What is Artistic Beauty
Dr. Marck L. Beggs, Director M.L.A. Program What is Artistic Beauty? From the beginning of time, men and women have scrutinized, categorized, andcompared components of their surroundings in an attempt to better understand their world. Inthe Bible's Genesis account, Adam, seemingly in appreciation of Eve's uniqueness and beauty, poetically proclaims her, "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman,for she was taken out of man."[Gen. 2:23 NIV] Much later, artists, writers, and philosophers havesought to understand beauty, balance, and perfection -- the sublime. Their struggle to defineperfection and to set standards of beauty was termed aesthetics or, "the science of the beautiful,"in 1753 by German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. Baumgarten was consideredthe first modern philosopher to approach the question of beauty systematically, introducing theterm aesthetics and defining the experience of beauty as the sensory recognition of perfection.[Danto 1]. The works of his contemporary, Immanuel Kant, express the notion that beautifulobjects are without a specific purpose and that judgments of beauty
Poe outlines two criteria thathe believed must be present in order for a literary work to achieve greatness: a literary workmust have "high literary value" and must focus on a single strong emotion to elicit an emotionalresponse from the reader. "Kant's Aesthetics: Tattoos, Architecture, and Gender-Bending,"American Society for Aesthetics / Aesthetics On-Line. Artistic expression that endures to form a body of great art is that whichtouches the emotions of its audience. Therefore, the aesthetic in art does not necessarily mimic thebeautiful in nature; it may, at times, beautifully portray the macabre. Other music rousesenthusiasm like Frederick Remington sculpture. If a painting is unpleasant or disturbing, is it still art? Can that art still be beautiful if itupsets us? [Wilson, 1]. Similarly, what constitutes "greatness" and "beauty" in music is highly subjective. Though individual tastes vary when defining what is beautiful, any work ofart that has the power to arouse strong emotion in the viewer can be said to be an aestheticmasterpiece. Much art(particularly modern art) fails to imitate anything, yet often the obscure creations beautifullycapture an intangible feeling or emotion. Philosophyalso asks if there is a difference between the beautiful and the sublime. In Republic, Plato "went so far as to banishsome types of artists from his ideal society because he thought their work encouraged immoralityor portrayed base characters, and that certain musical compositions caused laziness or incitedpeople to immoderate actions. " For the sake of argument, in this discussion, beauty will be limited to the perception of color,sound, form, and words and with the emotional responses to these elements as experiencedwithin works of art, literature, and music.
Common topics in this essay:
Republic Plato,
Annabelle Lee,
Judgment Kant,
Similarly Encarta,
Benjamin West,
Practical Criticism,
Allan Poe,
Bible's Genesis,
Friedrich Nietzsche,
Immanuel Kant,
art literature,
artistic beauty,
artistic creations,
emotional response,
elicit emotional,
elicit emotional response,
emotive language,
danto 1,
encartac online encyclopedia,
2000 1997-2000,
microsoft corporation,
1997-2000 microsoft,
online encyclopedia 2000,
encyclopedia 2000 1997-2000,
artistic creations serve,
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Acceptance Essays
