Beauty is what we need. It represents the principle of complementarity. Beauty fills the void and creates a wholeness when it comes into contact with being, thus completing it. This is because beauty does not stand apart from the one who perceives it; rather, it changes depending on each person. From the outset, it must be emphasized that it makes no sense to treat beauty as an objective scientific postulate with unchanging principles. Beauty is, above all, a relationship or an interaction between an object or being and its perceiver.
There are practical ideas about how something can be considered beautiful, such as harmony, symmetry, etc. However, we have seen that these rules are not applicable to every new form of art that emerges. These rules arise from a specific context when a society finds its wholeness in that manifestation of beauty.
We can compare it to a piece of dessert: when you are full, it seems repulsive because you have no need for it, but when you are hungry, it appears to be the most delicious thing in the world. This ensures the relativity of beauty, which we understand well today. It also ensures the existence of two forms of beauty: the Dionysian and the Apollonian.
A person raised in a harsh and warlike environment will be more attracted to Apollonian art, as it provides what they lack and fulfills them. Meanwhile, today, in a peaceful environment, art often reflects the ugly, the violent, the irritating, because peace dominates the atmosphere.
A person will seek dessert until they are satisfied with it. They will not abandon a form of art without first being satisfied by it because they must be nourished by that form.
From a psychological perspective, if we rely on Jung’s theory of dreams, which have a compensatory function, then beauty has the same function in our lives as dreams do. It brings to our conscious life those aspects that do not manifest but are present. Beauty is what provides wholeness, not wholeness itself.
In a time when humanity is more pragmatic and rational, the mysterious becomes more attractive, and the opposite also occurs. For example, the explosion of Hellenic philosophy occurred in a superstitious time, while the rise of superstition, such as New Age culture and later the “Woke” movement, occurs at the peak of a rational culture.
Beauty, in this sense, appears as a compensator for our deepest needs and desires. It is a dream that tells us something about ourselves that we often do not know. Dreams remind us of aspects from the past that we have not overcome or wish to return to, making beauty a mirror of what we lack. However, they rarely warn us or predict the future, inviting us to reflect on ourselves and our experiences.
