Concept in Definition ABC

From the various reflections that aroused the vicissitudes of the becoming of art, one of the most conspicuous was the one that focused on the beauty problem. The delimitation of the aspects that conferred beauty to a particular work can be traced back to antiquity, in the considerations of the sophists and, later, in those of Plato Y Aristotle.

As expected, these speculations were not exhausted in the practice of art, but they tended to a global consideration of the problem. It would be pretentious to give an exhaustive account of the various nuances that speculation reached at the dawn of Western culture. Suffice it to say that the concept of "harmony", "order" and "symmetry" prevailed to account for what the beauty lay. Thus, for example, a face can be beautiful by keeping the notion of symmetry, while a body by the proportion that its parts keep. This concept was based in particular on the so-called "Pythagorean school", in which beauty was amalgamated with numerical and geometric conceptions. It is worth remembering that the followers of Pythagoras recognized in the five regular solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron) true symbols of

beauty that were homologated in turn with the five elements (water, earth, air, fire and the mythical "fifth element").

With the advent of Christianity, the idea of ​​god was decisive to characterize the aesthetic. Thus, the beauty of the sensible world consists of bearing the imprint of the divine will: the order present in nature, which in ancient times was considered the substrate of the beautiful, was the expression of the intelligence from the Creator. In this way, for example, one of the ways of Saint Thomas for the demonstration of the existence of God consisted in associating the earthly order with the will of a conscience higher. Even numerous chants used in the music sacra refer that "the beautiful Creation shows Your greatness", by pointing to the beauty of all that exists as a representation of the sublime Intelligence of the Creator God.

The Renaissance, for his part, took the beauty concept that predominated in classical Greece; the attempt to respect forms and keep proportions again took on vigor and was projected into artistic expressions that are still valid today. A clear example of the importance given to a harmonious form can be given "the Vitruvian man”, By Leonardo Da Vinci, where human proportions are established. Indeed, Renaissance painting, and by extension the other arts, took up the ideal of the beautiful, harmonious and symmetrical body present in Greco-Roman culture. From this stage also arises the anatomical study destined to give rise to a greater respect for proportions, evidenced in sculpture and in the great artistic aspects of the time.

It is noted that in the movement Baroque, beauty took on a different consideration that has been repeated in other stages of art history. Thus, while the beauty of classical Greece or the Renaissance was directed towards harmony and forms (Apollonian beauty, in reference to the figure of the god Apollo), the men of the Baroque recognized a profane beauty present even in aspects such as melancholy, the unattractive and even the grotesque (Dionysian beauty, in reference to the figure of the god Dionysus or Bacchus). In this way, it is often pointed out that, when faced with an image of nature, classical movements recognize the beauty of a rose, while the baroque canons warn of beauty both in the rose and in the clay in which it sits.

Beyond the differences that the concept could show throughout history until the consolidation of the Renaissance, it should be noted that always kept a trait fundamental as permanent: the idea of ​​univocity. Indeed, until now, the conception of the beautiful has led to trying to discover universal patterns, which despite being debatable, carry a notion of the absolute; It is still unthinkable to consider beauty as something socially determined. It will be the twentieth century where these perspectives become more vigorous, leaving aside the conceptions of antiquity and the Middle Ages. In the present time, the paradox of beauty understood differently by each of the cultures of the globe, but immersed in the modern idea of ​​beauty, must be admitted. globalization. Certain patterns of beauty typical of Western culture have begun to spread in the different nations of the Earth, to give rise to some "universal patterns" of beauty, both in relation to the arts (painting, sculpture, literature, movie theater, theater and even the so-called digital art) as well as in relation to the canons of physical beauty, both in men and women. Perhaps the best way to understand the very complex concept of the beauty is to recognize the strong subjective component of this abstract idea, which varies from person to person in all societies.

Topics in Beauty