/lit/ - Literature

>What makes something "beautiful"?

You're insecure, don't know what for
You're turning heads when you walk through the do-o-or
Don't need make-up to cover up
Being the way that you are is enou-ou-ough
Everyone else in the room can see it
Everyone else, but you, ooh
Baby, you light up my world like nobody else
The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed
But when you smile at the ground, it ain't hard to tell
You don't know, oh-oh
You don't know you're beautiful
If only you saw what I can see
You'll understand why I want you so desperately
Right now I'm lookin' at you, and I can't believe
You don't know, oh-oh
You don't know you're beautiful, oh-oh
That's what makes you beautiful
So c-come on, you got it wrong
To prove I'm right, I put it in a song
I don't know why you're being shy
And turn away when I look into your eye-eye-eyes
Everyone else in the room can see it
Everyone else, but you, ooh
Baby, you light up my world like nobody else
The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed
But when you smile at the ground, it ain't hard to tell
You don't know, oh-oh
You don't know you're beautiful
If only you saw what I can see
You'll understand why I want you so desperately
Right now I'm lookin' at you, and I can't believe
You don't know, oh-oh
You don't know you're beautiful, oh-oh
That's what makes you beautiful
Na-na-na, na-na-na, na, na, na
Na-na-na, na-na-na
Na-na-na, na-na-na, na, na, na
Na-na-na, na-na-na
Baby, you light up my world like nobody else
The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed
But when you smile at the ground, it ain't hard to tell
(You don't know, oh-oh)
You don't know you're beautiful
Baby, you light up my world like nobody else
The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed
But when you smile at the ground, it ain't hard to tell
You don't know, oh-oh
You don't know you're beautiful
If only you saw what I can see
You'll understand why I want you so desperately
Right now I'm lookin' at you, and I can't believe
You don't know, oh-oh
You don't know you're beautiful, oh-oh
You don't know you're beautiful, oh-oh
That's what makes you beautiful

>>17216311
Art is beautiful when it has a perfect mixture of Dionysian and Apollonian elements

>>17216315
>You don't know you're beautiful
>If only you saw what I can see
This summarizes it pretty well I think

Maybe Wildes Picture of Dorian Gray?

>>17216404
Looking for nonfiction. Like actual theories behind art and aesthetics.

>>17216428
Hmm, there is also Eco's History of beauty which is about what was considered beautiful in different time periods (mainly expressed through works of art)

Beauty is the external expression of harmony among the interior parts of a thing. There is no real Between harmonious unity of parts expressing a thing and beauty. In this regard reason, unity; balance, and so forth are the key to beauty.

The internal invisible harmony is the external visible beauty. In nature this is the harmony of the various plants, Sky, trees, water, animals etc.

Among artifice it is when harmonized is the literal material of the art work (such as the paint or the like) with the ideas and will/intent of the artist, and such a harmony necessarily makes the material of the beauty invisible and reveals a invisible harmony/unity of ideas and concepts and Will. The most beautiful poem’s structure and meter isn’t apparent since it so naturally fits the theme and sound. The guitar and drum and violin dissolve as independent instruments into the nature of the song, the red paint and the canvas become invisible when the painted Apple becomes visible.

The emotional and the like are similarly just ideas that can and ought to be harmonized but such is not necessary. You can have purely cold and beautiful art and purely emotion based and warm beautiful art.

Art is always the Union of self with other, something is only genuine art when it is in my opinion the synthesis of the harmonization of ones reason and various qualities being applied to the external world to produce ones own internal vision.

Richard Wagner said that man is nature becoming conscious of itself and that art is man becoming conscious of himself, he further argues that the Artist takes his figments of the Ideas, folds these strands of impressions into themselves and expands them into themselves, thus he is able to expand the truth and phenomenal range of ideas by manifesting and completing the Idea. (Compare this to the idea in hegel to the conceptual in Hegel, in which the Ideal is more complete and rational since it is fully manifest of the conceptual.)

Nicholai Hartman said (see his book on aesthetics) that art is when the foreground dissolves and a background Stratum becomes apparent, this illusionary stratum being a harmony of ideas and beauty itself is considered harmony among ideas.

Hegel says Art is the will in absolute freedom, our Figments would be the concrete universal of such freedom, as we are expressing the most mental energy and force possible thus this is the fullest expression of our freedom and reason in a art piece.

Gerard de nerval saw it as literally creating a universe out of yourself, a pure emanation of your being. That you are creating a world by emptying yourself, literally a form of demiurgy.

Maurice Blanchot thought that in Art you absolutely annihilate your individuality by pouring it out and marrying it with the symbolic world of ideas, converting your interior into a platonic realm of forms leaving with the world of the book being a crafted Hegelian-absolute-of-you.

CONT

>>17216461

Mallarme thought that Art was the only way that man could discover his inmost soul and look upon it; truly gaze into that jewel.

Goethe describes a three tier level of art in his work, wherein the lowest tier is art which simply produces entertainment, a flash of excitement before your eyes. He goes on to explain the middle tier of Art as being those pieces of art which produce an emotional response from the viewer, and he finally speaks of a highest level of art, wherein the ideas themselves are stirred in the individual and result in self-contemplation and thought of the relation of self, ideas, and so forth. Ultimately self-reflection.

By this litany of great men(all of which you can possibly study for ideas On art and beauty OP) I think we can find and agree upon a common thread that the highest level of artistic beauty is a harmonious expression of the man which has harmonized itself with the external world. Identical to Iamblichus’s conception of how theurgy and talisman working ought to work. This is the key to artistic beauty in my eyes, marrying the ideal world with the material.

>>17216461
>>17216475
fuck beauty
entropy, pessimism, decay and death are the real shit.

>>17216311
Yukio Mishima, Thomas Mann

>>17216311
Croce's breviary of aesthetics.
I also stumbled onto the recent translation of Bolzano's work on esthetic and it's incredible, but don't know if is has an English translation. It is, as usual with that writer, next level autism, but is the clearest treatment of the subject I've seen. The thesis is a even stronger form of Leibniz's, with beauty being seen as the feeling of passive synthesis.

>>17216555
You like those things because you find an aesthetic pleasure in them which is harmonious and beautiful in accordance with your interior nature and aspects. Why would you even mention that grouping of things unless you believed they harmoniously rhymes as concepts?

>>17216632
w-what are you trying to say? that ones artistic preferences represent its inner nature?
how is it possible to find "beauty" in those things?

>>17216672
Death, entropy, decay and so forth has long been a popular subject in the arts, ranging from music to clothing to painting to poetry.

Ones taste is a reflection of ones interior nature, ones inherent qualities, ones “taste” is in accordance with the ideas that fill you up. If I gave a man who by his nature despised, for example, all religion and thoughts of religion, all religious ideas, and I forced him to sit and listen to the most beautiful religious poetry and look at the most beautiful religious paintings, if he found nothing appealing to it all he could say is value of the technical skill, and if his particular values do not value technical orderly skill he would not enjoy it in the least. Ones taste in things is dependent on the virtues he holds, the composition of his senses, what ideas and emotions appeal to his sense of identity, his experience, his sense of rhythm (which is for all humans based on the beat of the heart for the basis of what we consider fast, slow, etc.)

Ones taste is representative of ones nature fully. Death and decay are aesthetics, how many people love silent hill for the aesthetic? It’s not because they hate the experience. How many edgy goths exist. How much melancholic poetry exists?

Beauty is harmony among parts, your preferred beauty is that which harmonizes with your interior aspects.

something is beautiful if it looks like my Japanese girlfriend.

>>17216719
Thank you man. I have never really thought about this way.
But what if your nature tends towards melancholy and pessimism. How is it compatible with a world which works on optimistic principle? Can I really escape this set of aesthetics which resonate with inner me?

>>17216428
>>17216311
Ruskin

>>17216778
>But what if your nature tends towards melancholy and pessimism. How is it compatible with a world which works on optimistic principle?

It need not necessarily be consistent. We read in goethe and in multiple romantic poets the idea of a “beautiful soul” who makes their soul and being “beautiful” by denying the society and world, not in a transgressive or negatory way, but simply following their own soul’s virtues, aspects and loves no matter the repercussions of following its highest ideals and loves. The idea being that this while painful and ascetic will naturally lead to a beautifying of the interior world.

>Can I really escape this set of aesthetics which resonate with inner me?


Eh, people can change over time, with enough consumption your interior can also change and harmonize with that also. This has been known since at least Aristotle who writes about it. Consider looking into Schopenhauer and the decadent art movement who were basically trying to be melancholic aristocratic types obsessed with an edgy asceticism of aesthetics. Ya know, retreat from the world into pure artifice.

>>17216719
>Beauty is harmony among parts
extremely based

>>17216845
How do you or anyone can incorporate these philosophical concepts into your/their artwork? Is there a way? or is it an intuitive process?
for example people say Wagner was a quintessential Schopenhauerian artist. But I don't understand how. How does philosophical concepts can directly influence arts?

>>17216719
>>17216850
>harmony among parts
No, or at least terribly framed. Simple objects (without parts) couldn't be beautiful. God is simple, hence wouldn't be beautiful. Same thing with any thinking creature's soul.

>>17216903
>How do you or anyone can incorporate these philosophical concepts into your/their artwork? Is there a way? or is it an intuitive process?

Depends on the medium, Dante for example made his divine comedy with perfect mathematical measurements and so many aspects which reflect his philosophy, whether it be the 33 syllables per stanza to reflect the age of Christ, the terza rima to reflect the trinity, how he mathematically determined where to write “christ” In the comedy in order of make a “cross” within the work. And so forth. There are many ways and some can be direct, some music will have lyrics of a specific theme of relevance etc.

>for example people say Wagner was a quintessential Schopenhauerian artist. But I don't understand how. How does philosophical concepts can directly influence arts?

It influences both the form (how they construct the art) and the content, Wagner’s contents in terms of what he was writing about directly is based on the themes Schopenhauer argues about as is the aim and methodology an application of Schopenhauer’s ideas about art as a stilling/satisfaction of the will (one reason why Nietzsche would say Wagner’s work was like a disgusting disease, having the power to still the Will by aesthetic means)

So philosophical aspects and aesthetics directs how you form your works and modifies the contents themselves. Everyone to some degree does this, some people just recognize what they are doing and thus have much more skill and capacity.

>>17216925
You can either argue that God is the Well-spring of the beautiful and not the beautiful (equivocity argument) or that you can take the Kabbalistic/hermetic approach, and say that harmony is a reflection of unity. So the simplicity/unity is simply the next octave of that same substance which people call the beautiful, and this would fit with Platonic thought, as the beautiful is a means of remembering the Unified.

Also the composition of a human in Christianity has consistently been at minimum tri-partite, consisting of spirit, soul and flesh, with the imperfection of sin as a kind of lack/crack within the being. There are other schemes but this is one of the eldest.