What Is Beauty? On Surprise, Elegance, and Why Good Taste Is Not a Privilege
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There are some things you just can't ignore.
Not because they are large. Not because they are loud. But because there is something about them that captures the eye—a perfect balance of proportions. A surface that reveals more than its mere material composition. A form that seems as though it could never have been any other way.
What happens in that moment is what we call an experience of beauty. But what triggers it is harder to pin down than the word suggests.
The Three Components of Beauty
American designer and strategic thinker Marty Neumeier has defined beauty with a precision that is rare: as a quality of wholeness or harmony that generates joy, meaning, or satisfaction.
What immediately stands out is that beauty is not a quality of the object alone. It arises from the encounter between the object and the viewer. It is an event, not a substance.
Neumeier identifies three components without which true beauty cannot arise:
1) Surprise
Everything we perceive as truly beautiful contains a moment of surprise. Something unexpected that, in the very next moment, seems perfectly right. Without this moment, there is nothing new. Without something new, there is no interest. Without interest, there is no beauty.
This explains why some things inspire awe at first glance but merely please the eye upon a second look. The element of surprise has worn off. What remains is solid—but no longer what it was.
True beauty has something else: memorability. The ability not simply to please, but to stick with you. Physiologically describable as what Neumeier calls a “serotonin rush for the central nervous system.” The warm glow following a silent cry of recognition.
2) Correctness
The second component is harder to name, but immediately recognizable.
Charles Eames, the 20th-century furniture designer, called it *“way-it-should-be-ness”*—the quality of an object to be exactly as it ought to be. Not perfect in a mathematical sense. But in harmony with its purpose, its use, its surroundings.
A carafe that drips when pouring has failed in correctness—regardless of its shape. A ring that feels good and does what it’s supposed to do has achieved it.
Righteousness is the reason why some things still work after years, while others, which looked beautiful when purchased, become irritating after a short time. What doesn’t fit wears out.
3) Elegance
The most frequently misunderstood of the three principles.
Elegance does not mean luxury. Not over-decoration. Not the most expensive version of a thing.
Elegance means the opposite: the rejection of the superfluous. The minimum number of elements needed for the whole to fulfill its purpose. Nothing is missing. Nothing is too much.
By this definition, an elegant dress is not the most elaborate, but the simplest one that fully fulfills its purpose. An elegant sentence contains not a single word too many. An elegant piece of jewelry has nothing that could be removed without losing something essential.
When authenticity and elegance are lacking, what Neumeier calls kitsch emerges: surprise without substance. Objects that are briefly appealing and then find their way into the basement because their original appeal has faded. Kitsch can certainly have charm—but it doesn’t last. Übersetzt mit www.DeepL.com/Translator (kostenlose Version)
The Secret to Good Taste
Many people believe that good taste is innate—a talent you either have or don’t have.
That’s not true—and it’s an important distinction.
Good taste is, in a sense, based on education. Not in the sense of institutions or degrees, but in the original sense: something that arises through attention and engagement.
Psychologist Howard Gardner describes it this way: All young people develop aesthetic preferences. But only those who are exposed to a wide range of artworks, who observe how they are created, who understand something about the people behind them—and who engage in thoughtful discussions about craftsmanship and taste—are likely to develop an aesthetic sensibility that goes beyond the popular trends of the moment.
Good taste, according to Gardner, is learned through conscious effort.
That sounds demanding. But above all, it is an invitation.
Those who begin to view objects not just based on first impressions, but according to their formal qualities, open themselves up to a different experience. One begins to see why some things endure and others do not. Why some spaces offer tranquility and others make one feel restless, without being able to say why. Why some pieces of jewelry still look as they did on the first day, even after twenty years.
What this means for jewelry
Anthropologist Carolyn Bloomer defines beauty as “optimal completion”: the state in which an object appears so perfect that one cannot imagine anything better.
A piece of jewelry that achieves optimal completion needs no explanation. It asks no questions. It simply lies there—or on the body—and seems as though it has always been there.
RETINA® jewelry strives to achieve exactly that.
The Retina pattern itself is organic, meaning it emerged according to formal rules that no human invented. Its translation into metal through handcrafted work is committed to the principle of elegance: no superfluous gesture, no decorative element that is not part of the original. And the surprise lies in the mystery itself—in the moment when someone understands what they are seeing.
No louder than necessary. But deeper than expected.