Speaking personally , and on a subject such as this it is difficult not to, I have always found the typically lauded, stereotypical images of beauty, not nearly as appealing as the quieter, understated beauty of “the girl next door”. And on that note, perhaps I can add a little anecdote:

For many years now I’ve played League volleyball in Toronto. Volley ball is one of those sports that, at the higher level at least, has a reputation for exemplifying the ideal human physique. I have to chuckle when I think of an occasion last year when one female player in particular seemed to be garnering rather more attention than usual. With a natural, unassuming demeanor, and girl-next-door looks - quite removed from the usual images of beauty that have evolved from years of shifting fashion - this girl had a much more element attractivness. Whilst waiting to rotate back into my own game, I too found myself focused a little more than I should be on the other court. Unaware that I'd been so obviously side tracked I expected, at the very least, a good natured admonishment when the wife of one of my own team members caught me not paying attention to our own game. instead though, came an unreserved concession: “Yes, She’s Beautiful”! It rather took me aback that someone one would pass up the opportunity, in such a playfull environment especially, for a little friendly teasing...very unusual! This off-hand comment started me thinking about the universal qualities of beauty and, as such, it seems worthy of inclusion here.

The "girl-next-door" phenomena might best be characterized perhaps as an "averaging" of physical characteristics. Koinophilia, as it is known, was first noticed in the late 1800's during studies that attempted to correlate social behaviour and physical appearance. It establishes that, contrary to reason, the more average the appearance the more attractive. When different facial characteristics were overlaid and an average made. The resulting composite image was always observed to be more physically appealing than either of the two originals. No one feature is particularly notable, though, taken as a whole, there is balance of proportion that is intuitively, and universally, beautiful. It is thought that any out-of-the-ordinary feature is naturally avoided. The sign, perhaps, of a potentially undesirable trait - genetically speaking. Again, this may tie in with the underlying principals of Phi, and other proportional ratios; the closer a subject is to the average, the closer to that specific mathematical "Blueprint" of nature. The evidence of these underlying natural structures can be found everywhere and the implications, I believe, are far reaching. Discussions of beauty, it seems, always come back to nature; despite the claims of Esthetes and Modernists alike.

In preparing a proposal for an upcoming exhibition I came across an interesting sentiment that makes an important connection between beauty and nature. Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (one of the key members of London’s sort-lived avant-garde movement, Vorticistism - 1913-1915) wrote:

“When I face the beauty of nature, I am no longer sensitive to art, but in the town I appreciate its myriad benefits—the more I go into the woods and the fields the more distrustful I become of art and wish all civilization to the devil; the more I wander about amidst filth and sweat the better I understand art and love it; the desire for it becomes my crying need. ”.

This quote from Gaudier-Brzeska – also a co-founder of the London Group (which, incidentally, is still in existence) – is a revealing sentiment; encapsulating, as it does, some of the inherent contradictions and conflict of Moderism. Vorticism emerged out of French Cubism, Italian Futurism and Imagism and was, as the New York Times put it in 1914, “their sure conclusion”. Embracing “modernity”, to the exclusion of everything that went before, was far from a balanced approach, and it is apparent in their writings that there was a fanaticism, borbering on madness, in this ideology. They were adventurous and forward looking; nontheless, following a series of disillusioning events, not the least of which was WWI (In which Gaudier was killed) “Futurism” fell out of favour. (Following the shock of WWI, which ushered in a period of mysticism and neo-classicism, Vorticism re-emerged as a major influence in the Art Deco movement). More on Vorticisim later.

The sentiment above illustrates that art is perhaps a substitute for nature, an attempt to capture something of the creative essence of nature. Thus art, I belive, can never wander for too long from it's naturistic roots. Implicit in this is a deep rooted need for beauty and order - ironically, the essential elements of aestheticism.

This particular overview, though much longer than those in the past, can but scratch the surface. I did think I might close by adding a number of the quotes - as mentioned earlier - ideas from the likes of Picasso and Baudelaire (All of which are easily sourced online). Instead though, I thought I would take advantage of a wonderfully serendipitous comment made over lunch just last week. Andrew Sookrah, one of the artists from our 2006 Arctic Quest project, Summed up all of my own sentiments on this subject succinctly when he said:

"I'm no judge of beauty; I'm an artist, I see beauty on all levels".

On that note which, ironically, makes much of this latest exercise a little bit redundant, I'll end this rambling, extended essay. It's been over two years since I began writing on these related subjects, inspired by an exhibition of the Hudson River School at New York's Historical society, and I hope that my slightly off-beat perspective on these varied topics has been of interest. Perhaps some of the material here will even inspire further inquiry; my own exploration will certainly continue, as the process of creating art is a never-ending journey!