The London Lounge

I know, we are born with a lust for style, and some are born more gifted than others. However, taste is also influenced and refined by culture. We may learn to love certain types of music and paintings, and we may develop our feelings, views, judgments and vision of things. We could also say that the way we define the world in sublime and vulgar, beautiful and ugly, united and parted, balanced and unbalanced, pleasing and unpleasent changes with time. Our structure transforms, and this metamorphosis influences the way we structure the world.

How do we structure our structuring structure, so that it becomes more refined? I would like to know. Well, reading the LL is a very good thing to do

I suppose this would be a good place to start:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildung

DonB wrote:I suppose this would be a good place to start:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildung

Bildung may very well be a key activity, although I have the impression that Bildung is more attached to knowledge, mind and spirit than educating the senses with the exception of romantics like Goethe and Schiller.

Personal judgement on dressing and appearance must be the work of the eye. How do we educate the eye? Reading the LL, old Apparel Arts, visiting the tailor, the shirtmaker and shoemaker, looking at other people in the streets are good things to do for sure. We mould the eye through that process. However, would it better to visit a museum or walk in the mountains or go for heavy drinking in the downtown? In the end, what educates our feel for style, our structuring structure the better way?

Our cultural luggage, acquired through heritage and selection, is indeed the structuring element, under the condition that there is something to structure in the first place. Harmony structures the melody in music, drawing structures colour in painting and ideas structure feelings and images in literature – to paraphrase Pierre Lanbriet.
Proust writes in “Le Temps Retrouve” that

Marcel Proust wrote:…we are not at all free with respect to the work of art, we do not create it as we please; instead, because it preexists within us, we must – since it is necessary and at the same time concealed – discover it the way we would do with a law of Nature.

Becoming familiar with Style’s consecrated possibilities of expression is as useful to us as the theory of colour to a painter: it can help him understand better what he is doing (or what he is feeling), but it won't teach him how to paint. True style always discovers its own way of doing things (which may prove similar to others', but discovering it remains a personal experience) – from the most mundane tasks to the most complex: originality comes naturally, effortlessly, in fact Style cannot help being creative and original.
In the absence of a strong vision of which one is already aware, I think Schopenhauer’s cited work poses the danger of a damaging divorce between intuition and intellect.
Any place is good to find inspiration for means of expression – the museum, the woods or the bar – as long as the eye and the mind work together to go beyond banality and the obvious. But beware of “moulding” the eye – rather, I would strive to maintain it fresh and capable of noticing the essential, the surprising, the hidden gem in any piece of rock; as well as the cliche and the triviality of the intellect under any polished appearance.
As for the refinement of expression, I understand it in the sense of dispensing with all that is superfluous with respect to our vision, rather than adding layer after layer of borrowed cultural material.
The most important part of this search is inside, rather than outside: there we will find our unique backbone, which will indicate what shape and size of ribs will fit it for a harmonious shape.

Gruto wrote:Bildung may very well be a key activity, although I have the impression that Bildung is more attached to knowledge, mind and spirit than educating the senses with the exception of romantics like Goethe and Schiller.

Heine, in spite of the criticism expressed in "The Romantic School", proves that he remains after all the last of the romantics:

Heinrich Heine wrote:In artistic matters, I am a supernaturalist. I believe that the artist cannot find all his forms in nature, but that the most remarkable are revelead to him in his soul.

It's easy to see beyond the strict notions of "art" and "artist" and apply this principle to a wider array of situations where one strives to build bridges between the inside and the outside world. Not only can one not expect to find "ready-made" patterns to follow for expressing one's vision, but the most remarkable of the forms are revealed (not seen, not heard, not read) to him in spirit.
This doesn't have to be anything revolutionary, it may just be a very personal way of understanding and using, combining, putting into an individual syntax available elements, without necessarily creating new ones. So yes - museums, books, artisans, anything that, regarded with what Balzac called "seconde vue" (this capacity to see beyond appearance to discover the essence of things), can help find correspondences between vision (of the inner eye) and sight (of the physical eye).