Beauty Week 3: Beauty changes

[imomus]

Disregard all the rubbish you hear about "timeless beauty". Beauty changes. Of course it does. That's one of the most beautiful things about it. Things that are beautiful from one angle are ugly from another. Things that look good in one context, under one type of lighting, look bad in another, under another. Surrounded by ugly people, you look relatively good. By beautiful people, relatively bad. As the ugly duckling found out, what's ugly today might be beautiful tomorrow. Not because some "true inner beauty" comes out, but because things are changing all the time, and because we move the goalposts and rewrite the rules. Some new ideal of beauty gets revived. Not only does everything change, but we also change our eyes and our ways of seeing.



This week the BBC website and the Shobus blog agreed on something: that candy-striped postmodern buildings from the 1980s were suddenly beautiful again. Buildings which look like Memphis furniture. Buildings like One Poultry and MI6 HQ in London, or Kisho Kurokawa's Softopia headquarters in Ogaki, Japan:

Here's Kisho Kurokawa discussed in O.lamm's entry on Shobus blog.

Here's Mullets. White jeans. Architecture?, an article on the BBC News site, which begins: "As with fashion, styles come and go in buildings. With the haircuts, clothes and music of the 1980s making a comeback, is its architecture due a revival?"

When I watch old buildings become newly beautiful, am I watching buildings change or watching my own eyes change? Or perhaps I'm watching change itself, and finding change itself beautiful.

Here are some people listening to their own ears change in an I Love Music thread called "Do you ever overload on a band or artist at a particular point in your life until one day you wake up and you just can't listen to them any more?"

Last night Hisae and I saw a really beautiful film, The Cave of the Yellow Dog. It's set in Mongolia, and gently dramatizes the life of a nomad family who live in a yurt. Hisae slept through most of it, though, having beautiful dreams!

Here's a list of records I'm finding beautiful at the moment:

Ariel Pink: "Worn Copy"
Fan Club Orchestra Japan: "20001: A Space Odyssey"
Various: "A Paen To Flexipop"
DJ Elephant Power: "No Si, No So"
Robert Ashley: "Perfect Lives"
Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto: "Vrioon"
Rusty Santos: "The Heavens"
Terrestrial Tones: "Oboroed / Circus Lives"

And some old kabuki record I bought last year in Omihachiman. Speaking of last year, here are some of my blog entries from one year ago, which contain a lot of beauty, I think:

Graphics: Generics or Chaotics?

A Postcard from Kyoto

Osaka, yukata, geta

Polyhedric

Very much my cup of tea

Here are two beautiful people:

May Kasahara

Eye Yamataka

Sixty years ago today one of the least beautiful things in human history happened. Nuclear weapons were used against civilians for the first time.

Comments

[luckyclone.livejournal.com]

2 hip!

[fufurasu.livejournal.com]

Architecture is most certainly affected by fashion these days, a fact that is obvious if you follow the end of year shows of architectural schools for a few years. Trouble with that is that architecture is *slow* and fashion is *fast*. It takes long for buildings to go up, and they last for a minimum of 20 years usually. So the only way architectural style can be "in fashion" is when the fashion preaches nostalgia.

(Glad to see your post this morning. I had a very convincing series of dreams in which you were dead.)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

But actually, it works out quite well. For instance, the new British Library takes 20 years to complete. By the time it's finished, it looks 20 years out of date. But the fashion revival cycle is also 20 years. So... not "too late" after all, "just in time"!

Which reminds me of the title of one of my very 80s postmodern friend Douglas Benford's albums: "Just In Time For Too Late"!

[thefirstman.livejournal.com]

Is it that after twenty years, we've either forgotten enough, or is it that we've gained the opportunity to be more objective?

Or is it just dirty marketing tricks?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think it's rather like the stockmarket cycle: a style is established and hyped, it rises on the "stock exchange" of public opinion to a peak which is beyond its merit then falls out of fashion when a new style comes along to replace it. The first style is then undervalued, its share value "cheap". This tempts clever tastemakers to reassess and buy into it, at which point the hype begins all over again, as we're seeing with pomo 80s architecture.

The same thing happens with city districts. The rent is high, then falls as the over-hyped area (Docklands, ha ha!) becomes unfashionable, then, when it's sufficiently low, a rediscovery will be very likely if the area has anything whatsoever to recommend it, just because the rents are "undervalued". It tends to take 20 years or so for all that to happen.

[thefirstman.livejournal.com]

Do you think that there can be an objective 'value' then for certain styles? While I think that you're very right as far as the initial hype (and not believing it) and the subsequent undervalued state and the eventual re-discovery and reattachment (don't forget your roots), does this pattern repeat ad nauseum until it's forgotten, or does it eventually settle on some sort of agreed-upon historical value?

All of this comes to mind because I've been reading www.forgotten-ny.com. And while some sorts of archetecture (a 70s geometric fax store sporting a huge orange triangle) appear almost classic nowadays, the earlier architecture is almost always uniformly agreed upon as attractive in its beaux-arts style. Perhaps it's simply because nobody's around to rehash the events of that time from personal memory, and all the information I've got is from (at best) second-hand sources, so all I see is what I've read. Perhaps it's because I have peculiar attachment to things that appear to be detached from anyone's memory, and therefore, appeal to me purely on a romantic level. But I find that the older a style is, and as it fades, the less people argue its nastalgic 'value.'

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Jermyn Savile puts it nicely below: "Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough."

[thefirstman.livejournal.com]

Awesome.

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

i'm your friend

[bethanyrose.livejournal.com]

I can easily recall my parents being desperate to replace their "ugly and old fashioned" 1930s furniture which they'd inherited from an elderly relative. Have you seen the prices these kind of things now attract from collectors now that those chunky, heavy peices have been desginated as fashionable again?

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

whistles...

[j7bnvaaaetrd.livejournal.com]

You are just listening to Robert Ashley now?

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

i'm your friend.

[(Anonymous)]

I would not bomb you.

[artysmokes.livejournal.com]

Of course you are right about ideas of beauty being fluid and cyclical. I don't really like the MI6 building, but some of the others you mentioned ALWAYS seemed impressive to me.
One thing I've noticed is that aethetically-minded people such as myself always seem to be a couple of years ahead of the mainstream when particular styles come back into fashion. By the time the 80's revival was "officialized" by the media, I was pretty bored of it.

I hope that nuclear bombs don't ever have a revival.

P.S. Ariel Pink is GREAT.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

By the time the 80's revival was "officialized" by the media, I was pretty bored of it.

I agree with your premise, for me the 80s revival started in 2000 (you can hear it in songs like "Robocowboys" on my "Folktronic" album). But I don't think we should be so snobbish as to renounce our discoveries when other people discover them. And if we do, we should already be "onto the next thing". Are you onto the next thing, and if so, what is it? A 90s revival, obviously! Grunge, right?

[artysmokes.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't really *look for* the next thing. It just seems to find me. The electroclash thing came along just when I was getting bored of guitars and was moving back towards electronic tastes. I should be one of those tastemakers that get given free phones.
I've actually been hoping that mid-90s Britpop would come back "in" properly, 'cos I still wear all my old suits. Musically, I think the Big Beat revival is well overdue.

It's also time that "Staying In" became the new "Going Out" like it did for a month in about 1994.

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

the next thing? filofaxers.

[artysmokes.livejournal.com]

I'm not your friend. ;)

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

that's ok. i do understand.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's also time that "Staying In" became the new "Going Out" like it did for a month in about 1994.

Staying in is great! I went to a Butt magazine party last night. It was incredibly cool, but I wasn't tempted to stay more than ten minutes or so, because it was just a big room full of people smoking and drinking and listening to music, like most parties. And at home I had a rabbit!

Staying in OVER Going out.

[artysmokes.livejournal.com]

A Rabbit? As featured in Sex & The City? ;)

The best parties are the ones that don't involve leaving the house.

[saikoutron.livejournal.com]

The next thing? Brian Eno`s new album with vocals on an ambient piece? A hyperbjork movement of musical instruments composed of just the human voice. Or has that been done already?

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah we all enjoy swallowing the warmed-up crap that's fed to us over and over because we have lost all future, and we make pretty sounding songs out of desperation, to color the lack and nothingness of our insides, with gibberish like: "watching change itself, and finding change itself beautiful", and still whatever we treat ourselves to believe is worth anything in the end is just a giant heap of trash. What the fuck? I can't FEEL a single picture in all your beauty talk: it's ALL empty. You don't know jack shit about anything man, you are not even half-blind. I've been coming here for quite a while, out of my need for anything that would teach me good things, and i tried long to listen, but this is all plain nothing. It seems to me you talk so much because you're filled up with too much. Shouldn't we stay silent about our treasures? You spill your filthy words over everything in reach. "Beauty is this, beauty is that, beauty is not that" - just keep your mouth shut about this thing. Looking at you, I find more beauty in the promises of an atombomb than in what you have to offer, a false promise, a lie-to-self, a loss... and I hear you, all confident, all sophisticated, with an air of persuasion and self-reflection around you, but it's not strong, what comes, and it's not inspiring, what you talk about, it's not smart, it's not clear as a sharp knife, it's not weighted, it's only the shit you eat into yourself from morning till evening that you spill out here, in fact, you have lost yourself, and everything I read here, I always read that loss, of something i can't really define. So I'll go! And all you others, hesitate! The artist-authority may speak de la grandeur but it's not necessarily any truth in there when that happens.
I actually told myself everything above.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I can't FEEL a single picture in all your beauty talk: it's ALL empty.

Couldn't you picture how wonderful the Japanese fishing fleet looked from a plane, a network of lights stretching to the horizon?

Shouldn't we stay silent about our treasures?

No, I don't believe we should. You seem to be suffering from some sort of empathy gap or autism.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm feeling you, man.

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

Momus's obsession with beautiful things often crosses the line into escapist fantasy, but it's his career, so it's not like he can have a day job and just be an artist in his spare time.

The wondrousness of modern civilization is that it allows for the support of artists and others who do not produce goods or essential services. Chill out, have a Coke and a smile and be man enough to put a name behind your vitriol.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It might be obsessive to be enchanted with the way Eye Yamataka makes his forecurls into scrolls (http://www.alphalink.com.au/~zeroin/pics/eye.jpg), but I don't think it's "escapist". Things like this really exist, and they make life better, for me at least. Of course, the corollory is that I'm going to see a lot of really, really scary Ossie mullets at this weekend's Karl-Marx-Allee beerfest, and each one is going to make me clutch my eyes in agony, screaming in pain. But no, wait, the BBC article tells me beauty has been noted in mullets again recently! Thank God! I can look at them with that in mind!

passionate me

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

http://www.ncf.ca/~ek867/0xdc1770b939f4c422cefdd0cc.gif

[ex-mimic736.livejournal.com]

But how did Momus get famous in the first place, and develop a reputation that would bring us all here to read his critical commentaries? He may have been published here and there since his musical career began, but it's the music that sealed it for most of us. I've never been extensively aware of or interested in his various influences, but I've always been transfixed by how he responds. His music has always been more talkative and discursive than most--even his liner notes seemed to reach out for conversation. In all honesty, it's been about six years since his music actively interested me, but my interest in his writing/thinking has only grown in that time, and arouses some of the same feelings and responses as the music once did. Perhaps that's reflective of the way his own career/artistic priorities have diverged.

[ex-mimic736.livejournal.com]

Oh, and it wasn't just the illusion of conversation either--he responded to an email I sent him around age 16, eight years ago, and we know how he first acquainted himself with Shazna, and here he is now on Livejournal, arguably the most 'personal' of the blogging communities.

[ex-mimic736.livejournal.com]

(Though it also goes without saying that the conversation extends beyond teenage girls, despite what I implied here. I think I'm done now.)

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

i'm your friend

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

"Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." John Huston, Chinatown.

hope for the future

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

today in 1890 was also the first execution by electric chair.
also andy warhol's birthday.

i've been overloaded on all of my music in the last few months! but today my co-worker is lending me a handheld recorder and i am beginning my ice cream truck recordings.

some lovely recent re-releases:
Jean-Claude Vannier "L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches"
Yamasuki Singers "Le Monde Fabuleux Des Yamasuki"

everything old is new again!

gambatte!

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

Disregard all the rubbish you hear about "timeless beauty".

For once, you are dead wrong. I chuckled at the Nipposexual thing and conceded your point, tempered of course with Hisae's point of "It's how you say it", but this time you have missed the mark.

An example of timeless beauty is nature. Even when it is "inconvenient" or even dangerous, nature has a beauty that may or may not be fashionable, but is consistently beautiful. Sure there are aspects that rely on accepted fashion, such as the aesthetic value of a mound of crap or a rotting corpse; but nature is the only example of perfection that humanity has and there are inherent aesthetic aspects that are invariably consistent.

Plastic beauty does indeed change with the angle and with the collective sense of fashionable aesthetics. And, as Cerulicante pointed out in a reply to your last post, it also changes with the understanding of it's damage and cost and how conscious of such as we choose to be, moment-to-moment.

To further illustrate my point, slow-life, as you have posted before, has an aesthetic principle that is timeless: synchronizing our lives with nature's lives.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I can't agree that nature is always beautiful. Is it beautiful when a tsunami devastates a whole island? However, even if I give you the point (after all, you could quote Rilke back at me to say that beauty has a close relationship with the awesome and the terrible), I'd still say that natural beauty is subject to change, and that change is part of its beauty. Evanescence—the awareness of the temporality of beauty—is most famously celebrated by the Japanese, and the cult of sakura. I'm trying to image perma-sakura, and all I'm coming up with is an image of a plastic branch and plastic petals. So obviously I disagree with your statement "Plastic beauty does indeed change". It's only plastic which doesn't change, surely?

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

A tsunami's devastation doesn't, on it's surface, appear beautiful (as in the emotional impact of it's aftermath), but a tsunami itself does look "awesome and terrible" in its gorgeous might.

As for natural change, the change itself is beautiful (particularly when seen over time, despite minor "devastations") and, as natural change is predictably cyclical, I'd still say it's timeless.

With "plastic beauty", I was speaking metaphorically. Though with "does indeed change with the angle" I was paraphrasing your statement "Things that are beautiful from one angle are ugly from another."

I cannot say that nature is universally beautiful from every angle, but the beauty of nature as a whole is certainly timeless.

[(Anonymous)]

did mullets really come back in style (besides being made fun of on websites and in a few ironic ID photo shoots? i don't think it did. unless the author means it did in the 80's after it was populized in france during proust's time.

[(Anonymous)]

do you smoke cigarettes or otherwise momus? i need to know for some reason.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You're selling life insurance blog to blog, aren't you?

Please Momus what was that design site link again?

[meganfinley.livejournal.com]

Hi there, I was hoping that you could help me find that site you had in your back journal log which helps create comics/manga with a web application? They had a Japanese, a Chinese, and a Roman/Viking thing going on and your could select the characters in their poses and flip them around and add your own captions underneath. I know you are busy and all but if you can help I'd appreciate it. I seem to remember the artists who did it were Scandinavian. Thanks so much!

Re: Please Momus what was that design site link again?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think it was this one (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/2005/03/16/). By the way, anyone can search this blog pretty easily with Google. Just type "imomus + subject".

Re: Please Momus what was that design site link again?

[meganfinley.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! Best regards, Megan PS I won't bother you again , I'll search the blog on Google. Happy days!