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Yeah, I'd call it uglier. The scene in the painting looks mundane, not pretty but simply normal because it depicts a real situation in a real place, realistically. The scene in the poster is an illustration of an imaginary ideological utopia, so ugly that it needs to be stylicized in order to avoid reactions of disgust.
Again, I am not sure what it is that is depicted there that is disgust-inducing. Disgust is an awfully strong emotion, after all. And, the OP used the term "ugly" -- I took that as an aesthetic comment, rather than as a synonym for disgust, but perhaps that is indeed what they meant. I can certainly understand if someone found certain elements of the scene objectionable, such as the Antifa reference. Or even the LGBT-adjacent couple. But the overall scene of people going about their day -- walking the dog, flying a kite, going to work, hanging out with friends, etc, is a pretty regular street scene.
Again, I took the OP to be saying something other than "I disagree with the Greens' political vision," but perhaps that is indeed all they were saying.
If you want to look at the picture purely as an abstract piece of visual art, divorced from its context and implications, then fine, it can get away as being merely not pretty. But visualizing the scene and its constituent elements with some degree of fidelity should present an image that requires some ideological or at least aesthetic buy-in for the viewer not to be repulsed. See some of its elements:
Cripples
Fat people
Squatters
Graffiti
Transsexuals
Piercings
Tattoos
Antifa
Stoners
BLM
And I don't mean this as a jab against these categories, but I do mean to observe that someone who is not already inured to their sight would almost certainly feel some level of disgust were he to encounter their average representatives. Certainly those who are already on board will imagine more presentable examples instead, or idealized versions, and the poster is almost certainly simply an in-group signal aimed at them in the first place.
To rephrase: All of the elements enumerated above are, if not categorically then at least with most of their real-world examples, fit to cause disgust, and ugliness is merely description of the visual qualities that lead to the more visceral reaction in the viewer.
To be even clearer: Crippled limbs are ugly. Rolls of fat are ugly. Squats are, most of the time, ugly. Graffiti is ugly. Transsexuals are ugly. Piercings are, if not ugly in themselves, viscerally disgusting. Tattooed people are ugly. Antifa tends to be fairly ugly. Stoners often become ugly. BLM activities tend to be ugly. Yeah, there are probably counterexamples, but I'd wager they're rarer than those examples that prove my point. And yes, ugliness is subjective, so I posit some neutral human observer who sees any of these things for the very first time and has never heard of them before.
Really? People will feel disgust at encountering a disabled person? Not empathy?
You of course, are not the OP, but it seems to me that the Green position on these matters is that disabled people, nor any of those other types of people, are not inherently ugly. So, if that is the basis of the claim that the scene depicted is ugly, then that answers my question: That calling the scene "ugly" is just another way of saying "I disagree with the political positions espoused." Which is fine; like I said, I thought the OP was making a different type of claim.
The disgust is what makes the empathy sincere. It is no great love to love the beautiful, the abled, the pleasant; that is natural, and all people love them. But love the leper -- disgusting, oozing, broken, repulsive, dangerous? Well, now that's a shining soul.
The crippled are innately worse people. They are crippled. Those who rise above their limitation through hard work and grit warrant a certain respect, but for the most part, the broken are gross. Being hovered over by a super autist is uncomfortable. Watching a kid with a Downy stroke-face flip his shit is uncomfortable. Seeing some strung-out junkie piss himself on a bus arouses disgust.
If you can't acknowledge that the dregs of society are in fact viscerally repulsive, then tolerating them is no sign of virtue. Of course you tolerate them. They're fine, apparently!
And I have not said otherwise. OP's claim was completely different: " someone who is not already inured to their sight would almost certainly feel some level of disgust were he to encounter their average representatives." In other words, that the normal reaction to seeing someone in a wheelchair is one of disgust. That is the claim that I am taking issue with, not with the obvious fact that someone who uses a wheelchair is unable to walk.
The OP explicitly referred not to "the dregs of society" but rather to average handicapped persons.
I have not claimed that tolerating them is a sign of virtue; in fact, I have claimed the exact opposite: That tolerating them, or at least not being disgusted by them, is normal. That which is normal is, by definition, neither particularly virtuous nor particularly lacking in virtue. In contrast, if someone reacts with disgust at seeing someone in a wheelchair, that does seem to me to be indicative of a lack of virtue.
These are the same claims, though, just worded a bit differently. Of course someone in a wheelchair is disgusting, to some extent; their handicap is depressing, their inability to do basic things is shameful. The world would be better, and that person would be better, if they weren't in a wheelchair. They are a permanent sign of something bad.
That doesn't make them the world's worst people. But it does bar them from ever being the best.
Same thing.
Well obviously not, or we wouldn't have needed and still need social campaigns to support them, tolerate them, special olympics to make them feel included, etc., etc. You don't need to try so hard to make people do normal things. Children point and stare and make bad comments; that's normal. We have to chastise them until they learn to hide it.
Now I just suspect that you are yanking my chain.
Honestly, I normally feel like that about what Minotaur writes, him coming off as a little edgy, but he's really explaining my perception of the matter quite correctly.
He is being utterly politically incorrect by the standards of current western society, but he's also very much factually right. Being disabled is a bad thing, and people naturally react negatively to it. The positive reactions we often display, observe and expect are entirely nurture.
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