New York University Beauty and Ugliness Reading Analysis
Description
Read the essays on “Beauty” and “Ugliness” by Ivan Gaskell and Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer. They are not quite as dense as Kant, but they are about 26 pages in all, so please leave yourself enough time! Readings attached!
Make note of anything that is not clear or difficult to understand. You are not the only one who finds this challenging.
Gaskell recounts an episode from his own life in which the judgment of “beauty” became a central issue. He uses this episode to illustrate how using or not using evaluative terms (like “beautiful”) can shape our ideas.
1. What (as Gaskell asks) is gained and what is lost when scholars use, or avoid using, evaluative terms such as “beautiful”?
2. What does judging something “beautiful” have to do with social status, class, or difference/otherness?
Athanassoglou-Kallmyer‘s essay examines changes in the perception of “ugliness” from ancient times to the modern day. She starts by establishing the opposition between ugliness and beauty.
3. What purpose does this opposition serve? What categories has it been used to separate, beyond objects and works of art?
4. What cultures or periods rejected ugliness, and what cultures or periods appreciated it? Why was it appreciated?
5. What do 20th-21st-century artists and theorists do with the concept of ugliness?
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