Ugliness  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Welwitschia has been called the ugliest plant in the world

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1. very unattractive, repulsive.
2. displeasing to the eye, or ear, or sensibilities; unsightly.

"All profoundly original art looks ugly at first." --Clement Greenberg

Ugliness is possessed by physical things that are unappealing to the senses, especially visually. It often indicates that something provokes revulsion or horror. The term is commonly used in reference to human appearance. The opposite of ugliness is beauty.

Some argue that ugliness is a matter of subjective aesthetics, claiming that one person may perceive to be beautiful something that another may find ugly (as referenced in the popular phrase Beauty is in the eye of the beholder). However the predominant view in the scientific fields is that human ugliness is part of sexual selection and an indicator of poor genetic or physical health.

Although usually thought of in terms of a lack of physical beauty, the property of ugliness, like beauty, may also be ascribed to other phenomena, such as music, literature, human behavior, and so on.

As a 19th and 20th century aesthetic category, see the cult of ugliness.

Films related to "ugliness"

• The Beauty and the Beast (1947)
• Freaks (1932)
• The Elephant Man (1980)

• Shrek (2001) - Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson

Namesakes

• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• And We'll Kill All the Ugly Ones
• Ugly Woman
• Ugly, Dirty and Bad

Ugliness in Northern Renaissance

• The Ugly Duchess (1525-30) by Quentin Matsys

Related terms

aesthetics - bad - dirty - disgusting - freaks - grotesque - incongruity - monster - offensive - obscene - repulsive - sordid

Synonyms

• homely
• repulsive
• unattractive
• unsightly

Contemporary photographers fascinated with ugliness

Diane Arbus - Nan Goldin

The sublime

The sublime may inspire horror, but one receives pleasure in knowing that the perception is a fiction. Burke's concept of the sublime was a stark contrast to the classical notion of aesthetic quality in Plato's Philebus, Ion, and Symposium, and suggested ugliness as an aesthetic quality.

Uglinesses

• Ugly woman

Bibliography

• On Ugliness (2007) - Umberto Eco
• The Ugly Woman: Transgressive Aesthetic Models in Italian Poetry from the Middle Ages to the Baroque