subject: Aesthetics Verses Popular Art. [print this page] Aesthetics is usually thought of as beauty/ugliness however is more precisely described as creating something with no any concern for winning any Game.
Beauty and ugliness is in reality aesthetics PLUS game issues. This ought to be observable from the fact that what is considered "beautiful" changes radically (even becoming the opposite of what it was) according to the health considerations of a specific period in history . . . for example a long time ago a good-looking lady was a woman who was fat since fat women had sufficient food to eat, but more recently attractiveness is a thin woman who is healthier than somebody who is overweight. Beauty/ugliness is in reality aesthetics plus concern for winning the game of "survival". Survival is amongst the main games on earth, and in this physical-universe.
"Fine Art" is generally about aesthetics but what is popular will always be more concerning emotions than aesthetics. This difference is not absolute, of course . . . as an example , the romantic fine art period was a lot to do with emotions (artists such as Stubbs, Landseer etc.), and fine art is in many cases popular as well although this is frequently because the lower classes strive to pretend to be like the higher classes, so they like what the art represents in terms of class as opposed to actually liking the art in its own right.
In fact this really is a massively common factor in the fondness for any art or music. Most of the people like what the media, or society tells them to like, for the reason that they have a concept of what "Class" or level in society they believe that they are, consequently they like things that that class likes. Clearly, this has a range of different levels, with large numbers of sub-cultures in a class.
Here is an example of this difference between emotions and aesthetics from music . . . compare early Pink Floyd with The Beatles. The Beatles are considerably more popular as a result of their focus on emotions but early Pink Floyd is more about the aesthetics. Lots of people might feel they are similar, but if one can realize the difference between emotions and aesthetics, they are in fact very different.
Some humans are fascinated with aesthetics but the majority of people aren't at all, so emotions will always be more well-liked than aesthetics. In practical terms, what this means is that popular art will probably be art that's about emotions, as compared with being concerned with aesthetics.
