The other day I happened to cross paths with a friend who was my yoga instructor over a decade ago. Despite (or because of?) all the years, I was struck by her radiance and vitality — her beauty. I’d always felt she was beautiful in ways that don’t quite fit the stereotyped, homogenized ideals so pressed into our minds by models in print and screen. To a degree my response was triggered by how she looked, but I suspect also by things that transcend visuals. With people, I feel it’s an ensemble of aesthetics, sensations, and energies, further colored at times by our previous personal exchanges or experiences with another. A complex dynamic to be sure.
What makes someone beautiful? What defines beauty? Early on in my art career, I was exposed to art from different cultures and times. It got me wondering who or what determines certain objects are more beautiful than others. Was it just subjective or are there metrics that can be measured and quantified? How does the culture of the viewer affect the determination.
Like everyone, I’d encountered things, people and experiences labeled beautiful and was often intensely moved by them, but why?
A foundational understanding of art always involved beauty. In studio classes we aimed to gain a facility in handling a medium, and within this there were certain results we were striving to attain, usually based on a precedent of work done by someone else considered beautiful.
A combination of my curiosity and a few seminal mentors expanded my horizons beyond concepts I’d acquired. This encouraged my quest to understand by learning about other cultural perspectives. It led me to consider the intersection between social norms of beauty while discerning my own felt responses.
Which then led me to dive into questions about responses I had to any circumstance or experiences. How often were these the result of accumulated influences of upbringing, culture, or societal norms? What was “good” and “bad”, what relevance did “liking” a certain art work have if all responses were totally subjective? Or are there genuine felt ideals we all respond to, but which melt when we try to pin them down with the constrictive tool of words? How often were my reactions just “mechanical” or “habitual” responses?
I veered from wanting to avoid imposed societal or peer-influenced views, to wondering if we ever could have fully aware, conscious responses to objects… How important was the context of the experiences? When does such an “experience” really begin and end?
When I gaze at the roses gifted to me by a kind friend from his yard, I can be swept into gentle rapture by the peach blush as it fades within a single petal; or their delicate curves softly echoed by the form of the vase, both lightly contrasted by the leaves. Yet if I’m open to it, the sparkle of light passing through the water within the faintly greenish glass is equally as arresting. As is the dynamic of lines made by the interplay between the circular mouth of the vase and the edge of the round table top, and the vertical pickets supporting the porch handrail. All enhanced by the ever-shifting sense of depth — the trees and yard beyond come into view, but in the instant I shift my focus to the blossoms, this becomes a “backdrop,” presenting the flowers. So beyond colors, there are forms, and shapes, and depth all adding to the visual symphony… and then there’s the breeze on my skin and both the felt and known sense of warmth sunshine both provides and evokes.
Birds begin cackling and calling fiercely and suddenly my attention is pulled to witness five or six robins screaming their fiercest while on the wing, as they chase a Cooper’s Hawk across my view. With an elegant swoop the loose cluster all glide swiftly across the street then out of view into the pines a few hundred yards distant.
I’m able to half-sustain this awareness as I rise from the rocking chair and add in my own movement. I walk up the hill of wild plants thriving in my backyard, into the overgrown arches of trees in the alley. In between patches of bright sunlight, a black cat sits motionless up ahead. Our eyes lock and it stares me down for a few seconds. As I approach, it darts down into the shadows of the trees. A chestnut colored Brown Thrasher watches us both warily and then follows the cat through a passage above.
Out of the alley and on the sidewalk, I pass a profusion of rose bushes bursting with color, hanging over the adjacent fence. Many blooms have shared their part in this chromatic chorus, and having graciously aged, let go. The morning rains and gravity have called hundreds of the multi-colored petals to the earth. Each one taking its proper, un-knowable, assigned place on the shimmering, umber-gray wet cement, continuing an evolving symphony to my eyes and other senses. I can “feel” the delicate velvet of the petals resting on the damp dense sidewalk underfoot. My shoulder brushes and gets splashed by the still dripping greenery that leans out to touch me as I pass. Everything glows and smells fresh.
What is beauty? When we allow our selves to “fully be” within the non-rational “now” — to embrace and not resist the whole flow of life — maybe the better question is: what isn’t beautiful?
What makes someone beautiful? What defines beauty? Early on in my art career, I was exposed to art from different cultures and times. It got me wondering who or what determines certain objects are more beautiful than others. Was it just subjective or are there metrics that can be measured and quantified? How does the culture of the viewer affect the determination.
Like everyone, I’d encountered things, people and experiences labeled beautiful and was often intensely moved by them, but why?
A foundational understanding of art always involved beauty. In studio classes we aimed to gain a facility in handling a medium, and within this there were certain results we were striving to attain, usually based on a precedent of work done by someone else considered beautiful.
A combination of my curiosity and a few seminal mentors expanded my horizons beyond concepts I’d acquired. This encouraged my quest to understand by learning about other cultural perspectives. It led me to consider the intersection between social norms of beauty while discerning my own felt responses.
Which then led me to dive into questions about responses I had to any circumstance or experiences. How often were these the result of accumulated influences of upbringing, culture, or societal norms? What was “good” and “bad”, what relevance did “liking” a certain art work have if all responses were totally subjective? Or are there genuine felt ideals we all respond to, but which melt when we try to pin them down with the constrictive tool of words? How often were my reactions just “mechanical” or “habitual” responses?
I veered from wanting to avoid imposed societal or peer-influenced views, to wondering if we ever could have fully aware, conscious responses to objects… How important was the context of the experiences? When does such an “experience” really begin and end?
When I gaze at the roses gifted to me by a kind friend from his yard, I can be swept into gentle rapture by the peach blush as it fades within a single petal; or their delicate curves softly echoed by the form of the vase, both lightly contrasted by the leaves. Yet if I’m open to it, the sparkle of light passing through the water within the faintly greenish glass is equally as arresting. As is the dynamic of lines made by the interplay between the circular mouth of the vase and the edge of the round table top, and the vertical pickets supporting the porch handrail. All enhanced by the ever-shifting sense of depth — the trees and yard beyond come into view, but in the instant I shift my focus to the blossoms, this becomes a “backdrop,” presenting the flowers. So beyond colors, there are forms, and shapes, and depth all adding to the visual symphony… and then there’s the breeze on my skin and both the felt and known sense of warmth sunshine both provides and evokes.
Birds begin cackling and calling fiercely and suddenly my attention is pulled to witness five or six robins screaming their fiercest while on the wing, as they chase a Cooper’s Hawk across my view. With an elegant swoop the loose cluster all glide swiftly across the street then out of view into the pines a few hundred yards distant.
I’m able to half-sustain this awareness as I rise from the rocking chair and add in my own movement. I walk up the hill of wild plants thriving in my backyard, into the overgrown arches of trees in the alley. In between patches of bright sunlight, a black cat sits motionless up ahead. Our eyes lock and it stares me down for a few seconds. As I approach, it darts down into the shadows of the trees. A chestnut colored Brown Thrasher watches us both warily and then follows the cat through a passage above.
Out of the alley and on the sidewalk, I pass a profusion of rose bushes bursting with color, hanging over the adjacent fence. Many blooms have shared their part in this chromatic chorus, and having graciously aged, let go. The morning rains and gravity have called hundreds of the multi-colored petals to the earth. Each one taking its proper, un-knowable, assigned place on the shimmering, umber-gray wet cement, continuing an evolving symphony to my eyes and other senses. I can “feel” the delicate velvet of the petals resting on the damp dense sidewalk underfoot. My shoulder brushes and gets splashed by the still dripping greenery that leans out to touch me as I pass. Everything glows and smells fresh.
What is beauty? When we allow our selves to “fully be” within the non-rational “now” — to embrace and not resist the whole flow of life — maybe the better question is: what isn’t beautiful?
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