Many years ago as a young man I set out to become an artist. I was not a fan of any known art style or established master, and I had NO idea what I was doing. I was, however, a fan of female beauty so I proceeded to make pictures of beautiful women, hoping to eventually create something I could call "art". After creating an image of a beautiful woman I would look at it for hours, in contemplation, hoping it would inspire me to make more, hoping to learn something, looking for a mystery to explore further, trying to be an "artist". I concluded that any drawing that would inspire me to look at it for hours had to be art, and I congratulated myself at having become an artist. Unfortunately, I still didn't know exactly HOW I'd done it. After many more drawings I was still wondering why the ladies I'd drawn were so beautiful to me. Was it their blonde hair? Their elegant bodies? Their bare breasts? Their lovely skin? The ladies didn't answer. Then one day, as my mind wandered over this drawing I asked myself why I'd included the rock in it. "Because I like rocks," I said. And why is the woman striking a diving pose? "I guess because I like that too." BOOM! It was precisely THEN, in that exact moment, that it hit me: I didn't draw beautiful women because they were beautiful; I found them beautiful because I'd put them into poses I liked! I had drawn something simply because I liked it and BOOM! I found it beautiful. I realized that day that it's not some mysterious force that does it but our personal values that make something beautiful to us, that beauty is always the result of depicting our values (the things we like) - that it IS the depiction of values - and while we may FEEL beauty is inspiring us, it's really our values doing it. This is very important because it means beauty - including female beauty - is the direct result of values. It means female beauty is a moral concept, and inextricably connected to what we consider good. It means people who hate beauty hate values per se, and those who defend female beauty are defending morality. Heady stuff. And to this day I can't look at this picture without thinking the rock taught me all this, and that that is why the girl is standing in front of it poised and ready. She is me, isn't she? And she is about to learn something important about beauty. Kinda freaky isn't it?
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