Aesthetic Emotions and Lines of Beauty and Grace
Lines of Beauty and Grace, the photography of Jock Sturges. You can see an interesting interview with the artist here. This interview is associated with a documentary released on DVD about the photographer and entitled “Lines of Beauty and Grace”.
I love this title because it is associated with the theory of aesthetics by the painter William Hogarth, as he wrote in a book called “The Analysis of Beauty” [full text online here]. The concept of Lines of Beauty and Grace is just a perfect description of the sense of beauty that the work of Jock Sturges conveys. Smoothness and curved lines, with gradients leading to smooth transitions. Lines of Beauty and Grace.
William Hogarth proposed that the core of “Beauty of Line” in art or nature is not the simple geometry of a straight line or circle, or more elaborated but still simple shapes like the oval, but of curves that progress smoothly from one gradient to another. An example of line of beauty would be a S-shaped line, a geometric figure that excites the attention of the viewer as opposed to simple straight lines, or crossed lines that convey a negative impression to the viewer. Hogarth defined the s-curve as the basis for all great art.
The following excerpt is from the book, Mental Science: A Compendium of Psychology and the History of Philosophy (Classics in Psychology Series) [Ayer Publishing]
“Waving lines are more beautiful that straight lines, because they are more varied; and among the waving lines, there is but one entitled to be called The Line of Beauty, the others bulging too much, and so being gross and clumsy, or straightening too much, and thereby becoming lean and poor. But the most beautiful line is the serpentine line called by Hogarth, the Line of Grace. This is the line drawn once round, from the base to the apex, of a long, slender cone. As contrasted with straight lines, the Lines of Beauty and Grace posses an intrinsic power of pleasing”
The power of pleasing, the power of beauty, this is the intent of the photographic work of Jock Sturges, as he explains in the interview.
“There is no excellent beauty, that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. ”
Essays of Sir Francis Bacon #43