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Aiwendil: I'm afraid the truth is that there's no more than a genetic program at work there. Aesthetic beauty, I think, is quite different from this (or - a useful definition of "aesthetic beauty" would be quite different from this). Aesthetic beauty appeals to the rational mind; beauty of that sort appeals fundamentally to irrational impulses and drives.
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I disagree with your "no more than a genetic program" point. Such an assertion necessarily begs the question, "where did the genetic programming come from"? Which is answered (at least for me) in my little aphorism, beauty is being what a thing was meant to be: there is a maker/designer behind the genetics.
I think that any human's first response to art is not rational. ("Irrational" has connotations I'd rather avoid.) The individual's need to make sense of her world brings about the rational attempt to explain the first response .... within the work of art ... which is projection, isn't it? (uh oh) Thus aesthetics could be construed as the rational attempt of the appreciator to explain something within the self that connected to the work of art. Jungian. Tripe? No. It simply explains (to me) the subjective part of aesthetics, since in our modern age, aesthetics is done by individuals more so than ever.
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The Saucepan Man:The fact remains that there will be works that some people find aesthetically beautiful and others don't.
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Well, of course. Which has as much to do with exposure and education as personal taste. Just as striking as the wide variety of individual points of view on beauty, is the universal agreement among all humans as to what constitutes beauty.
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The Saucepan Man:I can think of works of art which I don't find aesthetically pleasing, but which nevertheless stir such a reaction within me that I would (subjectively) class them as "good".
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I attempted to account for your objection by including the
rendering as well as the art itself. As Estelwyn aptly illustrates in her distinction between J.S. Bach and "P.D.Q. Bach".
Lalwendė
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Lalwendė ... judgements on whether art is good or bad are made by those 'professionally qualified' to do so, not by the consumers.
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It has been my experience that market forces typically trump professional judgments. This is best seen in the movie industry. I've watched some movies that were classed as real stinkers by the elite, and they were really quite good, as well as popular (since they did well in the market). And I've watched movies that were proclaimed brilliant, and found myself faced with postmodern tripe that was so disgusting and/or absurd that it could have been grist for C.S. Lewis's mill in his writing of
The Abolition of Man. Market forces do more to decide what's good or bad art than any other force in our day.... sad to say? At times, yes.
Sometimes too much exposure breeds contempt, which is the problem with critics. They're so deep into their art form that the tried and true is for them merely boring. I wonder how much this affects our discussion of the fantasy genre?
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Lalwendė:I like a lot of music that really winds other people up, and it's definitely not aesthetically pleasing, but it's me-pleasing, and I would say that this is a non-aesthetic reason by choice. I like to hear cathartic or discordant music as much as I like to hear Vaughan Williams.
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The Saucepan Man So, although you may not consider it to be aesthetically pleasing, and others may consider it to be "bad", you nevertheless consider it to be "good". That illustrates precisely the point that I am trying to make.
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No, I don't think it does, SPM. I think that Lalwendė is saying that to her it's "enjoyable" even if it's not "good". There is a difference. It's the same thing Estelyn pointed out regarding the two Bachs.
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Firefoot:If there is something that one person thinks to be beautiful, but everyone else in the world thinks it is not, does it make the thing any less beautiful to that one person? If that is what the one person truly thinks, then no, it doesn't. So is it beautiful or not? Most people would say no, but as long as the one person thinks so, that thing must hold some element of beauty.
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With your "no, it doesn't", you suggest that the one person is right just because the one person holds an opinion of any kind, as to beauty. It could just as easiliy be because of individual human fallibility, failure of education, and/or misperception.