Kalopsia

"the delusions that things are more beautiful than they really are." Grandiloquent Dictionary online

It's certainly a common delusion. There are many troublesome ways in which kalopsia happens, but I will only trouble myself with three ways.

One: Looking back through rose-coloured glasses. This usually has to do with missing the good old day, when every day was a model day, photographed through sepia lenses and housed in expensive albums or golden frames. As a painter, this happens by thinking back to an idea that was forgotten and thinking, "oh, that would have made a great painting, why are my best ideas forgotten?". As an anecdote, the mathematician Paul Erdös often accused the Supreme Fascist (God) of hiding his socks and best equations. I feel that same way about answers to exam questions.

Two: Zooming in on a small part of a large piece. No matter how badly things go, there's always something salvageable and can be made into quite a nice memory. In a painting, no matter how much the whole canvas resembles a puddles of brown goop, there's always some little corner with a swirl of colour that looks brilliant, once you zoom in on it with a magnifying glass, digital camera, and probably Photoshop. Then, you're free to call the painting a masterpiece, despite its puddle-like qualities.

Three: Looking at things upside down. Looking at a confounded dilemma as though you weren't apart of it can be quite entertaining. Odysseus might have laughed at a poor little ship stuck between monsters Scylla and Charybdis in the strait of Messia, had it not been for his heroic disposition and, more importantly, his presence on the little poor ship. The same happens when you turn a distorted sketch and look at it upside down. Because your brain isn't used to seeing things upside down (particularly faces), it doesn't register that the nose is crooked and the eyes are too far apart. So, whatever alien you drew will look like a pulchritudinous portrait of some model.

So, it's quite easy to create the delusion of beauty, isn't it. This is why, for me at least, looking at things in too much detail with expose the tinted-glasses, unfair projection, and Medusas lurking around the canvas. Does every play need to be analyzed line by line? Does every moment of a soccer game need to be scrutinized? Does every painting need to be appraised to the sky by examining the brush strokes of the artists? Except for the last five minutes of the recent German-Italy World Cup game, I think not.