You're Being Tricked Into Thinking This Is Beautiful

Lofi Cinema
8.32K subscribers
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53K views 11 days ago #wesanderson #art #filmtheory
Let's talk about beauty. #filmtheory #wesanderson #art ...more
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What are you even trying to say? Let's start with the flawed comment that begins the video. They say that "low production value film making is not good in itself, it also needs to aspire for beauty". Already not true. What if a films goal is to scare you? Or make you laugh or cry? What if it makes you really really angry? Art need not be beautiful. But you missed that. Within a minute you manage to change the topic to whether beauty is some divine absolute or influenced by culture and context. You pit them against one another like they couldn't both be true at the same time. You don't even entertain the idea. How lazy. I don't even want to get into how you assume that an artists job is to create "new neural pathways" that evoke beauty for other people. Arrogant. Art is not always a good to be consumed. If it is seen by only its author it is still art. You have learned to create thumbnails for a video essay with a catchy title only to fill it with cliche video essay tropes. You can only hope the classical music played over movie clips and stock footage acts as enough of a distraction from your incoherent ramblings that people won't click away before they notice they've been duped. You've tricked the viewer into thinking this is worth anything at all.
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139
So you're saying my art isn't ugly, it's just ahead of its time?
170
is it beautiful or is it money laundering?
342
When I spent a week in Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum happened to have an exhibit of dark and nasty things from nature - it actually was a refreshing change from the seemingly calculated Art everywhere else.
58
Just a quibble: You said Manet painted a prostitute. That's not what you meant or I think you did not mean that he painted a woman who was a prostitute; rather, that he painted a model and for her to depict a prostitute in the painting. Victorine-Louise Meurent was no prostitute; she was an artist, herself, and had already had her art accepted by the Salon. She did these modeling gigs to help pay for her art supplies.
39
Duchamp questioned what we consider art NOT what we consider beautiful.
20
[Referring to banana taped to wall] "If this sticks around long enough... " I see what you did there.
72
The biggest mistake people make when talking about beauty is mixing it up with aesthetics. We often call something beautiful when we just mean it's aesthetically pleasing, and vice versa. But contemporary aesthetics disagrees. In theory, anything—not just art—can be aesthetically enjoyable, but not everything can be beautiful. Beauty is just one category of aesthetics. Humor is another. A joke can be aesthetically pleasing because it's funny. Some jokes are both funny and beautiful, but that's just because aesthetic values often overlap. A film, for example, can be beautiful, funny, dramatic, erotic, and sublime all at once. I’m not using these words loosely. My favorite take on aesthetics comes from Tom Cochrane’s The Aesthetic Value of the World (Oxford, 2021). He lays out a theory that’s broad (everything can be appreciated aesthetically), nuanced (each major aesthetic value has its own roots and ‘essential tensions’), and objective (each value stems from a specific psychological mechanism). He argues that aesthetic experiences are ‘distal versions’—distant echoes—of basic human needs or practical values (with aesthetics being a category of value that isn’t tied to practicality). Beauty, for instance, connects to our drive for knowledge, while comedy stems from our ability to detect errors and the relief we feel when those errors turn out to be harmless. That doesn’t mean the application of the word 'beauty' hasn’t changed over time, like the video shows. But the name we give the phenomenon and how we apply it matters far less. The appetite for harmony, symmetry, and complexity communicated with simplicity (which, according to Cochrane, are beauty’s essential tensions) could be called “beautiful,” “pleasing,” “elegant,” “pretty,” or even “qiwlh,” a completely made-up word. What matters is that the psychological mechanism driving our appreciation of these qualities is built into our nature. Different cultures might emphasize some aesthetic values over others. For example, we might favor “sympathetic” things (which Cochrane links to our appreciation of tragedy), like the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic, which values asymmetry, roughness, and broken things, over beauty, which leans toward symmetry and wholeness. But both are aesthetically meaningful, and neither is better—just culturally and personally preferred. A work of art, whether a film or a novel, can tap into both and many more aesthetic values at once. I think mixing up beauty and aesthetics weakens the conversation—just like denying that aesthetic values have an objective side, tied to our psychological wiring. But that doesn’t mean every non-serious norm violation (Cochrane’s definition of comedy) will make me laugh. I can recognize that something fits the phenomenon of humor—it violates a non-serious norm—but still not find it funny. On the flip side, anything I do find funny will, by definition, involve some kind of non-serious norm violation. This is where objectivity and subjectivity meet: aesthetic values come from universal psychological mechanisms, but personal and cultural preferences give us more or less incentives to experience them. Duchamp’s Fountain might not be plastically beautiful in Cochrane’s sense, but it could be conceptually beautiful—or even (plastically) ugly, which Cochrane calls a 'difficult beauty', something we can still appreciate in its own way. From another angle, it might be funny, since, for some, it plays with non-serious norm violation. It could even feel sympathetic—like, "Poor urinal, stuck among all these grand artistic masterpieces!". Most people find it shocking, which ties into beauty—shock relies on surprise, an epistemic emotion tied to knowledge, which is the practical value at the root of beauty. In the end, it all comes down to how you look at it: subjectivity is the perspective you take, while objectivity is the inherent quality the aesthetic object reveals to you once you adopt that perspective.
24
Many questions asked. No answers given.
129
I'm honestly shocked by all these positive comments. This video felt incredibly unfocused, almost like rambling, with no coherent point. The biggest issue is we are here because the video is supposedly about beauty as a concept, but in fact it isn't. I have never looked at surrealism or abstract art and said 'this is beautiful', instead I have always seen them as 'this is a movement challenging the status quo, redefining what art is'. I see the images you show in your video and I think... these artworks were not about creating a new standard of beauty or anything of the sort. The goal was never 'let's make a new beauty standard', it was to challenge our preconceived notions as to what good art is. Art can be ugly and still be worthy of our admiration, but your video seems to posit that art and beauty are the same concept; that art, if popular, must be beautiful. If these artists really were trying to convince me all along that these styles are as beautiful as the classic artworks of the 19th Century, then I'm sorry, but I simply do not understand this. Modern art movements have value, but I have never looked at Albert Gleizes 'Woman with Black Glove' and seen beauty in it, despite how much I like it. Please correct me if I have misunderstood the point you are trying to make.
32
In my late 70's, I've questioned ''beauty'' mercilessly all along, as an artist. I've an observation; today I washed a serving bowl I purchased 50 years ago because I loved it in every aesthetic way - proportions, colours, decoration, overall shape - and having it clean in my hands today, I experience the same joy with now it as then. Either I evolve slowly, or there are aesthetic roots to consider.
11
"As an artist, your job is to challenge traditional aesthetics". I am curious about what is even left to challenge. I'm not inclined to think relentless deconstruction is as valuable as the toil of craft/tekhnē and the reception, building up, and handing on of a tradition.
6
No Basquiat hate will be tolerated
8
You're making a mistake to when assuming that modern art is attempting beauty. It's not, because aesthetic and cultural philosophy surpassed that as being the aim of art. Art become capable of expression, and statement. Showing and saying things that weren't about beauty. Like, artists who paint scenes of modern wars - they're not aiming for beauty. Likewise, concept artists, or people like Hieronymus Bosch. So your analysis is premised on faulty assumptions.
5
Beauty is merely the order peering out from the chaos of life
5
This is one of the worst videos I’ve ever seen on the philosophy of aesthetics. There are plenty of claims you make in here that are just factually incorrect. Its not really hard to get history correct just do proper due diligence when researching/reading. The philosophical side im willing to be more open since it relies primarily are argumentations for its grounding but even there you still make incorrect statements based on the arguments and philosophical history is your citing. You really need to do much better and thorough research as this has been one of the worst videos I’ve seen on the subject matter. Cheers
9
Telling you something is beautiful and has more value when it's actually ugly isn't art. That is called marketing.
4
Props for using Gran Vals in the intro and closing. Great way to comment on conceptions of beauty since it’s a nice tune that tons of people would say they hate/hated for being the old Nokia ringtone
0:35 Play doe
12
I have always believed to a degree that we do find some things ugly or beautiful, naturally and without outside influence.
4
really cool video essay! liked the tie in for neural pathways
2
Beauty depends on the observers' experience, culture, knowledge, emotions, etc. These things change over time and from one person to another. So, beauty is ever changing.
27
Beauty is an appearance that gives us an insight into a truth
2
To break rules or subvert them in the modern movement you describe is an acknolwedgment of those rules
5
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but the beholder didn't choose what it finds beautiful.
2
People crave novelty through art
5
Have been banging my head against the wall with these questions and vague answers for the past five years. People often get frustated and run away from me.
7
"As an artist, your job is to challenge traditional aesthetics." No. That's the job of an activist. One using "art" as a tool for revolution or something.
21
So many interesting points in this video. For me personally i've never found more beauty than standing in the middle of an empty field at night when it's snowing heavily, the world blanketed in one uniform color of white. Arguably that should be boring. But its one of the few things that are truly beautiful to me.
4
I think some modern art, dont aim to be beutiful they aim to be interesting. Like the banana on the wall. Is not beautiful but putting it in the context of a museum like that is extravagant and interesting to see, people there might even consider it beuatiful because you are sorrounded by beuaty, and by clean walls in a well lighted spaced.
3
We have to be carefull not to fall into the extremes tho. We would miss out on alot of beauty if we didnt challenge ourselves with new styles. But we have to remember that beauty is indeed a thing, its not that literally everything, in any order, is just as beautifull as anything else. That would be like saying that any food is as tasty as any other food, its dumb, taste is diferent in each food, and you might even enjoy a blander taste to a more intense one. Beauty can be subtle, comforting, intense or provocative, and an infinity of other things. But its not this postmodern slop of everything and nothing. Beauty is out there in the world, but we only expirience it when its in the eye of the beholder. It has to be in the eye of the beholder, but it must necesarily also be out there in the world. Its objective and subjective, like reality. There is a true objective reality, but we can only aspire to get closer to seeing it, so our view of it will always be subjective, but never random, always striving to a fuller comprehension of the objective.
5
A banana duct-taped to a wall (along with most contemporary art) is not beautiful; rather, it represents a product of self-aggrandizement, crafted by artists who thrive on contrarianism and criticality for the sake of provocation. These individuals are often complicit with investors who now perceive contemporary art as a vehicle for money laundering.
16
Beauty is absolute. Abstract is different which leads to a subjective beauty, being something "new" to the eye.
1
Beauty is a value that experiences of the world can meet & we orient towards that in our actions
2
As a painter, the best painting always transcends the original subject, otherwise it is nothing more than a photocopy; and just like Churchill once said rather wisely: copies are bastards.
2
4:54 TUMBBAD MENTIONED 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥🔥HASTAR 🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥🔥
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3
i NEED a list of all the music used! Fantastic!
Some forms of beauty are objective others are subjective, and some things are great specifically because they aren't beautiful.
3
You mix beauty with art.
2
Creating new brain pathways to see beauty in the unconventional is not the job of an artist. That's the job of a person who wants to manipulate you into thinking something is beautiful when its actually not that basically a propagandist. That type of thinking is the reason most modern art is complete political garbage.
43
if you think art, especially modern and contemporary arts are about beauty you dont get it at all, beauty its not the only, neither it is the most important sensibility to have an aesthetic experience. an artpiece can be ugly and still hold value, duchamp's urinal its not beautiful, thats not even the point, its not trying to be, but still its an important work in art history because it challenged the art world of that period, which led to new ways of approaching art, but if you think it is simply beuatiful and aesthetic pleasing, you probably see art in a shallow way
1
A cybertruk is beautiful. I like how it looks like a concept of an object rather than an actual object.
10
Plato also didn't believe there was beauty or knowledge to be found in theatre. It was Aristotle who began to question the aesthetics of art.
This is a phenomenal overview of the aesthetic problem. "What is beauty?" "Nobody knows." Sounds about right. For my own part, I think we see as mutually exclusive many things which are actually compatible. Perhaps we can be wrong about what is beautiful, yet still beauty has a subjective element; perhaps beauty, indeed, is both objective and subjective, or both universal and relative. I don't have answers either, but we must keep our minds open always to new posssibiliies (please pretend I spelled that word right and see the beauty in my fine motor failure, thanks).
13
Beauty is not subjective.
Not the golden spiral on Trump 😂😂 funniest jumpscare
1
I think people are tired of ugly things being venerated as beautiful rather than classical ideas of beauty.
20
I’m going to save you some time: no, they’re not beautiful. Not because of a "delay" or a period where we, the unwashed masses, need to catch up with the sophistry applied to art. No, it’s not about that. While many things once considered ugly have become canonical over time, this doesn’t axiomatically mean that anything will become beautiful if we stare at it long enough or if a new theory of beauty or art starts circulating. Picasso, Expressionism, jazz—all of these “break the mold,” yet they respected a baseline of composition, rhythm, melody, color harmony, and craftsmanship. Neither an absolutist theory (that beauty is a supreme thing to be discovered) nor its counterpart (that beauty is purely subjective and culturally dependent) will ever succeed for this reason. Even though finding new ways of expression is valuable, if your theory of mind doesn’t account for a baseline in how humans relate to the world, your new form of expression will be nothing more than a passing fad. People’s rejection of an oeuvre is not a tacit acknowledgment of its originality, nor a hint that future generations will look back and wonder how anyone ever thought it was ugly.
2
Beauty is, in fact, objective. It's all about patterns, even chaos itself has a pattern. The work of an artist is to extend that vision. To show how beauty can present itself
3
Beauty in art is probably at different levels.Great art is probably the one that can stand the test of time.Usually sensitive people with a level of intelligence can have a better subjective experience of a great artistic product as I see it
1
I feel that a big portion that is being ignored in these essays about art and beauty is the fact that ,when we indulge in satisfying the senses, we end up doing so in sick and perverse ways. And sure this leads to discovering new things but again often these discoveries are labelled as "good" simply because they are "new".
nature is the purest beauty
Right! I was thinking about that the other day with the new "mute colours" trend. I bought a beige headphones and I don't even know why.
Do you know what is beautiful? Your mum.
11
I wonder what your opinion is on modern architecture, because I have some... Comments.
2
We dont create new ideas of beautiful without losing other ideals. Only the same percentage of things will be considered beautiful at any one time
While this video takes a broad look at beauty, one of the first things you learn as an artist are the principles of design (balance, proportion, variety, etc...) Looking at these principles, you see a pretty literal breakdown of how beauty can be created, without the trappings of style - which i agree changes from year to year. More modern artists aren't as far removed from beauty as you might think, they're often still following the principles of design, just without the style of realism/representation.
Beauty is a sense of integrated harmony. This defintion makes sense when you start considering what is ugly. Imagine just a person being dressed with beautiful clothes on their own but they just don't fit with each other and you end up having 9 colors on you, it's gonna be too much, everything will feel disjointed*. But at the same time if you have a fit that is all red, you could argue it's integrated but it's gonna feel ugly aswel because it won't have any *proportions displayed. Beauty is a feeling you get when multiple things (colors, shapes, depth) come together into a whole that seems to be coherent (it's integrated) and harmonious. What is harmonious is just nice ratio. music theory, nice ratios? shapes? nice ratios. Color theory? nice ratios. It's just math can't explain further, 1/2 is a nice ratio, 4/5 is nice aswell, 17/41 is horrendous, your brain cannot neatly cut it so it screams "UGLY !". Now, there is, when experiencing art, a lot of subjectivity in how you'll feel about it. A beautiful cathedral might strike fear into me, a beautiful town might put me at ease, a beautiful rainy street might make feel melancolic. And how you experience art certainly does involve your values. If you an individualist Greek Statues and stories of individual achievements will evoke stronger emotions to you than others, if you like nature then beautiful gardens might be your thing, if you're religious then the grandiose of churches will make you feel closer to god, if you're fascist the imposing symmetrical buildings with imposing heights and pillars may make you feel proud of your nation. And certainly these stronger emotions will make you scream "*This* is beautiful" to something alright for the rest of people. But instead of seeing this observation being evidence for beauty being totally subjective, in my view, this is more evidence that having your values aligned with what ideas a thing is projecting will make you more attentive to its beauty. But beauty isn't however much one's values align with an art's message (this is just you loving something), even if you can't feel connection with god you can still recognize cathedrals as being excellent work and that you'd want to have those stylistic principles applied for an art piece whose message you like, to support the message you like, rather than the art being surrounded with randomness and disharmony. Beauty is not whatever you love. It's how you wish to represent the things you love. (addendum : I lack clarity on "complexity" in art, I don't know if it'd fall under the "harmony" term or if I should modify my definition. I do think there is a balance between too simple and being boring to too complex and being noisy)
4
Beauty is important. Beauty is undefined. Often people break your aesthetics, perhaps not with malevolence but for ease of function. Don't succumb, fight for what your mind's eye sees. Also, copying something beautiful isn't a sin. But do it with your own hands. Put some of you into it. PS: Just realized there's male in malevolence. Sums up everything.
I thought this was going to be a Wes Anderson hate video based on the title and thumbnail and was ready to disagree, I ended up being pleasantly surprised.
7
if you think art, especially modern and contemporary arts are about beauty you dont get it at all, beauty its not the only, neither it is the most important sensibility to have an aesthetic experience. an artpiece can be ugly and still hold value, duchamp's urinal its not beautiful, thats not even the point, its not trying to be, but still its an important work in art history because it challenged the art world of that period, which led to new ways of approaching art, but if you think it is simply beuatiful and aesthetic pleasing, you probably see art in a shallow way
1
A cybertruk is beautiful. I like how it looks like a concept of an object rather than an actual object.
10
Plato also didn't believe there was beauty or knowledge to be found in theatre. It was Aristotle who began to question the aesthetics of art.
This is a phenomenal overview of the aesthetic problem. "What is beauty?" "Nobody knows." Sounds about right. For my own part, I think we see as mutually exclusive many things which are actually compatible. Perhaps we can be wrong about what is beautiful, yet still beauty has a subjective element; perhaps beauty, indeed, is both objective and subjective, or both universal and relative. I don't have answers either, but we must keep our minds open always to new posssibiliies (please pretend I spelled that word right and see the beauty in my fine motor failure, thanks).
13
Beauty is not subjective.
Not the golden spiral on Trump 😂😂 funniest jumpscare
1
I think people are tired of ugly things being venerated as beautiful rather than classical ideas of beauty.
20
I’m going to save you some time: no, they’re not beautiful. Not because of a "delay" or a period where we, the unwashed masses, need to catch up with the sophistry applied to art. No, it’s not about that. While many things once considered ugly have become canonical over time, this doesn’t axiomatically mean that anything will become beautiful if we stare at it long enough or if a new theory of beauty or art starts circulating. Picasso, Expressionism, jazz—all of these “break the mold,” yet they respected a baseline of composition, rhythm, melody, color harmony, and craftsmanship. Neither an absolutist theory (that beauty is a supreme thing to be discovered) nor its counterpart (that beauty is purely subjective and culturally dependent) will ever succeed for this reason. Even though finding new ways of expression is valuable, if your theory of mind doesn’t account for a baseline in how humans relate to the world, your new form of expression will be nothing more than a passing fad. People’s rejection of an oeuvre is not a tacit acknowledgment of its originality, nor a hint that future generations will look back and wonder how anyone ever thought it was ugly.
2
Beauty is, in fact, objective. It's all about patterns, even chaos itself has a pattern. The work of an artist is to extend that vision. To show how beauty can present itself
3
Beauty in art is probably at different levels.Great art is probably the one that can stand the test of time.Usually sensitive people with a level of intelligence can have a better subjective experience of a great artistic product as I see it
1
I feel that a big portion that is being ignored in these essays about art and beauty is the fact that ,when we indulge in satisfying the senses, we end up doing so in sick and perverse ways. And sure this leads to discovering new things but again often these discoveries are labelled as "good" simply because they are "new".
nature is the purest beauty