Emo Aesthet

Theodor Lipps the OG edgelord aestheticist.

Emo Aesthet

Via psy.lmu.de

So basically, Theordor Lipps, came up with this whole new way of looking at art and establishing beauty by how the person empathizes with the thing that they are looking at in order to figure out if it is beautiful or not. Screw the Golden Ratio, if you have done a bike fail and you watch a video of bike fails that will be more appealing to you than the Golden Ratio ever will be. Because you empathize with what is going on in the video.

Examples pls.

alamy / Via alamy.com

Okay so to make it simpler, if you were a war veteran, you would find pictures of soldiers being saved or laughing at the front lines to be more beautiful than the Mona Lisa. The reasoning is the empathy that you share with those veterans outweighs the possible mastery of the medium.

Lipps' Einfühlung (and no that is not a euphemism)

That very long, very German word is what Lipps' theory on empathy and beauty is called. It doubles as the German word for empathy. The overarching thing with the Einfuhlung is that you project yourself on the object you are pondering at. The best artist according to this logic is the artist that can capture everybody's personalities in one piece of art or an object.

My Emo Son

In summary, Lipps has finally put a theory to that feeling of empathy when we see specific art and objects. Every time we project ourselves onto specific objects and art that we then proceed to like more than other art is a form of his theory of aesthetics and empathy being intertwined. My boy, Lipps, gets it ladies and gents.