Aesthetics: Complicated but Simple

It is difficult to define beauty, for truly “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. True beauty can take a great number of forms, and these forms will be aesthetically pleasing to some, while to others they may be outright distasteful. This picture is an archaic aesthetic, a sculpture of beauty and grace which any viewer can look on with some joy. Society today is sculpting a new aesthetic for women with longer legs, larger breasts, blonder hair and bluer eyes than any model of perfection which has come before. Interestingly enough, Salvadore Dali said that, “beauty is simply the total consciousness of our perversions.” (Fletcher 2001: p.308) Under careful consideration, this statement is resoundingly true. Beauty relates to sexual appeal in a direct and sometimes startling way. The study of aesthetics has started to diversify as pop culture makes objects which were once intended only for the artistic elite more ubiquitous and mainstream. Anyone can now be the beautiful model they wish to be, if they only pay the price to get there. These principles have filtered into almost all areas of life, from vehicles to fashion. Consumers will go to great lengths to achieve aesthetic beauty, and sometimes forgo practicality and utility. It seems everywhere, values are changing. This is why when looking at this simple statue, it reminds me of a simpler time; a time before when how the an objects function and its aesthetic were separated by so many layers. As Fletcher mentions both artists and craftsmen were called “technitai” (makers) in Ancient Greece (2001). They did not separate the creation of objects into many different steps for technical and manufacturing ease. This of course must have made for simpler design and products. Everything which is old eventually becomes new again, so perhaps in the future the simple statue pictured above will again be the aesthetic look of the day. This however, will remain very difficult with the rampant consumerism propagated by companies to make a “new, better you”. Perhaps as a society we have no real concept of aesthetics, but simply follow a set of aesthetics spoon-fed by large corporations trying to achieve a negative self-image in the majority of consumers. I pray this is not the case, and so agree with Michelangelo when he said, “Beauty is the purgation of superfluities”. (Fletcher 2002: p.308)