Beauty Beauty Look At You
I've been thinking a lot about beauty. After all, it is my business. Or is it? Maybe it's none of my business. Maybe our definition of the word, beauty has become stretched so thin that the line between beautiful and grotesque is fading as we speak. Beauty as defined by modern standards can be found in anything. A collection of lingerie can be seen to some as beautiful. A collection of knives can be seen as beautiful to others. A woman is beautiful. But a woman, wearing lingerie while being hacked to death by a knife would be distasteful to many. Would the addition of blood be the culprit ? Would turning a lovely scenario of a scantily dressed woman laying next to a knife be just as scary to the voyeur without the presence of blood? It seems that with the addition of blood the viewer is no longer in control of distinguishing that line between what is pleasant and what is horrific. Each of us perceive the world differently in terms of pretty/ugly...happy/sad...sweet/sour..etc. I find extremely idillic beauty in humans a bit scary while I find some tragic deformities to be rather thought provoking and quietly beautiful. The photographer Diane Arbus captured on film this ugly/beautiful world with her view of people outside the fringe. Another photographer, Joel Peter Whitkin took this idea to the extreme by setting up still lives with corpses and amputees. The pictures are disturbing but the beauty is overwhelming. Perhaps the fact that both of these artist chose to print in black and white removes the color of fear and let's the viewer decide the tone of the piece.
So, it is true that the old adage," Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" still holds true. Even if the eye has been gauged out and replaced by a daffodil.
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