Week 2: Beauty

     David Hickey's stance on beauty is very controversial and naive. I feel as though he possesses some sort of superiority complex. Hickey positions himself as the arbiter of beauty by believing that beauty is obvious. He also believes that if something isn't beautiful, by his definition, then it isn't worth spending too much time on. By saying this he's ignoring depth in beauty, nonphysical beauty and the fact that beauty is subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Not to mention that some things aren't meant to be beautiful, yet they still have significance and attributes that people may be drawn to. Great artwork does not always have to beautiful. Hickey fails to find political, cultural, social or economical meaning within artwork because he believes it to be bad. Hickey also fails to observe art that he feels isn't worthy where an art historian would observe any piece whether its deemed "beautiful" or not. Again, sometimes great art was never intended to be portrayed as beautiful. 

    Hickey observes art with biases from his own culture. He was an American white man and his beauty standards are seen through a westernized lens (fair skin, light hair/eyes, nordic facial features). This beauty standard reflects belief in the superiority of white people. It seems as though his mind wasn't open to the beauty standards of other cultures. He was nicknamed the Enfant terrible of art criticism because he only saw art through one lens. However, Hickey uses Robert Mapplethorpe's work to prove that his point of view regarding beauty is objective. These images are a contradiction to his "beauty standards". I feel like this is because a lot of Mapplethorpe's photographs are sexual. Hickey sees these photographs as making sex beautiful. He believes this was Mapplethorpe's triumph. I feel as though Hickey fetishizes things and/or people displayed in Mapplethorpe's work. This fetishization of peoples race or ethnicity reinforces harmful stereotypes already held about different groups of people. Hickey thinks political, cultural, and social meaning behind artwork is bad, but he also thinks that images such as Mapplethorpe's collapse and combine our hierarchies of response to sex, art and religion. Would this not be a contradiction? 

    I feel as though many people's world view is skewed towards the eurocentrism direction resulting in many cultures believing that fair skin/ light features are what is deemed beautiful. This belief may be impossible to reverse completely because of racism, biases, and harmful stereotypes, however, individual definitions of beauty can be made for themselves. Again, I believe beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Whatever someone believes to be beautiful is their own opinion. It may be biased or influenced in some way or another but opinions can always change or vary.  

    Amelia Jones describes Renee Cox's photograph as strong. She writes "I want to align myself definitively with Cox's strength of mind and body, as I perceive these being expressed in the taut body image of a strong naked woman who is at once sexualized object, threatening (masculinized) muscular black female subject, and maternal subject." Jones is diving deep into this photograph by looking at social issues. She goes on to acknowledge her privilege as a white woman who "judges subjectively rather than projecting it outwards into claims for authenticity". Jones gives and finds meaning behind artwork rather than seeing beauty through one lens based off of biases, fetishes, and/or eurocentrism. I want to align myself definitively with Cox's

strength of mind and body, as I perceive these being expressed in this taut body-
image of a strong naked woman who is want to align myself definitively with Cox's
strength of mind and body, as I perceive these being expressed in this taut body-
image of a strong naked woman who is at once sexualized object, threatening (mas-
culinized) muscular black female subject, and maternal subject.