Recently, the class has been subjected to a multitude of presentations on famous pieces of literature. One such presentation, on Ovid's Metamorphoses introduced a question that raised my eyebrows: "Does art exceed nature when referring to beauty?"
At first I thought, "Yes! After all, art can be manipulated however you want, even displaying what lacks existence in reality." However, I quickly retracted that claim. The perspective I originally pursued targeted only the visual aspect of beauty, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this is what everyone else focused on as well.
In my opinion, beauty is much more than the visual aspect, including what that visual makes you feel inside. Nature has something that art lacks: physical, external sensation. Beauty does not have to be restricted to what we see; instead, it can be defined by how it stimulates each and all of our senses. I find walking on the beach--feeling the salty breeze on my neck and hot sand on my feet--is more beautiful than a picture on a wall, no matter how enhanced the visual may be.
The need for art is in your argument. Of course a walk down a beach in the hot sand is far more substantial then a picture of a nice beach but the ability to be at said beach is very limited to many. I do not believe art exceeds nature, but I see art as a way to evoke the memories and sensations given by the real thing. For instance I am a huge Disney World fan my family and I go every year and we have made it a huge part of our lives. Now for obvious reasons we are only able to physically be in Disney one week of the year and that is truly a lot in reality. So we look to art in many different mediums in order to fill the void between terms in Disney. So far as to tattoo it to my body even! Just a simple picture from a photo album, or a painting of the castle can take my mind to the good times associated with the item in question. This is where art can be more "beautiful" then nature as nature is not as easily accessible as art is. Of course if you can be where you want to be in nature go be there but if you really cannot then art may be all you have to enjoy the entire beauty of the nature you desire.
ReplyDeleteI agree that beauty runs much deeper than surface level, and I think nature and art are both visually and internally sensational. They are both pretty and they both make a person feel something. But nature has a raw beauty, and there is something more appealing about that to me. Nature is always here and now, as where art often brings the spectator somewhere else.
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