Dr Plim

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Beauty

So.
I was walking along campus (to all my avid readers, no I still haven't finished with University) and thinking about something which has been a reoccuring theme lately, beauty.

Everyone has those moments of lucidity, where for a while you seem to be seeing things for the first time. Well, I was walking along fascinated at how strange people looked.
We take the human form to be so for granted. The four limbs, two on which we balance and two which swing/dangle at our side. The random facial and head hair... in all its shapes and sizes and colours. The face! Simply composed of two eyes, a nose, a mouth... but the amazing variety of faces depending on race, age... our skin tone...
Anyway.
The main thing I was thinking about was how this rather awkward assemblage is looked at as beautiful or ugly, attractive or repulsive. That for starters, the most interesting part is how does that affect our evaluation of ART!!

Is our whole concept of beauty based on our sexual attraction?
We could just as well have been raised to find a dog sexually attractive (if we were dogs, that is) so would our appreciation of colours and forms be different because of that?

Is our view of art based upon our view of human beauty?

What do you say?