Does beauty lie in the familiar?

I began reading the article The Abuse of Beauty by taking the author's statements and attempting to make correlations between music and his broader descriptions of beauty in art in general. After a few pages, it was very clear that I should not pigeon hole the text in such a way, but rather allow the author's opinions of the evolution of the definition of art and beauty's role in said definition. (It is also difficult to carry on keeping yourself in one musical-minded frame throughout 23 dense pages!)

It was not until I read a few pages in about human's own insecurities about new and seemingly "avant-garde" techniques in art that make them chastise it for being crude or ugly. "Fry blamed ignorance and unfamiliarity...we will usually apply the word beautiful to those works of art in which familiarity has enabled us to grasp the unity easily."

FAMILIARITY. Buzzword! Collect $200 dollars.

This sent me thinking all the way back to the first days and blogs of the semester, in which we attempted to define what is "Avant-Garde". A large component of personal definitions includes one's own unique environment and pre-disposed experiences that is brought forth when they experience new things. If someone is educated on a more contemporary issue, art form, or musical style, they will know how to appreciate it. Danto states: "I draw attention to the a priori view that the painting in question really was beautiful, if only viewers knew how to look at it".
Without the "aesthetic education" (or for our purposes, musical education), new works can be perceived as confusing, scary, or, god forbid, unfamiliar.

A second point I thought was both thought provoking as well as quite applicable to other disciplines was the intersection of beauty and culture. I wasn't able to put this into a true cultural context until the excerpt: "The point was not to stand in front of the church and gape at its ornamentation, but to enter the church, the beauty being the bait as it so often is in entering into sexual relationships".

The emphasis on beauty and physical attraction is widely debated and protested, especially among women's groups (It's what is on the inside that counts, girls!)
But now I challenge you to google image search for BEAUTY. (Hmm, I thought that word was supposed to be associated with art?) The results?

Not a single image that is not of a female, typically scantily clad or made up in a doll-like fashion. Granted, I will acknolwedge that this little experiment is kind of in a vacuum (and Google searches may not be the most reliable search for looking into beauty in art). However, I think it speaks volumes about what cultures perceive as beautiful (God Bless the USA?)

How does this relate to music? Well if our culture doesn't value Tuvan throat singing, I would be hard pressed to find a group on mildly music educated adults who fall in love with this unique music from wildly different culture. What I mean by this is that If we are ignorant or unaware of other cultural norms and values in music, we cannot dare to call it 'ugly' or uninteresting because we don't appreciate the aesthetic; anything is possible.