Perceiving Beautiful Bodies

Traditionally, art students have learned to draw the human body by copying original works of art or by looking directly at a nude model in a figure drawing class. There are obvious differences between those two types of perception but even more distinctive is the recent phenomenon of artists and viewers perceiving paradigmatic beauty of the human physique by looking at the toned bodies of contemporary elite athletes. The photographs of Helmut Newton in 1981, images in Life and New York Times magazines (1996), nude Olympians in Playboy (2004), and ten years of ESPN Magazine: The Body Issue, provide examples of both male and female athletic beauty that are reminiscent of ancient Greek ideals.

The history of these various modes of perceiving cast suspicion on basic writings in aesthetics dating back to the eighteenth century, offering both a simplistic notion of perception (given what we now know from studies in cognitive science) and a limited conception of “pleasure” as the accompanying sentiment of one’s experience of beauty. I will consider what draws us to perceiving beautiful bodies in art and athletics—repeatedly and over time—that is informed by recent writings in the philosophy of sport. Perceiving beautiful bodies can be explained by a model of looking that also incorporates the performing body—typical of athletic competition—not just the body-to-be-looked-at—as seen in posed art.

Bio

Peg Brand Weiser is an artist and Emerita Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at Indiana University Purdue University—Indianapolis who teaches at the University of Arizona. She is editor of Beauty Unlimited (2013) and Beauty Matters (2000), and co-editor with Carolyn Korsmeyer of Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics (1995), among various other publications in aesthetics.