Must Art Be Beautiful?

Before we engage with this question, we must realise that the beauty of the world exists independently of human consciousness. 

Scientific studies suggest that humans are naturally drawn to symmetrical forms, so maybe it is possible that there is some biological truth of what is beauty for human beings. Since ancient times, the most vital concept underlying beauty and harmony, is the concept of symmetry. Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras believed beauty was centred around a kind of universal harmony. A thought which is shared by German mathematician Hermann Weyl, according to whom “Symmetry… is the idea by which man for centuries tried to comprehend and create order, beauty, and perfection.” (Testov, 2020)

While symmetry has long been upheld as a marker of beauty, not all artists and thinkers subscribe to the idea of aesthetic universality. Baudelaire and Courbet critique this notion in promoting the idea that beauty correlates with the time in which one lived. That beauty is conditional and dependent, not eternal. In Baudelaires' best-known work, "The Painter of Modern Life," he argued that true beauty captures the essence of its contemporary context, reflecting the prevailing moods, fashions, and struggles of the time. This was a stark departure from the classical ideal of beauty, which aspired to timeless perfection and universal standards. In similar fashion, Gustave Courbet rejected academic art's romanticised and idealised representations of beauty. It’s not incidental that both artists emerged in a period marked by significant social and political upheaval in France. Both Baudelaire and Courbet's approaches underscore a critical shift in the understanding of beauty.

This tension between universal beauty and contextual beauty leads to the question: who determines what is beautiful? If the classical ideal relied on symmetry, and Baudelaire saw beauty as rooted in the present moment, where does that leave us today?In our modern world, we are very comfortable with the concept that beauty is determined by one’s experiences. An individual’s attachment and connection to the artwork, that is deeply personal, has become more appreciated in the 21st century. Old forms of authority that would have dictated what is beautiful do not exist as they did years before in the 19th century, when art academies decided what was and wasn’t beautiful based on Greco-Roman ideals. Art academies upheld these ideals not merely out of admiration but as a means of enforcing a rigid hierarchy within artistic practice—one that equated technical mastery and classical proportion with artistic legitimacy. By institutionalising these standards, academies positioned beauty as something objective, measurable, and exclusive to those trained in their doctrines, thereby marginalising alternative artistic expressions. This fact explains artistic focus on idyllic proportion, of the human body especially. The academies steered artists in the direction of what they conceptualised to be the ideal, and thus all of art education was geared toward teaching one to be able to achieve that kind of beauty - an education that must have been truly suffocating and oppressive for artists. 

Circling back to the necessity of beauty in art or the lack thereof, artists of the 21st century are not the only ones who are able to separate art from aesthetic and appeal. Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, implies that the beauty of art lies in its ability to reveal deeper truths and meanings, "The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance." Many artists agree with the concept of art as a vessel of the truth. Georges Braque, a pioneer of Cubism, claimed “Art is meant to disturb. Science reassures.” What does it mean for art to ‘disturb’ in contrast to science ‘reassuring’? Is the implication that beauty is passive, while truth is active? As a pioneer of one of the most well known movements in art history, you would expect his art to be made to be beautiful, but instead he implies the purpose of art is to challenge and provoke rather than comfort with beauty. 

The perception of art transcends mere visual appeal, encompassing emotional resonance, historical context, and personal experience. As society evolves, so too does our understanding of what constitutes ‘beauty,’ and with it, the purpose of art itself. Beauty, once considered a fixed and universal ideal, has been reshaped by cultural, historical, and individual influences. Art, in its truest form, is a mirror of our collective and individual experiences, capable of capturing the full spectrum of human emotions and everything in between. It can be as beautiful or as unsettling as the truths it seeks to convey. Today, as we continue to challenge the boundaries of what art can be, perhaps the most important question is "Must art be beautiful?" In a world where art is increasingly seen as a reflection of the human condition rather than a pursuit of aesthetic perfection, the notion that art must conform to traditional standards of beauty becomes obsolete, but make no mistake beauty has not vanished from artistic discourse altogether.