What if I were to tell you there is a magic number that does determine attractiveness, and it can be seen from the parthenon to the Mona Lisa? In the art world, it’s hard to break the rules because there are no one set of definites, but painters have found a way by using the ancient theory of the golden ratio to find beauty. Many use this visual principle as more than a compositional guide, instead of applying it to an image to make it proportionally attractive, it consults the image as a diviner of lines and shapes. The more input the image receives from the artist, the more it begins to determine itself. There’s a push and pull between the creator and the creation that resolves itself like an equation. Despite the mathematical conclusions found in the pictures, the results are anything but formulaic. The reason it is so popular is because it has created the vision of perfection seen as favored by gods and humans alike.

While the golden ratio is arguably successful in making art aesthetically pleasing, to claim it’s God’s building block found in all manifestation of nature and art is as dubious as a conspiracy theory. Once you see a pattern, it’s hard to not see it in all shapes and forms, but paintings look at the golden ratio exposed on its own by the secret formula it imposes. Look at basilicas or triforium buildings like churches for example.. Painterly interpretations of what could be hard-edge straight lines provide a needed indeterminacy for the viewer to approach the work on a human level, creating a distinction because heavenly and earthly, or even reality and fantasy. 

The Parthenon

Viewing the world through the golden ratio can be useful, but it’s only a one sided perspective. There’s little evidence to suggest its more right than one’s intuition, but there’s a willingness to invest in the golden ratio’s veracity because it offers a peak behind the curtain. The subjective nature of art is what elevates it beyond other endeavors because it eludes scientific analysis, but we're closer than ever to understanding how the mind reacts to art through our advancements. Is it coincidence how we react to perfect proportion?

It might be that it’s only a matter of time before artists, instead of using the golden ratio, become more like scientists and consult mounds of brain scans from various experiments and questioning minds to predict the viewer’s reaction, calculating with a high degree of clarity what colors, shapes and motifs that create the strongest reaction, making a work of art that is beautiful rather than subconscious reliance.