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What is beauty?
Is it possible to describe the difference between something ugly and something beautiful using scientific terms?
I try to give an answer on this.
Before starting with the answer as such,
let’s investigate a model that tried to reduce an artwork to different parameters.
such as complexity, color intensity, number of forms &c.
Berlyne described a relation between these values and how we enjoy an artwork.
The so called inverted U –shape model says that if something is too simple (here)
or too complex (here)
we dislike it.
The same with other parameters:
if a painting is too dark
or too light
it is smaller probability that we will like it.
Berlyne’s inverted U model is elegant and is in line with our experiences.
There is one thing it does not handle: the culture around the artwork.
And in many cases the culture can be even more important than the artwork itself.
Just remember Marilyn Monroe’s well known photo.
If a modern celebrity like Britney Spears would have done the same
five years ago, who would have cared about it?
The culture has changed since 1955 and sexuality became a part of our lives.
So once again what is then beauty?
Although beauty is handled as a subjective, emotional category,
surprisingly, beauty is connected to cognitive processes.
Whenever we can create a new schema by connecting an artwork with a schema of us
we feel the artwork beautiful.
And one more interesting thing:
the more effort we invested in creating this new schema
the nicer we will find the artwork.
So let’s look once again on Berlyne’s U shape!
In the left-hand side we find those artworks where we could connect
the artwork to one of our schema but with too less effort (too easy).
On the right-hand side we find those artworks that we could not connect
at all to our schema system.
Of course in the middle we find those where we invested energy
and we got rewarded as we have enriched our schemata system.
Does this approach have anything to do with culture?
Can it handle the cultural differences?
The answer is yes, as our schemata are deeply embedded in the culture.
We can also say that a culture is nothing else than the collection of schemata under usage.
That is why somebody from a non-Christian culture can not understand
Michelangelo’s masterpiece ‘The Creation of Adam’.
The illustration of Adam as a young man
and God as an old man flying above the clouds
are all Christian symbols that have to be ready and existing among our schemata
in order to create a new schema on the whole creation process.
If somebody can not identify Adam as the person from the Bible,
has no chance to understand what happens on the painting.
The situation is similar in many different fields of life:
movies, presentations, illustrations, teaching and other artistic fields.
In all of these the message has to be coded such a way by the artist (or teacher)
that it should create a new schema, and possibly that schema
should integrate as much other schema as possible.
If the creation of the new schema fails
the message won’t come over and the communication act will be only a source for frustration (Self-narrowing).
If the new schema is integrating only a few schema than it is easy to create it,
but it won’t generate as much Self-expansion either.
To summarize, we can say that beauty is nothing but a cognitive schema
– object, event, phenomenon, person, thought –
which can be incorporated amongst our existing cognitive schemata,
can totally connect with them and,
as it is new, so elicits Self-Expansion.
The more cognitive schemata it can connect to,
and the better its connection, the greater our perception of its beauty.