beauty

ElegantMedia

Here’s the GutaiManifesto:

“This is described as the beauty of decay, but is it not perhaps that beauty which material assumes when it is freed from artificial make-up and reveals its original characteristics? The fact that the ruins receive us warmly and kindly after all, and that they attract us with their cracks and flaking surfaces, could this not really be a sign of the material taking revenge, having recaptured its original life?”

maja sent:
andy goldsworthy:
“Nature is intensely beautiful,” he says, “and at the same time very
unnerving, and at times deeply frightening. You feel it if you’ve ever
stood in a wood that has been blown down after a strong wind, a volcano,
or any of these incredible acts of nature. You feel it as soon as you go
out to the land, where everywhere you go things are dead, decaying,
fallen down, growing, alive. There’s this incredible vigour and energy
and life. And it’s sometimes very difficult to deal with. I would hope
that I don’t have a kind of romantic view of nature. I do feel the
beauty of it, for sure. But it’s a beauty that’s underwritten by extreme
feelings.”

etc...

http://vs2.i-dat.org/unstructured03/05.html

might be taken as an illustration of Dostoyevsky’s observation that “beauty is the battlefield where God and the Devil war for the soul of man.”

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see also: BeautyInTheAgeOfDigitalArt

OF THE SELECTION OF BEAUTIFUL FACES.

LeonardoDaVinci

It seems to me to be no small charm in a painter when he gives his
figures a pleasing air, and this grace, if he have it not by nature,
he may acquire by incidental study in this way: Look about you and
take the best parts of many beautiful faces, of which the beauty is
confirmed rather by public fame than by your own judgment; for you
might be mistaken and choose faces which have some resemblance to
your own. For it would seem that such resemblances often please us;
and if you should be ugly, you would select faces that were not
beautiful and you would then make ugly faces, as many painters do.
For often a master’s work resembles himself. So select beauties as I
tell you, and fix them in your mind.

OF THE DELUSIONS WHICH ARISE IN JUDGING OF THE LIMBS.

LeonardoDaVinci

A painter who has clumsy hands will paint similar hands in his
works, and the same will occur with any limb, unless long study has
taught him to avoid it. Therefore, O Painter, look carefully what
part is most ill-favoured in your own person and take particular
pains to correct it in your studies. For if you are coarse, your
figures will seem the same and devoid of charm; and it is the same
with any part that may be good or poor in yourself; it will be shown
in some degree in your figures.

see also: TheLessonOfNN

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definitions via syndicate1:

Dehr juz jalwa-e-yaktaai-e-mashooq nahin,
hum kahan hotay agar husn na hota khud-been?2

                                                 - ghalib

the world, isnt just a spectacle of the oneness of the beloved
where would we be, if beauty was not gazing-at-itself

spectacle: creation, display
oneness: uniqueness
beloved: god

beauty looks at itself. selflove. narcisism. vanity
beauty or the beautiful requires gazing at oneself

god requires someone to look at him/er, thats where ghalib and we come in,
to give the required appreciation ;)

                                                - yasir husain

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BeautyResearch

Books

History of Beauty
Beauty After The End Of Art

articles and searches

Gog:The invisible dragon four essays on beauty
http://archive.salon.com/ent/feature/2000/01/10/beauty/