#esthetic

Arguments for preservation based on the beauty of wilderness are sometimes treated as if they were of little weight because they are "merely aesthetic". That is a mistake. We go to great lengths to preserve the artistic treasures of earlier human civilisations. It is difficult to imagine any economic gain that we would be prepared to accept as adequate compensation for, for instance, the destruction of the paintings in the Louvre. How should we compare the aesthetic value of wilderness with that of the paintings in the Louvre? Here, perhaps, judgment does become inescapably subjective; so I shall report my own experiences. I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and in many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that have filled my aesthetic senses in the way that they are filled when I walk in a natural setting and pause to survey the view from a rocky peak overlooking a forested valley, or by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set amongst tall tree-ferns, growing in the shade of the forest canopy, I do not think I am alone in this; for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost mystical intensity. ↗

— Peter Singer

#nature #art

Sometimes diaspora art expresses a longing for home, and frequently it tries to construct a collective identity out of its mostly heterogeneous reality. ↗

— Sieglinde Lemke

#mercer #art

Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. ↗

— Aldo Leopold

#each #economically #ethically #examine #expedient

Scientific understanding is often beautiful, a profoundly aesthetic experience which gives pleasure not unlike the reading of a great poem. ↗

— Paul Nurse

#beautiful #experience #gives #great #often

A lot of children don't have a developed aesthetic. I did. I made early choices in life, even about cloth; I liked flannel and not polyester. ↗

— Patti Smith

#aesthetic #children #choices #cloth #developed

Before vampires were aesthetically appealing, they were physical anomalies and ostracized outsiders whom we banished to the dark, and they didn't have the appeal that they do now. ↗

— Ian Somerhalder

#appeal #appealing #banished #before #dark

Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but that's not reality, it's just another aesthetic form of fiction. ↗

— Steven Soderbergh

#another #fiction #form #just #moment

I am courteous enough to assume that everyone in this so aesthetically voluptuous age, so potent and aroused that conception occurs as easily as with the partridge which, Aristotle says, needs only to hear the voice of the cock or its flight overhead - to assume that at the mere sound of the word 'concealment' everyone can easily shake a dozen romances and comedies from his sleeve. ↗

— Søren Kierkegaard

#aristotle #concealment #courtesy #partridge-and-cock #age

The darkening of the world makes the irrationality of art rational: radically darkened art. ↗

— Theodor W. Adorno

#philosophy #art

At last everything was satisfactorily arranged, and I could not help admiring the setting: these mingled touches betrayed on a small scale the inspiration of a poet, the research of a scientist, the good taste of an artist, the gourmet’s fondness for good food, and the love of flowers, which concealed in their delicate shadows a hint of the love of women ↗

— August Strindberg

#art #food #inspiration #love #poetry