Aesthetics

What constitutes beauty has been a much-debated topic in Western art. In Grecian times, the philosopher Aristotle thought beauty was about function and proportion, while in the early 1700s, the Earl of Shaftesbury argued that goodness and beauty are one and the same. In 1735 the German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten posed the question ‘What is beauty?’ and it is from this moment that our modern reading of the word begins to evolve. He used the word ‘aesthetics’ to describe his process of understanding what makes something beautiful or ugly and how we make these judgements. The term 'aesthetics' is derived from the Greek word ‘aesthesis’ meaning perception.

Later, the philosopher Immanuel Kant sought to clarify what aesthetics meant by writing Critique of Judgement, in which he tried to work out how to analyse beauty, as well as taste and the Sublime. He concluded that there is no scientific rule for determining what beauty is, as it is subjective, and in the eye of the beholder.