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AESTHETICS The aesthetics of an object is closely linked to our emotional perception of that object. Victor believed in a biological basis for appreciating good form, in accordance with the Gestalt psychologists as Wolfgang Kohler and Karl Koffka.12 Many of his products mimicked the human fat cell. (17) While culture is a learned response that controls our responses toward manmade objects, our true inclination in beauty is compatible with forms and processes in nature.13 This is a philosophy that is being explored today in biomimicry, which by understanding natural processes, enables the construction of more beautiful and sustainable systems. However, in the late 1800's Ernst Haeckel, a German biologist, also studied the aesthetics of structural patterns in nature, illustrating crystalline skeletons of microscopic organisms. (18) Even students at the Bauhaus explored organic form-making, as demonstrated in a material study from cut paper.(20) These geometric forms were replicated and expanded by Buckminster Fuller, a friend of Victor's, in the US Exhibition Pavilion Montreal, Canada 1967. (19) Our relation to a space in terms of scale alters our perception of objects in that space. (21) In addition, Victor believed our aesthetic perception could be elevated to the spiritual through a magical "rhythm of light and darkness, warmth and coolness, cues of texture, nature and the human-scale,"14 as in the Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. (22) |
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