Reading Response 13

Wysocki – “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty”

Summary

In her article, “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty,” Wysocki attempts to analyze the concept of art and how it has different effects on people and their perceptions based on details held within pictures. She argues that our predetermined notions of beauty can both give us pleasure as well as anger from a picture. She breaks it down into a very descriptive analysis of what you feel when you see anything

Synthesis

This doesn’t really have much in common with anything that we’ve read. It discusses literacy a little, such as in how your experiences influence what you see in art, as well as how position, shading, and other factors influence what you receive from a picture. It relates to Berger in that it analyzes art, and the one that Wysocki looks at a lot is about a nude, basically. However she widens her approach beyond just nudes and applies her concept to all art.

QD

2. Visually, it is a low-visual text because other than the picture in question and the following diagrams, there are very few pictures or any defining features to the article to help convey anything more than “essay.” Aside from her longer quotes that are indented from her main essay, it flows like any other essay.

3. No it doesn’t work as a consumer. It interests me on a purely biological level, but it doesn’t make me want to either purchase the book or learn more. I have much better things to spend time on, such as finishing this reading response.

A&E

2. Beauty is most definitely in the eye of the beholder, as some people find some things appealing whiles others don’t, and vice versa. I don’t agree with can’t because there are very few things that are truly universal. Based on culture and your own personal experiences, you come up with your own idea of what beauty is. Wysocki was correct by saying that it is subjected to social forces.

MM

This statement fits her article well, because although she refers back to her original argument about the Peek article, her reasoning can be applied to a plethora of different art types. Her deductions could be applied to anything with  a picture in it, such as her statement about the difference between placements, as well as discussing how when you make something it becomes more universal.

Thoughts

I didn’t like this text much, though I did agree with her final statements on the subject. My tiresome complaint of the argument being stretched is coming back again. Her sources are reference in a way that she expects us to know what she’s talking about, and her vocabulary is excessively complex. I honestly didn’t fully understand what most of her article was about til I reread the Framing the Reading section of the apparatus.