5 What Is Beautiful?
What is beautiful?
What do you think is beautiful? Many of us may respond, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the old saying goes. As we discussed in “Who Am I?”, ‘the eye of the beholder’ is another way of thinking about the ‘theory of mind.’ One beholder thinks differently than another beholder. When thoughts, values, and perspectives on the world are very common within cultural groups, we call them norms. Norms about beauty are the idealizations and expectations of how people should look in a society: what ‘good looks’ are. BTW, we’re focused on beauty norms for physical appearance but they also relate to aesthetic qualities of things, which we’ll come to later in the chapter.
Beauty norms or ideals for women often relate to facial and body features. Preferred characteristics become a shorthand for femininity. There are also cultural norms that reflect ideals for the appearance of men and masculinity. For example, if you went through an European or Euro-American educational system, it is very likely that you encountered imagery like Bust of a Youth by Francesco Mochi from 1630-1640 CE. Artworks like this are often used to illustrate primary school textbooks or public flyers because they exude many of the beauty norms of European and Euro-American societies. With skill and precision, Mochi captured a portrait of a classically beautiful young man, according to long-established beauty ideals of the Western Canon.
But, Mochi and other artists of the Renaissance and Baroque periods misunderstood something about Greek scultpure… it wasn’t ever meant to be seen as bare white marble. It was lavishly painted with bright colors! Check out some examples reconstructed by scholars in “When the Parthenon had dazzling colours” (Haynes 2018). Following from what Renaissance artists thought were Greco-Roman traditions, European beauty ideals often coalesced around qualities such as light complexion, facial symmetry, and straight noses. White marble came to offer an aura of ‘whiteness’ and normalized the relationship of whiteness to purity in the Western Canon and ideals of beauty.
Such images and expected ways of representation reflect how people view others in their society. We all know that people look different and the vast majority of people in any culture do not ‘fit the mold’ of beauty ideals. Yet, we continue to set store by them. These ideals influence art and they become shorthand for not just good looks but ‘goodness’ in a society, as the discussion about the term “classical” in “Where Does Art Come From? An Introduction” demonstrates. What about global arts that do not fit the mold of classical beauty but focus on unique traditions developed without reference to ‘the classics’ of the Western Canon? This is one of the ways that art history has to reflect upon its biases. In this study of art, we are taking a global perspective and so must affirm the ‘theory of mind of cultures’ and be aware of the ways that beauty (as well