Beau-laid

Meanwhile for Charles Baudelaire ugliness is opposed to harmony – “it is the unresolved tension, the conflict of contradictory forces that has been left standing as it is”.

eau-laid is a wonderful French word that introduces us to the notion of beauty within a piece that might, on the surface, be perceived as ugly; it is the idea that these seemingly contradictory values can co-exist in the same work. Emerging in philosophy, it also appears regularly in art theory from classical tradition which presupposed that the aim of art was to manifest beauty. Conversely, it was said that it was the absence of beauty that makes something ugly to thr German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten, who introduced aesthetics