Warm Up 514 Who are the most beautiful

Warm Up 5/14 Who are the most beautiful people in the world? What influences the people who make these decisions? Is this something that is knowable? These are the People Magazine winners from 4 years ago. How can there be different winners every year?

Subjectivity of Beauty ▪ Beauty is an experience, nothing else. It is not a fixed pattern or an arrangement of features. It is something felt, a glow or a communicated sense of fineness. ~ D. H. Lawrence~ ▪ One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty is another's ugliness; one man's wisdom is another's folly. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Argument for Beauty’s Objectivity �Beauty is a relative characteristic that distinguishes a beautiful object from one that is not beautiful. �If everything can be described as beautiful then the term beautiful loses it’s meaning. If everything is beautiful then nothing is. �Yet we see beauty and can judge beauty, therefore some things must be beautiful and others cannot be. �If some things are not beautiful then not everything is beautiful.

Arguments for Beauty’s Objectivity Objects that are generally found to be beautiful have the same characteristics

Arguments for Beauty’s Objectivity

Across eras and styles

Fashion?

Arguments for Beauty’s Objectivity

Arguments for Beauty’s Objectivity

Arguments for Beauty’s Objectivity

Arguments for Beauty’s Objectivity

Arguments for Beauty’s Objectivity

What do you see?

Is she beautiful? Why?

Arguments for Beauty’s Objectivity �“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state to another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. ” Alexandre Dumas

Arguments for Beauty’s Objectivity � Order is the shape upon which beauty depends. ▪ Pearl S. Buck � The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order, symmetry, and limitation; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful. ▪ Aristotle Metaphysica � We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes. What arguments can you make ▪ Ralph Waldo Emerson against these comments?

Writing Prompt ▪ Are you still convinced that beauty is subjective – that it truly is in the eye of the beholder? ▪ Taste and fashion are products of their times and are social constructs, but what about true beauty?

History of Beauty ▪ While the golden ratio hasn’t changed, tastes have. ▪ The ideal beauty has changed dramatically over time and is related to culture. ▪ Not the same as fashion or being fashionable ▪ Historical stereotype - inherent sexism ▫ Women = beautiful ▫ Men = handsome/rugged (we’ll look at Saint Sebastian today if we have time , otherwise

Fashion = Beauty?

Helen of Troy through the ages “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ileum? ” Christopher Marlowe Helen and Menelaus Greek Urn Louvre, Paris Menelaus Taking Helen from Troy – Ancient Greece

“Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss! Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies! Come Helen, come give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven be in these lips, And all is dross that is not Helena. ” C. M. The Abduction of Helen – English Wood cut Helen of Troy by Evelyn de Morgan, 1898 1600 s How do we get from A to B

“Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air Clad in the beauty of a thousand 'The Abduction of Helen by Paris', about 1450 Luca Giordano - Abduction of Helen Middle Renaissance stars” C. M.

“Beauty is but a flower Which wrinkles will devour; Brightness falls from the air; Queens have died young and fair; Dust hath closed Helen's eye” Thomas Nashe th Century Les Amours De Paris Et Helene Jean Tassel Abduction of Helen 17 by Jacques-Louis David 1788

“She (Helen) threw into the wine which they were drinking a drug which takes away grief and passion and brings forgetfulness of all ills” Homer Frederick Sandys. 1867 Dante Gabriel Rossetti Helen of Troy, 1863.

Paris: Father, this is Helen. Priam: Helen? Helen of Sparta? Galyn Görg, as Helen of Troy on Xena: Warrior Paris: Helen of Troy. Diane Kruger as Helen in Troy Princess

Helen of the times ▪ How has the portrayal of Helen changed over time? ▪ Does her story make her more beautiful? ▪ How has Helen influenced modern ideas about beauty?

Other Changes in the Standards of Beauty

Female Portraits and Men in Film video clips ▪ How has idealized beauty changed? ▪ Why?

Pre-Historic Beauty Venus of Willendorf, from Austria. c. 25, 000 - 20, 000 BCE Limestone, height 4 3/8" (11. 1 cm). Naturhistorischesmuse um, Vienna

Venus de Milo 2 nd C. b. c. Socrates postulated, that the main task of the artist was to give a standard idealised contour of the human body in exact proportions to gain Balance and harmony. We can still admire this in the statue of the "Aphrodite of Melos", better known as the "Venus de Milo", one of the most famous works of art history. . .

Caroline Bookpaintry: Adam and Eve Grandval Bible ~ 840; London, Brit. M. In these genesis scenes of the "Grandval Bible" from the early Middle Ages, about 840, we can see, how the consideration of physical characteristics, the proportions and harmony of the design, has become unimportant. The human being lived religiously, beyond earthly reality, in an eschatological

"Birth of Venus" by Sandro Botticelli, 1486 Return to the Greek ideal

Peter Paul Rubens Much of the art in the Baroque period depicted women with more curves than is considered beautiful today.

Leda and the Swan Antonio da Correggio Another change in the late baroque time: the Rococo, now ladies became graceful and petite, the ideal was a very slim waist line, the "wasp waist". Closer to Da Vinci’s version

Post Rococo Curves finally disappear as a sign of female beauty in the 1920 s with the Bahaus movement. They get a temporary reprieve in the 1950 s but for the most part society has changed its tastes.

The Math of Beauty ▪ What is thesis of this article? ▪ Do you agree? Why or why not? ▪ What problems could this kind of research cause?

St. Sebastian ▪ Patron Saint of athletes and gay men ▪ Martyrdom – Shot full of arrows, survived, healed by Irene, (some say angel), found, beaten and thrown in privy. ▪ Usually depicted tied w/ arrows in him.

Mantegna, Andrea (1431? 1506)

Benozzo Gozzoli 1465

Bartolomeo di Giovanni 1500

16 th-century illuminated manuscript

Bartolomeo di Giovanni 1505

Hans Holbein the Elder, c. 1516,

Giovanni Antonio Bazzi 1525

Bicci di Neri, 1547

Titian, 1575

th Marco Basaiti, 16 century

El Greco, c. 1612

Carlo Saraceni, c. 1613

Rubens, 1618

17 th Century

Vicente López y Portaña 1795 - 1800

François-Guillaume Menageot (1744 -1816)

Honoré Daumier, 1849

Angel Zarraga 1911

George Lois, 1967

James Belton Bonsall, 1975

Krayel, 1995

Takato Yamamoto – Secret Traces of Night (Sebastian), (1980 -2007)

Saturno Buttò – Glamour Sebastian, (2000 -2007)

Fogarty, 2008

My. Sweet. Phantom 2008

How has St. Sebastian Changed?

In natural beauty better than made beauty?

In class assignment Part 1 ▪ Define Beauty – Be sure to explain whether beauty is subjective or objective and what characteristics a beautiful object possesses

part 2 PICASSO, Pablo - The Guitar Player - 1910 -Oil on canvas Pablo Picasso The Old Guitarist, 1903/04 Oil on panel Which of these is more beautiful according to your