Oh, I am confused. The photograph would show the truth of an event and that result. There is nothing beautiful about result of violence. Either Keat's idea stands as he states it or it is a false statement as it requires enough qualifications until what remains is simply what can fit his definition.
No. You are quite wrong. The image does not necessarily show the truth of the event, otherwise the job of the police invesatigation would be plain sailing. The image shows the result or consequences of an event, or series of events, which are probably very ugly and deceitful and unbeautiful in their nature.
The photograph would be a complete scene--the result of an impact trauma. So, I guess what you are saying is random acts that have no context nor meaning cannot be beautiful nor true? Dribbling paint on a canvas for example?
Not quite. Dribbling paint on a canvas can only be beautiful or true within a context of meaning that the viewer brings to the image. An example which springs to mind is Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles which was bought by the Australian Government a few decades ago and has since increased in value immensely.
For this painting to be beautiful, according to Keats, it has to be true. So, just as an exercise, let's enquire into what may be true and therefore beautiful in Pollock's Blue Poles. First, the random splashing of paint on a canvas would seem to be controlled more by the subconscious than the conscious. I think we could agree on that, yes?
So any truth or beauty in the Blue Poles painting is likely to be of a subconscious nature. Agreed?
Here one has to use one's imagination. Could it be, for example, that some of those random patterns in the Blue Pole painting recognisably resemble in some vague way, the network of neurons and synapses in the human brain? Does the image appeal at some 'undefined' subconscious level to certain very sensitive, but influential, art critics who have praised the painting and lifted it to the stratospheric heights of 'millions of dollars' value?
One can speculate forever on the true reasons for this painting's value, but truth should play an essential part.
Sounds like you are not sure. It also sounds like you need to justify the violence to make it beautiful.
Of course I'm not sure, in this example. It's hypothetical. And of course violence has to be justified to make it beautiful, as in the image of Jesus Christ on a cross.
But it seems what you are saying is it all come down to your personal interpretation. Just as Keats made a personal statement about art that works for him. So a personal truth is beautiful personally, which is not saying very much.
You seem very dismissive of personal opinion. As regards art, everything is a personal interpretaion. However, the significance of Keats' phrase
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
is in his equating truth with beauty. Beauty devoid of truth is shallow. The world of fashion is a good example of shallow beauty, a fake beauty, a lie which can appear beautiful.
Supposing Keats had written, "Beauty is a lie, a lie beauty", that's all ye know on earth and all ye need to know".
What sort of world would we be living in? Probably the same world we are now living in. Not many, it seems, have paid much attention to Keats. There exists in our world, unfortunately, a complete divorce between truth and beauty.
I prefer Keats'world, but I have the nous (hopefully) to understand that I'm probably surrounded by scoundrels, but in a general way. I'm not implying my immediate neighbours are scoundrels.