Single Idea 23921

[catalogued under 21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 5. Natural Beauty]

Full Idea

It is not what I call an aesthetic emotion that most of us feel, generally, for natural beauty. …Most people feel a very different kind of emotion for birds, flowers and butterfly wings from that we feel for pictures, pots, temples and statues.

Gist of Idea

Our feeling for natural beauty is different from the aesthetic emotion of art

Source

Clive Bell (Art [1913], I.I)

Book Reference

Bell,Clive: 'Art' [nk 2010], p.5


A Reaction

Not convinced. I think the main difference is our awareness that art is a human production, the result of choice, whereas nature is a given. Beethoven 9 and a good sunset don't seem to me far apart in our responses.