Woke up this morning thinking about what is the root of sensory pleasure. What makes something pleasing? Why are some songs immediately danceable, hummable, everything just sounding “right”? Each sense has it’s own barometer of pleasure. And as much as we like to think we are all individuals, with individual tastes… there are many commonalities when it comes to sensory pleasure. Sweet is still sweet to most everyone’s plate. A balanced range of tones is soothing to the ear. Food relies as much on our sense of smell and sight as well as the obvious, taste.
There is, however, appeal to be found in discordant sounds, clashing flavors, scents meant to repulse or repel, and sights that confound the eyes, and by extension, the brain. I apply these thoughts to my own visual work, of course. I’ve pursued a path over the past year or so to disregard the “pleasing” image, the perfect exposure, the balanced composition. There are many reasons why, of course, often discussed here, and in my therapist’s office. But this morning, in particular, I am thinking deeply about what makes an image “good.” What makes something pleasant to look at. And why we as humans gravitate towards that. I think our brains are wired to respond more positively to something balanced, symmetrical, colored in a balanced contrast, balanced in taste, or sound, or scent, or appearance. Yet, perhaps it’s a element of contemporary life, certainly from a 21 century perspective, that with this desire for pleasure, we are ignoring the discordant, the chaotic, the “ugly” or the imbalanced.
A walk through history yields many examples of a counter to the idea of beauty, of perfection, of harmony. I tend to believe that ignoring the ugliness of the world is to deny our truly nature. And the nature of the world. I think about Werner Herzog’s musings on the subject:
“Taking a close look at what is around us, there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle, we in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel, a cheap novel. And we have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication, overwhelming growth, and overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars up here in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it, I love it very much, but I love it against my better judgment.”
Regarding visual art, there are myriad examples of art that has been dismissed as ugly, or in a simpler way, misunderstood when compared to the prevailing trends of its time. The history of art, all the way back to prehistoric times, is littered by modes of expression that confuse or outright offend our inner sense of beauty. Yet these works are as valuable as any “masterpiece” hanging in a museum. At the very least, they provide perspective to our definition of beauty, harmony, balance…pleasure. And any denial of darkness, metaphoric or literal, is ultimately providing the viewer, the brain, our soul… an incomplete picture.
