December 2017
Intermediate to advanced
208 pages
3h 39m
English
The idea that a work of art should be beautiful is widely held. But just exactly what beauty is has been debated since ancient times.
• Plato (427–347 BCE) felt that we perceive an object as beautiful because it partakes of an ideal form of beauty that exists in some sort of higher plane.
• Aristotle (384–322 BCE) discussed beauty in his Metaphysics and declared that its universal constituents were order, symmetry, and definiteness.
• Vitruvius (c. 80–15 BCE) proposed a theory of beauty based on the idea that nature provides in its designs certain proportions that are universally beautiful. He cited the ideal proportions of the human body as the most desirable basis for structuring beautiful buildings and objects.
• Sigmund Freud ...