Order is not necessarily beautiful, or interesting
2023 09 08
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Things like symmetry appeal to us because our brains like order. But is that beauty? In an art class I once took, the instructor pointed out that certain shapes that we're used to considering as pleasing are actually boring in art. Rounded shapes were particularly guilty of being boring, and even unnatural, to the eye when considering depictions of nature, for example.
There is also the consideration of the prismatic, or rainbow order, of colour sorting. Our eyes like it because it's orderly, but is it beautiful? Is it interesting? It really isn't. It looks good in an art supply store - partly because it makes it easier to find certain things. But outside of that, in art itself, it's really not interesting at all.
Someone who was explaining the display of art to me once, talked about why you stagger shapes and sizes and orders of painting when setting up in a gallery. If everything is the same size and and shape, the eye will slide along and off it and not stop to look. That's why, if you only have paintings that are all the same size, you break up the wall display by placing a pedestal with a sculpture on it, for example, so the eye stops to look.
I would never classify anything as having inherent beauty, particularly given the criteria we tend to use to define it, and particularly given that what one person finds beautiful another might not. Orderliness is satisfying, and easy on the brain, but not necessarily beautiful. There is more beauty in the discordant at times.