Aesthetics - in art and every day.

Exploring the idea of aesthetics throughout art and every day, aesthetics are something that we subconsciously judge every day. We interpret each other aesthetically before anything else. Traditionally in art history there has been an impact of aesthetic and beauty. Before the post-modernists, art was characterised by form of aesthetic quality. Movements such as the Pre-Raphaelites display an obvious love for aesthetics, focusing on love and beauty in their work. Although the aesthetics of a piece of work can be more than just to do with subject matter – as a lot of artwork also relies on its surroundings to create a certain aesthetic to the viewer. A direct definition of aesthetics is; “relating to pure beauty rather than to other considerations” (taken from a dictionary)

As I touched on above, the history of aesthetics have been really dominant throughout art history. Throughout portraits idealising Kings, Queens and those in power – making them seem flawless and powerful; using aesthetics to symbolize their hierarchy. Leonardo da Vinci would re-use certain body parts which he liked, like women’s hands – ones which he thought were particularly beautiful. Art history really relied on beauty until around the Expressionist movement when artists came to focus more on creating emotion behind their artwork. Since then different movements have been pushing the boundaries (Dadaism, Cubism, Surrealism, etc.), these have all been ways to change people’s opinion on the way they view art. At the time they also caused a lot of shock, as it was different and unusual to the time and not necessarily seen as art as they weren’t ‘beautiful’.

Aesthetics can also be determined on the type of space that the ‘art’ is placed within. Once an object is placed inside a gallery space it has a totally new identity and we tend to look at it in a different way. Interpreting and appreciating its aesthetics, in a way we wouldn’t in everyday life. Like, Duchamp’s fountain, where he displayed a urinal – we don’t usually focus on its aesthetic appearance when in a men’s toilets, we see it more for its function. There are contemporary artists which rely on the same environment – an obvious one would be Tracey Emin as similar to Duchamp, her bed relies on the gallery space to be interpreted as art and focus on the aesthetics and features to find out the conceptual meaning (emotion) of her work. If this was a photo in her house it would come across totally differently visually. The art movement which relies most on the space is minimalism – as minimalists use simplified objects

An artist who looks at pushing the idea of aesthetics is, Jenny Saville – Saville pushes the ideas of aesthetics and looks at the raw material of flesh rather than the beauty. Her paintings are large scale works which depict ‘grotesque’ overweight women – from unflattering angles to focus on their weight rather than their conventional beauty. The tones she uses throughout her painting include blue/green shades showing what is beneath the flesh , also some of her work they’ve applied pressure to the skin (such as pulling the flesh). Showing a different outlook on the human skin as it’s usually depicted for its beauty – the aesthetics. “Men paint female beauty in stereotypes; Jenny Saville paints it the way it is” [1], this quote shows how Saville paints the real picture – even though that’s not how we like to be displayed, we’d rather look our best especially when being painted. To have others perceive us as good looking.  Looking at the human body, artists have used simila

Hans Bellmer is another artist who you could say looks at going against usual aesthetics, he was most known for his life-sized dolls which caused controversy. These pieces differ to Saville’s work as they have an erotic sense to them. Even though these are Bellmer’s most well-known pieces I also found a collaboration piece with Unica Zurn which looks at the use of elastic bands wrapped around the human body. Even though these are in black and white, most likely because they’re film based photograph, they have a strong link to Savilles work as it creates the pressure to the skin. Also displays the skin similar to a piece of meat, stringing it up – defiantly going against the tradition of aesthetics in art. Almost as though he’s cutting up the body into sections - in a similar way to Bellmers more well-known dolls, creating a form of disfigurement.

Seeing the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ a documentary on Channel 4 about disfigurements and comparing ‘beauty’ to their ‘ugliness’. This showed how the ‘beast’ had no control over how they looked – from birth, or had very little control having been in a fire or another accident. This showed how judgemental we really are, as these people would be treated differently, as a burn victim said on the series children would point and laugh at him. This goes along with how I said we focus on aesthetics in art due to how the person looks physically. People also would avoid touching him because of the way he looked. How it shaped and controlled how people acted towards him and how he lived his life. They also re-created some famous celebrity advertisement billboards, asking the public if they would now buy these Calvin Klein underwear – when someone with a disfigured face is wearing it compared to David Beckham. The public replied with mixed views, some finding it disgusting to be on display and wouldn’t consider buying the product. This shows how judgemental the public can be, and how media relies on appearance.

 Throughout this series I found a photographer, Edith Bergfors, who looked at portraits of people with facial deformities. Her photographs have a certain characteristic making them difficult to tell whether they are paintings or photographs. They also almost seem to have surreal tendencies; due to their blank expressions.

Although it is our subconscious which makes us feel uneasy, unhomely and uncanny about those who tend to appear different to us, we do not want to look to appear rude or staring yet avoiding eye contact is equally just as offensive. Artists have looked into themes of conjoined twins, such as Jake and Dino Chapman. The brothers created sculptures of dolls which are conjoined; although there most well-known piece included a blow up doll, which was nominated for the Turner Prize. They go out to shock people by showing them something, in which they don’t know how to react to – on an emotional and social level.

Reading through Freud’s ‘Uncanny’ made me focus on the idea of the uneasy and unhomely (as uncanny is directly translated from German). He focuses on something being uncanny which is almost too realistic, such as doll.

Looking into the detail of interpreting beauty from a scientific view, I found Jürgen Schmidhuber’s ‘algorithmic theory’ of beauty. Schmidhuber’s theory distinguishes the differences between what is beautiful and what is interesting. The most aesthetically pleasing observation is the one with the shortest description – this is so the viewer can decode the information from past experiences/knowledge (such as similarities and symmetries). This is all down to personal preference though – as we all have different experiences of aesthetics. [2] Although personally I feel that the more interesting and unusual something is in appearance, it draws you towards it as you do not always understand it right away – which makes it more intriguing. Rather than Schmidhuber’s theory who says we find things we are used to aesthetically pleasing – so you can make common links between previous objects. I am more attracted to things which I have not seen before it makes it more exciting and if I don’t understand it, it makes me want to understand it more.

Today we still have the high impact on aesthetics – although it may not be focused so much through our art, as with art we are focusing on creating new and pushing experiments rather than to make something beautiful. The power of aesthetics is mainly dominant through the media and celebrity culture, similar to the classics – painting perfect portraits so someone looks beautiful. We now have the use of technology such as photo shop. Rather than important high status portraits this technique is used to glamourize themselves and to sell sex. Some ‘uncanny’ as they are basically life like but not real.

Aesthetics have changed and developed throughout time, aesthetics is just as important now as what it was hundreds of years ago, just the way it has adapted and developed is different.  Also how they are exposed to us is different, as these massive traditional portraits, painted can be realistic but with improvements to make someone’s nose appear smaller, skin clearer etc. have taken lots of time for the artist to create. Whereas in the modern day we have millions of copies of magazines printed with models and celebrities air brushed and photo shopped to appear desirable taking no time at all when compared to the portraits of the masters. These also are carelessly thrown away, in contrast to the other portraits.

In conclusion, generally aesthetics, beauty, is a lovely subject matter – beauty sells. Just someone or something different, unusual or deformed can make you interpret the object/image in a whole new light. Making you take more time over something rather than looking at it and right away noticing its beauty, you are able to sit there and question the work and find an understanding of the work, even if it goes against Schmidhuber’s theory to do with beauty and interest. Contemporary artists also prove my point, as if we were aesthetically drawn to things which we already know, and then we would not have half of the contemporary work we have now, artists pushing to make something new – even though they’re obviously influenced by art history.