In a media culture, we not only judge strangers by how they look but by the images of how they look. So we want attractive pictures of our heroes and repulsive images of our enemies.
Virginia PostrelRead
Aesthetics has become too important to be left to the aesthetes. To succeed, hard-nosed engineers, real estate developers, and MBAs must take aesthetic communication, and aesthetic pleasure, seriously. We, their customers, demand it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Aesthetics is critical and should be considered by all professionals, not just artists.
Virginia Postrel emphasizes the importance of aesthetics in various fields such as engineering, real estate, and business. She argues that aesthetic considerations should not be relegated to artists alone, as customers increasingly demand a focus on beauty and design in the products and services they encounter. This reflects a broader cultural shift towards valuing aesthetic experiences in everyday life.
Themes
AestheticsDesignCommunicationPleasureCustomers
In practice
Example use cases
In a presentation about product design, use this quote to emphasize the importance of aesthetics.
More from Virginia Postrel
All quotes →Glamour doesn’t just happen, people don’t wake up in the morning glamorous.
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With its fluctuating forms and needless decoration, fashion epitomizes the supposedly unproductive waste that inspired 20th-century technocrats to dream of central planning. It exists for no good reason. But that's practically a definition of art.
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A world of few choices, whether in jeans or mates, is a world in which individual differences become sources of alienation, unhappiness, even self-loathing. If no jeans fit, you'll feel uncomfortable or inferior. If no housing developments reflect your taste for unique architecture, you'll write screeds against philistine mass culture.
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Most of us cluster somewhere in the middle of most statistical distributions. But there are lots of bell curves, and pretty much everyone is on a tail of at least one of them. We may collect strange memorabilia or read esoteric books, hold unusual religious beliefs or wear odd-sized shoes, suffer rare diseases or enjoy obscure movies.
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'Frankenstein' did not invent the fear of science; the novel found its audience because it dramatized anxieties that already existed. Although popular entertainment can, over the long run, shape public perceptions, it becomes popular in the first place only if it addresses preexisting hopes, fears, and fascinations.
Virginia PostrelRead
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