Beauty

Beauty is one of many terms describing a particularly desirable and powerful aesthetic quality or experience that is more than mere liking. Beauty is perhaps the oldest name, and the one used with most historical consistency, to describe a range of objects: landscapes, faces, poems, visual art, music, architecture, consumer goods, furnishings, and even ideas, equations, and moral principles. There is considerable disagreement among philosophers and critics about whether beauty refers to a single, unique quality or if it refers to a range of powerful, positive aesthetic responses to art and the natural world.

In addition, some scholars argue that beauty is of decreasing importance in contemporary art and aesthetics, as conceptual art and individual artistic style take a central place in museums and galleries. Beauty ...