The first two chapters of “Theories of Art: From Plato to Winckelmann” by Moshe Barasch chronologically describe the ideas of beauty and art in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Each thinker offered new insight, building off the ones before him. From this, humanity’s train of thought could be realized. As I walked through the thoughts of Antiquity to the Middle Ages, I observed a development in the way people understood and defined Beauty—a movement from the objective to the subjective to a relationship between the two. These shifts in viewpoint show the development towards, what I believe to be, a more complete understanding of Beauty, which has both external and internal qualities.
For Barasch, Antiquity is the first era to bring up ideas about beauty and art. Thinkers of this time valued logic and reason, mostly viewing nature objectively. In other words, they often explained reality as if it were separate from themselves. Antiquity is also the time of the Ancient Greeks with their ideal human forms becoming manifest in their sculptures.
Combining both Antiquity’s logical mindset and its sculptural development towards the ideal, Polyclitus wrote a treatise, the Canon, for the working artist looking to achieve beauty in his works. Rather than instructions for creating a specific human form, it contained pages of mathematical proportions of the human body*. It was Polyclitus’ understanding that Beauty was symmetrical, harmonious proportions. For me, his definition of Beauty
“Beauty is in the heart of the beholder” H.G. Wells. But does our society today actually care about what is on the inside? If you look at any magazine today, all they talk about is how to better your outside appearance. This constant ridicule has stemmed from the Bronze Age, and has continued throughout. Throughout history women have been using their good looks to achieve high social status, power, and a lavish life. The Bronze Age has paved the road for discrimination against the less attractive and privileged. In our everyday world today one can see the favoritism in the social, political, and professional world. In my research paper I will delve into the subject of beauty and how the Bronze Age has made our world today require and want
Their aspect of beauty is called “Antiquity” which is the combination of kalos, which is beautiful, and agathos, which is honest and virtuous. Concluding only people who are honest and handsome are considered attractive. While, the Christians put the emphasis on inner beauty, the beauty of the soul and its virtues. Physical beauty has negative connotation with “vanity, lust, and corruption of the flesh (Dürrigl, 209)”, according to Dürrigl, “The more beautiful someone was, the greater danger there was for them losing their souls (209).” Furthermore in Medieval Times, the concept of beauty was dominated by certain philosophical-theological ideas on the relationship of the body with the soul.
Mankind is prone to some degree of sin. A question that has always plagued mankind is how one can achieve redemption from sin. Any sin becomes compounded when the perpetrator does not take responsibility for it. In the book The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, perhaps the greatest sinner was Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale.
Delaina Storey Pope Huma 1315 February 2, 2016 Enneads 1.6 by Plotinus Summary In Volume 6 of Enneads, the Greek philosopher Plotinus gives his standpoint on what defines beauty. This passage is noteworthy because of the way it contradicts the aesthetics of his day and age.
Art had played an important role in building up civilizations from all over the world through thousands of centuries. It is and will always still the way of projecting artists’ ideas and thoughts into meaningful and tangible objects which we called “work of art”. In addition, It was the path through all these years that dug its way to reach to our current century to show us the beauty of every single era starting from the Upper Paleolithic Period of time (42,000 – 8,000 BCE) reaching to our contemporary artists of today.
Beauty is an incredibly subjective thing; what might seem appealing to one’s eyes may be horrendously ugly in the eyes of another. However, the status of “beautiful” or “ugly” can be assigned rather objectively when art is examined from the perspectives of different philosophies. The beliefs and values of different philosophies can be used to find meaning and beauty in various art forms, allowing for a more straightforward determination of beauty. Because of the many layers of meaning most paintings entail, they are a perfect example of an art form that can be analyzed by numerous philosophical viewpoints to find meaning and beauty, and Ma Yuan’s painting Walking on a Mountain Path in Spring, which comes from the Song dynasty of Chinese and depicts a sole figure standing in a natural surrounding, is no exception. Ma Yuan’s painting is beautiful because it represents the ultimate achievements for the Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian philosophies.
This essay aims to investigate two different time periods in the history of art. It will scrutinize the influence that the respective societal contexts had on the different artists, which in turn, caused them to arrange the formal elements in a specific way. I will be examining an Egyptian sculpture of the god Isis nursing Horus, her son, as well as the Vladimir Virgin icon, which dates from the Byzantine era. Experts vary on the precise ‘lifetime’ of the Ancient Egyptian civilization, but according to Mason (2007:10) it existed from 3100 BCE up to 30 BCE. The Byzantine era, which
For decades, the media portrayal of the Arab culture and Islam has contributed to a skewed public opinion in America. Looking closely at the news coverage concerning the Middle East and the United States, there is an inherent media bias against Arabs and Muslims as foreign threats to domestic security. Stephen Franklin argues that "Islamic nations are often portrayed in news reports as uniformly intolerant and anti-democratic" (Franklin 17). Unfortunately, such coverage has contributed to the public and government misconceptions of all Arabs and Muslims as terrorists. According to Fawaz Gerges, "terrorism has emerged as one of the most important political issues in the United
This interest in the order of nature eventually evolved into a fascination with the human form and the idea of human perfection. The way in which the perfect human form was portrayed by Greek artists was of a highly intellectual nature. The early sculptors of the period explored basic human anatomy and its aesthetic value, creating such sculptures as the Kritios Boy, of the Acropolis. The precision and realism of this sculpture captured a more accurate portrayal of the human form than ever before seen. This accomplishment in itself showed strong advancements in intellectual thought, and inspired future generations to further explore aesthetic and order. Artist such as Polyclitius later envisioned human perfection as a series of mathematical proportions. The
For as long as humankind has been around, humans have created and been engrossed with artwork. Art, whether in the form of music, paintings, movies, etc., can have multiple functions, including telling a story, providing a moral lesson, engaging our emotions, or just being entertainment. In a world as diverse and imperfect as ours is, an artist’s intentions and morals can be controversial and viewed negatively depending on the place and time in which his or her artwork is viewed. While all art has a place in society, not all art is equal in quality and morality, but those are not interchangeable terms; morality corrupt art can be beautiful and morally upstanding art can be of lesser quality. In this paper, I argue that a work of art can be both beautiful and evil at the same time, and that a piece of evil art can be just as important to society as a piece of wholesome art.
In the 14th century the word beauty was known as “physical attractiveness,” also “goodness courtesy,” from Angelo French beute. Beauty was once known as how someone looks to
The arguments surrounding capital punishment have focused primarily on its ability to provide general deterrence. Instead of focusing on a purely utilitarian aspect of capital punishment, it may be useful to analyze the death penalty through a morality perspective. The idea of retribution often carries a negative connotation because of its equivocation with the concept of revenge. While they may externally seem similar, they are far from analogous when analyzing the underlying motivations driving the two ideological perspectives.
In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus defines beauty and the artist's comprehension of his/her own art. Stephen uses his esthetic theory with theories borrowed from St. Thomas Aquinas and Plato. The discourse can be broken down into three main sections: 1) A definitions of beauty and art. 2) The apprehension and qualifications of beauty. 3) The artist's view of his/her own work. I will explain how the first two sections of his esthetic theory relate to Stephen. Furthermore, I will argue that in the last section, Joyce is speaking of Stephen Dedalus and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as his art.
Society’s perception of love changes constantly. As a result, poems of different time periods have different perceptions of love and beauty. Ben Jonson’s “A Vision of Beauty” and Samuel Daniel’s “But love whilst that thou mayst be loved again” reflect the importance of physical beauty in love during the Renaissance Era. In the Victorian Period, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt’s “I See You Juliet” and Robert Browning’s “A Face” continue to reflect society’s fascination with female beauty in both a positive and negative way. In the Modern Period, a shift occurs in both marriage and love with a greater emphasis on true love and inner beauty. William Butler Yeats’ “When You Are Old” and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Only Until This Cigarette Is Ended” show
Debate over the definition of art has developed for hundreds, if not thousands of years. People have spent millions of dollars and given years of their lives to the craft called art. However, there has not been an agreement on what the definition of art is because it tends to be a very vague concept incorporating many cultures and ideas. It has proven itself to be an effective tool in the human expression over the years preserving deep and personal feelings along with history. Art can be defined as the creation of beauty through expression with skillful use of creativity, design, and manipulation of the viewers’ emotions.