After being introduced to A Picture of Dorian Gray, I can't seem to stop comparing it to everything. Of course, this book portrays the three main themes we are discussing in class: Beauty, Art, and Truth. These three elements string together perfectly, each having a piece of the other within them. Humans separate themselves from other species by their ability to create art, have a concept of beauty, and an ability to conceal or understand truths. All three of these elements require massive amounts of cognitive thought and emotion. Being able to understand and express your opinions and thoughts is a human-like trait. All of these elements- art, beauty, and truth- require a deeper understanding of one's mind.
Through art, we create beautiful things that reveal the truth about our feelings and thoughts. Art is visual, emotional, honest, and enlightening. Art has a way of engaging the mind to search deeper within itself. Truth does this, as well. Truth requires a person to search within themselves and discover their core thoughts and emotions. Truth, like art, can be eye-opening and incredibly emotional. Sometimes, viewing an honest work of art can be as triggering as discovering a secret about a person. Art has a way of revealing the truth to the viewer, even if that truth is a difficult one to understand.
When it comes to beauty, most say that there are two categories- materialistic and individual. Regardless of the advertisements on television, or the unrealistic expectations of physical beauty in our current time, beauty is a personal experience. Recognizing true beauty is an emotional process. What we view as beautiful often says something about the person that we truly are. Beauty is much like truth; as one person cannot be called truly beautiful if they are not themselves. Though everyone has their own idea of beauty, everyone also has their own idea of truth. Both can be subjective, as well as debated. The difference between truth and beauty is that truths can be proved and beauty cannot.
From an instinctual level, we create art because it is visually appealing to us. We cannot explain why we find particular arrangements of color to be breathtaking. Art is the way we express our emotions, and a piece of art can be beautiful, ugly, or sometimes frightening. When it comes down to it, we admire so many paintings, statues, and songs because they are beautiful to us. Beauty and art are very closely related. Beauty can be obvious or complex, as can art. There are visual and inner responses to beauty, such as the way a certain person causes you to react, or the way you visualize all of the things that make them beautiful. Art can also be visual and inner. The initial beauty as a piece may cause the viewer to take a few steps back, and then they begin to react in an emotional way. Art triggers different emotions for each individual- as does seeing a beautiful stranger on the sidewalk.
Zoe,
ReplyDeleteI very much agree with you that art, truth, and beauty share pieces of each other. I appreciate the way you connected this topic back to our original class discussion about what it means to be human. I would certainly agree that comprehension of art, beauty, and truth, are aspects of life that are unique to humans. I found the first sentence of your second paragraph to be particularly thought-provoking, I think that this one sentence does a beautiful job of expressing the relationship between truth, beauty, and art in a way that I wouldn't have thought of before. Thank you for sharing your perspective! Great job!
Zoe,
ReplyDeleteI love your ideas on the concepts of art and especially beauty. Most people do believe that beauty is black and white and determined by society, but as you said this is not the case. It's such an individual and personal experience and I'm glad that you pointed this out. As for the art, I completely agree. Art is not only a visual experience, but it's also an emotional, honest, and enlightening experience. It does reveal a certain truth about the artist.
I love that you connected this to what we're currently reading in class, you're one of the only ones who did that. Thanks so much for sharing this, I really love it.
I really like how you took a psychological view of these things, not necessarily philosophical. I like however that you equated art with truth, because art can convey a person's inner truth to the world. Art is a vehicle to this. As for beauty what you said is true, it is a personal experience. Media can try but cannot depict what the truth of beauty is to an individual.
ReplyDelete