Aesthetics...

Museums and Art galleries all across the world house many works of art, famous, infamous, or even relatively obscure ones as well. Certain art galleries in the modern times have come to be known as centrepieces housing the most extraordinary forms of art, like the Uffizi and the Louvre.

I often marvel staring down at a print of famous works like the Mona Lisa or trying to figure out the message Picasso tries to convey through his Guernica. But off late I have started to wonder at why these pieces of art strike me as something majestic, curious, and beautiful. When I listen to music especially the classics by Chopin, I can say with surety that Chopin has a sense of subtlety and calmness that I often find rejoicing. This is the nature of music, one can say for sure what sounds are soothing and what sounds are not. But as I have pondered over applying this analogy to the question of how can someone can say a piece of art is beautiful or not, the thought of art being a field that is truly unique and in no ways can be generalized has to become appealing to me. Consider this for example- Suppose that you are given a problem in physics. While there are numerous ways of carving a path to the solution, there is only one correct answer. This is certainly not the case in art. Nobody can say that this is ugly or this is beautiful.

It is famous quote that beauty lies in the beholder’s eyes. It is very true. But it is this same that confuses me. Since ancient times people all have continued to appreciate works of art, like the works of Michelangelo, or the frescoes in the Vatican, art is something that continues to display a polarization that somehow shouldn’t be there and which most certainly goes directly into the quote at the beginning of this paragraph.

So then what is it that can be considered as “ugly” or “beautiful”? Is the statement about the ugliness, itself redundant, by the true meaning of beauty?