The visual study «Methods and Tools for Measuring Beauty» focuses on attempts by humanity throughout European history to describe, rationalize and standardize beauty. The author suggests that beauty measurement systems are mystified, fetished and become instruments of manipulation.
Book concept Reference to classical printing, borrowing within reasonable limits with functional priority. Width leveling, maintaining the ratio of fields to the canon of Villar de Onnecourt, the decapitation of the headlines.
As a result of the study, the author concluded that the hypothesis of mystification and fetishing of the «pretty» measurement systems was confirmed. The history of the rationalization of beauty in the European tradition is a continuous movement between the desire to find an exact formula and the realization of the fundamental subjectiveity of beauty. Attempts to describe and regularize «beautiful» reveal not so much the laws of harmony as the complex mechanisms of power, belongings and exceptions.
Lystal