Beauty, symmetry and personal perception

Moderator note: These following posts have been split off from this discussion: http://www.trawlerforum.com/forums/s3/trawler-economy-twice-speed-8659.html

manyboats said:

Beauty is not just an opinion or notion. It's a learned discipline taught in schools by others that know and understand the elements of art.

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Really. So an artist who didn't go to school is incapable of creating beautiful art? That's just dumb, sorry. Some of the most beautiful art on the planet was created by people who didn't go to school nor were they formally taught anything by anybody.

Beauty is whatever a person thinks is beautiful. I have never taken an art class in my life and I know exactly what I think is beautiful and what is not by my standards. And it is very much a matter of opinion. Monet's paintings are beautiful in my opinion and I have travelled to France just to see them in the Musee d'Orsay. Picasso's paintings are rubbish in my opinion and I wouldn't cross the street to see one.

The schooner Bluenose and the J-class sloop Endeavour are gorgeous vessels and I didn't have to go to school to learn this. I thought the Bluenose was beautiful the first time I saw a picture of her when I was about 8.

manyboats said:

Why are ALL the other passage makers in the world conforming to normal aspect ratios?

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They're not "normal", they're fat!.....

They aren't all conforming, myself, George Buehler, Guy Saillard, Matt Marsh, Long Cours/Michel Joubert, Vripack, Tim Barnett, and Ron Holland are just some of the designers offering alternatives. The longer and narrower passagmaker designs started at the end of WWII with L. Francis Herreshoff introducing Marco Polo.

The function of most boats is to sell. Windhorse is not saddled w that extreme limitation.

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On the contrary, building(and voyaging in) Windhorse is part of a very smart and careful maketing campaign. Yes, millions were spent (and written off as R&D) for the sale of eight 64's and now a 97'. There may be a few more really big ones built yet......

Marin wrote;

"Really. So an artist who didn't go to school is incapable of creating beautiful art? That's just dumb," So you didn't read my post Marin.

Marin also says "Beauty is whatever a person thinks is beautiful.". Well coming from a person that thinks his beautiful boat isn't attractive and drives a Land Rover I can see you coming to that conclusion. Naive Marin naive. We aren't all born that gifted but some have talent ... others don't. Just because they see something does not mean it's beautiful.

And as proof from another angle beauty won't stand as such w/o ugly. Beauty is a relative thing. Beauty is just an image in somebody's mind and it takes a gifted and trained mind to identify the beauty or ugliness of the image. I know you like black and white things but much of the world isn't B&W. We all know something about beauty and some know a great deal. But an emotional knee jerk reaction to an image does not make that image beautiful.


TAD,

I think "fat" is normal and you are designing boats that are skinny. Thank you thank you as most boats I also consider fat.

Re "boats to sell" I stand corrected. I thought Windhorse was just a personal project that got noticed.

Tad Roberts said:

They're not "normal", they're fat!.....

They aren't all conforming, myself, George Buehler, Guy Saillard, Matt Marsh, Long Cours/Michel Joubert, Vripack, Tim Barnett, and Ron Holland are just some of the designers offering alternatives. The longer and narrower passagmaker designs started at the end of WWII with L. Francis Herreshoff introducing Marco Polo.





On the contrary, building(and voyaging in) Windhorse is part of a very smart and careful maketing campaign. Yes, millions were spent (and written off as R&D) for the sale of eight 64's and now a 97'. There may be a few more really big ones built yet......

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I love many of your designs, they are woks of art. The long skinny passagmaker especially so, but i wouldnt look good in one being a fat guy

manyboats said:

Just because they see something does not mean it's beautiful.

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So who determines for the world's population what is beautiful? You?

But an emotional knee jerk reaction to an image does not make that image beautiful.

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Of course it does. To that person. Whether you think it's beautiful is totally irrelevant to that person. What you are saying is that everyone should find the same things beautiful because beauty is defined by a set of rules and guidelines you learn in school. That's black and white.

You try to equate everything to engineering with its rules and formulas. I personally find that a staggeringly limited, narrow minded, and unimaginative way to view the world. Sorry, but when it comes to emotional things, like what's beautiful and what's not, there aren't any rules and formulas. All there are are 7.06 billion (the world's population) subjective, emotional opinions about what constitutes beauty.

Marin asks,

"So who determines for the world's population what is beautiful? You?"

I know something about beauty .. yes. But only 10 to 30% of what a person would know that really knows about what is beautiful and what is not. If you gathered together a committee chosen group of people well known for their expertise in fields like Jewelry design, architecture of numerous types of structures, sculpture, Photography, industrial design, art teachers, painters and possibly interior decorators and observed what they chose consistently as beautiful you would see/find what is beautiful. And after a long period of time making such observations yourself you would advance your own ability to recognize beauty when you see it.

I personally think the ability to recognize beauty is about 75% learned and 25% innate. But one dosn't know beauty by just successfully passing through the womb.

manyboats said:

But one dosn't know beauty by just successfully passing through the womb.

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Sure you do. It's an established fact that one of the major elements of an object that makes it, including another human, beautiful to a person, is symmetry. But they don't teach that in school. Little kids are attracted to other little kids to no small degree because of the symmetry they see, not because they read about it in their Dick and Jane books or saw it on Sesame Street. We're born with that instinctive attraction to symmetry. It as prevalent in tribes with no formal education as it is in highly educated societies.

Tad Roberts said:

On the contrary, building(and voyaging in) Windhorse is part of a very smart and careful marketing campaign.

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This is the most accurate statement about Windhorse in this thread, in my opinion.

What does symmetry have to do w beauty. I think an image is more interesting if it is NOT symmetrical. Being "drawn to" something also has nothing to do w beauty.

I DO hope your'e feeling better tomorrow and not talking this nonsense.

I inserted your favorite avatar.

Eric

Marin said:

Sure you do. It's an established fact that one of the major elements of an object that makes it, including another human, beautiful to a person, is symmetry. But they don't teach that in school. Little kids are attracted to other little kids to no small degree because of the symmetry they see, not because they read about it in their Dick and Jane books or saw it on Sesame Street. We're born with that instinctive attraction to symmetry. It as prevalent in tribes with no formal education as it is in highly educated societies.

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When i was a little tiny kid i had a playmate that lived a few houses away. We were maybe all or 6-7. We were very attracted to each other and when we could we would go get in a box out of sight to play our favorite game, doctor. I assure you the attraction had nothing to do with symmetry just normal sexual curiosity. I was so sad when she moved away...
Currently it is commonly taught that good looking people have symmetry but history and observation teaches us that isnt so. Symmetry may make one pretty or handsome but to be a beautiful you must also exhibit poise and have presentation, posture, bearing. I'm sure you have seem many beautiful landscapes many of which were not symmetrical at all but still beautiful.

Good God!!!! Too much information....

Marin said:

Beauty is whatever a person thinks is beautiful. I have never taken an art class in my life and I know exactly what I think is beautiful and what is not by my standards. And it is very much a matter of opinion. Monet's paintings are beautiful in my opinion and I have travelled to France just to see them in the Musee d'Orsay. Picasso's paintings are rubbish in my opinion and I wouldn't cross the street to see one.

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What a sad and unfulfilling mindset guaranteed to stifle growth and/or keep new doors of perception from opening.

Perhaps if you did take classes to better understand art you just might gain something. Art doesn't have to be Monet pretty, it can be harsh, ugly, confusing, disgusting, and purposefully hard to interpret.

When you are talking with someone, are you really listening to what they have to say, or are you planning in your head what you are going to tell them next? When looking at art you have to drop your dogma at the door, and open yourself to understanding the artists way of seeing. Being a good listener helps, as does an empathetic nature. Good luck with that.

manyboats said:

What does symmetry have to do w beauty.

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If you do not know the role symmetry plays in the human perception of beauty then beauty is a subject you you might not want to tackle. Perhaps stay focused on the engineering side of things. The fact you feel it is "nonsense" speaks volumes.

There are about a bazillion published studies that show that symmetry is a significant factor that contributes to our perception of beauty. This does not mean that everything has to be same on both sides. Symmetry also has to do with the perception of overall balance of appearance. And balance of composition -- or an object--- is not tied to an equal division of its components.

Based on your approach to things I would not expect you to agree with or even understand this sort of thing. But I work with a bunch of extremely talented graphic artists who could talk you into insanity on what constitutes beauty, why we perceive some things as beautiful and some things not so much, and explain in painful detail exactly how symmetry and balance play roles in this perception. The same thing applies to the videographers I work with who instinctively can compose their shots to be "beautiful." While some of this ability can be taught, to be truly great at it, a huge degree of it must be instinct, if you will, that you're born with.

Were you to talk with these guys, i think you would find that you are quite a ways off the mark with the theories about beauty you have expressed so far.

bfloyd4445 said:

I'm sure you have seem many beautiful landscapes many of which were not symmetrical at all but still beautiful.

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Hee Hee Heeeeee!

Murray--- if you look at your avatar photo you will see--- if you have the ability to do so--- that in fact it is symmetrical in terms of its balance.

The most simplistic explanation is that the wave in the left foreground, the rocks and the angle of the wave and rocks up and to the left toward the trees at the far left are balanced by the mountain and cloud on the right. While the elements of the photo are not evenly divided in half, the composition is symmetrical in balance and that is what makes the photo beautiful, or at least pleasing, to most viewers.

Marin said:

Murray--- if you look at your avatar photo you will see--- if you have the ability to do so--- that in fact it is symmetrical in terms of its balance.

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My ability to "see" and "understand" the photo in my avatar is helped somewhat by the fact that it is a 4x5 contact print of one of my negatives, and was made by me in my own darkroom with a print developer of my own concoction from raw chemicals.

I call this kind of composition 'balanced imbalance'.

I believe the studies you are referring to regarding symmetry and beauty dealt with human faces, not fine art.

Marin,
My understanding of beauty may be imperfect but your reading skills may be short of that in that you seem to overlook the fact that I only claimed to know 10 to 30 % of what's necessary to fully understand beauty. Symmetrical composition can work for the artist in that it draws full attention to the subject when the artist wishes to do so and in many other ways.

But I know you know something about composition as I've seen many of your pictures and you have seen mine so nobody's fool's anybody on that score.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder only in that an image has been seen but if the mind is educated in the elements of beauty he will recognize it as such.

Murray I think your avatar is balanced By imbalanced elements. The imbalance in your photo is of mass. The heavy dark relatively massive part of the photo is decisively to the left but the action is in the cascading water to the right. That's the way I see balance in your photo. There's a balance of foreground, middle ground and background. But the mass and action are quite imbalanced but ther-in lies the element of interest.
But I can't see how any of this is beautiful or not.
Most perceived beauty is the result of familiarity regarding some association w something liked from the past. But that's liking something not understanding or perceiving beauty.

MurrayM said:

I believe the studies you are referring to regarding symmetry and beauty dealt with human faces, not fine art.

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The human face is a big part of it but it applies to all art as well. As I said, I work with a group of guys here and in St. Louis who each get well over six figures a year for their art and graphics abilities and experience. To say nothing of our award-winning still photographers, as in the Nikon Award for best industrial photographers in America as well as other stuff.

If I had a dollar for every time they've explained to me why a particular composition, animation sequence, or photo works I'd have that Fleming 55 we'd like instead of this pathetic, tired old GB. And symmetry and balance, including " unbalanced balance" as you call it, is a big part of what they talk about.

manyboats said:

Murray I think your avatar is balanced By imbalanced elements. The imbalance in your photo is of mass. The heavy dark relatively massive part of the photo is decisively to the left but the action is in the cascading water to the right. That's the way I see balance in your photo.

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Short, sweet, and works for me

Getting fine art advice from graphic artists is something like getting classical music explained by TV commercial score writers. They'll hate that, but being an artist is an 'all in' solo endeavour, while being a graphic artist is in large part doing what somebody else tells you to do.

manyboats said:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder only in that an image has been seen but if the mind is educated in the elements of beauty he will recognize it as such.

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That makes no sense to me at all. If a person sees something and thinks it's beautiful, then it is beautiful to that person and they recognize it as such. There is no requirement to understand why it's beautiful in order to think something is beautiful It's an emotional recognition.

Now you can analyze why something is beautiful if you choose to. But that analysis is not necessary to feel something is beautiful. Most people do not analyze what they see, be it art, a photo, or another person. They simply respond to what's in front of them and never bother with an "analysis." And an analysis will not change their minds if they think what they're looking at is not beautiful, or is beautiful.

You can explain all the reasons why something should be beautiful, but that will not change a person's initial impression because the perception of beauty is at heart an emotion.

Marin,

Did you miss, or are you ignoring post #12?

MurrayM said:

...but being an artist is an 'all in' solo endeavour, while being a graphic artist is in large part doing what somebody else tells you to do.

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That tells me you don't know much about what an artist really is then. To think that because a person works for a company they are not an artist is bullsh*t. And doing what someone else tells them to do is, in fact, even more challenging than wandering around in the woods taking happy snaps of trees. Because these guys have to take the subject they are given and turn it into something beautiful and compelling..

Michelangelo was a "company" artist, too. He did what his clients told him to do. He was hired to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He didn't just wander in off the street and start painting. He had "bosses."

Your assumption about the graphics artists and photographers here is a dangerous assumption to make if you don't know the people involved. The fact they are graphic artists for a living dos not mean that they are not artists in your definition of the word. One of them, now retired, is one of the top aviation artists, as in oil paintings, in the country. Or he was, I don't know if he's still active.

And our senior still photographer, Ed Turner, has won countless artistic awards for the photography he does outside the company. His recent coffee table book on the making of the Dreamliner is already a collector's item and his calendars of shots he takes all over the world on his own are absolutely stunning.

Marin said:

Leonardo di Vince was a "company" artist, too. He did what his clients told him to do. He was hired to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He didn't just wander in off the street and start painting. He had "bosses."

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If you had taken fine art classes, you'd know Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, not Da Vinci.

Da Vinci, and Michelangelo had patrons for sure, but had them only because they were first and foremost artists of formidable skill, and were given the freedom to explore as yet untrod ground.

MurrayM said:

Marin,

Did you miss, or are you ignoring post #12?

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I have to work tomorrow and need my beauty sleep, so I'll let you think about it for a while.

MurrayM said:

If you had taken fine art classes, you'd know Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, not Da Vinci.

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Yeah, I knew it was wrong right as I hit Submit. I'd been thinking about the Mona Lisa but that wasn't a contract job (so far as I know). So I switched to the Sistine Chapel, which was. I made the artist change but you beat me to it.

MurrayM said:

Marin,

Did you miss, or are you ignoring post #12?

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Yes, I read 75. And I've seen that explanation of art, or variations and elements of it, about a zillion times. I have no quarrel with it in general, as far as it goes.

But my discussion with Eric is not about art but has to do with his interpretation of beauty and his basic contention that beauty is not an emotional thing or a matter of opinion but is subject to rules and principles, and must be taught, like engineering, to be understood.

I maintain that this is not correct.

Tomorrow I am directing a recording session of an original music score featuring a 16 year old violinist who earlier this year in Washington, DC came in third in the world in the category of young violinists. And then next week we shoot the music video that features her. This is a girl that began playing music on her own at age four. Sure, she's been taking lessons and still does, but today she plays as the featured solo violinist with symphony orchestras including the Seattle Symphony. She also plays jazz, and our score is rock. She is absolutely phenomenal.

Now this is music, not art or photography or boat design. But my point is she was born with this innate ability and at age four recognized beauty in music and acted on it. On her own. No parental pressure or even guidance. No schooling, no formulas, no beauty "rules," simply an instinctive understanding of beauty and a desire and ability to create it.

I work with a girl like this and then read about how beauty is a structured, unemotional thing based on rules that one has to learn in order to "understand" beauty, and that's the only way to truly know if something is beautiful or not, and that people are not born with an instinctive recognition of beauty, and I find it absolutely baffling that anyone could adhere to that belief.

I don't expect people to change. Eric's an engineer and his world will always be numbers and formulas and rules and things you can teach and learn. No room for emotion or instinct in engineering and perhaps that's a good thing. I don't know.

But that's not my world and I am eternally grateful that it isn't.

I think you are still missing the point though. This girl is following rules, in that she is interpreting music which was created by other people, and those other people were following the accepted "rules" which allow their music to be considered classical music.

Do people write symphonies of distinction without any musical education? I doubt it.

Just because somebody is proficient at moving paint around on a flat surface, or coming up with pleasing compositions doesn't make them an artist. To discover new ways of seeing and/or interpreting the internal and external world in a way that pushes the envelope of discovery is what an artist is. Something Leonardo and Michelangelo did in spades.

Do you know the names of any sign painters (the graphic artists of their day) from the mid 1400's to the early 1500's?

Gosh Guys,

I have learned more about symmetry, composition, imbalance than I ever new was possible from just this one topic.

But .. when it is all over and the dust settles...

The FPB boats are still ugly!


HOLLYWOOD