On Aesthetics

For most of my life I split the space around me into “beautiful” and “ugly.” And I don’t even mean art — I mean the plain stuff: city streets, buildings, signs, interiors, typefaces, interfaces. To this day something in me rebels when I see a panel high-rise next to a historic mansion, as if the two had arrived from different universes. When a restored red-brick building wears an acid-bright banner straight out of a nineties kiosk. The list could go on forever.

I even had a hypothesis: if a person grows up surrounded by beauty — in public spaces, interiors, films, music — then over time a “taste” forms in them almost automatically, and with it the ability to create something beautiful as a continuation of their own experience.

Recently I caught a conversation with a gifted artist and sculptor — and I found a different view. For her, your standard Khrushchev-era apartment blocks and peeling walls are a source of inspiration. In the “ugliness” and the decay she sees rhythms, patterns, textures. For her, beauty lives not so much in symmetry and clean lines as in imperfection, randomness, chaos. What breaks from the norm carries its own ideas and meanings.

I tried looking at this through the philosophy of Stoicism. The Stoics taught us not to split events into “good” and “bad” but to take them as neutral facts, open to interpretation. It’s the same with aesthetics: the world isn’t objectively divided into “beautiful” and “ugly.” These aren’t properties of objects — they’re features of our perception. And the harder our notions of the “one right way,” the more often we run into irritation and frustration when reality fails to match our expectations.

Can universal criteria for aesthetics even be drawn up? And who has the right to set them? “Who are you to judge?”

A feeling of aesthetic distaste turns out, at times, to be not a sign of taste but a form of pride. Snobbery dressed up as “refinement.” Perfectionism hiding behind talk of “visual hygiene.” At times we lock ourselves in the cage of our own dogmas — when in fact we’re using it to bury an unresolved conflict inside.

The most ironic part is this: when we fume over a clumsy façade or a wretched font on a sign, we don’t change reality — we only spend our own energy. The world works like a pendulum: the more attention we give to the thing that irritates us, the more actively it starts to fill our field of perception. You’ll agree — those forces could be aimed at far bigger things.

Some spaces were never about aesthetics in the first place. Their purpose is function — an airport, say, or a train station. Anything beyond that is a bonus. No need to curse the small flaws and breakdowns: we could think instead about where we’re heading, who we want to hug, what words we’ll say when we meet.

The urge to surround ourselves with beauty is natural. But the ability to notice it even where it isn’t obvious — that’s another level entirely. We make a choice: curiosity instead of irritation, a shift in the angle of view instead of tilting at windmills. And that’s exactly where the source of energy is hidden.

Here’s to fixing our attention not on what irritates us but on what inspires us. Maybe, for the first time, we’ll notice in a leaning little hut behind a garish banner something that reminds us of a moment of childhood joy… and we’ll walk on — with warmth in our chest and a smile on our face! 😎