Post-Functionalist, Beauty and The Struggle of Representation

-An oil refinery silo that demonstrate sheer functionalist beauty of assisting nature's tasks.

Modern era represent beauty of functionalist thinking but functionalist thinking couldn't be singly represented by modernism. Functionalist perspective of absolute beauty has deeper root and longer history than what the Utopian and dictating modernist had single-handedly claimed.

One day in Athens, student Aristippus met master Socrates...
Aristippus tried to challenge Socrates' view on the relationship
between 'good', 'beautiful' and 'usefulness'...
Aristippus:"Can you describe what constitute 'good'?"
Socrates: "There could be nothing good in itself but only in relation to something. A thing must be good for something in order to be good."
Aristippus:"How about 'beautiful'?"
Socrates:"A beautiful wrestler is unlike a javelin beautiful for swift and powerful hurling."
Aristippus argued that the two answers given by his master are overlapping and repeatedly the same. Socrates then explain:" Is a dung basket beautiful then? Of course, and a golden shield is ugly, if the first is well made for its special work the later badly!".
But for Aristotle's Functionalist theory, a work of art that is truly 'beautiful', is one that could function to complete mother nature's unfinished design of the world. The higher rank in life scale, from insect to animal to human, the more nature require them to assist her task. Provided the rational faculty of art, man is able to come to nature's aid and the art done by human functions to fulfill her uncomplete task. (example: an oil refinery plant is a beautiful work of human art to solve the incapability of nature to convert oil into power resource) A physician/doctor use the law of nature to do the heal of health of a person, when nature made mistakes and incapable to do so. The skill and machinery of a physician carrying out his job, has help nature to reach the desired result of providing health. This is the true reason and the beauty of human art.

The end of modern era see the lack of rational understanding of the beauty of architectural art. Those classical faith and thinking of functionalist beauty faded and the whole post-modern world plunged into a deep abyss of identity struggle in the search for 'beauty'... called it the Struggle of Representation. One full century of functionalist modern rationality proven to be too cruel to some ill-fated human, who always wish to live in idealised imaginary world (especially those in third world country which literary understanding of the meaning of modernism is lacking), the 'hamster wheel' of Struggle begun. Morality neglected, the responsibility of completing nature's unfinish task pushed aside, the naive, emotional and irrational reviving of the fading identity barricade the human eyes! The Struggle continues...
-The rude and banal etnocentric post-modernist revivalism - a giant Golden Shield?

'Man shouldn't be able to see his own face - there's nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes.Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself. The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.'

- Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet