Theories of Art and Beauty

Art theories and art itself exist inside a context—philosophical, cultural, socioeconomic, and
gender specific—from which they develop and cannot exist without. Philosophers and art
theorists cannot avoid the impact of previous philosophers and theorists, nor can they be immune
to current developments in film, technology, and architecture. Art and culture, as well as art and
culture theories, are inextricably intertwined. Furthermore, this is a dynamic, flowing pattern that
changes over time rather than being static or everlasting. In general, major philosophical
developments are likely to have a greater impact on art philosophy. The general philosophy and
the philosophy of art have a fundamental confluence. Throughout this course, three general
themes in pre-aesthetic, aesthetic, and postmodern philosophies should be considered. It is
important to note that Europe only evolved the concept of aesthetics in the 18th century.

Aesthetics (as the study of art and beauty), aesthetic experience (the proper way of approach
and experience art and beauty), and modern art (art for art’s sake) all arose together at approx.
The same time as expressions of modernist culture (somewhere between the Renaissance and
the middle of the 20th century). Aesthetics is the name of the philosophical study of art and
natural beauty. It is a relatively new branch of philosophy that arose in the early 18th century
(early 1700’s) in England and Germany, over 2000 years after the beginnings of other branches
of Western philosophy (which began in Greece around 600 B.C.E.)

Aesthetics is closely related to the concept of aesthetic experience. Baumgarten who coined
the term aesthetics, claimed that humans experience the world in two fundamentally ways—
logically and aesthetically. Logically—that is a thorn, it will hurt if it pricks me. Aesthetically—
enjoying a sunset, looking at seashells, enjoying a work of art. These things are beautiful
because you are looking at them aesthetically.

What we call art, or more properly fine art, is therefore, according to the 18th +19th century
tradition of the aesthetic, those objects made by humans to be enjoyed aesthetically. So,
Paleolithic European cave paintings, Native American wood carvings are not really art according
to some because they were made by people before the emergence of aesthetic experience.

So, art created as art, aesthetic experience. And aesthetics are notions that all arose together.
These human ways of interpreting the world have not always existed since the dawn of human
society and not even since the beginning of Western civilization. Philosophy is often thought of
as a kind of systematic reflection of our ordinary commonsense intuitions and deeply rooted
beliefs and assumptions. This would mean that aesthetics is a reflection on ideas we already
have about art, artists. If aesthetics is a branch of philosophy and philosophy is a reflection of
our ordinary commonsense intuition, then, in a sense, we already know what art, aesthetics,
and artists are.
 But these commonsense intuitions may be so deeply ingrained and internalized that we may
take them for granted. Perhaps we can more fully experience artworks if we enlarge our
perspective. How do we do this? Our way of viewing art from an aesthetic point of view is only
one way of looking at things. It appears at a certain point in the history of certain cultures and
may just was easily disappear and be replaced by another way of viewing things.

The ideas of aesthetic enjoyment and fine art and artist arose in what we call the modern
period (end of 17th century to middle of 20th). Main points of modernist aesthetics

1. Aesthetic experience is non-utilitarian

2. AE is detached from ordinary self-interested pursuits (is disinterested)
3. Works of art are made to be viewed aesthetically—and so just to be enjoyed (For no other
purpose)
4. Everyone can appreciate art just by adopting the aesthetic point of view
5. Artists see things in a unique way and creatively find innovative ways of communicating that
vision to us
6. Artists show us how to look at the world, how to understand ourselves, who we are
7. Works of art express these unusual ideas of artists
8. Great works of art must be innovative and creative, expressing new ideas in new ways
9. The history of art is the history of these great innovations by these great artists
10. Art is not hard to understand—it just requires that we adopt the aesthetic point of view

Historical Introduction to Aesthetics

The story of aesthetics begins with Hobbe’s claim that all human perception is self-interested.
Many people disagreed with Hobbes and though that some human actions were disinterested,
that is, done for their own sake, enjoyed and appreciated for their own sake. And one large
subset of such disinterested actions were those associated with art and natural beauty.

The reaction began in Britain with the Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) who said we can love
things for themselves (good wine, a beautiful sunset, a painting). Deciding what we should love
and appreciate in this way is a matter of taste, a kind of inner sensation, or feeling. It is not
something you can learn from a book.

In the 1750’s Alexander Baumgarten pursued this idea by dividing all human thought into two
broad categories—logic and aesthetics. After Baumgarten, the British worked on the idea of
good taste as kind of refined sensibility available to anyone who would adopt the detached,
disinterested aesthetic point of view. And still later, at the very end of the 18th century, the
German philosopher, Immanuel Kant synthesized the work of the British taste theorists and the
German attempts to define the aesthetic as differentiated from the logical, and Kant’s efforts
pretty well defined and stabilized the tradition of the aesthetic attitude for the next 150 years.

Plato
A good example of Plato’s understanding of beauty can be found in the Symposium. This
dialogue devoted to praising and exploring love, ultimately gives us a definition of beauty as
understood by Plato. He explains that it is the Form of Beauty that is the object of love.
Diotima’s teachings describe a ladder of love that moves from the appreciation of singular
beautiful bodies on up to the ultimate and higher contemplation of the Form of Beauty that
makes it possible for us to discern individual cases of beauty at all. Those who have ascended
the ladder of love learn that the beauty of the soul is superior beauty of the bodies.

The Platonic philosophy of beauty does not have much interest in the world of sense and
considers it from a philosophical point of view to be a kind of illusion and a potential source of
error. According to Plato, beauty transcends the world of sense experience, which means that
the experience of beauty is different from what would be described as aesthetic experience
today. His theory dismisses sights and sounds as illusory. Plato does however take an interest in
the beautiful things of the world of sense. He does try to figure out what all beautiful things
share in common. But for Plato, beauty is a simple, unanalyzable property and is logically
similar to a primitive term such as red (cannot be defined—can only be understood by direct
sense experience).

If we look at Plato’s theory of art, we see that he held an imitation theory of art that focuses
attention on the objective properties of the work of art. The theory of art in Plato is object
centered. This leads to Plato’s negative estimation of art as twice removed from reality and a
poor source of knowledge. Art is doubly unreal and is an inferior product and poor model for
moral conduct. Plato’s characterization of paintings as untrue appearances may be understood
as the origin of the view that art is illusion, a view held by a number of present day theorists.

Plotinus

Plotinus, like Plato, thought that the experience of beauty itself is not a sensous experience but
an intellectual one. One of the most important results of both of these theories of beauty was
the establishment of contemplation as a central idea in the theory of beauty and consequently
in the theory of aesthetic experience. Almost all aesthetic theories have maintained that the
experience of beauty or more generally aesthetic experience involves contemplation. When
Plato and Plotinus thought of contemplation, they meant that a person had an awareness of a
non-sensuous object.

St. Thomas Aquinas (354-430 AD)

Aquinas’ understanding of beauty is not an unworldly one; he defines beauty as that which
pleases when seen. Objects please when they have the conditions of beauty which are
perfection, proportion and brightness or clarity. Importantly, his theory has both objective and
subjective aspects. The idea of pleasing brings in the notion of the subject who is pleased.
Being pleased is a property of a subject. This is significant step away from the objective
platonic conception of beauty toward a subjective account. This subjective concept of beauty
will reach its high point in the theories of 18th century philosophers. As we progress towards
the Renaissance, we find a great interest in more concrete and specific topics such as the
theory of painting and the theory of architecture. There is also a resurgence of Neoplatonism
at this time.

The 18th Century: Taste and the Decline of Beauty

The 18th century brings us into a critical and important time in the history of aesthetics. It is
during this time that philosophers provided the basis for aesthetics in its modern form. During
the middle of the century, the German philosopher, Alexander Baumgarten coined the term
aesthetics. It is at this time that the philosophical tradition tried to explain behavior and mental
phenomena by attributing each kind of phenomenon to a distinct faculty of the mind. For
example, the vegetative faculty explains nutrition and procreation, the locomotive faculty
explains movement, the rational faculty explains mental behavior, the sensory faculties explain
perception, imagination, etc.

Prior to the 18th century, it was generally assumed that beauty named an objective property of
things. But in the 18th century, there was a shift to taking about taste and thus a shifty onto the
subjective faculties of the perceiver. In the hands of these philosophers, philosophy,
philosophy of art became subjectivized. What this means is that philosophers turned their
attention towards the subject and analyzed the states of the subject’s mind and his mental
faculties. For example, British philosophers thought that they had discovered a new internal
sense (in the subject) _ the sense of beauty. The establishment of aesthetic theory as the
theory that unifies the problems of the theory of beauty and the philosophy of taste was not
completed in the 18th century. However, Kant’s views near the end of the 18th century
incorporated the insights of the British of the British aestheticians and came close to being a
unified aesthetic theory. By aesthetic theory I mean a theory that makes the concept of the
aesthetic basic and defines other concepts of the theory in terms of the aesthetic.

In Hume’s Standard of Taste, he makes it clear that his investigation into the nature of taste is
an empirical investigation of certain aspects of human nature. Hume denies that rationality
intuit beauty or the rules that govern it. For him, the foundation of our understanding of taste
is to be found in experience. His claim then is that the normative question of what is correct to
call beautiful can be solved by a comprehensive empirical survey of the taste of men. This is
the feature of Hume’s view that most vividly contrasts with Kant.

Hume concludes that beauty is not in objects but is a feeling. These feelings are linked by the
nature of our human constitution to certain qualities in objects- faculty of taste is more refined
and developed in some people. He also claims that standards of taste vary according to age
and temperament. So it is possible to have objective judgments about beauty in the sense that
there might be universal agreement among normal subjects (Hume experiential account of
beauty and taste. Hume’s ideas about aesthetics and the theory are spread throughout his
works, but are particularly connected with his ethical writings, and also the essays “Of the
Standard of Taste” and “Of Tragedy” (1757). His views are rooted in the work of Joseph
Madison and Francis Hutcheson. In the treatise (1740), he touches on the connection between
beauty and deformity and vice & virtue. His later writings on the subject continue to draw
parallels of beauty and deformity in art with conduct and character.

In “Standard of Taste”, Hume argues that no rules can be drawn up about what is a tasteful
object. However, a reliable critic of taste can be recognized as being objective, sensible and
unprejudiced, and having extensive experience. “Of Tragedy” addresses the question of why
humans enjoy tragic drama. Hume was concerned with the way spectators find pleasure in the
sorrow and anxiety depicted in a tragedy. He argued that this was because the spectator is
aware that he is witnessing a dramatic performance. There is pleasure in realizing that the
terrible events that are being shown are actually fiction. Furthermore, Hume laid down rules
for educating people in taste and correct conduct, and his writings in this area have been very
influential on English and Anglo-Saxon aesthetics. Watch this video Beauty and Hume.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxv6Q9jvvcU

Baumgarten

While the meanings of words often change as a result of cultural developments, Baumgartner’s
reappraisal of aesthetics is often seen as a key moment in the development of aesthetic
philosophy. Previously the word aesthetics had merely meant “sensibility” or “responsiveness
to stimulation of the senses” in its use by ancient writers. With the development of art as a
commercial enterprise linked to the rise of a nouveau class across Europe, the purchasing of art
inevitably led to the question, “what is good art?” Baumgarten developed aesthetics to mean
the study of good and bad “taste”, thus good and bad art, linking good taste with beauty. By
trying to develop an idea of good and bad taste, he also in turn generated philosophical debate
around this new meaning of aesthetics. Without it, there would be no basis for aesthetic
debate as there would be no objective criterion, basis for comparison, or reason from which
one could develop an objective argument.

Views on Aesthetics

Baumgarten appropriated the word aesthetics which had always meant “sensation”, to mean
taste or “sense” of beauty. In so doing, he gave the word a different significance, thereby
inventing its modern usage. The word had been used differently since the time of the ancient
Greeks to mean the ability to receive stimulation from one or more of the five bodily senses. In
his Metaphysics, Baumgarten defined taste, in its wider meaning, as the ability to judge
according to the senses, instead of according to the intellect. Such a judgment of taste he saw
as based on feelings of pleasure or displeasure. A science of aesthetics would be, for
Baumgarten, a deduction of the rules or principles of artistic or natural beauty from individual
“taste”. Baumgarten may have been motivated to respond to Pierre Bonhours’ opinion,
published in a pamphlet in the late 17th century, that Germans were incapable of appreciating
art and beauty.

Kant
Kant tried to show how it is possible for us to have some knowledge which is certain unlike
Hume who thought that since knowledge derives from experience we cannot be certain of
anything. The differences between Hume and Kant show up in their different philosophies of
taste. The empiricists (Hume) understood the philosophy of taste as an empirical inquiry into
the object which can lead to a psychological generalization about human nature. Kant
conceives of the philosophy of taste as an inquiry into the priori foundations of knowledge
which will show why judgments of beauty are universal and necessary.

For Kant, all aesthetic judgments focus on pleasure, which is a property of the experiencing
rather than of the objective world. But even if judgments about beauty are subjective, Kant
does also thing that they are stable and universal in a way that other pleasures are not
(pleasure felt with beauty is different than with other pleasures of taste like our pleasure of
taste involved in consuming chocolate for example).

Kant’s theory of beauty can be summarized in a sentence: A judgment of beauty is a

disinterested, universal, and necessary judgment concerning the pleasure which everyone
ought to derive from the experience of form. Disinterestedness-perceivers are indifferent to the
real existence of the object. The judgment of beauty is independent of the interest in real
existence. Interest in the object is a secondary and different kind of judgment.

All of these qualities are primarily involved with the experiencing subject. Kant asserts that it is
the recognition of the form of purpose which evokes the beauty experience. Only form is
beautiful (the design of a painting or the compositional structure of a music piece- these are the
result of purposive activity of a human agent) The form of a work of art is the result of
purposive activity of a human agent. Kant’s views can be understood as a link between
18th century theories of taste and 19th century aesthetic theories. These 19th century aesthetic
theories were totally subjectivized. An object is beautiful because it is an object of our
aesthetic contemplation. Watch this video Beauty and Kant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC0dPsWOXEA

The significance of the 18th century for aesthetics can be summarized in the following way:
Before the 18th century, beauty was a central concept; during the century it was replaced by the
concept of taste and finally by the end of the century we open onto a concept of the aesthetics.

Other strain in the history of aesthetics—the philosophy of art

It was not until shortly before the start of the 19th century, that the imitation theory of art
found in Plato and Aristotle was called into question. During the 19th century, the theory that
art is the expression of the emotion of the artist came to be the dominant view. The doctrines
of the expression theory of art has its roots in Kant’s theory of knowledge. This viewpoint was a
reaction against empiricist philosophy and an attempt to reach behind the sensuous screen of
ordinary knowledge to something thought to be vital and important. This generated a new role
for the artists a new interest in artistic creation. This new role of the artist is pointed up by the
following passage from Nietzsche’s will to power: Our aesthetics have hitherto been women’s
aesthetics, inasmuch as they have only formulated the experiences of what is beautiful, from
the point of view of the receivers in art. In the whole of philosophy hitherto the artist has been
lacking.

The expression theory of art explains that art is the expression of the emotion of its creator.
This theory tries to show that art can also do something important for people. It attempts to
related art to the lives of people. And finally it attempts to account for the emotional qualities
of art and the way in which art moves people.

From Blended Learning Modules, 2012, Lecture of Dr. Allan C. Orate

Aesthetics concerns the nature or essence of beauty. To understand this, first of all you
need to distinguish the two ways of considering beauty: absolute and relative. To say that is
absolute means that something is beautiful by virtue of itself: a thing has its own of being
beautiful regardless of the judgment of people. On the other hand, the view that beauty is
relative means that something is beautiful by virtue of itself: a thing has its own way of being
beautiful due to the perception and conception of people: so it is said that “beauty is in the eye
of the beholder.”

In this lecture, I will explain to you six theories of beauty with their corresponding
theories of art. To have a general view of them, please take note of this diagram:

SUMMARY OF THE THEORIES OF BEAUTY AND ART

Aesthetic Absolute or Standard of Standard of What is art?

Theories relative Beauty Ugliness
Idealism Absolute Reality, Truth, Illusion, Falsity, Art is the
beauty by Knowledge, Ignorance, Evil imitation or
universal idea Good representation
of reality or
nature
Functionalism Relative beauty Function Malfunction, Art has didactic,
depending on Usefulness, Uselessness, political or
what the object Utility, Perfect Futility, Defect therapeutic
does values
Hedonism Relative beauty Experience of Experience of Art is pleasure,
depending on pleasure for pain for the fun and play
the experience the individual individual self
of a person self
 Conventionalism Relative beauty Agreed to be Agreed to be Art is what is
or Cutural depending on beautiful by ugly by people made art by
Relativism the culture of people in the in the society people within
the people society the institution
Psychoanalytic Relative beauty Positive Negative Art is the
Theory depending on suggestions as suggestions as artist’s
the in the concept in traumatic expression of
unconscious of archetypes experience emotion or idea
Formalism Absolute Order, Disorder, Art is the
beauty by proportion, Disproportion, inherent
mathematical Integrity, Disintegrity, combination of
principles Simplicity Complexity elements

Aesthetic Idealism. I’m sure you already encountered Plato in your other subjects. His
contribution to learning is vast, however, he is primarily a philosopher. If you understand him,
it is said that you would understand the whole of Western civilization. Plato formulated an
aesthetic theory along with his theories of knowledge and existence. For him, beauty is truth
and reality. But reality does not exist in this world where we live, because things here are
changing and temporal. The reality are the transcendental forms or universal ideas existing in
the metaphysical world of being. What we perceive in our physical world of becoming are
appearances, shadows, images or reflections of reality. The real beauty, then, is not a physical
thing, but the idea of beauty. To experience the reality of beauty is for the philosophers to
know its idea in their minds, and not simply to perceive its reflection in this world.

Based on his worldview, Plato theorized about the essence of art. As this world is an
appearance of reality, art is an imitation of this world. There are three kinds of chair: (1) the
idea of chair in the world of being which makes up its reality known by a philosopher, (2) the
physical chair in this world constructed by a carpenter, and (3) the painting of a chair produced
by a painter in the world of art. As another example, we again turn to Titanic. You saw in this
movie the character Rose who is the artistic, beautiful woman. But Rose is an imitation of Kate
Winslet who is the physical, beautiful woman. And Winslet in turn is an image of the idea and
reality of beauty. For Plato, art is dangerous because it makes us ignorant by leading our minds
two times farther away from the truth.

Plato’s notion of beauty applies to art called “Imitationism”. His theory defines art as
the “imitation of the appearance of reality”. It is interpreted as Representationalism in which
art becomes a copy of nature, like your ID picture that is a visual copy of your face. For
Aristotle, art is also an imitation of things, but unlike Plato, Aristotle believed that reality is
inherent in this world. Following this insight, Leonardo noted that “art is a window to nature,”
and Shakespeare wrote that “ art is putting mirror up to nature.”

Aesthetic Functionalism. This theory may be traced back from Socrates. Are you
familiar with this quotation: “ Knowledge is a virtue”? Here, the Philosopher implied that
people are defined by their actions based on the dictate of the mind. Our rational operation
constitutes our human nature. So what you do makes up who you are. If you know that a
student is meant for studying, then you must study your lessons so that you may realize your
true nature as a student. Interpreting this view in aesthetics, the essence of beauty is what
things are supposed to do, that is, their function, use or utility. An object is ugly if it is defective
and useless for its purpose. In this sense, you become a beautiful student because you study
well and you learn, not because of the whiteness of your skin or the designer jeans you wear.

Functionalism is much applied in architecture. There is a fundamental principle that

“form follows function.” This means that the shape, size, space and other formal properties of
a building is determined by its use. Consider your house. You know that each part of it has a
function: the kitchen for cooking or the bedroom for sleeping. The more efficient the use of a
house is, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier planned and built their works in the art of
architecture.

In the other arts, some compositions in painting, sculpture and music are beautiful
because they achieve a particular purpose, such as for the ideological aim of changing the
society as in Marxist theory of art, for didactic purpose in morality, for therapeutic value in
medicine, even for commercial worth in selling artworks for great price. Also in functionalism,
art is a talent and skill for doing things according to Lucretius. We talk about virtuosity of the
artists in fine arts. There are liberal arts which include efficient use of language in grammar and
rhetoric. While in practical arts, there is craftsmanship in embroidery, ceramics, masonry,
carpentry, sartorial and culinary arts. There is martial arts too. For Rousseau,
agriculture and metallurgy were the arts that propelled the development of human
civilization.

Aesthetic Hedonism. You may find hedonism to be very inviting theory. As an ethical
view about human life, it was formulated by Aristipus and Epicurus. They believed that
whatever is good is what brings pleasurable experience to the individual person. Food, money
and sex are good because they give self-interested pleasure. Relating this insight to aesthetics,
“pleasure and pain, therefore,” in the words of David Hume, “are not only necessary attendants
of beauty and deformity, but constitute their very essence.”

There is some truth in aesthetic hedonism considering our common experience of

nature and art. We find the rainbow beautiful because of the pleasure it presents in our eyes,
while the sight of a shit is ugly because of its terrible appearance and bad odor. Sometimes
when we listen to music we feel relax, or when we watch a movie we enjoy it. Art is beautiful
because of the sensuous delight it affords us. But if the music is irritating to our ears, or the
film is boring, they bring us pain, and thus ugly. In culinary art, we appreciate the food not only
because it is nutritious, but more because it is delicious. Have you experienced this that when
you were eating lechon, you simply enjoyed the taste, and never minded its cholesterol that
might bring you high blood and heart attack?
 Plato and Aristotle did not altogether reject hedonism as an art theory. They claimed
that imitation may also bring pleasure, and for Plato art is a kind of play for the artist.
According to Immanuel Kant too, art is more of play and fun than of work, however, the person
must be disinterested to the pleasure which art and things provide. And for Albert Faurot,
painting, sculpture and music are meant only “for giving pleasure and life enhancement.”

Aesthetic Conventionalism. Do you know “ethnocentrism?” I’ts an anthropological

term which means that when you were born and now living within a society, you have
embodied its ways from which you judge the people outside your own community. This basic
notion of Conventionalism may be interpreted based on the ethical theory by Thomas Hobbes.
He claimed that the moral values of good and bad depend on social agreement. Morality is a
construct made by human consensus through the civil law imposed by the sovereign in a
political state. Along this line of thinking, Aesthetic conventionalism contends that the
concepts and facts of beauty are inventions of people. As members of society, we collectively
create standards and rules for how the artistic values of things are measured based on our
shared tradition and culture.

There is no universal norm of beauty. Each society creates its standard. For the
Padaung people in Myanmar, women are considered beautiful if they have long necks full of
spiral rings. In the Suri and Mursi community in Africa, the beauty of women are determined by
their wide lower lip with a big hole at the center. And in China before 1917, women had the
tradition of foot binding and made their feet small, only four inches long looking like the bud of
a lotus flower. For us, present Filipinos, these cultural practices might look weird, but only
because we apply our own cultural rule to them. We too have our peculiarities which in turn
may not be acceptable to others, such as the practice of tattooing by the Pintados, or the
blackening of teeth by the Aetas during the pre-colonial period. What we all need to do is to
have a mutual respect for other’s standards. The theory of conventionalism may also be
applied in understanding the evolution of fashion, trend and fad, as well as the meaning
of baduy, bakya, jologs, conyo. These are popular terms which denote different aesthetic
norms prevailing within some times and places, for some groups of people in our society.

As a theory of Art, Conventionalism is related to Institutional Theory according to

postmodern thinking. For Arthur Danto and George Dickie, what makes something an art is due
to the “artworld,” an institution composed of groups of powerful people. These people are the
professionals and experts who justify anything to be art by virtue of their influential status. Art
has no fixed essence. It is defined by the artworld through its own established rules which are
changing and depend on relations of power. Could you consider a toilet urinal an art? Yes! In
fact, one urinal became art, because it has been integrated within the artworld. It has been
made art by the renowned artist Marcel Duchamp. It has been exhibited by the art curators in
museums and galleries, and it has been affirmed by the art critics, historians and teachers who
talk about it in their respective fields.

Aesthetic Psychoanalytic Theory. Probably you have taken up in Psychology the theory
by Sigmund Freud. As you remember, he advanced the theory of the unconscious or
subconscious mind. The unconscious defines the conditions of our human personality. For Carl
Jung, within the unconscious lurks collective standards which we share as members of the
human species, and which serve as archetypes or models of how we perceive things to be
beautiful or ugly. The perception of ugliness may be due to childhood trauma which lies
dormant within our subconscious, but when triggered by a certain stimulus revives our
conscious memory of an ugly object or experience.

As a theory of art, psychoanalysis is employed to uncover the artist’s desires, urges

inhibitions, depressions or wishes which lie hidden in the artwork. All of us dream where we
see fantastic images. Images in the arts are like those of our dreams. They contain symbolic
meanings; they are expressions of the unconscious content of the mind which may be
interpreted to reveal artist’s personality. Freud analyzed the psychological makeup of Leonardo
based on the painter’s dream about a bird flapping its tail inside his mouth, and on his paintings
whose subjects were mostly women such as The Monalisa and Leda the Swan and from which
Freud concluded that Leonardo was a homosexual. In Reuben’s painting entitled Samson and
Delilah, and in Van Gogh’s Bedroom at Arles, are found a red blanket which is an archetypal
symbol for sexual desire and sin of the flesh. A lot of weird, dreamlike images may be seen in
the surrealist paintings by Salvador Dali, Mark Chagall and Rene Magrite.

The basis of expressionist theory of art is the view that art is a revelation of the artist’s
internal impulses. In his lesson on poetry, Aristotle proposed the term catharsis; it refers to a
person’s overflowing emotion which may be diverted into artistic production and creativity.
According to Susanne Langer: “ Art is the creation of symbolic forms expressive of human
feelings.” For Tolstoy, art is the “objectification of emotions.” And for Benedetto Croce, art is
not the physical substance but the ideas in the mind of the artist which may be expressed like
words in a language. The best lesson that you learn from this theory is that beauty and art are
not only perceived by your senses, but are also felt by your heart and conceived by your mind.

Aesthetic Formalism. In the tradition of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, in its theory

of hylomorphism, the word”form” denotes the essence of a thing. The form of a beautiful thing
makes up the essence of its beauty. Anything ugly is “deformed”. Fundamentally, there are
two formal principles of beauty: order and structure. The two specific principles are
proportionality and integrity. Simplicity is the principle of individuation of beauty. The
coordination of all these principles determine the beauty or ugliness of a thing.

B. Donald Duck Golden Mean

C. Golden Ratio= Mind Blown

According to aesthetic formalism, “beauty is the harmony of proper proportion.” This

means that the parts of a thing must be properly coordinated in shapes, sizes, colors and other
elements, so that it may look beautiful. Have you seen a woman with vital statistics of 36-24-
36? This horizontal measure should correspond to an appropriate height, say five feet six
inches tall, so that you may see the woman beautiful; but you would see her fat if she stands
four feet tall, and thin if if seven feet. The drawing by Leonardo, The Virtuvian Man, is the best
illustration of the formalist theory of beauty and art. Taken from the canons by the ancient
Roman architect Vtruvias, Leonardo depicted the perfect measure of the human body based on
the mathematical proportion of its parts with one another. This proportion is also said to be
the harmony which underlies nature and the universe, thus attesting that, indeed “man is the
measure of all things” as proposed by Protagoras. Another mathematical form of beauty is the
Golden Measure that is found in nature like in a nautilus shell and was used by the ancient
Greece architects in designing temples and buildings.

Aesthetic formalism asserts that an artwork is to be perceived as a whole made up of its

corresponding parts. The relation of elements with one another composing the whole is the
artistic form. Painting is the combination of points, lines, shapes and colors; musical
composition is formed by the coordination of rhythm, pitch, tempo and dynamics; and a short
story by characters, setting and plot. This means that, when you look at the Mona Lisa, you
don’t see a woman but a form, not a nose but a triangle, not a smile but a curve line. Art then
is to be regarded within itself, independent of its connections to anything outside. It is “art for
art’s sake,” in the famous statement by Oscar Wilde. This is the same with Clive Bell who said
that art is concerned only with the “significant form,” and has nothing to do with life.