A friend, recently, by commenting on a contemporary art exhibition in Germany, told of an artist who exhibited human poop as a form of art, raising interpretative doubts on visitors.
As a matter of fact, the art history is characterized by the continuous attempt to reproduce beauty inspired by nature and looking for the border of perfection.
Even in everyday speeches, defining a thing made to art means “perfect”. And the term artist is used to define, in all professions, who is particularly good and capable.
The same applies to beauty, which is used as a value criterion. The philosopher Edmund Husserl supported the aesthetic criterion as the only universal criterion that connects us to all living beings. And we see this also when we use the term “beautiful”: we define beautiful everything that seems to be successful. A gesture, a fact, an experience, an emotion. Beauty is an ontological and universal criterion for everyone.
The search for beauty implies a continuous effort: Because while even an bad detail is enough to ruin the harmony and perfection of beauty, so, on the contrary, in something bad it all the beauty of the world is not enough to improve it, because it needs a radical change instead.
While beauty requires continuous efforts and attention, the bad is always available.
While doing something bad is within the reach of anyone. It’s enough to destroy what is beautiful or create something without any care or attention. The ugly is the zero degree of human experience.
And not only: so, in order to produce beauty, we must feed ourselves on beauty, the more we are fed on existential ugliness, the more we produce and only look for ugly things: In the information area, in social area and in experiences.
The friend concluded his reasoning by asking: why are people so attracted to poop?
The answer could be the following: by eliminating the tension for beauty, this is the only thing that many people are able to produce.
LAURA MALTAGLIATI
(Original article by By Andrea Zoppolato & Duilio Forte)
