We label things beautiful or ugly not from automatic feeling but because artists have shaped our sensibilities; many industrial objects (power lines, windmills) are considered ugly only because no artist has yet come along to reveal their beauty, as shown by 17th-century Dutch attacks on windmills that are now seen as beautiful.

causalpending

Speaker

Alain de Botton

Evidence Quote

a lot of the times we call things beautiful or ugly because artists have been there and shaped our sensibilities

Source

Alain de Botton on the Pleasures and Sorrows of Work 09/13/2010EconTalk
Created: 6/13/2026, 7:00:39 PM

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