The charm of ugliness

Author: Gao Xiaokang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: Fool, clown, Arhat, Ksitigarbha, lake stone, sick plum, gray wolf, Medusa, Mephistopheles, Girl of Avignon, hell, beetle, howling, abstract, Egyptian pharaoh, urban skyscrapers
The appreciation of "ugliness" reveals the secrets of the human heart: truth, fear, loneliness, nihilism, immortality, and the state of non-existence. A person who truly loves beauty cannot help but also love "ugliness." Humanity is incomplete without both. Humans are not approaching a single sun but are heading toward an infinitely vast, dazzling starry sky.
Why write about the charm of ugliness? It is not because I wrote about beauty first and then wrote about ugliness to balance it. In my view at the time, it was precisely ugliness that better revealed human vitality. Speaking in the tone of my youth, it would be: Mephistopheles, the devil, is more powerful than God! I often say that one of my favorite quotes is: If the "Inferno" is removed from Dante's Divine Comedy, it becomes half of a work; but if the "Purgatorio" is removed, it ceases to be a Divine Comedy and becomes merely a hymn commonly used in churches.
As the old saying goes, "Everyone has a love for beauty." This means that people's love and longing for beauty are a universal, ancient psychological need. However, it is only in the modern era that the love and demand for "beauty" have become unprecedentedly intense and fervent. From the overwhelming visual images of beautiful women to the myriad beauty pageants, and even to the various and bizarre beauty products and plastic surgeries, it seems that the joy of modern life lies in acquiring and consuming beauty.