What is beautiful?

Yesterday, a video went viral of a boy, Boris, who stood with an Ikea cloth in the Modern Art Museum in Arnhem to see how the "art experts" would react to that cloth. Of course, he didn't mention that it was an Ikea cloth, but said it was a work by "the Swedish artist Ike Andrews." As expected, everyone falls for it with open eyes, and then he starts shouting complicated things about a perfectly ordinary Ikea work, and that's just hilarious because ha-ha, art people are pretentious. Something similar happened a few years ago in Washington D.C. One of the most talented and successful musicians in the world, Joshua Bell, stood.

for three quarters of an hour in a subway station playing famous pieces of music on a violin that reportedly costs about 3.5 MILLION dollars and was made in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari himself. Joshua had performed a few days before this experiment in Symphony Hall in Boston where tickets were sold starting at $100,-, he is unanimously called a virtuoso or child prodigy – and now he went to play in a subway for three quarters of an hour , dressed in simple jeans and a shirt. You can already feel it coming here too; in those 45 minutes, 7 people stopped to listen. That’s it., "Oh, is that from Zara? Really?.

“Wow, I didn't expect that. And this also applies to fashion. Just pay attention to how often you hear yourself or someone else say, "Oh, is that from Zara? Really?.”

“ Quite a strange remark, why do you not expect that beautiful piece of clothing to have been expensive? Must something always be expensive to be truly beautiful? And I wonder what would happen if you showcased H&M and Zara clothing in a And this also applies to fashion. Just pay attention to how often you hear yourself or someone else say, "Oh, is that from Zara? Really?.Margiela-like setting , whether people would immediately start shouting about Art and High Fashion. Hang a cheap H&M sweater in an expensive store, and then that shirt will also seem expensive.

A few years ago during my studies, I took a few philosophy courses, and one of the topics we discussed was the question: what is beauty? Is it something measurable? Or, as philosopher David Hume said, is it just an opinion of an individual person? Or a combination of both, influenced by the mental state of the person observing the object? That last view was from a philosopher named Immanuel Kant and is often seen as the most useful. But don't these kinds of experiments show that besides the mental state, an opinion, and "something" objective, there is another factor at play: that of the environment?

Put an Ikea cloth in a real museum, and then that Ikea cloth will belong there and thus also be real art (whatever “real art” may be, by the way), and then the cloth should also be approached as such. Let a "real" musician play in a stinky subway station, and then his music won't be much better than that subway station. Hang a cheap H&M sweater in an expensive store, and then that shirt will also seem expensive. That last point is still just a suspicion, but while writing, I have quite a desire to test that in real life. Any volunteers in the house?

Yesterday, a video went viral of a boy, Boris, who stood with an Ikea cloth in the Modern Art Museum in Arnhem to see how the…