Kendall said that to him beauty is simply the absence of ugly.

I tend to disagree. I don't think ugliness and beauty are antithetical at all.

If you look at Picasso's Guernica, there is no question in my mind that it's ugly. And yet, that ugliness invokes an emotional reaction to which I must assign the concept of beauty.   It's in the evocation of the emotion that the beauty lies.

I'm sure you (or least most of you) will agree that prettiness is not beauty. But, as I see it, a painting, we'll say, that's merely pretty misses being beautiful by not evoking an emotion appropriate to the thought.

Dave Oesterreich