Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and LifeLee, Vernon
Philosophy
Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and Life
Lee, Vernon
Aesthetics
Now, besides this beauty or quality producing the emotion of the
beautiful, there exist in things a lot of other qualities also
producing emotion, each according to its kind; or rather, the
beautiful thing may also be qualified in some other way, as the thing
which is useful, useless, old, young, common, rare, or whatever you
choose. And this coincidence of qualities produces a coincidence of
states of mind. We shall experience the feeling not merely of beauty
because the thing is beautiful, but also of surprise because it is
startling, of familiarity because we meet it often, of attraction
(independently of beauty) because the thing suits or benefits us, or
of repulsion (despite the beauty) because the thing has done us a bad
turn or might do us one. This is saying that beauty is only one of
various relations possible between something not ourselves and our
feelings, and that it is probable that other relations between them
may exist at the same moment, in the same way that a woman may be a
man's wife, but also his cousin, his countrywoman, his school-board
representative, his landlady, and his teacher of Latin, without one
qualification precluding the others.
Now, in the arts of line, colour, and projection, the arts which
usually copy the appearance of objects existing outside the art, these
other qualities, these other relations between ourselves and the
object which exists in the relation of beauty, are largely a matter of
superficial association--I mean, of association which may vary, and of
which we are most often conscious.
We are reminded by the picture or statue of qualities which do not
exist in it, but in its prototype in reality. A certain face will
awaken disgust when seen in a picture, or reverence or amusement,
besides the specific impression of beauty (or its reverse), because we
have experienced disgust, awe, amusement in connection with a similar
face outside the picture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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