Ugliness

Definition of ugliness according to WordReference (yes, again, it’s turning into my best friend): “unpleasant or repulsive in appearance”.

If you agree with that then everybody should take as an example that horror on four legs I stumbled upon a couple of weeks ago about.

I was walking around Yaletown with a friend of mine on a Friday night, when my attention was caught by that “thing” I saw beyond the glass door of a condo hall. The intent was probably to create a sort of lamp out of the ordinary, but the result was a real obscenity: introducing the lamp-horse (or maybe the horse-lamp, readers, please assist me).

It was such a horrid thing that I couldn’t resist to take a picture of that and to write this post now. Even another chap stopped by at the entrance of the condo to take a photo, obviously attracted by the bad taste of that object, as confirmed by his words.

I am not an aesthete, but coming from the land of Michelangelo and Leonardo my deep nature as human being got really shaken and upset, also considering that “un-art” was placed in full view of the pedestrians, illuminated by the hall lights. If I were a parent I would just cover the eyes of my children.

I don’t want to start an erudite disquisition over beauty vs. ugliness, but I believe the former may indeed be also something simple, whereas the latter must always be complex at some extent, involving a wicked intelligence that on purpose makes something resulting in a punch on the eyes. Ugliness is not about combining two things opposite each other, as to the contrary it can give an original contrast highlighting a specific characteristic or detail, but rather the combination of two or more things totally disconnected each other, like a lamp and a horse. Really, what does have to do a lamp with a horse?

City of contrasts Vancouver, where  the beautiful scenario of parks and skyscrapers just clashes with the syringes of east downtown, and where the simple beauty of rock balancing is compensated by the complex ugliness of the luminous horse.