Should a person / a viewer standing in front of my painting experience emotion, feel something?
Basic beauty is a biological response to outside stimulus. Humans respond favorably (or not) to anatomical proportions, to colors of flowers, and songs of birds. Such appreciation of beauty never changes since it is inborn, like a reflex in animals. Here, beauty stands in opposition to ugliness and is a response to what is lovely in nature: effects of light, color, water, fog… . There are artworks that are pleasant to look at since they are like looking at the water.
Another form of beauty is hiding what is ugly, painful and hurtful. It works like an illusion, a mask, and keeps appreciators happy by hiding problems or, maybe, even inducing a trance-like state thus keeping the prevailing order of things undisturbed. Additionally, an object may be perceived as ugly because it distorts what we know, want and used to see. Colors are only an empty beauty, they have an ability to hide a bad form.
Harmony is also beauty. We notice harmony when disharmony is present. This beauty is always changing and belongs to forms that are man-made. Harmony, in this interpretation, is also ordered knowledge about the world where knowledge is memory. New harmony will be equal to a new beauty. Then, creation of a new harmony = reordering knowledge about the world = creation of a new beauty.
Improvisation is pretty much what life is – applying learned skills and concepts in real time as I go and with different results. Speaking language is such an improvisation where by using words I make available for understanding my thoughts and feelings. When speaking I am also connecting meanings, feelings, thoughts. What comes out of it is what I make available for understanding for another person. Improvisation is a fast response to the preceding stimulus, which stands on a foundation of knowledge. At the same time feelings are always expressed in attitude, body gestures, intonation, choice of words.
During the process of improvisation a new system may emerge which responds to its own logic and not to what was planned to be a final result. If I know the result I am striving for, it is no longer an improvisation. I like to look at improvisation as a way to create a new harmony. Improvisation may result in finding a new harmony.
Occasionally experiences are called beautiful because they feel as being beautiful. Intelligence is beautiful.