What is Beauty?

A video essay on how ugly art has dominated the art world for over a century. Here are the philosophical and political trends that led us away from representation in art and a message of hope for artists.

This video was adapted from a lecture I gave at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
 
 
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think it leads us to our greater truths ...that is to say it helps us find the puzzle pieces in our lives. Attraction is personal though generally we can agree on things to be more pleasing, for instance symmetrical, to look at than others - but this is surfacial and not the kind of beauty that transforms us or embosses like fire forever in memory. Give an example, I think back on the few people I've ever had close relationships with and they've all to a tee had features spot on reminiscent of what you could call my closest soul mates. My twin flame, if you believe in this kind of thing or understand it, he has always had a shaven head and worn a tuque or hat of some sort because he is balding. He makes up for this in terms of facial hair, a rough goatee or big beard. In highschool I've only ever dated two guys and they were both identifiably black and track athletes whose other common feature was always wearing a tuque or hat. This was long before I met my twin flame. I fell in love with a woman in grade 12 towards commencement and though she was very bad for me in every drugged way possible, she was very beautiful and looked so similar to the closest or one of the most primary soul mates I know currently. I realized the light and charm I saw/felt in her was this later spiritual connection in hindsight. In this case you could synthesize beauty into a convenient soundbite or byte of a conventional "type" that is like a tapestry of patterns returning again and again in this life and across life times. I've also long have been attracted to long hair, and Sarah Breskman Cosme found something remarkable that seems to echo why Native American and indigenous people, men and women, do not cut their hair. Beyond military proficiency in studies that have attributed longer hair to a practical guiding sixth sense, in terms of Sarah and her work with so called ETs, she found - excuse long run in sentence - that reptilian ETs who cut their feathers list their sensitivity and so fell into engagements with warring. I state it, reiterated as I heard and read it, you don't need berate me if you don't believe in this sort of thing from past life regression and hypnotherapy. Anyways so I've long been attracted to long hair and this similarly reflects in why my twin flame is obsessed with the lead singer Hoest of Taake Norwegian metal band who now strangely has looked like him now because he shaved his head. This long hair attraction is also why I find beauty in many Native American and Tibetan men like Gene Braverock...why I am attracted to Dumbledore and Hagrid and Gandalf even though they all may be gay. It's 👍 okay
 
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