Frederic
Robert-Fleury, Joseph Nicolas
Robillard, Hippolite
Rousseau, Henri
Rousseau, Henri
Rousseau, Henri
Rubens, Peter Paul
Shishkin, Ivan
Steinlen, Théophile
Stubbs, George
Stubbs, George
Susini, Antonio or Giovanni Francesco
Troyon, Constant
Van Gogh, Vincent
Van Gogh, Vincent
Velázquez, Diego
Velázquez, Diego
Warhol, Andy
Warhol, Andy
Warhol, Andy
Simple Notion of Beauty
In defining beauty, we say of it, first, that it is a simple and primary quality. It is uncompounded. No two or three qualities in any method present can compass it with their combined effects. No analysis can resolve it into other perceptions, but there always remains something unresolved and unexplained, which is beauty.
The Three Black Auks (detail)
Anonymous, c. 27,000-19,000 BCE
Cosquer Cave, Calanque de Morgiou
This is proved by the fact that the most successful of these resolutions, while they hit on qualities frequently concomitant with beauty and intimately related to it, are never able to go beyond this companionship and show the identity of those qualities with beauty, whenever and wherever found. Unity and variety are qualities usually, I think always, in some degree present in beautiful objects. But though this presence may show them to be a condition for the existence of beauty, it does not show them to be its synonym or equivalent. In fact, we find that these qualities exist in many things which have no beauty.
Bison Carved in Low Relief
Anonymous, c. 16,000 BCE
Limestone, length: 30 cm
Musée national de la Préhistoire, Les Eyzies-de-Tayac
Their range may include the field under discussion, but it certainly includes much more, and thereby shows that these qualities do not produce the distinguishing and peculiar effects of aesthetics. Thus is it with every combination of qualities into which we seek to analyse beauty. Either phenomena which should be included are left unexplained, or phenomena which do not belong to the department are taken in by the theory.
The Antelopes
Anonymous, c. 1550–1500 BCE
Fresco, 275 × 200 cm
National Museum of Athens, Athens
These analyses, either by doing too much or too little, indicate that the precise thing to be done has not been done by them, and only prove a more or less general companionship, and not an identity of qualities. It is one thing to show that certain things, even, always accompany beauty, and quite another to show that these always and everywhere manifest themselves as beauty, reaching it in its manifold forms, and leaving nowhere any residuum of phenomena to be explained by a new quality.
The Cat Goddess Bastet
Anonymous, 663–609 BCE
Bronze and blue glass, 27.6 × 20 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
The idea of beauty has been with patient effort and elaborate argument referred to in association, thus not only making it a derived notion, but one reached through a great variety of pleasurable impressions. It is clear, however, that association has no power to alter original feelings, but only to revive them. Therefore, if beauty is not as an original notion or apprehension entrusted to association, it cannot be given by it since this law of the mind has no creating or transforming, but simply a uniting power. Association can explain the presence of ideas, not their nature.
The Painted Garden of the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta
Anonymous, 1st century BCE. Fresco
Museo Nazionale Romano
Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome
On this theory, beauty must chiefly be confined to the old and the familiar, since upon these associations it has acted and been correspondingly excluded from the new, as not yet enriched by its relations. This is not the fact. The beauty of an object has no dependence upon familiarity, but is governed by considerations distinctly discernible at the first examination.
In individual experience, it is a matter of accident what objects ultimately become associated with pleasant or with unpleasant memories; and in community, association is as capricious as fashion. No such caprice, however, attaches to the decisions of taste.
Ducks and Antelopes
Anonymous, 1st century BCE. Fresco
Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples
A uniformity indicative of many well-established principles belongs to these. So far as beautiful objects have been united by a firm association with wealth and elegance, this association itself must be explained by their prior and independent beauty. Beauty has occasioned this permanent and not groundless preference for wealth and elegance. The simplicity of this quality is seen in the presence of an unexplained and peculiar effect, after we have removed all the effects which can be ascribed to the known qualities present.
Detail of pictorial decoration with trompe l’oeil garden and fountain with birds
Anonymous, 25–5 CE. Fresco
House of the Golden Bracelets, Pompeii
It is underived. The primary nature of beauty presents a question of some difficulty, since there are qualities with which it is often so intimately associated that its own existence in particular cases is dependent on theirs. Compared to qualities with which it is often associated, beauty can have the appearance of a
