NullVector Posted March 1, 2019 Share Posted March 1, 2019 Hah. That guy really likes Oak trees. Well, I guess being old and ravaged, but still clinging on somehow, is part of the 'ideal oak tree' aesthetic? That's all I got @DeltaV ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeltaAro Posted March 1, 2019 Share Posted March 1, 2019 @NullVector well, at least you try. I always left it at “beauty = too complicated” and can just give examples of how difficult it is to systematize it. A bit far fetched maybe, but now I also have to post two of Ivan Aivazovsky “shipwrecked” paintings: Just because we intellectually understand the horror of the situation, it doesn’t mean they can’t win us over emotionally with their beauty. The Rainbow The Ninth Wave (considered his masterpiece) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aro_elise Posted March 8, 2019 Author Share Posted March 8, 2019 this has become quite the discussion. all i have to add is that i do often find dark or intense (?) stuff beautiful. idk how to put it but like the music i like is kind of heavy and depressing and no one lets me play it when we're hanging out or whatever but i think it's so awesome. (i'm learning to fry scream and it's so sick.) and i generally prefer what many people would call 'bad' weather: gloomy, rainy, stormy, definitely snowy. i also like, you know, cheerful and delicate pretty things. as a fashion designer, i adore a blush pink tulle ballgown with colourful rosettes, for example, but you'd be surprised if you saw me. so yeah, things can be beautiful in different ways and some people will find those different qualities more beautiful than others will. think of people. there are beauty ideals but not everyone will find the same person the most attractive, and two very different-looking people can be equally beautiful to someone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NullVector Posted March 8, 2019 Share Posted March 8, 2019 On 3/1/2019 at 5:34 PM, DeltaV said: Just because we intellectually understand the horror of the situation, it doesn’t mean they can’t win us over emotionally with their beauty. I think the two can be closely connected. An awareness of death and the fleeting nature of life can make us less complacent and more sensitised to the beauty of the everyday, perhaps? In buddhism there are a lot of practises centred around bringing to mind the fragility of life and the inevitability of ones own death. I suppose you're only really one breath or one heartbeat away from death; it's a sort of improbably beautiful miracle that we're even alive moment-to-moment Fully appreciating that can (purportedly) bring you peace of mind through an acceptance of things as they actually are. In contrast, you might say that our culture likes to keep death at an unhealthy distance? There I go trying to systematise beauty again, eh? 19 hours ago, aro_elise said: all i have to add is that i do often find dark or intense (?) stuff beautiful I think it's kind of sanitising or sugar coating reality, robbing it of something essential, to ignore it. It's not satisfactory. It doesn't let us develop fully as integrated people to push the darkness of the world aside. I liked this scene in Donnie Darko Quote Donnie Darko: So we call them IMG’s. Gretchen Ross: Infant Memory Generators. Donnie Darko: Yeah, so the idea is that you buy these glasses for your infant and they wear them at night when they sleep. Gretchen Ross: But inside the glasses are these slide photographs. And each photograph is of something peaceful of beautiful whatever the parents want to put inside. Kenneth Monnitoff: And what effect do you think this would have on an infant? Donnie Darko: Well, this thing is, nobody remembers their infancy. Anyone who says they do is lying. So we think this will help develop memory earlier in life. Gretchen Ross: Yeah. Kenneth Monnitoff: And did you stop and think that maybe infants need darkness? That maybe darkness is part of their natural development? Actually, when I was a little kid, I was heavily into some animations that were full of darkness and death! Like Animals of Farthing Wood and Watership Down (and the moments where there was some reprieve from the death and darkness of the characters' worlds were rendered the more beautiful by that, IMO). I think children have the capacity to appreciate the prevalence of death and darkness in the world and it's probably not good for their emotional development if parents try to overly insulate them from that...Like maybe children are stronger and more mature and more intuitively aware of how the world really works than they are commonly given credit for? 19 hours ago, aro_elise said: and i generally prefer what many people would call 'bad' weather: gloomy, rainy, stormy, definitely snowy In Brave New World, Helmholtz insists on being banished to an island with terrible weather, on the grounds that it will be better for his writing Quote Helmholtz rose from his pneumatic chair. 'I should like a thoroughly bad climate,' he answered. 'I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms, for example...' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NullVector Posted March 8, 2019 Share Posted March 8, 2019 19 hours ago, aro_elise said: there are beauty ideals but not everyone will find the same person the most attractive, and two very different-looking people can be equally beautiful to someone. and some people get a kick out of subverting the ideals For instance, when I read this in Alain de Botton's book Essays In Love, it made sense in the context of how I've subjectively experienced beauty in the opposite sex: Quote There is a tyranny about perfection, a certain tedium even, something that asserts itself with all the dogmatism of a scientific formula. The more tempting kind of beauty has only a few angles from which it may be seen, and then not in all lights and at all times. It flirts dangerously with ugliness, it takes risks with itself, it does not side comfortably with mathematical rules of proportion, it draws its appeal from precisely those details that also lend themselves to ugliness. As Proust once said, classically beautiful women should be left to men without imagination. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeltaAro Posted March 10, 2019 Share Posted March 10, 2019 On 3/8/2019 at 4:58 AM, aro_elise said: this has become quite the discussion. all i have to add is that i do often find dark or intense (?) stuff beautiful. idk how to put it but like the music i like is kind of heavy and depressing and no one lets me play it when we're hanging out or whatever but i think it's so awesome. (i'm learning to fry scream and it's so sick.) and i generally prefer what many people would call 'bad' weather: gloomy, rainy, stormy, definitely snowy. we’re pretty close. How do you call that one genre … “dark romanticism” oh no, that’s an unfortunate name… Stormy: Villa by the Sea by Arnold Böcklin Snowy: Winter Scene in Little Russia by Ivan Aivazovsky (huh, one of the few without the sea!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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