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Comment by sph | Hacker News Reader

There are two schools of thought: those that think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and those that think, like Steve Jobs famously quipped, that some people just have no good taste.

After fighting with this concept for years, I decided to embrace the superiority and smugness that comes with the latter: the vast majority of people have no understanding of beauty and aesthetic.

The only thing that stops the world from becoming uglier is social norms and peer pressure. Otherwise there'd be more people very proud of wearing socks with their flip flops in public and choosing serif fonts for their computer UIs.

Mind you: beauty doesn't have to be conformism nor normative. But like music, you need to understand the rules first, before trying to break them.

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I never bought into the "eye of the beholder" on aesthetics.

I might not understand a particular aesthetic. It might be impossible to formulate logical rules to decide what is beautiful. But beauty is objective, nonetheless.

Be it an exquisite Japanese drawing of a bird with ink and rice paper, or Caravaggio, anyone with a soul can see that talent, effort, and a sense of "wholeness" went into creating both.

I, personally, cannot appreciate Chinese calligraphy art; but I don't doubt for a second it is beautiful and I could appreciate its beauty if I cared to learn Chinese calligraphy.

On the other hand, 1950s brutalist buildings, by their own architect's admission, are ugly. An attempt by nihilist "artists" to force their rejection of aesthetics on others. A sea of grey cement m, jagged lines, and boxes resembling prison cells reflect the architects' sense that we are oppressed... and then shove that claustrophobic feeling on all of us too dumb or too happy to be suffer from ennui.

> On the other hand, 1950s brutalist buildings, by their own architect's admission, are ugly.

Plenty of brutalist buildings are not ugly.

https://preview.redd.it/1w5r7lmno0491.jpg?width=4032&format=...

Interesting uses of lines and perspective, a willingness to have large sweeping architectural shapes that were not possible before, huge stairwells, open air walkways, plenty of windows for natural light.

Yes the concrete is ugly as sin, and it turns out it weathers and falls apart way sooner than anyone expected, but the shapes concrete was able to create are impressive.

Let me guess. A university or a museum.

It's.. not pretty. A wannabe portico that is more reminiscent of a jail hallway. Its lined with buttock crushing benches to "rest".

As you (necessarily briefly) sit on this bench, at no point are you allowed to fathom that you'll ever escape the concrete that envelops you on every side.

Concrete floor.

Concrete walls.

Concrete ceiling.

But! There's hope in the horizon! A few trees grow in the courtyard. these are the only things that shatters this prison cell. That introduces hope and, yes, beauty. None of it manmade.

For the beauty in this picture, if there is any at all, is exclusive to nature. The trees' elegance jumps at the viewer precisely because otherwise everything in this picture is ugly.

> But! There's hope in the horizon! A few trees grow in the courtyard. these are the only things that shatters this prison cell. That introduces hope and, yes, beauty. None of it manmade.

It is a wonderful campus to be on. Open air walkways between classes, vines growing everywhere, lots of natural light.

Concrete allowed for playing with new shapes and angles, the beauty is in the flow and dynamism of shapes.

Go browse the top posts of https://www.reddit.com/r/brutalism/top/?t=all plenty of amazing buildings there.

Interiors like https://i.redd.it/e7yucwdqia461.jpg are wonderful to be in, and new technologies in construction materials and techniques made those interiors possible at a much lower price compared to what was possible before.

https://www.reddit.com/r/brutalism/comments/hlqa2l/geisel_li...

That is just cool.

I'm not going to claim Brutalism has a good track record vs art deco or modern styles that incorporate natural material (loved me some mixed textures!) but claiming everything brutalist is ugly is just false.

(another good entry, https://i.redd.it/5volkc9zx4561.jpg)

> I never bought into the "eye of the beholder" on aesthetics.

Indeed, but I suspect this has a lot to do with the embrace of materialism, a metaphysical view that has far-reaching and destructive intellectual consequences. Once you accept materialism, you have a whole world of phenomena that cannot be explained purely in terms of res extensa which leads some people to a kind of crypto-Cartesian position in which this unexplainable excess is swept under the rug of the "subjective". (I say "crypto-Cartesian" because res extensa cannot accommodate this excess explanatorily, so clearly you've got to pass the buck and squirrel away things in this metaphysical time-out zone that you've conveniently constructed to hold all that things you cannot explain according to your officially stated dogmas.)

Also, philosophical liberalism encourages a kind of indulgence of the subjective, a kind of alternate reality protected from error and insulated from threatening facts. Desire is one such thing kept in the safety of this interior world. It is not possible to have evil or disordered desires (with some ad hoc exceptions). It is not possible to have bad taste. These are "subjective" matters, and since only objective matters can be debated, then, as the saying goes, de gustibus non est disputandum. "That's just your opinion, man!"

"Thats just your opinion man!"

Ugh. The triteness is the worse part.

There are two schools of thought: those that think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and those that think, like Steve Jobs famously quipped, that some people just have no good taste.

There certainly aren't just two schools of thought. A third school would that a variety of aesthetics exist each serving a different purpose and each requiring some small or large amount of study to appreciate and each providing a somewhat different level of reward to those that study it - none of these are better or worse but learning none at is bad (like cuisines - even fast food can have its charms but fast food all the time is sad and unhealthy, etc). Some paintings are both immediately striking and can offer more as you study them but other might have just one or the other quality.

As far as the article goes, urban architecture has gone from traditional to high modernist to the present fair. The thing about, say, a building by one of the "great" modernist architects is it (usually) provides a fits organically with the environment quality while also providing more rewards and still offer a given place a "sense of place". Oppositely, a cheap contemporary building offers at best, only blending with the environment, it's only camouflage and some completely eliminates a sense of place from around the building. Ironically, the main way one can get a sense of place today through the truly bad examples of contemporary architecture, thing that fail as camouflage and stand out like a sort thumb.

I'd like to put forth the idea that taste is cultivated. Might seem like I'm splitting hairs but I don't like the idea that 'taste' is something you're born with - that its innate - you either got it or you don't. Its like saying some people can cook and others can't, etc etc. That's a story we like to comfort ourselves with. I disagree with the premise /almost/ entirely.( I promise I'm fun at parties. An individual claiming they "just can't do X" is shorthand but "There are people who are born incapable to do X, no matter the effort" is where I take issue)

Like any talent, its a pursued interest. I seriously think the world would be a better, more beautiful place if people were willing to push back on social norms and peer pressure more often; Especially when the stakes are so low.

I'm not the one to do it but I'm willing to bet we could agree on an aesthetic that is based around Flip-Flops and Socks - the Japanese might want to have a word or socks with those Adidas sandals.

The reality of human pursuits is that regardless of how we like to think of history, we aren't actually being led by a few Omega-Tier mutant geniuses who gift us with ~ A E S T H E T I C S ~ (Tm) but we collaborate and try things and fail and try again. A culture where more people feel more free to express themselves is one where the Art gets better, IMHO.

can you help me make sense of your argument? If most people have bad taste, how can peer pressure prevent ugliness? Peer pressure almost by definition demands conformity.

If one isn't born with taste, peer pressure and conformity is what stops them from going full ugly.

But of course, the artistic ideal is someone that understands taste and beauty, so they can shed norms and just do whatever they want. This is why Michael Jackson could pull off wearing white socks with dark leather shoes, but we collectively know they do not pair well.

Keep going though.

It’s not just about “taste”.

We have always needed opinionated people to be able to push their ideas. That’s what Linus is, Jobbs was, like him last year or hate him this year Musk, Eminem, Pulitzer, Jefferson, Tesla or Edison, Stuart Mill, the Wrights, and so on to any major or minor scale…

The best things come from opinionated people who were told they couldn’t go against the grain like that.

We’ve have rejected that idea. Everything is run by MBAs who avoid opinionated in favor of a boring mass appeal.

Look at big tech in the last decade… who was actually opinionated? What is actually worth a damn in 10-15 years? Zuck and Dorsey are clowns. Bezos seemed to have some great ideas on how a company should communicate internally but to an effect that is insanely boring (but reliable which is good for something else). Uber and Etsy and Apple after jobs, none of them show opinion, not in a “dangerous” sense.

We’ve conditioned ourselves into conformity because being opinionated is to be “an asshole”. We told assholes they aren’t welcome with CoCs and that every opinion is equally valid, with virtue signaling and post modernism of “my truth”, and that you can forgo everything else if it people buy it.

We’ve silenced anyone who could make something beautiful because it also might be offensive.

I'd consider Zuck opinionated compared to the other FAANG companies. I appreciate his bet on the Metaverse. I don't think it's a good idea, but I can appreciate having an opinion.

I don’t know, I guess I’ve never seen it. But I would say in addition to my argument is that I don’t think there is anything about the MBA-ification of the world that has prevented bad decisions.

It just runs them through a calculator and committee first.

I'm saddened to see you downvoted. I do not agree with the examples you've made but I agree with the general idea of your comment.

In our thirst for a more progressive society, we've created an artistically dull culture that is afraid to offend, and there can be no beauty if one isn't allowed to say fuck the rules. Punk died at the turn of the millennium, and we're all a bunch of posers now.

I love that this is down-voted, and in doing so validated.

Very well said. I had a similar takeaway, captured by this quote which is representative of many flavors of the sameness described in the article

"The imagined color of life under communism, gray has revealed itself to be the actual hue of globalized capital. “The distinct national colors of the imperialist map of the world have merged and blended in the imperial global rainbow,” wrote Hardt and Negri. What color does a blended rainbow produce? Greige, evidently."

> We’ve conditioned ourselves into conformity because being opinionated is to be “an asshole”.

Asshole is just a shorthand for "inconsiderate of others". Not everyone who is opinionated is an asshole, but some are. And some of those assholes even have valuable opinions, which we do consider, but still recognize them as being assholes.

Tolerance is tiresome. Putting up with nonsense, and being impelled to consume metaphorical shit, is vulgar to the soul.

In art, the nonsense is the lack of honesty. Inauthenticity brought forth and exhibited for all of us to see. People without a shred of depth having the obnoxiousness to put something out that appears to be more than it is. The hubris.

Each passing day, I understand the wisdom of the French and their intolerance more.

There is nothing objectively beautiful about modern architecture. Brutalism, for example, is talentless nonsense.

Before the advent of "everyone gets sued", the ADA, nuclear war, etc there was actual creative freedom. Now, everything is just one size fits all. Just in case you happen to attract the wrong attention.

Architecture really is a reflection on how mind numbingly dull modern life actually is.

> Brutalism, for example, is talentless nonsense.

Brutalism is a perfectly serviceable form of art. The problem is that architecture has more practical purposes than pure art, as its goal is to create inviting living spaces. It needs to exist within this constraint, with the ultimate judges being the people that dwell in it, and the architect as their servant. Imposing architecture on people is just plain rude, and brutalism can be quite imposing and oppressive.

So in general I agree, brutalist architecture is terrible.

> Brutalism, for example, is talentless nonsense.

I find eco-brutalism to be interesting and eerily captivating, but I think it relates to your last sentence:

> Architecture really is a reflection on how mind numbingly dull modern life actually is.

Eco-brutalism reminds me of depictions of the remnants of long lost civilisations adopted by privitive species*.

* This is likely a consequence of growing up playing Halo CE.

At least brutalistic buildings have some character. I'd take living in the hollowed out bones of a concrete monstrosity over the tepid soulless constructions we are building in the post-modern age.

Some of the most fetishous ideas about building design come from AI-art. Unconstrained by economics, practicality, or code, I've been offered glimpses of architectures that could have been and in doing so have a profound impact but also a sense of loss of the could-have-been.

> There is nothing objectively beautiful about modern architecture.

I drive by multiple, lovely, modern houses every day. Some are incredibly well restored mid century pieces, others are tastefully done new buildings.

I'd argue that examples such as

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Einstein...

http://inspirationist.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/223.jpg

https://mediacloud.theweek.com/image/upload/f_auto,t_content...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stillman_Photo_2.jpeg

are great examples of modern exteriors.

It is also worth noting that modern buildings are largely about interior spaces. Tons of natural light all day long, and beautiful interiors that work as canvases to hang the art that one gathers throughout life.

You want to know what is ugly? Almost everything built in America in the 40s.

Cape cod houses.

Saltbox houses

Modern architecture encompasses a wide set of styles. Yes the crap "modern" houses being thrown up now days with bad vinyl siding are ugly. They also didn't have a single architect involved in their creation.

The good modern houses, the ones that play with textures and colors, that use natural materials mixes with the modern, those are far from ugly.

With brutalism, as it is obvious from its name, it is a deliberate move. The bigger question is why this direction has been embraced so much. I.e. why brutalist architects get commissions to build the next ugly building after they built the previous ugly (and often poorly functioning) building? Why taxpayers, who pay for many of these buildings, tolerate it? I think the latter may be because of the "you have no taste, peasant" thing - they have been convinced that "the experts" know what is really beautiful and really ugly, and only their opinion matters. I think there might be time to push back on that and admit the possibility that if something looks ugly, there may be a chance it is ugly.

music is a good analogy. In college, for whatever reason, i hung out with far more architecture students than CS students. Hanging out with architecture students (and their professors i might add) in their studios and listening to them brag about themselves and teardown each other is a lot like hanging out with insufferable music fans in a record store.

on a tangent, i felt really bad for the kids in that school. They all had such grand plans and were taught that if they don't change the world then they're worthless. Then they graduate and are stuck doing construction documents for Taco Bells and things like that. That has to be a bitter pill to swallow.

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