beauty

[Zee.]

There is a great sense of kindness to Kate's beauty.

[stlukesguild]

Good bone structure? Good bone structure varies, not everyone has the same face, obviously, but good bone structure is in harmony with itself...
I can't possibly explain what good bone structure is because so many people possess it and look completely different...

That, of course, is the problem. We cannot define "good bone structure" any more than we can "beauty". We can only suggest that we know it when we see it. And when others disagree? I could probably find someone lacking a well-defined jaw or cheek bones whom I still find beautiful, and someone with these ideal attributes whom I don't find beautiful of attractive at all... just as the earlier poster here suggested that he/she did not find Angelina Jolie all that beautiful.

[kandaurov]

Oh stlukesguild, unfair! Well of course she does have those features which can't be neglected, but I also meant the face close-ups in say 'Match Point'. She's a diva, and divas must have a face to fall in love with.

Agreed about Kinslet. And what an amazing actress, too.

I wouldn't be too specific when describing what is or isn't beautiful, e.g. jaw like this, chin like that. For me, beauty is when the facial features are in complete harmony. This has to do, for example, with proportion. A small nose can make a woman beautiful or quite plain, depends on the other facial features.

[stlukesguild]

I wouldn't be too specific when describing what is or isn't beautiful, e.g. jaw like this, chin like that. For me, beauty is when the facial features are in complete harmony. This has to do, for example, with proportion. A small nose can make a woman beautiful or quite plain, depends on the other facial features.

The same holds true in art... but just as in art, there can be no preconceived formula as to what will or will not result in such harmony. The nose that works on one face may look absolutely ridiculous on another.

[kandaurov]

Oh yes, absolutely. I don't believe in the universality of any truth, and beauty is no different.

Well now.

'Beauty! Uh! What is it good for?'

I've thought about this a lot. Sure, we derive pleasure from it through the eyes. But what's the point of wanting a beautiful significant other? Because you see, beauty is something you want but you never really get - you can't own the lover's beauty (well you could if you actually own the lover, but I hear that is being frowned upon in the past centuries).

So you can't own beauty, it's just contemplation. Like living in a marvellous place. Take my house in Portugal, for instance. It's perfect. It's got a breathtaking landscape of the countryside. Yet I'm not truly happy, more nostalgic and melancholy, because I can't really take full advantage from its beauty, at least I feel I can't, because all I can do is look at it. So I really don't mind at all to live in a campus in London where the sky's always gray and my view is made of bricks.

Does this make any sense at all? I'm very sorry. I just... well, I'm sorry, I had to say this.

[skasian]

Nah, I think symmetry is useful, but not essential. Keep in mind, people used to add birthmarks to their faces to add to beauty, but in theory, that would break symmetry, rendering such an obsession invalid.

Moles and birthmarks doesnt hinder the overall symmetry of the bone structure. I am talking about overall symmetry of the bone structure, ie equal proportion from the forehead, nose, chin. Birthmarks doesnt do much about symmetry of the bone structure.

[skasian]

Why do we think celebrities are attractive, glamourous, sexy, exhibiting something called beauty? Visit www.morphthing.com/popular and see for yourself the ones that are reminded as most beautiful do share very good symmetry in their bonestructures.

[stlukesguild]

Symmetry deals with an equal balance between sides. By and large this is irrelevant because excepting deformity all human faces are symmetrical. To suggest that a certain face is more "beautiful" than another because of the symmetry is rather like suggesting that the stained glass rose window of Chartres is more beautiful than others because it is symmetrical... which ignores the fact that ALL rose windows are symmetrical. Now when you speak of the relationship of the forehead to the nose and the nose to the chin... this is speaking of proportion. Certainly proportion is an essential element in beauty... whether we speak of art or design or architecture or the human face. The problem, however, is that there are persons that are commonly considered "beautiful" who have very different proportions or rations. Since the Renaissance... and even the ancient Greeks and Egyptians there have been ideals or standards of beauty based upon certain proportions. These, however, have greatly varied between cultures. The ideal facial and body type of Old Kingdom Egypt or Classical Greece differ greatly from the ideals of the Armana period in Egypt or Hellenistic Greece.

[JBI]

Or even today - there are still places in this world where necks are elongated by means of big brass necklaces, stretching this concept of proportions out of control.

Not to mention areas in the world where obesity is considered beautiful, and women are literally force fed as children in order to obtain the "ideal look" and therefore secure a better marriage.

Really, all one needs to do is look into a basic anthropology textbook dealing with indigenous societies to get a sense of the wide range of "beauty" in the contemporary world, not to mention the ancient and closer historic world.

I know Eco has written a pair of books, The History of Beauty and The History of Ugliness on the subject, I believe dealing entirely with western conceptions and ignoring eastern ones. He certainly demonstrates the range and development, in many genre and forms.

[Zee.]

Putting physical beauty aside for a second, my best friend is very beautiful - physically beautiful, but aside from that, I find great beauty in her because of what she is to me.

I find kind people very beautiful - i don't only mean on the inside, but many have a really strong sense of energy around them, which immediately draws you to them.

I also find Charisma more worthy than beauty.
Beauty is flimsy - it doesn't get you too far.

[stlukesguild]

Beauty! Uh! What is it good for?'

I've thought about this a lot. Sure, we derive pleasure from it through the eyes. But what's the point... Because you see, beauty is something you want but you never really get - you can't own the lover's beauty... you can't own beauty, it's just contemplation. Like living in a marvelous place. Take my house in Portugal, for instance. It's perfect. It's got a breathtaking landscape of the countryside. Yet I'm not truly happy, more nostalgic and melancholy, because I can't really take full advantage from its beauty, at least I feel I can't, because all I can do is look at it. So I really don't mind at all to live in a campus in London where the sky's always gray and my view is made of bricks.

I find this makes for a much more interesting discussion than the question of what exactly is the formula for beauty in the human face. What is the purpose or value of beauty? You have suggested that beauty is irrelevant to you as you do not own it... you can only contemplate it. Such reminds me of a great poem by Thomas Traherne:

Wonder

By Thomas Traherne (?1636–1674)

HOW like an Angel came I down!
How bright are all things here!
When first among His works I did appear
O how their glory me did crown!
The world resembled His Eternity, 5
In which my soul did walk;
And every thing that I did see
Did with me talk.

The skies in their magnificence,
The lively, lovely air, 10
Oh how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair!
The stars did entertain my sense,
And all the works of God, so bright and pure,
So rich and great did seem,
As if they ever must endure 15
In my esteem.

A native health and innocence
Within my bones did grow,
And while my God did all his Glories show,
I felt a vigour in my sense 20
That was all Spirit. I within did flow
With seas of life, like wine;
I nothing in the world did know
But ’twas divine.

Harsh ragged objects were concealed, 25
Oppressions, tears and cries,
Sins, griefs, complaints, dissensions, weeping eyes
Were hid, and only things revealed
Which heavenly Spirits and the Angels prize.
The state of Innocence 30
And bliss, not trades and poverties,
Did fill my sense.

The streets were paved with golden stones,
The boys and girls were mine,
Oh how did all their lovely faces shine! 35
The sons of men were holy ones,
In joy and beauty they appeared to me,
And every thing which here I found,
While like an Angel I did see,
Adorned the ground. 40

Rich diamond and pearl and gold
In every place was seen;
Rare splendours, yellow, blue, red, white and green,
Mine eyes did everywhere behold.
Great wonders clothed with glory did appear, 45
Amazement was my bliss,
That and my wealth was everywhere;
No joy to this!

Cursed and devised proprieties,
With envy, avarice 50
And fraud, those fiends that spoil even Paradise,
Flew from the splendour of mine eyes,
And so did hedges, ditches, limits, bounds,
I dreamed not aught of those,
But wandered over all men’s grounds, 55
And found repose.

Proprieties themselves were mine,
And hedges ornaments;
Walls, boxes, coffers, and their rich contents
Did not divide my joys, but all combine. 60
Clothes, ribbons, jewels, laces, I esteemed
My joys by others worn:
For me they all to wear them seemed
When I was born.

Traherne, who in many ways echoes William Blake, suggests that indeed he need not own something beautiful to enjoy the pleasure of it. One wonders if this did not reflect something of an earlier sensibility... the commoner reveling in... sharing in the beauty and splendor of the aristocracy... which in itself mirrored the relationship of mankind to God... man reveling in the beauty of creation.

But can we really live without beauty? William Morris suggested that the malaise of the modern man at the start of the industrial revolution owed much to the fact that he or she lived without beauty. That he/she was surrounded by objects of great utility lacking any aesthetic merit. He notes that this was quite different from earlier eras (ie. the Renaissance and Middle Ages) in which there was a pride in craftsmanship... and thus an aesthetic merit in nearly every item of utility. I somewhat concur. I teach in an urban setting. The building I am in is beyond ugly. The walls are collapsing... they seep water and mold forms on them. The ceilings are water-stained and falling down. The furniture is all battered and broken. In this environment the students show absolutely no respect for the building... and one can hardly blame them. It sends a message, to my mind, that they are not worth anything more... that nothing is expected of them. There is no suggestion of something better to strive toward.

During the Second World War Matisse and Pierre Bonnard continued to paint pictures of unabashed beauty:





While the war raged and horror was compiled upon horror none of this entered into the works of these two painters. I used to agree with those who expressed a dismay... a righteous indignation at the audacity of these artists who dared to ignore what was happening and continue on as before. But then with time I began to ponder whether or not what Matisse and Bonnard had done was not braver than any of the artists whose art grew dark and ugly... who allowed the ugliness to banish beauty in response to the war and rose a shrill voice of protest. Had they not, after all, conveyed the greatest faith in humanity... the belief in beauty and the belief that one day the ugliness would end? I thought, to no small extent, of William Faulkner's marvelous Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

As a visual artist I am quite struck be the absence of "beauty" in today's art. Certain critics raised a repeated protest against the continued popularity of the Impressionism and suggest that such is but the result of a naive audience. I suspect that rather, the continual love of Impressionism owes much to the fact that this was one of the last eras focused largely upon images of unquestionable beauty... beauty to be found in the world in our own back yard. There are several critical books which address the banishment of beauty from contemporary art. Some of the strongest criticism comes from a feminist point of view which suggests that imagery of unabashed sensuality... color... splendor... beauty... have been repeatedly denigrated as overly emotional... weak... or less rigorous of thought... and thus: feminine. Hard geometry, abstraction, the absence of color, conceptual rigor... these have all been thought of as more masculine. Such criticism abounds. Matisse and Bonnard have been dismissed by any number of critics in contrast to Picasso or Mondrian. Sean Scully... one of the leading painters today notes that there is such a prejudice against beauty as to almost suggest a Puritanical thought. Something that feels good or tastes good is immediately thought to not be good for you. A painting that looks beautiful is immediately assumed to look better than it really is, while some minimalist conceptual installation of feces and used condoms addressing issues (ostensibly) of societal inequalities, racism, and gender is immediately thought to be much better than it actually looks. Thus Schoenberg or Webern are claimed to be superior to Puccini or Rachmaninoff who have the misfortune of sounding good.

So what exactly is the role of beauty?

[skasian]

Symmetry deals with an equal balance between sides. By and large this is irrelevant because excepting deformity all human faces are symmetrical. To suggest that a certain face is more "beautiful" than another because of the symmetry is rather like suggesting that the stained glass rose window of Chartres is more beautiful than others because it is symmetrical... which ignores the fact that ALL rose windows are symmetrical. Now when you speak of the relationship of the forehead to the nose and the nose to the chin... this is speaking of proportion. Certainly proportion is an essential element in beauty... whether we speak of art or design or architecture or the human face. The problem, however, is that there are persons that are commonly considered "beautiful" who have very different proportions or rations. Since the Renaissance... and even the ancient Greeks and Egyptians there have been ideals or standards of beauty based upon certain proportions. These, however, have greatly varied between cultures. The ideal facial and body type of Old Kingdom Egypt or Classical Greece differ greatly from the ideals of the Armana period in Egypt or Hellenistic Greece.

No human possesses a face that is 100% symmetrical. One side of the face is always different from the other. I am only talking about the face only- the position and proportion of the eyes, nose, lips and bone structure such as cheek bones. Nothing else. I am not accounting the different eras and their appreciation of beauty. That is a completely different story.
However the most proportional and most symmetrical face is considered most beautiful universally regardless of era and age.

See for yourself how the human face is very unsymmetrical
http://kr.fun.yahoo.com/NBBS/nbbs_vi...1201&mi=758085
The third face is the original, where the first face is the left half of the face, whereas the second face is the right half of the face.
If a set is similar to each other, that face is considered beautiful as the face is very symmetrical.

[skasian]

Or even today - there are still places in this world where necks are elongated by means of big brass necklaces, stretching this concept of proportions out of control.

Not to mention areas in the world where obesity is considered beautiful, and women are literally force fed as children in order to obtain the "ideal look" and therefore secure a better marriage.

Really, all one needs to do is look into a basic anthropology textbook dealing with indigenous societies to get a sense of the wide range of "beauty" in the contemporary world, not to mention the ancient and closer historic world.

I know Eco has written a pair of books, The History of Beauty and The History of Ugliness on the subject, I believe dealing entirely with western conceptions and ignoring eastern ones. He certainly demonstrates the range and development, in many genre and forms.

The defintion of beauty is far too broad as there are different levels of beauty, and different appreciations of beauty is very diverse in a vast range of aspects, including culture and era as I said before.

Also identifying what is beautiful and what is not does not have to consist out of the human form. Nature itself is beautiful, and all the components that is natural are beautiful to an extent that is inexplicable.
A man may comment that his car or boat is a beauty, a woman looking at a pair of shoes may comment that they are beautiful. What we think is beautiful all varies as it does not necessarily have to link with human faces or form.

[kandaurov]

Stlukesguild, an award-winning post you wrote there. Many, many thanks.

[Saladin]

Yeah i like your posts, stlukesguild.