I'm not sure what you are saying. The most beautiful math is when there is neither symmetry no asymmetry? — Yohan

Precisely!

Precisely! — GraveItty

Sounds interesting!

I can't imagine how math, or anything, can lack both symmetry and asymmetry. If something lacks symmetry doesn't that mean is asymmetrical?

And isn't math all about the symmetry of numbers, loosely speaking?
the quality of being made up of exactly similar parts facing each other or around an axis.
synonyms: regularity, evenness, uniformity, equilibrium, consistency, congruity, conformity, agreement, correspondence, orderliness, equality

The law of non-contradiction, in the positive, could be the law of agreement. In other words, the law of symmetry.

You cannot judge a sculpture based on a photo. Best to touch it. — Olivier5

A thought or two.
1) Of course I can. Why can I not?
2) Touch is the immanent death of most sculptures. Further, if not yours then someone else's, and the rule would be Don't Touch!, or touch with your eyes. However, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts had and may still have exhibits marked expressly for touching, chairs for sitting in, and the like - real exhibits conspicuously marked with explicit signage.
3) Northeastern University in Boston, home of the Huskies, for years had outside and then moved inside a life-size life-like bronze statue of a sitting husky, capturing much that is likable about the animal - a very engaging statue, in other words. And for years and one hopes even still people would go out of their way to pet its nose, the result being that while the rest of the metal took on a patina of age, it's face, nose, head, and ears kept highly polished and glowing in any light. The spectators in that way becoming part of that statue.
4) And the Riaci bronzes, worth the google search. Uncanny, unheimlich, disturbing and terrifying in their own right. And as part of the history of art, also very interesting. But to be sure, best seen at a distance, certainly not with one's hands.

Yes, there is clearly something wrong with her. — Bartricks

Yet she loved Piet Mondrian's Apple Tree in Bloom or Flowering Apple Tree. (I do too)

The work is entitled Méditérannée. She's at the beach. Her body slightly sunken in the sand, she's protecting her eyes from the sun... And yet she looks eternal, almost prehistoric. — Olivier5

Good caption. Thanks.

↪TheMadFool
The professor, obviously. The mona lisa is just fine — Bartricks

Yeah, I was reading others' posts in response to your post to me "there is clearly something wrong with her". I got your reference point without missing a beat. But then I read the others' responses -- humor jumped on them, I guess.

Beauty is the red herring of aesthetics. Metaphorical use of a word for high socio-sexual status would lend power to any propaganda of recommendation: see this, eat that, use the other.

It's natural to confuse this propaganda purpose with the aesthetic purpose of the recommended art. Especially when so much art happens to refer to (e.g. depict) people of high status.

Yet she loved Piet Mondrian's Apple Tree in Bloom or Flowering Apple Tree. (I do too) — Caldwell

I prefer the red tree, but though clearly not entirely insensitive to the aesthetic aspect to reality, she's not tracking it particularly well if she's unmoved by the mona lisa but is in love with a Mondrian. That painting is good, no question - but it's not in the same league as the mona lisa.

The existence of faultless aesthetic disagreements, even given the arguments that often accompany such disputes, supports a subjectivist and relativist position in regard to aesthetic value, one that recognizes ultimate differences in taste. But if the existence of differences in taste at every level of critical sophistication implies a subjectivist and relativist position in regard to aesthetic value and the lack of aesthetic principles of the most important kind, how can we claim that the taste of some people is better than that of others? Must the relativist say that it is all a matter of what particular individuals prefer, of what subjective value they find in response to various works? If so, there would be an air of paradox, if not a genuine paradox. For, as noted, our very concept of taste includes the idea that there is both good and bad taste, that some people have better taste than others. How, then, can the appeal to taste show this to be false?

if she's unmoved by the mona lisa but is in love with a Mondrian. — Bartricks

:) funny. To me "in love" isn't the same as "she/he loves". One can love someone or something, but not in love with it. Just my thoughts.

How? If you love something, you are in love with it, surely?

If you love the flowers in the garden, are you also in love with them? Not sure.
You are only in love briefly, but you love forever. Hmm, don't know.

If you love the flowers in the garden, are you also in love with them? — Caldwell

Yes, I think so. Doesn't saying you're in love with something or someone or some appearance or whatever just mean the same as saying that you love that person, or thing, or appearance, or whatever?

If I say "I love x" then I am describing an attitude I have towards x. If I say "I am in love with x" then I am describing my situation in the attitudinal relation that i have towards x. That seems to be the only difference. Yet if I have a loving attitude towards x, then I am in the situation in the attitudinal relation that I have towards x that "I am in love with x" describes.

Clinton cards have yet to use any of my greeting card messages.

We've taken up the idea of beauty in an OP on whether there is an objective aspect of aesthetics.

In that thread I presented Kant's description of our judgement of what he terms the Beautiful--that it allows for rational discussion (apart from just personal feelings or value judgments, etc.) through the criteria internal to the art--its form.

One's personal experience or sensation is what Kant calls the Pleasant--an experience that it is nice (say when you look at it), or whatever personal "feelings" you have. Kant also allows that a piece of art can have good/bad "value" for us (popularity; taste). The Beautiful is focused on the form of the art, say, the way a story is told (think Northrup Frye's Modes and Genres); or the possibilities of the camera, the method, processes, framing, etc. in photography.

Part of the rationality is that the critic is making a claim (with evidence and rationale) in what Kant calls a universal voice--on behalf of everyone for others to accept or discuss. Even though the outcome is not predetermined to be an absolute, certain conclusion (or even resolved)--the goal, and the truth of the beauty of the work, is to get you to see for yourself what I see along the terms of the form of the art.

From Kant's 3rd Critique:

“As regards the Pleasant every one is content that his judgement, which he bases upon private feeling, and by which he says of an object that it pleases him, should be limited merely to his own person” Sec. 7.

“[The Beautiful] is not what gratifies in sensation but what pleases by means of its form... [that] is... the only [element] of these representations which admits with certainty of universal communicability” Sec. 10.

“[ B ]ut if he gives out anything as beautiful, he supposes in others the same satisfaction—he judges not merely for himself, but for every one... which can make a rightful claim upon every one’s assent. ...the beautiful undertakes or lays claim to [the universal].” Sec 6.

Okay, thank you. I believe you.

Clinton cards?

There is an objective aspect of beauty. Objects can be beautiful. Objects can be ugly. I never understood why in aesthetics beauty has the upper hand. Isn't ugliness just as beautiful? Is beauty more difficult to create? Is ugliness a kind of taboo? Almost no one admits he finds a person ugly. And ugly people can be beautiful! Is there an aesthetics of the ugly? Why does one prefer beauty over ugliness? One can give symmetry or formal, mathematical reasons, but in my opinion these are insufficient. Is beauty subject to fashion? It certainly is. As such, it can be objective and a group of people will agree on it. Is an ugly person objectively ugly? Do all agree? What if I find that person beautiful? Will she be beautiful then. Of course, though others might agree and call my taste an objective failure.

Doesn't saying you're in love with something or someone or some appearance or whatever just mean the same as saying that you love that person, or thing, or appearance, or whatever? — Bartricks

Obviously not. I truly are not in love with the conceptual works of Mondriaan or Escher. However I like them or pleasing they are to see. Sometimes I can hate them though, for their being bound to the purely formal, of which Mondriaan (or Rietvelt and van der Lek)) is the ultimate example. Reducing man and wife to two perpendicular lines placed perpendicular to the painting's frame.... what a farce! And the frame has to be hung up with a corner pointing down. How ingenious. Two lines perpendiculary driven in a corner. Was the man painting his marriage?

A worker can be considered beautiful by the manager of a company, but beauty crosses work and play, meaning that the worker, in obsession with a different beauty, may become less beautiful to the manager. There is risk.

I regard beauty is good for all but possibly imbalanced.

Beauty is something to do with obsession and infatuation when imbalanced; can be beneficent.

I meant to respond to this sooner, but forgot.

1) Of course I can. Why can I not? — tim wood

You can also judge a pudding by its look. However, the real proof of the pudding is in the eating.

the Riaci bronzes — tim wood

Yes, you cannot touch those of course, too old and fragile. But to come back to contemporary artists like Rodin or Maillol, you can touch their bronzes without posing any risk to their work.

Maillol's sculptures are what we would call today "sexualized": beauty for him was also carnal. E.g. tits are typically erected. There are a few Maillol bronzes in the Tuileries garden in Paris, and people touch them all the time. Some body parts more than others, though, just like your husky... :-)

Well I haven't rubbed up against this bronze either, but I don't find it attractive.

I don't find it attractive. — Tom Storm

As I'm sure has been said many times already on this thread, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I find the 'Flore' statue very attractive. The point was that these bronzes are there for the touching, that touching a sculpture is not out of place (unless it can damage it of course), but is in fact the best way to enjoy and literally grasp a sculpture.

the Riaci bronzes — tim wood

Beauty outstretches logic.

Beauty is the perfection or near perfection of form and function. When form is violated one has a monstrosity and if the function has no subject, not even to serve the beauty of form, again one has a monstrosity. One might say though, that beauty for consciousness severs as its own function, for only for consciousness is there beauty.

Beauty is the perfection or near perfection of form and function. — boagie

Question remains: what is perfection? What is perfect? One man's perfection is the other's worst nightmare.

d

Beauty you might say is the relational make up of a particular form, species of object. The degree this relational form is violated is the degree the object approaches non-being, a monserosity of form and/or function is not beautiful and will not long be. It is first a conscious evaluation, in the absence of consciousness of course there is nothing. The healthier the being/object the more beautiful it is.

What's beautiful is all that counts, pal. That's ALL that counts. — Jack Nicholson

What's beautiful is all that counts, pal. That's ALL that counts. — Jack Nicholson

What Nicholson should have said.

"What counts as beautiful, Pal? That's ALL that counts. "

Do you believe that there is a hedonically ideal set of propensities for aesthetic pleasure to which all should aspire, and that this sets the standard for resolving disputes about taste?

In other words, do you believe in ‘true judges’ whose sensibilities are perfectly calibrated for the maximization of aesthetic pleasure, such that their hypothetical joint verdict on matters of aesthetic value fixes the aesthetic facts?