Almost without exception when I find an artists work I really love, I often start rummaging through their behind the scenes images etc and I’m looking for one thing in particular, their bookshelf. 9 times out of 10 there’s a book that deals with the philosophy of beauty on that shelf.
I find this more so even with artists who claim to just follow their own visions and taste. Their book selection seems to oust them and reveal a great breadth of intellectualising has shaped their vision.
I’m not a great intellectual but I’ve read a few books on this subject of beauty. It’s hard, it’s boring, they’re a struggle to read. I can only seem to grasp the essence of it but never fully understand it.
Here’s my understanding.
On an unconscious level we are all coming to terms that the world is chaos, little meaning and order. Images that add order and coherence to this chaos help us to come to terms with this realization.
Images that pull back, reveal even more possible chaos and give shape and coherence to all these elements, giving form to the formless can have greater meaning.
In relation to this argument, artwork that appears to give this unity of form with the *appearance* of effortlessness gives truth to our hope that the world can be beautiful. With trickery or force, once we see it, it breaks the bonds of truth. The world is no longer ordered and beautiful as strain is needed to make it so.
I believe there are exceptions but by and large most great portraits of cultural significance are around 50mm lens and shot at eye level. With an apparent economy of means.
And then finally, form, texture pattern, it’s essentially decoration. Can simple decoration be elevated to the heights of beauty? No matter how hard we abstract our images the reality of their subject matter still exists. When the subject matter deals with the human condition, what it is to be human, its status is elevated.
The subject is just theories, many separate competing theories. It goes deeper, like why some music speaks of great sadness of the human condition but sound is more an abstract form.
On a closing note aesthetic theory has often been shooed away from the artists studio, it can bog you down, cripple your vision with overthinking and self imposed constraints. There’s also many exceptions to disprove the rules. I happen to agree but I never forget, for many a super creative artist out there, I’ve seen their bookshelf and they’ve read about it at least and come to terms with it in their own way.