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on the cover painting. I'll keep looking.
If anyone has any ideas, please let me
know at cameralucidas@yahoo.com]
Roger Scruton has written a book he simply titles Beauty which came out in 2009. I only recently found out about this book. I give similar importance to beauty. My blog has a whole category on beauty. My book looks at beauty in the bigger context of art, culture and society. I think beauty is important, but I think it is part of many other related, or conflicting, subjects. Scruton has decided to concentrate on beauty alone, which I think leaves it isolated from culture and society. I find that modern beauty lovers tend to isolate beauty. They also personalize beauty, making it some kind of fetish or personal quest. People's internal, personal monologues, without the checks and balances of the external and the spiritual worlds, are suspect, and sometimes turn to horror. So, at times, as we see in the modern world of the avant-garde artist, beauty actually turns to ugliness.
Scruton has two chapters which seem to address this: "Judging Beauty" and "Artistic Beauty" but I don't think either goes far enough to address the beauty-turned-to-ugliness phenomenon that is overwhelming our modern world.
I have two sections in my chapter on Beauty in which I address this. They are: "Rejecting Beauty" and "Elimination of Beauty."
Still, I guess great minds think alike :-).
Below are Scruton's chapters on Beauty:
1. Judging Beauty
2. Human Beauty
3. Natural Beauty
4. Everyday Beauty
5. Artistic Beauty
6. Taste and Order
7. Eros and Art
8. Sacred Beauty
Chapter on Beauty from Camera Lucida: Views on Art Culture and Society, which I've divided into the following sections:
- Synthesis of Beauty
- Beauty in the Worship of God
- Beauty and the Transcendent
- Beauty and Humanity
- Beauty, Truth and Goodness
- How to be a Beautiful Movie Star
- Beauty: I will be your mirror
- Rejecting Beauty
- Elimination of Beauty
It is interesting that Scruton, as an art critic, doesn't seem to be interested in how beauty is created (by man, or even by God). He also omits the dangers of narcissism in beauty, which I try to address in "I'll be Your Mirror." I like the title of his chapter "Natural Beauty" which I think means the beauty actually found in nature, whether a human being, an animal or a plant. But he doesn't have any views on "Rejecting Beauty" and ultimately "The Elimination of Beauty." Again, as an art critic, I think Scruton believes that beauty is eternal and universally desired. Yet our own culture is pursuing the incredible project of ridding us of beauty, and quite successfully too, something which he doesn't seem to address.
I will try to get a hold of this book soon, and write my own review of it. It might even give me some ideas.