Aesthetics and gender

26 March 2009 by pcNielsen Leave a Comment

Last night The Curator linked to a Wired blurb (hardly long enough to be an article) titled Beauty affects men’s and women’s brains differently. The title had me hooked, but the spot didn’t deliver. Some excerpts (that I’ve rearranged to make more sense):

    “This the first study about neural activation in aesthetic tasks to include sex as a variable,” said study co-author Camilo Cela-Conde, an evolutionary anthropologist at Spain’s Universitat de les Illes Balears.

    Earlier studies on sex-based cognitive differences have found that men seem to have a heightened sense of absolute location. Women, by contrast, are quicker to process relative values.

    In men, images they consider to be beautiful appear to activate brain regions responsible for locating objects in absolute terms — x- and y-coordinates on a grid. Images considered beautiful by women do the same, but they also activate regions associated with relative location: above and behind, over and under. The difference could be the result of evolutionary pressures on our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

I’m ignoring the somewhat inane plugs for evolution embedded in the blurb; the research, after all was conducted by an “evolutionary anthropoligist.” Wired notes that the study was conducted with a pretty small group of people, which makes me wonder why they bothered to mention it at all.

Further, this isn’t news. Both my wife and I — and probably any other conscious person — could have told you based on simple unscientific observations that men think more concretely and women more abstractly.

I hope this research wasn’t publicly funded.

rothko-gender-aesthetics

Photo from MarkHillary’s Flickr Photostream.

Filed under Aesthetics, Beauty

The mathematics of beauty

23 February 2009 by pcNielsen 4 Comments

Sebastian Smee of the Boston Globe penned a very interesting profile this weekend on one Horace Brock, an imposing man with five degrees under his belt including classical music, mathematics and economics.

Brock claims to have discovered a formula for beauty. From the article:

    What about this theory, then?

    In truth, it’s satisfyingly simple. Designed objects, Brock writes, can be broken down into “themes” and “transformations.” A theme is a motif, such as an S-curve; a transformation might see that curve appear elsewhere in the design, but stretched, rotated 90 degrees, mirrored, or otherwise reworked . . .

    Brock wants to be clear that his theory applies only to beauty in design – in other words, architecture, furniture, and other kinds of decorative art: “That’s very important – I wouldn’t want to claim too much.” But in his catalog essay he claims his account “makes it possible to clarify, and indeed to quantify, one of the deepest principles of aesthetics: People . . . tend to be bored if there is too much simplicity (the kitchen chair, certain Gregorian chants) and overwhelmed if there is too much complexity (pastiche Victorian furniture, much 20th-century classical music).”

    In his estimation, the theory also subsumes most previous theories of beauty in design – from Pythagoras’s golden rectangle to Hogarth’s “line of beauty,” from the celebrated golden section to the Fibonacci series – into a neat mathematical equation.

Smee probes a little and questions whether beauty can be reduced so simplistically to an equation. Brock is absolute in his response to the idea that beauty is merely in the eye of the beholder, “It’s absolute crap.”

A man after my own heart. Read the article in its entirety here.

Filed under Aesthetics, Art, Basis for designing well, Beauty, Design, Furniture

How a bad economy influences art & design

19 February 2009 by pcNielsen 3 Comments

In this case, design refers specifically to fashion, though I’m thinking in broader terms. NPR’s Ari Shapiro interviewed Sally Singer, Vogue magazine’s fashion news and features director in a Morning Edition spot this morning.

I have a love-hate relationship with fashion — both practical fashion and runway fashion. Runway fashion is easy for the masses to deride. A lot of it appears to lack almost every practical consideration, and us rabble in the middle classes can’t remotely afford it. It rightly births satire such as Ugly Betty. However, artistically and aesthetically fashion design is worthwhile.

“In tough times, why not express yourself by how you dress — whether you’re doing it from what’s in your closet, what’s in a vintage store [or] what you made yourself?” Singer asks. What a person chooses to wear — or live in, drive in, read or listen to if we expand the discussion — communicates, whether we like it or not. Our wardrobe can say that we value our appearance, or that we don’t. It often identifies us with a certain subculture. For better or worse, it sets us apart as lower, middle or upper class.

Depression era chic

One of the more practical — and beautiful — creations
from the fashion industry reflecting depression era chic.

And, perhaps, fashion serves as an indicator of an economy. Singer talks a little about “depression era chic” in the interview. A New York Post article elaborates on this idea:

    The duds say it all — and it’s depressing.

    Taking a cue from the grim economy, this fall’s fashions at Banana Republic, Gap and H&M are featuring a distinctly Depression-era trend of cloche hats, pencil skirts, conductor caps and baggy, vintage-style dresses.

I wouldn’t have expected this kind of a trend from the fashion industry (had I been thinking about it). In other artistic segments, possibly: Painting has historically reflected social hardships; film and photography possess similar track records as I recall. While any observant twenty year old is old enough to realize that styles recur, this years’ shift in clothing design is more intentional than what generally appears to be a more simple ebb and flow to this common observer.

That said, props to the fashion industry for taking a culturally relevant direction. I’m not sure, off-hand, if it’s the right direction; one might worry that mimicking the styles of the depression might result in even more dire attitudes. The flip-side — to create elaborate clothing that defies a cultural climate — could instead instill hope.

Then again, it might also create some kind of complex in us, causing us to believe things are better than they are whereby we spend more than we actually have to spend. This is what Singer seems to refer to as morality. Towards the end of the interview, she states that “Not shopping is not a moral act right now.”

There’s actually no indication of whether she expects us to actually spend more than we have, but in the context of American consumerism the inference is believable. And such reckless spending is more-or-less what landed us in this so-called economic mess in the first place.

Photo from the Retro Radar.

Filed under Aesthetics, Affluenza, Beauty, Business of art, Design, Fiber, Handmade, Modern culture

Alarm clock aesthetics

12 February 2009 by pcNielsen 4 Comments

I never thought it would be so difficult to find a well-designed — functionally and aesthetically — alarm clock. The two in our home now are both quite old, and some of their more basic functions recently ceased to operate. Thus we’ve been thinking about purchasing a new model for some months now.

I checked Walmart to no avail before heading over to Amazon.com. They have a large variety of items with competitive prices and a large number of user reviews. I was stunned at the hideous objects that resulted from my search. Apparently alarm clocks haven’t been redesigned in thirty years.

Of course, there are a few space-age exceptions, as well as your more expensive iPod ready fair with decent minimalist aspirations, in line with Apple products. However, I’m not so much into the coldness of the space-age aesthetic, and both of these options cost more than I wanted to pay for a simple alarm clock.

clock2

We ended up with the little clock above. It possesses all of the functionality we wanted, which was basically two alarms, a radio and the ability to set times both forward and backward. But you can’t read the time from halfway across the room. The time is backlit, and neither my wife or I can make out the digits from the bed to the dresser. Further, it’s quite bright and potentially interferes with sleep.

Oh, and the wife doesn’t like the looks of it either. I still contend it’s the best from among the options I found, but she’s correct when observing that the design is more or less blah, and that the white color pops whereas black would recede.

This is problematic. The little thing just won’t work for us, but I dread starting the seemingly futile search over again. I don’t need gimmicks, which there are an abundance of. I just want something that looks good and functions.

Perhaps we need to bring back certain principles espoused by the Bauhaus, where aesthetics were at least some part of industrial design.

Filed under Aesthetics, Basis for designing well, Beauty, Design, Modern culture

For a better wedding, elope

12 January 2009 by pcNielsen Leave a Comment

I had a lot of fun planning my own wedding. You only get to throw a party like that, theoretically, once in your life, and there are a myriad of aesthetic considerations. Flowers, music, food and so on. All of this is on my mind after returning from my brother-in-law’s wedding last week.

My wife and I, in retrospect, would have carried out our own wedding very differently. First off, we planned it long distance on account of tradition, the tradition of holding the ceremony in the city of the bride’s family. Long-distance wedding planning is a pain, and a lot of our friends didn’t come because of the drive (or so it seemed). As it was, we already bucked a lot of the current American trends: No garter, no bouquet toss, no dance and our processional was Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C Major — a gorgeous organ piece of almost ten minutes. A friend told us ours was one of the most unique and beautiful weddings she’d ever been too.

Still, we’d do it differently if we could. I’d like to stretch the celebration out and see the whole think become more personal; stick to family and close-ish friends, not so many acquaintances milling around. I’d like good friends and family to be around for a couple of days. The rehearsal dinner, ceremony and reception just aren’t enough time in all the rush to allow for real conversation. How about a barbecue and trip to the movie theater the day before? My wife and I would have loved to put on a formal dinner for our guests, but decided against it on account of cost. (We tried to do the whole thing on the cheap, and as I recall the rough total was somewhere around $6,600, $600 more than it would have been if the in-laws’ church wasn’t being remodeled that year.). My brother actually invited all the family out to brunch the morning after his wedding, a nice touch to extend the celebration. It seems that other cultures do this a lot better than ours from some things I’ve read.

Yesterday I had another thought: The whole wedding situation would actually run a lot more smoothly if a chaste couple (the assumption here on this Christian blog) eloped. You propose, you find a few best friends as witnesses to get the formalities over with and jet off onto the honeymoon. After you get back you start planning what can then be a more relaxed wedding scenario. This avoids the obvious sexual tension during a traditional wedding. The bride and groom are free to enjoy the company of their guests during whatever ceremony or reception plans they choose to make. They don’t feel pressure to rush off after the festivities.

Sarahs wedding arms

Another aesthetic consideration for today’s bride and groom is the photographer, something I’ve written about before. Photography has, in a sense, taken over the modern American wedding. Before or after the ceremony (the correct answer is “before”)? Friend, amateur or pricey professional? The photo session for a wedding often takes as much time as the ceremony and reception combined, at least in my experience. The flashing and clicking and running across the aisle by the cameraman or woman to catch every best angle during the ceremony is, frankly, distracting.

The same brother I mentioned above avoided formal photographs altogether, even though they hired a professional to record the event. I personally like this idea, however modern American mothers seem to take great umbrage to the lack of faux, er, formal smiles. In the case of my brother, his mother-in-law made the bride and groom put the dress and tux back on months after the fact for a proper sitting.

Can’t we find a happy medium, where a few formal photographs are taken during the span of, oh, say an hour before the whole shindig? Well-done candid photos are, simply, better anyway. The one image that I remember from our own album isn’t a formal capture at all, but of my wife getting ready the her bridal chamber, eating a quick lunch while one of her attendants irons the train of her dress, which she’s already wearing. She’s beautiful, the photo is beautiful and poetic and real.

Filed under Aesthetics, Beauty, Feminine aesthetics, Modern culture, Personal reflection

End-of-year aesthetics

2 January 2009 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

Earlier this week I was a passenger in a car for almost five hours from Missouri to Chicago, a pretty unusual situation to find myself in. I tried to make the most of the restful opportunity despite the all-too-slowly waning symptoms of my mega-cold. I watched the barren winter Illinois landscape go by and meditated on beauty, the goodness of God and art farms.

On beauty, my mind came back to this combination of quotes from earlier in the year that I thought was worth reposting.

    We don’t want merely to see beauty . . . We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
    - C.S. Lewis

and

    Endeavouring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love. What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.
    - Alain de Botton

Filed under Aesthetics, Beauty

Gifting Don’t: Wrapping like crap on purpose

22 December 2008 by pcNielsen Leave a Comment

I just learned about a phenomenon called crapwrap, where people try to wrap things crappily. They’ll even do it for you, for a fee. The local news spot showed boxes wrapped with gaudy reused paper and brown packing tape.

The interview included a crap-wrapping employee talking about why they do what they do. He suggested it was a great way to present a package in a one-of-a-kind way.

He’s wrong. Really, the boxes just look like your four year old took a crack at the box. There are soooooo many creative ways to use ordinary objects to embellish beautifully instead of elementary-like. Crumpling up ugly paper, poor technique and using bawdy tape are just that, and they are not beautiful when combined. They are simple and ugly.

There are so many more so much more interesting textures and materials around your house that can be both recycled and unique. Think brown paper bags, foil, spray paint, old t-shirts for wrapping. For joining think clips, rivets, thread, thumb tacks; for tags use the inside of Avon boxes, last year’s Christmas cards (heck, use these for paper!), etc etc.

Of course, if you actually want an ugly gift to give to someone, be my guest. Just don’t say the the best way to make a gift unique is to make it ugly.

Filed under Aesthetics, Beauty, Christmas list, Modern culture, Salvage

Incarnation and nudity

10 December 2008 by pcNielsen 1 Comment

From the Image Journal’s Good Letters blog, a well-written commentary on nudity from a Christian perspective. It was written by Laura Bramon Good and talks about her growing up in a household where her mother was anything but shy with her body. The entry continues with Good talking about her sister, a painter, and a series of paintings that deal with “women and men, their bodies, and their need for and confusion over the other.”

No commentary from me, just passing the article along.

Filed under Art, Art and faith, Beauty, Modern culture

Eyeglass Aesthetics: Jewelry for your face

2 December 2008 by pcNielsen 4 Comments

When I was in tenth grade, or thereabouts, things started getting blurry.

I’ve worn glasses since eleventh grade, and I actually like wearing them — unless I’m playing Ultimate Frisbee or photographer. Eyeglasses are face jewelry, and I wish I could afford a new pair every six months, just for fun. Three things, in my opinion, make (or break) a good pair of frames.

The Face: Different people, believe it or not, have different faces. Some are square, some are round and some are light-bulb shaped like my own. Not ever pair of frames works on every face. For instance long faces, like my own, can very rarely pull of a round frame. Better suited to such light-bulb countenances are a wider design, something oval or rectangular.

prodesign-denmark
A hot pair of specs from ProDesign:Denmark

The Frame: Don’t be afraid to show off a little frame. I walk into the local post office with some regularity. I recognize all of the clerks when I go in, and immediately took note of one’s new specs. They were wild — and gorgeous — and I made a point of saying how much I liked them. She replied by saying that they were way more risky than her usual conservative self. She went for them anyway, and it paid off. Seek out good design, of which there is an abundance in frame design if you know where to look, and find something that pops! If you have to wear glasses in the first place, don’t pick something that’s going to pretend to be invisible on your face. Use it as an opportunity to save the world.

Proportions: Keep in mind proportion (in all things, not just eyeglasses), both of the frame to the surface of its lens and the eyeglasses as a whole to the size of your own head. All of a sudden aviator glasses are back in style, especially for sunglasses. All of a sudden aviators are back in style. The original 1937 design was fairly innocuous, but I’ve seen some modern takes on that classic design that are more like windshields on a person’s face than sunglasses. I begin to wonder where the windshield wipers are and if I should look out for errant sprays of blue washer fluid. Not only is this potentially problematic in how much glass is covering up a person’s eyes — and eyebrows, and cheeks, and ears and . . . — but the amount of frame to lens is enervating.

The kicker here is that good frames aren’t cheap. In fact, their prices often seem more a little outrageous for something so small and pretty darn simple. I’ve found some very good deals on Ebay in the past on unique frames, and in years past I actually bought a pair of reading glasses that I had Walmart put lenses in.

But you get what you pay for generally. The reading glasses fell apart almost immediately, and the two frames I bought off of Ebay never fit very well. The Ebay sellers did provide measurements, but only trying a particular frame on will tell you whether or not it’s comfortable. Further, Walmart doubled its cost for lenses a couple years ago.

My last pair, a Bellagio design, I bought from a stellar local place called Childers. They purposefully carry very unique frames (in light of which it’s hard to believe they’re still in business here in Siloam Springs) and the customer service is great. Not only that, the cost of their lenses was half of Walmart’s new price.

There are a lot of internet outlets offering deals on frames and even lenses anymore. However, I’d encourage you to look into local businesses that will give you what you pay for, in service and design.

And remember to show off a little frame.

Filed under Aesthetics, Beauty, Buy local, Design, Siloam Springs

Beautiful is natural, healthy, make up?

25 November 2008 by pcNielsen 3 Comments

Last night I helped my wife purge some of the surfaces in our bedroom. The dresser and a set of shelves donned piles of earrings, clothing tags and old makeup that she didn’t need and wanted to be rid of. I possess a powerful anti-clutter gene and was glad to assist in sending superfluous items into the trash or recycle bin.

We ditched a lot of makeup last night; a few eyeliners or lip pencils I took to the studio to use as marking pencils, but quite a number of old cosmetics are headed for the dump now. My wife doesn’t wear too much anyway. Back when we were dating I stated that I didn’t really prefer the fake-face look, and in fact am turned off by overdone layers of caked on foundation (Or what not; I don’t know in reality what cakes and what doesn’t.) and unnatural colors ineptly masquerading as something inconspicuous.

Regardless of my own opinions, though, make up is a very significant part of American culture. In fact, it’s been a significant part of many cultures going back thousands of years. Egyptian Pharaohs used it more than 5,000 years ago (see photo below). Modern cosmetics manufacturers would love for men to begin using make up again, mainly out of greed.

narmerpalette-rom-back
Narmer’s Palatte, 3100 B.C. Palettes were normally used for make up,
although this one was most likely just decorative.

Being content with a natural beauty — a healthy beauty — in this fallen world, internally or externally, isn’t as easy as it might sound though. War and disease certainly do their part to externally (and internally) disfigure what God intended when he breathed life into the dust of Adam and Eve in the Garden. The consequences of humanity’s sinful state remain obvious.

That said, things like make up and plastic surgery do have a place in our cultures. My question today is “What place?” What constitutes reasonable physical modification? And who has the authority to determine what is reasonable?

Most parents will (hopefully) establish limits for their children. No make up until you’re fifteen, or whatever age they deem reasonable. Cosmetics are pretty innocuous in and of themselves. They are temporary indulgences that can be removed at will. A person could easily make arguments both for and against the use of lipsticks and blushes and eyeliners. In the “For” column fit things like “boosts self esteem, beautifies the visual environment, enhances femininity.” Things to jot down in the “Against” column might include “artificially boosts self esteem, just a vanity, potentially dangerous to your health, wasteful and bad for the environment.”

What about plastic surgery though, a much more permanent cosmetic alteration? At what age do parents allow their daughter to get a nose job or breast implants? Apparently some parents don’t mind signing off for or offering these surgeries to their children. Some girls get boob jobs at sweet 16 or as graduation gifts, which I eluded to last year while talking about Alissa Quart’s Branded: The buying and selling of teenagers.

Plastic surgery has its practical uses, but more often we hear about its employment as a luxury. We see Extreme Makeovers on television and dream about being the next one chose for the show to go under the knife.

Is this a slippery slope? How much further down the line is a scenario like the one posited in the film Gattica, where a person can change his or her height by having bone added or removed to his legs? How far away are we from the movie’s dystopian prediction of genetically predictable and perfect offspring? Are we so comfortable (and oblivious or cocky) in our scientific prowess that we fail to consider ethical or psychological ramifications to these kinds of alterations. Are comfortable enough (read “foolish enough”) to play God?

Why are so many people not content in the way they look? Advertising, probably. Peer pressure, likely. And what about an innate but unspoken understanding that things are not the way they are supposed to be, that the world is amiss (on account of the Fall)? Does something in us, even if we can’t put it into words, understand that God had something better — all around — in mind for humanity?

Photo from Wikipedia.

Filed under Aesthetics, Beauty, Christianity, Feminine aesthetics, Modern culture

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