Toronto Ryerson Image Centre | ?m | 5s | Ryerson University | Diamond Schmitt

From what I recall, the point of Newspeak was to reduce language to such an extent that no thought was required or promoted through language. So Orwell was talking about the opposite of "supersizing" the language.

I do not all buy the argument that beauty is absolute - that it is or isn't - as I don't believe in dichotomies for the most part, especially false dichotomies that US uses a lot to frame those who don't share the same opinion as him.
 
One online dictionary has this definition of beauty: "The quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit".

To say then that beauty is an absolute would seem to state that pleasure or exaltation is an absolute, that is, that degrees of pleasure or exaltation are not possible. This doesn't coincide with my own experience in any way.

Many expressions in English also seem to hint that beauty is not absolute: "faded beauty", in which one continues to see beauty in something or someone, but recognizes that it is past its prime. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" speaks to the different experiences and conceptions we bring to the beautiful.
 
Lots of things are in the eye of the beholder but that doesn't mean that everyone has an equally good eye. We had a discussion here last year about whether or not the balconies of Spire can be seen to angle out from the building, as someone moves from the south-west corner to the north-east corner and looks up - and only a few of us had keen enough or well-trained enough eyes to see it. Not seeing something doesn't mean it doesn't exist, nor is it a moral failing not to see it, but an appreciation of beauty is still the basis for cultural standards in determining what has aesthetic merit and what doesn't in the visual world. There is the eye and there is the educated eye, just as standards can be determined in all other art forms.

Double-plus-ungood is no different from really-really-spectacularly-beautiful.
 
And you can't get anything more out of a work of art than was put into it in its creation. Second rate buildings designed by second rate talents, for instance, lack the magic ingredient ( that 'x' factor ) that raises them to the level of the beautiful - and no matter how long you stare at them and wish them to be better than they are they never will be. What's there is the "quality or aggregate of qualities" that Archivist talks of, which people respond to, that "gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit" in a great work but not in a lesser one.
 
Oh, US, all poppycock of course. You always talk as if beauty were were an absolute, which is absurd. Though I don't expect to convince you otherwise, equally nothing will ever convince me that concepts of beauty are not affected by the cultural context in which they appear, or by the personal context of the viewer.

If all was as you suggest, and we were able to transport say, a Jackson Pollock to the Renaissance, would we expect Michelangelo to see its beauty? Also, if we were to rely on self-appointed elites (such as yourself) to tell us what is beautiful, surely they should all agree. The current BBC series on Great Composers would be unnecessary and irrelevant because surely the elites such as yourself would simply agree on which was beautiful, not beautiful, etc., and we could make a list and be done with it. As if critics and commentators never disagree hotly about the relative merits of particular artworks, buildings, compositions. As if works that were once forgotten never arise into recognition. As if composers that were once considered masters of their art by all and sundry haven't fallen into obscurity.

Give me a break.
 
Archivist said:
Oh, US, all poppycock of course. You always talk as if beauty were were an absolute, which is absurd. Though I don't expect to convince you otherwise, equally nothing will ever convince me that concepts of beauty are not affected by the cultural context in which they appear, or by the personal context of the viewer.

If all was as you suggest, and we were able to transport say, a Jackson Pollock to the Renaissance, would we expect Michelangelo to see its beauty? Also, if we were to rely on self-appointed elites (such as yourself) to tell us what is beautiful, surely they should all agree. The current BBC series on Great Composers would be unnecessary and irrelevant because surely the elites such as yourself would simply agree on which was beautiful, not beautiful, etc., and we could make a list and be done with it. As if critics and commentators never disagree hotly about the relative merits of particular artworks, buildings, compositions. As if works that were once forgotten never arise into recognition. As if composers that were once considered masters of their art by all and sundry haven't fallen into obscurity.

Give me a break.
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Ditto.

Educated eye? Since when do the professors in a fine arts department ever agree as to what is 'beauty' (let alone agree through the ages)?
 
The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw. Havelock Ellis (1859 - 1939), Impressions and Comments (1914)

The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason. John Cage (1912 - 1992)

I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful. John Constable (1776 - 1837)

People often say that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where others have not dared to look, including inside ourselves. Salma Hayek

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626), "Of Beauty"
 
In terms of semantics 'beauty' is a fairly generic term, which is part of the problem here in that there is no defining/disclosure of the qualities that one is drawn to or looking for when qualifying something as aesthetically appealing. In reading US's posts I get the sense that he is drawn to that which is minimalist and modest. No crime at all, but this is not the only response to 'beauty' and 'beauty' is therefore not an absolute.
 
Of course, the other problem with US's position that "only a few of us had keen enough or well-trained enough eyes to see it ... There is the eye and there is the educated eye" is that his assertion about his own eye requires my consent to have effect. However, I am not a contestant in a dancing or singing contest who has agreed to put himself before judges, and thus accept their verdict. There are many divergent opinions out there about our built form, and I am free to mix and match with my own feelings and observations as I like.

Having said this, I do in fact have great respect for US's observations and positions about buildings, they do in fact influence my own thinking and appreciation. I just don't feel particularly bound by them.
 
What fun. Thank goodness syn dug up the long-buried bone of this thread and started gnawing on it ... Archivist, unbound, has certainly put his dictionary of quotations to good use.

Nothing is more beautiful than the beautiful, which is an absolute that can't be improved by tacking on words like "spectacle".

Whenever someone designs and builds something, sculpts, paints or draws something, writes a work of fiction, or a play, or composes and performs music, or song, audiences will extract whatever worth it contains. And if it contains little of worth it'll fall by the wayside. Quality and substance will vanquish the derivative and talentless. The elite of the arts has always been celebrated, regardless of whatever age produces it, and it survives - Michelangelo or Pollock. As for the audience, well elites who "get it" will always form. I don't see how you can prevent audiences from educating themselves by increasing their exposure to the arts, talking amongst themselves, and proselytizing their conclusons - why would anyone want to?

And as for training or educating the eye - visual literacy - what's wrong with that? We have a system for art, architecture and design education in our country, and thank goodness we do. Beyond that, Nuit Blanche and the Queen West Art Crawl, for instance, are great vehicles for bringing visual delight to the masses and allowing them to see the world diferently through the eyes of artists. As wyliepoon points out: I found that most people didn't seem to "understand" the art (most were saying "That was it?" or "What was that all about?" after looking at an installation), or were poking fun at the art (saying "That's art!?" or "I can do better than that!"), myself included. and I see only good in that because people are becoming more involved with their emotional responses to the unexpected and creative.

As for the quotes, I see a similar vein in what Havelock Ellis and Francis Bacon are both talking about - perhaps it's the idea that too much perfection doesn't add up to beauty?

I think what Cage was saying is that there is no reason for something to be not beautiful ... it just self-evidentlyisn't[/I, when it isn't, and that art is emotion that doesn't need to be screened by reason. His music seems to bear this out - another quote from him is: "If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." and he's asking the listener to join him in looking at what's in the world, opening the senses, and seeing the beauty in it. Not just looking, but seeing ( well, hearing in his case ).

Similarly, Constable saw beauty in the world and translated it into art. All artists do that. They see beauty in things everyone else sees as mundane and make us see the world differently.

The situation with Spire's balconies isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact.
 
Agreed, this a great debate and a welcomed relief from endless threads about heights and 'filling in gaps in the skyline' (whatever that means).
 
... though the 'gaps' in the skyline, and the dynamic negative space between buildings, is also a source of visual delight to some - just as the question of how soon those same pesky 'gaps' will be infilled with new towers is a cause of constant worry to others.
 
Urban Shocker said:
Nothing is more beautiful than the beautiful, which is an absolute that can't be improved by tacking on words like "spectacle".
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'Spectacle' may simply function as a qualifier of beauty, as 'minimalism' does, in further defining the quality of the beauty in question. In other words, something that is spectacle may or may not necessarily be beautiful but being spectacle doesn't necessarily make something not beautiful.


Urban Shocker said:
"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." and he's asking the listener to join him in looking at what's in the world, opening the senses, and seeing the beauty in it. Not just looking, but seeing ( well, hearing in his case ).

Similarly, Constable saw beauty in the world and translated it into art. All artists do that. They see beauty in things everyone else sees as mundane and make us see the world differently.
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Perhaps you just need to spend a little more time in front of 1 St. Thomas ;) Sorry to open a wound here.
 
Urban Shocker said:
Anything can be spectacle. A car crash is spectacle. It's a meaningless value. It doesn't improve beauty, because beauty is an absolute, and it doesn't make ugliness uglier. All it means is that the eye is drawn to something - an excuse used by poor designers to spin their context-ignoring ego-based excrescences to know-nothing clients who crave visual volume because they think it's good design.
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I'm aware of that, but it's besides the point in this case. You speak of 'poor context-ignoring designers' yet come up with any kind of rationalizations for projects that do just that, as long as the architect is to your liking. In the case of the Distillery, anyone that disagrees has a "fear of heights", and that's that.
 
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