Artspeaking topic
We find symmetrical faces beautiful, yet science says a perfectly symmetrical face strikes people as eerie. The most attractive faces are slightly asymmetrical. Why does perfection unsettle us while a small irregularity warms the heart?
— facial symmetry and attractiveness research
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- Minor chords sound sad to us and major chords sound happy, but this does not hold across all cultures; a funeral melody from one society can sound like a dance to us. Is the emotion of a sound universal, or something we learn?
- How did Diego Rivera's murals strengthen art's social message by carrying it into public spaces where everyone could see it?
- Put a child's drawing next to a famous abstract painting and most people cannot tell them apart, yet one hangs in a museum and the other on a fridge. How does the same image become genius in one place and scribble in another? Is value decided by the image, or by the story?
- The birth of conceptual art: can the idea behind a work be more valuable than the object itself?
- How did Rembrandt's mastery of chiaroscuro and sense of movement in 'The Night Watch' transform the tradition of the group portrait?