What are the characteristics of elegance?

1, a historical review of beauty

Elegance, also known as beauty, elegance and femininity, is often regarded as beauty in a narrow sense in the history of aesthetics. Elegance is a special form of beauty, which shows the lightness and grace of action and form. This word comes from three Greek goddesses-Charite, which the Romans call Cratia, symbolizing all beauty, joy and brilliance. As a manifestation of beauty, people often add some aesthetic colors to it: small, smart, naughty, delicate, and so on. This feature can occur at the same time as beauty, but it is not the inherent essential feature of beauty. In art, it refers to the light, smart, elegant and nuanced description of small themes. " [34]

Ancient Greek culture can be regarded as a beautiful historical source in the history of western culture. The harmonious and free system, cultural atmosphere and natural environment of ancient Greece produced beautiful soil, and the myths, sculptures and buildings of ancient Greece reflected beautiful characteristics everywhere. Hegel's evaluation of ancient Greek mythology is: "In the real classical ideal, the spiritual personality of the gods ... is not understood through the conflicts and struggles caused by their special differentiation, but through their eternal calmness and self-restraint and their tragic state in peace." [35] This "calmness" and "peace" make the overall style of the myth beautiful. Gombrich commented on Pollack Tellez's sculpture: "He can show the uplift and movement of muscles and bones under soft skin, and can make people feel all the beauty of a living human body." "There is no living human body in the world that is as symmetrical, uniform and beautiful as a Greek statue." [36] Dana believes that "the form of Greek statues is not only perfect, but also can fully express the artist's thoughts." [37] winkelmann said that the Greek sculpture "has a sense of solemnity because of its straight and soft lines, while the slightly undulating lines have a feminine taste. Beauty is included in this side. " [38] Then, Renaissance art is also a typical example of beautiful art. Dana said: "The Italian imagination is classical, that is, it belongs to the ancient Greeks and Romans." "Their buildings are full of strong, happy, cheerful, elegant and natural atmosphere." "Their music, like singing, has a distinct rhythm, but it is also beautiful and pleasant." Close to the Greek model: the proportion of each part is even, the development is balanced, the posture depicted after selection is wonderful, and the pleats are arranged properly with the surrounding human body to form a harmonious whole. " [39]

Corresponding to the cultural atmosphere and artistic expression of beauty, the history of western aesthetics began to explore the aesthetic characteristics of beauty. Cicero, an ancient Roman aesthete, thought that "there are two kinds of beauty, one is beauty and the other is solemnity;" We should regard beauty as female beauty and majesty as male beauty. " [40] British Bacon put forward that "the beauty of the combination of beauty and elegance is the essence of beauty" [4 1], Huo Jiasi put forward that the serpentine line is the most beautiful line, and Shafsbury thought that beauty is "beauty, elegance and harmony" [42]. In his Philosophical Discussion on the Ideological Roots of Sublime Beauty, Bok systematically discussed the graceful formal features, a delicate appearance, and even a delicate appearance, which is almost indispensable for beauty. "The most striking feature of flowers is their fragility and transience, but they give us the most vivid ideas about beauty and elegance." "The beauty of women is largely due to their delicacy or delicacy. "The concept of beauty is not much different from beauty, it is contained in almost the same thing. The concept of elegance belongs to posture and action. In these two aspects, if you want to be beautiful, you must show it without difficulty. This requires that the body should be slightly bent and all parts of the body should be self-sustaining so as not to interfere with each other or be separated by sharp and abrupt edges and corners. All the magic of beauty lies in the leisurely, complete and feminine posture and movements "[43]. German classical aesthetician winkelmann divided Greek art into four stages and four styles: ancient, sublime, elegant and imitation. Among them, the style of "elegance" is the style of beauty, and there are two kinds of "elegance": "One kind of elegance, like Venus in the sky, is of noble birth. She comes from harmony and is eternal "; "The second kind of elegance, like Venus raised by Dione, embodies the laws of matter" [44], which is secular and emotional. In the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, it is pointed out that "beauty is regarded as a beautiful feature of classical art because it is similar to the concept of beauty, especially in plastic arts. It was Schiller who regarded it as an important concept in general aesthetics and elaborated it in theory, making it an important basis for the theory of beauty in the future "[45]. Schiller pointed out in Beauty and Dignity that "in the beautiful mind, sensibility and rationality, obligation and hobby are harmonious, and beauty is the expression of the beautiful mind in the phenomenon"; "The ideal of perfect human nature requires not the contradiction between moral things and perceptual things, but the harmony between them, so this ideal and dignity will not be well compatible, because dignity, as the expression of contradiction between them, is not the individual limitation of the subject, but the universal limitation of human nature." Here, dignity equals sublimity. Compared with dignity, beauty is more in line with people's personality and ideals. At the same time, beauty and dignity, that is, beauty and sublimity can complement each other. "Only because of beauty can dignity be recognized, and only because of dignity and beauty can we gain value" [46]. Shestakov, an aesthetician in the former Soviet Union, thought that Schiller put forward the theory of the unity of human moral cultivation and aesthetic cultivation, which made the theory of beauty logically complete [47].

It can be said that in Schiller's era, beauty attracted all the attention. In the following era, the discussion about beauty no longer occupies a dominant position, and sublimity, as a new aesthetic category, has become the darling of the times. "Spencer was the last person who studied beauty as a realistic aesthetic category. At 19 and the end of the 20th century, we only saw the works of two aesthetic historians, N. souriau and P. Baier, who studied the concept of beauty. " [48] "The seriousness of the gods becomes beautiful, not shocking or making people surpass its particularity, but making people rest peacefully in it, just asking it to make him happy", but "the greater the proportion of the pleasing magic of beauty in the expression, the more their beauty is far from universality and the only profound content that can satisfy pure interest" [49]. Some psychological aestheticians mainly demonstrate the value of the category of beauty in the sense of aesthetic psychology, which has influenced the definition of the category of beauty as a form of aesthetic experience in Chinese aesthetic circles. Lipps believes that "anything that does not invade us violently, rudely and rudely, but captures everything in our hearts with gentle power, perhaps deeper power, is' beautiful'" [50]. Spencer described beauty as saving energy consumption on living objects, Bergson thought beauty was perceived as lightness in external movement, and Listowell thought beauty was that objects were in effortless and unimpeded movement, making people feel no conflict, contradiction or any pain [5 1].

2. The essential characteristics of beauty

The essence of beauty is understood as harmony in the history of aesthetics. This harmony is not only the harmonious unity of content and form, but also the harmonious unity of truth, goodness and beauty, subjective activities and objective laws, forming the characteristics of symmetrical, balanced, diverse and unified formal beauty, which causes the pleasure of subjective senses.

Beauty is the emotional satisfaction and experience that people live in harmony with the world. In the state of beauty, subject and object are relatively unified and balanced. Beautiful things, as far as content is concerned, are not manifested in fierce contradictions and conflicts, but in the freedom, harmony and unity of content and form. From the perceptual form, beautiful things are generally fresh, beautiful, elegant, small, light, soft, quiet, round, soothing, subtle and smooth, and the subject's senses can be freely grasped and the subject's strength can be freely controlled. Lipps believes that Meida has been "freed from harshness, embarrassment and rigidity, which does not mean that she is powerless, but means that she has not struggled. It has inherent clarity, and in the natural development of ontology, it keeps its true colors and completes its tasks; The premise is established and the strength exists, so it will always conform to nature and flow in the possible direction. This is the "freedom" opposite to all differences, hesitation and doubt, and it is also the "freedom" opposite to irregularity, argument or contradiction. Once one or more communication forces are released vertically, there will be no sudden intervention or drift anywhere, no pause at all, and no setbacks. It is completely natural to move forward. Then, this power or the power along the way is beautiful. " [53]. As Li Zehou said: "Beauty expresses the unity of truth, goodness and beauty, regularity and purpose in a relatively simple and direct form, which is the affirmation of reality to practice. Formally, it is harmonious, calm and stable ... Reality and practice, truth and goodness, regularity and purpose seem to be in a seamless and relatively unified state, giving people a relatively quiet and harmonious aesthetic pleasure;

Elegance has also formed different characteristics in Chinese and western arts. Western aesthetics emphasizes beauty, mainly focusing on the human body, and always combining with human posture, body and movement, which can be seen from Gombrich's evaluation of Pollack's sculpture works and Bok's discussion on the formal beauty of beauty. Schiller also extended beauty to human spiritual beauty and spiritual beauty. China's ancient aesthetics emphasized beauty, mainly taking nature as the object, such as "apricot blossom and spring rain in the south of the Yangtze River", "fish in the drizzle, swallow in the breeze" and so on, all of which described beautiful natural scenery.

Beauty also has different characteristics in nature, life and art. Generally speaking, natural beauty focuses on external formal features, such as blue sky and white clouds, blue waves and boundless expanses, which are the formal features of nature to arouse people's spiritual pleasure and satisfaction. Beauty in the social field is mainly manifested in the unity of truth, goodness and beauty, focusing on the expression of human spirit and soul, which is the unity of beautiful and dignified appearance and human inner spirit and beautiful personality. The beauty in the field of art is mainly based on the harmonious unity of artistic content and form, moving people with beautiful and harmonious artistic conception and arousing people's sense of harmony and freedom.