The Eye of the Beholder

When we humans look at something, a face, an object, a landscape, artwork ... we immediately judge its beauty. Now it is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, meaning that we each have our own canons of beauty as cultures and even as individuals.

However, there is a sight which is always pleasing to the eye. That is when we look upon the golden mean. In everyday life you can find this type of object - in the metro ticket for example. Measure it and you will find that its sides are in a proportion of 1:1.618 This is the golden ratio and allows the simple ticket to be pleasing to the eye.

Artists like Dali organized paintings such as the above, 'Last Supper', using this pleasing proportion. It is a sort of eye candy trick.

Well-proportioned faces also fall into this category. Both Cathérine de Neuve and George Cluny's faces measure up well.

Despite all this, could it be that the golden mean is not really 'out there' in faces, objects, landscapes and artwork but within the eye? In other words perhaps we perceive things as beautiful, or not, according to the structure, an innate golden ratio, in our own eye. Might beauty really be 'in' the eye of the beholder?

Tom