Professional Documents
Culture Documents
14
14
14
varied perspectives of the beauty of nature. It had poets like Keats and Wordsworth who turned beauty
into something ethereal and sublime.
The 20th Century saw the deviation of thinkers and philosophers from the concept. There was a wave in
the post-modern world to defy all the standards of beauty.
It popularised the view that boldness, confidence and personality are the aspects that make someone or
something beautiful. Beauty has become more dependent on the virtues and qualities that a human
possesses rather than the physical attributes he or she has. The notion of “Everyone is beautiful,” has
become the anthem of the post-modernists.
Beauty is a human-made concept which traces its origin even back to ancient Greece and Rome. The
word “kallos’ was synonymous to beauty in ancient Greece.
The pre-Socratic period also considered mathematical proportions and geometric symmetry to be
beautiful. The “classical idea of beauty” also emerged from the Greek and Roman sculptures which gave
more importance to physical attributes. The age of reason came with the renouncement of beauty as a
defining concept and turned it into more of a philosophical aspect. Lastly, the post-modernist approach
of the 20th Century has defied any physicality in the concept and believes in the notion, “Everyone is
beautiful.”
The earliest traces of the concept have been found in Ancient Greece.
Greek sculptures and the Renaissance sculptures were responsible for “classical idea of beauty.”
The Romantic period also focused more on nature and its etherealness.