What's your aesthetic? How did you come to decide on it?
adjective
The definition of aesthetic is being interested in how something looks and feels.
An example of someone who is aesthetic might be an artist.
Aesthetic means the pleasant, positive or artful appearance of a person or a thing.
An example of the word is aesthetic is to say that a particular car is beautiful.
noun
Aesthetic is defined as a concept of what is visually acceptable, in trend or expected at the time.
An example of an aesthetic is minimalism.
I'm an extremely visual person and would suggest most INFJs are... I see beauty in ugliness, and vice versa. I've always been highly influenced by it. When I was younger it was even crippling. My visual preferences have influenced many of my dreams and decisions in life.
This. As a practicing artist I feel beauty all around long before 'seeing' it. Since I have visual spacial issues I look at a thing or person differently than most. I see positive and negative space before color, tone or line. It is difficult to explain my interpretation of the beauty in a thing or a person which another finds unattractive.
Well artistically I like broken, destroyed, wrecked, ruined stuff. I think it has a lot of philosophical potential. In my daily life I don't have any patience with that sort of thing, but it has huge abstract aesthetic appeal to me. "Everything's fucked. What now?"
My aesthetics?
Glitch art made by databending, unintentional visual glitches sometimes, rain on windows/any glass.
Street lights on a dark night
Neon signs.
Based on the pics or art I consume regularly, I think my aesthetic is color or visual contrasts as they reflect a mood or state of mind or ironic constructions (surrealist) which twist reality in knots to make some kind of commentary or social reference. I also enjoy fantastic representations of real world whether exaggerated or simplistic use of vibrant colors. Big on contrasts.
Edit: I also like Victorian or Edwardian era stylistic choices. Gives spaces a classic, aesthetic, sophisticated appeal. Such as Mr Darcy's home in the Pride and Prejudice film. I am drawn to wide open architectural spaces with high ceilings and cozy rural landscapes and homes.
Modern art with a hint of classical vintage. I also like a lot of depth and texture to add a surreal look. I have come to this style by following my intuition and experimenting until I felt it sits well with me.
It's really difficult to objectively describe how things become visually appealing.
Like some posters implied, it's more of an evoked 'feeling,' rather than what has been physically sensed, which
might have a lot to do with the perceiver's abstract & symbolic associations with the object, I suppose.
As for Wabi Sabi, I don't just deliberately go finding cracked or broken things and call them beautiful.
(The rusty appliances and randomly peeled wall paint in our house are not necessarily visually appealing to me.)
It's really more of anything that feels organic, flowing/fleeting, or reminiscent of nature. Zen gardens and temples. Watercolour paintings. Mandalas and fractals. Brush calligraphy. Contemporary dance.
Wasabi (ワサビ or わさび（山葵）?, earlier 和佐比; Eutrema japonicum or Wasabia japonica)[1] is a plant of the Brassicaceae family, which includes cabbages, horseradish, and mustard.
I guess it's still the perceiver/beholder who does. The way I take it, this is probably not about absolute perfection, but a more personal ideal, or maybe objective standard, of perfection (kind of like what circle is perceived 'circle enough' to be called as such by any particular person). Then wabi-sabi may essentially be about deeming something as beautiful in spite of knowing it is, by personal cognizance, imperfect.
My aesthetic tastes are varied, but there is some consistencies:
I like high detail and craftsmanship in small objects. (Highly detailed objects)
I like stoic simplicity and functionality, with clean ornamentation in anything TV sized and larger. {Art deco design).
I like pristine natural environments, which have huge variations in terrain and ecology within a small distance. (Snowcapped mountains to ocean within a single landscape).
There are different things, not all the same type of style or aesthetic, I find it a lot in art, photography and sculpture etc. it's not just one aesthetic, but I know what grabs me when I see it, even if I couldn't describe it before hand. It's interesting though that most people instantly know what they do and do not like aesthetically speaking.
I notice the aesthetics of things all around and in the everyday. Sometimes the lines and shapes of buildings, or other things not intrinsically beautiful in themselves have an aesthetic of their own as well, maybe it's to do with something being visually interesting, and that being somehow evocative of something, as art is. I've taken photos of weird things like tractor tracks in mud, and the light reflecting of the water in tracks because I've found it 'aesthetically' pleasing, lol.
Also architecture which is thought of as aesthetic and beautiful in itself I find pretty inspiring. I've had that feeling in Rome and medieval villages, and not to mention beautiful landscapes, where your breath is literally taken away. Having that feeling when your looking at a landscape or a scene and you want to etch it on your mind forever so to speak but know that you can't, feels like food for the soul. It can also sometimes be found in the little, simple things sometimes like something incredibly like a remarkable, unremarkable leaf or stone.
I tend to gravitate towards earth tones and the things they signify to me: trees, branches, roots, foliage, forests, natural landscapes. I keep a lot of houseplants and they double both as decorative filler and a need for life around my living space. These are a good example of the color palate I like:
I appreciate the clean, uncluttered lines of mid-century modern furniture, eccentric antique pieces, or the random retro-modern feel of IKEA products. I prefer white or slate-gray for wall paint, open layout, and minimalistic decor. Impressionist and symbolist painters are my favorite, but I'm also sentimental to the nostalgia of eastern European motifs/kitsch, Escher, and Bruegel prints that my parents decorated with. These are some favorites that summarize me pretty well:
Glad I came across this great thread! I think that my aesthetic is best captured by the movie Solaris by Andrei Tarkosvky, but I don't seem to be able to link videos from it. So my second pick will have to do: Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven.
