Many people have had enough experience with the fact that when they enter a museum, they wonder how a particular work of art got into the collection. People look around, wondering if others notice any exhibits’ ugliness. Even Aristotle established the tradition of searching for the objective properties of objects that ensure their perfection, although it was represented in the history of aesthetics in numerous variants (Destrée). Art’s ugliness is irrelevant today as even the most whimsical and disproportionate objects are considered beautiful for certain art connoisseurs.
The ugliness of good art is revealed to the viewer, but that does not mean it is ugly to everyone. Any piece of art, either good or not, can be ugly for some but beautiful for others. The property that ensures perfection is called harmony, symmetry, proportion, expediency, and appropriateness. Searches and calculations of the already mentioned golden section are connected with these ideas, i.e., such ratios between parts, for example, of the human body or an architectural structure, the observance of which would ensure the perfection of the object (Ketelsen). The presence of the premise of the golden ratio is far from the only aesthetically worthy proportional relationship – both in nature and in architecture, in all spheres of art, aesthetic influence is formed by various principles of proportionality (Euron 14). Therefore, whether to consider art ugly, beautiful, entertaining, depressing, or chaotic depends on each individual.
In conclusion, art cannot be ugly since this feature is a subjective opinion of a viewer. In this way, few people pay attention to ugly works of art, as art is ugly or good in the eyes of the beholder. The ugly and the beautiful are among the main aesthetic categories that have attracted the attention of philosophers and art theorists since ancient times.
Works Cited
Destrée, Pierre. “Aristotle’s Aesthetics.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2021, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2021, Web.
Euron, Paolo. “Art and Imitation in Aristotle.” Aesthetics, Theory and Interpretation of the Literary Work, 2019, pp. 13–17, Web.
Ketelsen, Christian. “Aristotle, Art, and Greek Tragedy.” Public.wsu.edu, Web.