“Truth is beauty; beauty, truth — That is all ye need to know on earth and all ye need to know” — John Keats
I came across Immanuel Kant's view of beauty in this excellent blog:
According to Kant, judgments of beauty are best conceived as a “disinterested pleasure.” They shouldn’t be influenced by information or ulterior motives. The viewer should also not seek anything from the object or make demands. For instance, you don’t need to know anything about a rose to appreciate its beauty (and conversely, you shouldn’t believe something is beautiful just because it’s intellectually interesting). It also shouldn’t matter if roses are trendy, or if owning a rose confers social status or the possibility of financial reward. You should be able to appreciate the beauty of a rose on a warm mid-summer day stroll, purely by virtue of seeing its form and bounded dignity. The appreciation is visceral and emotional—it’s a pure, disinterested pleasure.
The Kantian idea of beauty seems acceptable at first glance. But upon giving it some thought, I realized that it misses something core to our perception of beauty: context.
If disinterested pleasure is all we are to consider as beauty, then what about artifacts that have a history behind them? Or a story that they convey? Or cultural/religious significance that they hold?
To illustrate my point, consider the world’s most famous sculpture - Michelangelo's David.
Sure, it is a thing of magnificent beauty; something you can marvel at without knowing any context. You do not need to know the story of David and Goliath, you do not have to know the Bible or the religion of Christianity. But how long does such “disinterested pleasure” last? When you step into the Accademia Gallery, you will notice that most people (lay audience) spend a maximum of 5 minutes taking in David before moving on. That is because that is how far disinterested pleasure gets them.
Now consider the staunch admirers - the antithesis of the lay audience - who take in David for several hours or sometimes even a whole day. What makes them stay? The context. And there is a lot of it.
To take on Goliath is no trivial task and yet, David’s face wears an expression of confidence and his body language exudes poise. One cannot appreciate this if one did not know the story of David and Goliath. The staunch admirers know the pivotal role Christianity has played in shaping western society and can thus understand the cultural significance of David. They understand why he is naked (it allows him to be agile) and why his right arm is abnormally long because they have read the bible. They know art history and thus understand how disruptive Michelangelo’s David is (Michelangelo has captured the moment just before killing Goliath as opposed to just after which was the convention at the time). They also know how much time and effort it must have taken to sculpt it because they know what 16th-century tools looked like as opposed to the tools available to modern-day sculptors. They know why the statue has been positioned in that specific spot in the gallery (it makes for a telescopic effect that makes David seem larger than he actually is).
All of this context feeds their consumption of the sculpture, elevating their experience by several orders of magnitude.
To put it simply, disinterested pleasure is only level 0.
Going by Kant's idea of beauty, there is no difference between Michael Jackson's iconic glove vs an exact replica of the glove. The former does not only have monetary value, it has cultural value.
Art does not exist in a vacuum. Art exists because people exist and there is a shared culture among them. Just looking pretty is not the sole purpose of art. While it can simply be that, art can do a whole lot more. They tell stories and themselves have stories behind them. Some of the best artworks are not only praised for their looks but also for how they tug at the sociocultural fabric of society.
However, Kant is also right that to appreciate a rose - you do not need to know anything about how much time it took to bloom, what resources the plant required, how photosynthesis works, etc. Context is immaterial. There is, however, a limit to the profoundness of your experience with a rose.
I am not saying that man-made art is superior to a flower. I am only pointing out that they are different. Roses, sunsets, and starry nights are the simpler pleasures of life. You don't need to have the privilege of money, education, or intellect to appreciate it. In that sense, nature’s beauty is universally accessible in a way that man-made beauty is not.
Art is anything that makes you go "that is beautiful". It can be a sunset or it can be Michelangelo's David. Hell, it can even be a mathematical derivation.
I think sanerthanlasagna captured it well:
People value a lot of different things in art: direct pleasure, skill and virtuosity, novelty and creativity, representation, emotional saturation, intellectual challenge, imaginative experience, veneration.
This is a non-exhaustive list, of course. And different people could value different combinations of things. For example, I am moved by skill, novelty, and intellectual challenge much more than by direct pleasure. Context is important to me. It might not be the case for others.
Discover what you value in art. Once you do, it will be an infinite source of profound joy till your last breath.
Thanks to Krithika and Bhargavi for reading drafts of this.
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Lovely article! I also think that a rose, while beautiful in itself, gains beauty if it has context and story behind. For eg - A rose given on a first date by a lover can exude beauty even after death, which a disinterested pleasure would not. :)