Noah Marlowe ︎︎︎

“Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naÏvety rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man – the domain of aesthetic judgement is therewith defined.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1889.


The world is a vessel in which man can imprint his own psyche and aesthetic judgements. Without man, the world just is. Nature, and the worldly things that we observe to be beautiful, are beautiful because they reflect to us characteristics in which we find to be desirable, noble, and exciting. For that which is ugly, we observe those characteristics in which we fear, detest, and avoid. Materiality and paper can be understood within the same logic. Paper and substrate are vessels in which we can transfer our imaginations through text, image, and form, but once transferred, its potentiality is diminished. The blank piece of paper represents potentiality in its purest form. Without bias, it can house both the beautiful and the ugly, but only man can make that judgement.

Nothing is Beautiful. 2020. Printed Zine. 8.5” x 5.5”. 22 pages.