Beautiful

Is one of our favorite labels: The painting is beautiful, the music is beautiful, the sensation is beautiful. But beauty isn’t a property of a thing; if it were, we’d all have the same taste. Beauty occurs in the relationship between the observer and the object. The artwork may have symmetry, rhythm, or any number of other wonderful things, but it can’t have beauty. Beauty isn’t a quality of an object, it’s an experience of the subject. 

So who am I to say what brings you beauty?

Humans share 99.9% of DNA. The vast spectrum of our preferences lives in the remaining fraction of a percent. If a relationship to something evokes beauty in me, it likely will in you too. We are biologically encoded to respond to things we can understand, like patterns and order, and to things that will help us survive, like fresh water and healthy partners. People have, no doubt, a very wide range of taste, but it all stems from the same select sources.

The artist, however, pays no mind to this. Tailoring work to please an audience not only diminishes the nature of the art, but is actually counterproductive. The artist should optimize for what evokes beauty within herself;  it is the only authentic metric available. If a work resonates deeply with one person, it will inevitably resonate with others. We are not as distinct as we imagine.

I am not to say what brings you beauty, but I am to say that if you have a beautiful experience, you are not alone.