In continuing my series on reflections in the Victorian era, I wanted to talk about Beauty. What is Beautiful? Is Art beautiful, and if so, what is considered Art? How about Nature?
Well, Art was of high importance to many during the Victorian Era. In fact, as I mentioned in my last blog on this subject, many people saw Art as a way of perfecting Nature. They saw nature as crude and unrefined, and sought to make things better through Art, whether that art be in the form of makeup, clothes, manners, or actual artworks.
I personally enjoy both Art and Nature, and don't see any reason to have one favor the other. However, my professor brought up a very good point. When we talk about gardens, we are generally talking about manufactured arrangements of plants to give aesthetic beauty. The exception to this is a food garden, for that is the only garden that has a purpose other than beauty.
He then continued to show us various gardens that had been manufactured, such as those at Versailles. The beauty in these gardens wasn't necessarily in the plants themselves, but the exact symmetry of the garden. It certainly takes a great deal of effort to remove the nature element (in the form of weeds and dead plants) from these gardens, and as such can be considered artificial.
So, the question was posed. Is there actual beauty in these gardens? Well, when I went to Versailles a few years ago, I did find the gardens to be beautiful (even if they weren't in their original state due to the addition of colorful flowers). I find the arrangements of the Dutch tulips every year to be amazing too. Even though these 'natural' states were made artificial, I still get pleasure out of looking at them.
However, I can also go to a wild meadow and see the beauty in that. I can go up to the mountains and look at the completely wild forests of aspens in the fall and see beauty in that. Things that are left to nature have a beauty just as much as these artificial gardens do.
So, I pose the question to you. Do you think that gardens are beautiful, or do you prefer the ruggedness of nature itself, without the tending of human hands?
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i prefer natural beauty because the fact that these flowers and bushes grew in their place by themselves, without humans saying "no, you mr. flower need to go here" or "sure willow tree, you can be there." Gardens are beautiful in their own way but I think that it loses some of its amazing beauty because you know that it is man-made, you know that everything is put in a certain place and there is no chance involved.