In the 20th century, ‘beauty’ in art was often regarded with suspicion. It was thought to be too decorative, too easy, too pleasing… No, it all had to be about concept! And ugliness wasn’t exactly a requirement, but it certainly was considered a plus. A painting deemed ‘too beautiful’ could expect distrust: where was the depth, the intellect, the critique?
I stand on the other side. To me, beauty is not superficial, cheap, or easy. Beauty is an essence, a basic need. As essential as oxygen in your lungs or sunlight on your face. And fortunately, I am not alone in this view.
According to Elaine Scarry (On Beauty and Being Just), beauty urges us toward care and justice because it lifts us beyond ourselves.
For Nietzsche, art and beauty were ways of coping with the tragedy of life. Without beauty, reality would be unbearable.
Kandinsky and Rothko believed that abstract art could detach beauty from the figurative and make it resonate on a spiritual level.
Uneasy
And yet, beauty still seems to be an uncomfortable theme within contemporary art. It is often dismissed as decorative, as something to hang on the wall without meaning. But why? Who would deliberately choose ugliness in their living space? Art may, and perhaps should, challenge and confront, but isn’t that even more powerful when it also carries beauty within it?
Beauty and ugliness are not opposites. They often coexist. A work can be raw and still be beautiful. It can confront and console. Take Louise Bourgeois: her sculptures breathe fear and trauma, yet they possess a rare grace. Or Mark Rothko: his color fields can feel like heavy sorrow, but their beauty compels you to stay with them.
Enhancing each other
For me, beauty is the very doorway to emotion. It opens the threshold, draws you in, and makes you feel what lies beneath. Beauty is the seduction; emotion is the echo that lingers. That is also what I explore in my own work: how beauty and inner emotion do not exclude one another, but instead amplify each other.
Perhaps the real question is no longer: is art allowed to be beautiful?
Perhaps the real question is: can we afford art that carries no beauty at all?
Because in a world already raw, loud, and chaotic enough, beauty may be the place where we breathe. Where we can pause, meet ourselves… and maybe even glimpse peace.
Touching the soul
Beauty is not the opposite of depth. Beauty is depth, on another frequency. It is a language that touches us without words, a language that may lie closer to truth than any theory or conceptual text ever could.
For me, color and form represent the inner world of emotion, shadow, unseen opportunities, and the patterns that sometimes hold us back. In a painting, beauty does not conceal the shadow, but reveals it. It is the pull of color that seduces us to look longer, and then, beneath the surface, we discover the vibrations of fear, longing, hope, or loss.
I believe beauty is not merely aesthetic but existential. It is the language through which emotion takes form. Just as a melody can move you to tears without a single word, so can color make you feel what you may not yet have wanted, or dared, to face.
That is why my work is not ‘beautiful or emotional,’ but lives precisely in the tension between the two. Beauty draws you in; emotion refuses to let you go. Together, they become a mirror: for the shadow we avoid, and for the unseen possibilities waiting behind it.
