'A Work of Art' is an honorific conferred often according to subjective criteria, although some of us like to try to find objective criteria for quality.

Beauty- what is that? Art need only be art to be art.

Beauty- what is that? Art need only be art to be art.

But we need truth as well as beauty.Can art be good without truth? You may as well ask if anything can be good wthout truth.

(Nested quote removed.)



But we need truth as well as beauty.Can art be good without truth? You may as well ask if anything can be good wthout truth.

Actually I never could quite figure out why truth necessarily would have anything to do with art. Not that it can't apply but would truth be a mandatory ingredient for art to subsist as Art? It's not that obvious to me! Can literature also be described as art in the same way as painting, sculpture, music? What creates truth in art?

When Picasso made the controversial but pithy statement, 'All art is a lie",he was referring to it etymologically; from artifice, in so far as it mimics or takes the place of the reality we know to be.

Truth in art is necessary for it to resonate with who we are. Without a personal connection of some sort, experientially or imaginatively, art would be without meaning. The truth lies in the connectivity of the art work to each one of us who are able to appreciate it.

Truth in art is necessary for it to resonate with who we are. Without a personal connection of some sort, experientially or imaginatively, art would be without meaning. The truth lies in the connectivity of the art work to each one of us who are able to appreciate it.

That would imply that truth in art is very much a subjective experience, a verification of its value by its corresponding emotional impact. In that sense truth as a feedback medium can exist in any guise not least as a religious experience whose "subjective truth" can be annulled by its objective counterpart.

To me art has much less alliance with truth as such than of a highly skilled implementation of the imagination that when acknowledged presents itself as a simulacrum of truth, an experience which can be extremely potent.

What's truly important are the feelings and inflections received and not the words which attempt to describe it.

Jklint wrote:

To me art has much less alliance with truth as such than of a highly skilled implementation of the imagination that when acknowledged presents itself as a simulacrum of truth, an experience which can be extremely potent.

The simulacrum becomes a truth in its own right, it is both simulacrum of truth and truth conveying object.The form qua form matters as a conveyor of truth. If the simulacrum were to be of no value except that of a representation, there would be no demand for the definitive or the authoritative.

Any old print would do. Any old imprecise or badly written version of the Bible would be as good as any other Biblical interpretation or anthology.Any bad pianist would be as good as the best,or the composer.

When we talk about art, I do indeed think that we often should include other media besides fine art.

That would imply that truth in art is very much a subjective experience, a verification of its value by its corresponding emotional impact. In that sense truth as a feedback medium can exist in any guise not least as a religious experience whose "subjective truth" can be annulled by its objective counterpart. .

I would be more inclined to call truth in art inter-subjective: The truth is there to be found by any sensitive thinker, not simply in a spiritual/aesthetic or emotional response but a cerebral one as well.

Handson wrote:

I would be more inclined to call truth in art inter-subjective: The truth is there to be found by any sensitive thinker, not simply in a spiritual/aesthetic or emotional response but a cerebral one as well.

One case of this is mentioned in another forum of philosophyclub where the dichotomy is named as the Romantic and the Classical as in 'Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'.