I Deny That There Is An Objective Beauty

[PhuturePriest]

I don't find Lucy Liu particularly attractive.  

 

[Era Might]

 

/thread

 

Provocative.

[Seven77]

Was thinking about this this morning. I would say that the Life of Christ, certainly, and even more specifically, the person of Christ, is the most beautiful thing to appear or be conceived of in human history (and I don't think anything could ever surpass it). But I would keep the focus on the person of Christ, rather the "Incarnation," because I think that idea of Incarnation, as an artistic concept, is too abstract and too tied to Greek artistic values of the human body. That's one of the reasons why I dislike Christian art in Western Europe, its focus on the body and realistic depiction. Pope Francis recently mentioned the painting "The Calling of St. Matthew" in a homily recently, and I think it's a beautiful painting for the story it depicts. That, I think, is when Christian art is most beautiful, in the stories of the life of Christ that it attempts to represent, rather than in the art itself. I don't think the art itself is "objectively beautiful," but I think the life of Christ is supremely beautiful...if that makes sense, and art is only beautiful to the extent that it approaches this supreme beauty which is the life and person of Christ.

 

 

But wouldn't you say that artwork which "approaches this supreme beauty which is the life and person of Christ" is *objectively* beautiful? And, how can you understand the Incarnation as abstract? The Incarnation is Christ, The Word made Flesh. I'm not really a big fan of the style in which God the Father and Jesus Christ are depicted in the Sistine Chapel… but I do like the Iconography of the East in picturing Jesus, the Icon of the invisible God.

 

Edited July 15, 2013 by Seven77

[CrossCuT]

What kind of beauty are we talking about? Physical? Spiritual? Personality? Etc?

Maybe someone else touched on it...but I do think there is a standard that we all view as beautiful from a physcial sense. Can that standard change? It can, but I think there are some central things that dont.

 

My viewpoint on the purely physical aspect comes from a very natural and evolutionary point of view. What aspects lead a higher chance of reproduction? On a physical level, thats all the matters and I watched a documentary on this very thing which outlines what physical attributes are most attractive to both males and females in the opposite sex.