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LOST_IN_BEAUTY

                               September 16, 2003

Let's work through the primer.


Esthetics are important,
if only because ethics
are esthetics in disguise.

Art need not be beautiful
(Robert Crumb).

Ugliness and Beauty need
not be antonyms.

Extreme ugliness can
transcend itself to
become another kind of
beauty.  (Metal Machine Music)


The beautiful need not be
art: there is natural beauty.

Art is better thought of
as an attempt at
communication than an
attempt at creating
beauty.

In found art, the
artistic act is an act of
selection, but the result
is also intended to speak
to a human audience,
though as always the
message need not be
clear.

   By "clear", I mean
   easily translatable
   into verbal summary.

The distinction between art
and ordinary communication
is that art has no obvious
survival value.


Opposing art to nature
works only given the
definitions that art is
human activity, and
nature isn't.

An alternate taxonomy
would take humanity as
part of nature, and
call art the natural
activity of humans,


(Feel free to interject "in this culture" at
any point through out the following.
Genetic determinists can
try the phrase "because
we evolved that way".)


Women are associated with nature.

  (e.g. childbirth, emotion)

Women are asociated with art.

  Their bodies are
  regarded as malleable:

  Much technique
  is allowed,
  if not required to
  change women's
  appearence.

  makeup,
  clothing,
  exercise,
  diet

  and now

  tattoos,
  piercing
  surgery

    Though the goal of
    manipulating women's
    appearence is often
    thought of as
    beauty, but
    this is not always
    the case:

    Much of it has to do
    with looking normal,
    standardized,
    irrespective of beauty.

       The imposition of
       order on nature?


Possibly:

Niceness is the
triumph of order.


       So the Venn diagram thus far is

      /----------------------\
     /                        |
    /    /-------------/--------/----\-------------\
   |    | art         /       ||      \     nature  |
   | c  |            /        ||       \            |
   | o  |           /         ||        \           |
   | m  |          / beauty   ||         \          |
   | m  |         |           ||          |         |
   | u  |       __|___________||__________|____     |
   | n  |      /  |          women        |    \    |
   | i  |      |  |      __ __||____ ___  |    |    |
   | c  |      |   \    /     ||        \/     |    |
   | a  |      |    \  /      ||        /\     |    |
   | t  |      |     \/       ||       /  \    |    |
   | i  |      |     /\____ __||____ _/    \   |    |
   | o  |      |    |         ||            |  |    |
   | n  |       \___|_________||____________|__/    |
   |    |           |         ||            |       |
   |    |           |         ||            |       |
   |    |            \        ||   ugliness/        |
   |    |             \       ||          /         |
   |    |              \      ||         /          |
    \    \--------------\-----|-\-------/----------/
     \------------------------/

But maybe that's not all that interesting.

   Let's check it over:

      Art can be neither
      beautiful or ugly.
      Okay.



   There's a possible mis-reading
   if you presume that all women
   must fall on one side or the
   other of the art/nature split.

   Really you would expect that
   any individual would have
   aspects of both.

        This is okay, though:
        I'm talking about           Possibly it would
        "womanness" not women       be better to rename
        as individuals.             the class for clarity.
                                    Something like
                                    "feminity", I guess.



                     Hm, it appears to imply that
                     woman are often attempts at
                     communication.

                     Perhaps the left
                     boundary of "women"
                     should be moved up
                     to the Art-Nature
                     boundary?

                     But no: I guess
                     this is right...

                     The thesis is that
                     women transform
                     themselves into messages...





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