This is a very interesting topic. Symmetry and precision can be beautiful too, in fact the Greeks worshipped it. Look at the architecture of the Pantheon for example, there is definite mathematical proportion there, also studies into what humans classify as a beautiful face is based around proportion and a loose kind of symmetry (not exactly symmetrical I know) This is a subject that greatly interests me...I'd like to start a thread about it when I get the bloody time, nothing serious just a ramble about the subject so others could hopefully add their own observations, opinions etc.

Last edited by formby (2008-05-04 07:31:05)

As a little bit of an appetiser consider the two landscape gardeners, the Englishman Lancelot "Capability" Brown and the Frenchman Andre Le Notre. Brown's style is a very naturalistic, flowing organic style. Compare this to Le Notre formal, unnatural and symmetrical style, both beautiful in their own way, each the antithesis of the other. Which do you prefer? Why?

Ramble on....gunna sing my song....ramble on....

I didn't actually make it up either!

Near as I can tell there is an ongoing tension between the "natural" and the "ordered" approaches to all Western arts, though my exposure to this concept is confined primarily to English literature (viz. reaction of the Romantics to their neo-Classical predecessors).