Ugliness-
Ugliness is the property of something which is perceived to have aesthetic disvalue. A thing eliciting not indifference, but discomfort or even misery. Modes of ugliness in personal perception, art and life itself therefore correspond to the various modes of what is commonly or logically considered to be beauty; or something of obvious aesthetic value.

If the mode of presentation of a thing is formal, the ugliness is therefore the ill-formed or the deformed, the misshapen, or the ill-placed. If the mode of presentation is expressive, the ugly in question may be considered sentimental, mawkish, clichéd, or sickening: or this expression of ugliness may arise from uncontrolled emotion- bombastic, ranting, or hysterical. If considered from a representational point of view, the 'ugly' objects in question are judged unrelievedly disagreeable or painful to contemplate.

Nevertheless, life as well as art can make use of the ugly; and so this question must always be asked: Does this prima facie ugly work possess any justifying or compensating features? Is there perhaps an ethical, moral or social point? Or considering further, has this ugly component been transformed; by the presentation or the medium- or by the context- to be an ingredient in a new whole which now somehow possesses a positive aesthetic value?

-BACK-