Art from the Outskirts

….Our definitions of what is good art or design may vary according to our own tastes and aesthetics captures this aspect of design very well indeed. But what does it say about our sexual attractions to others?

To say that another person is like art is probably something on might here in Shakespearian sonnet. But is it actually that odd? To answer this s not the easiest of tasks but the “attractee,”so to say, can start by looking where his or her own individuality lies: inside the human mind.

In his 1957 book The Psychology of Sexual Emotion Dr. Vernon W. Grant explores this topic is his section entitled “Sex Attraction and Art” Grant argues that the link between artistic beauty is an old theory and has a place in may in the theories of many of psychology’s great thinkers:

Freud felt sure that the attraction of beauty was rooted in sex: ” `Beauty’ and `attraction’ are first of all the attributes of a sexual object.” For Edward Spranger, “The spiritual relation of the two sexes is . . . insofar as physical sexuality does not take the upper hand, an aesthetic one.” Santayana thinks that aesthetic responsiveness comes from sexual processes “remotely stirred.” It is clear that sex psychology must come to terms of some sort with general aesthetics.

Yet Feud’s and other theories fall short of something. Whereas in sexual pursuit, a person’s ultimate agenda is to have sex, in art there is no such end. We may in fact want to touch a work of art. (This may very well be the reasoning behind all the “Do not touch the painting” signs in art galleries). However touching a painting and copulating with it are quiet different.

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