Venus di Milo
Alexandros of Antioch
150 BC
Esan Girl celebrates female beauty. It is an invitation to enter a world of perfection, a place where we can experience female beauty at its best. Extraordinary pictures of extremely beautiful Thai girls – images that transport us to a divine world, a world beyond our every-day existence.
The aesthetic foundation of Esan Girl is based on several important ideas;
1. The philosophy of Plato concerning beauty, the concept of divine beauty.
2. The composition ideas of the great Renaissance artists, and how they depicted divine beauty.
3. The concept of Esan as an earthly paradise, a land of goddesses.
2500 years ago, the Greek philosopher, Plato, developed his ideas about beauty, love, and virtue (goodness). Plato, and his teacher, Aristotle, are considered the two greatest western philosophers. Plato believed female beauty to be the highest form of beauty – something profoundly important that sits at the centre of human experience. He defined beauty as a cardinal virtue, the highest of all virtues, something to revere, something beyond the temporal experience of every-day life. Plato determined that beauty was both essentially good (a virtue) and the object of love. We love beautiful things because they are good.
Mona Lisa
Leonardo da Vinci
1503
The ancient Greeks understood the world through the existence of various gods and goddesses representing different aspects of life. Beauty and love were represented by Aphrodite, the most important of all female Greek goddesses. The ancient Romans had an equivalent Goddess of love and beauty, called Venus. Aphrodite and Venus each represent divine beauty, the most perfect form of beauty. It existed only in the realm of the gods (heaven). It was a creation of the gods.
This concept of divine beauty led Plato to believe in the supremacy of nature. Natural beauty, a creation of the gods, was more beautiful than anything man-made. By experiencing beauty we understand ourselves as spiritual beings, something beyond and above earthly life as experienced by animals and plants. He believed that female beauty was like a window through which people could see into the world of the Gods, a divine world of perfection, where all is beautiful, and all is good. Experiencing beauty is a transporting experience – we see great beauty and it moves us to a better place.
700 years ago, the Renaissance commenced in Europe, Over the following 300 years, the basis of the modern world was created – in art, sculpture, philosophy, mathematics and science. Renaissance means “rebirth”, to be born again. It was the start of a new era for mankind. The Renaissance led to some of the most important paintings, sculpture and buildings ever created. The great artists of the Renaissance were influenced by the ideas of Plato. They believed the purpose of art was to represent beauty. They believed in the primacy of human female beauty. And they believed in the idea of perfect beauty. The most famous of all ancient Greek sculptures, the Venus di Milo, created more than 2000 years ago, represents this idea.
The Renaissance artists also embraced the concept of the divine feminine, through the person of Mary, the mother of Jesus; also called the Virgin Mary, and Madonna. They mixed Greek mythology and Christianity. They represented beauty and love using both the Virgin Mary and Aphrodite/Venus. The works of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Titian and Raphael are the greatest expressions of female beauty ever created. The Mona Lisa, the most important of the Renaissance masterpieces, is both a portrait of a young lady, and a representation of divine beauty. Mona Lisa is Aphrodite, Venus, she is the Virgin Mary, and she is also the wife of Leonardo’s friend.
The Renaissance masters also adopted Plato’s belief in the supremacy of nature. That natural beauty is superior to man-made beauty. Michelangelo, the greatest Renaissance sculptor, stated that “the foot is more noble than the shoe, and the skin more beautiful than the clothing worn over it”. He considered a naked body, created by God, and untouched by man, to be more beautiful than any woman in fine clothes and expensive jewellery. The supremacy of nature underpins Esan Girl; that Divine beauty is natural and cannot be improved upon by man.
Esan Girl connects to ancient Greece, and Renaissance Europe. Master Tawee follows the ideas of Plato; beauty as the highest virtue, the concept of divine beauty, the transporting nature of beauty, and the supremacy of nature. These ideas are incorporated into the Esan Girl masterpieces. Master Tawee follows the brush strokes of Leonardo. He is inspired by the composition of Botticelli, Titian and others; the way in which the greatest artists presented divine beauty.
Esan Girl has an additional dimension, the idea of Esan as an earthly paradise, a land of goddesses. The natural beauty of the Esan landscape, its rice fields, its lakes and rivers, its temples. The natural beauty of its women. Together they represent divine female beauty in a natural world of perfection.
Master Tawee works with real Thai girls, who are not professional models, but are blessed with great beauty. He presents them as they were created, as they appear in real life, without manipulation or modification. Esan Girl connects the concept of divine beauty with the reality of contemporary Esan women. The idea that an ordinary normal working girl from Esan can be a real-life goddess of love and beauty. Real Thai Beauty.
Master Tawee hopes Esan Girl will make people think about the nature of beauty, and that we can each find our own transporting experience – something divine, a glimpse into a world of perfection.