Hi BurrMan,

even though the definition of the 'golden ratio' is mathematic, it surly reflects certain principles of proportion found in nature.
Depending on your personal understanding of artistry, in mine, one of the main aime is to be 'pleasant' to many beholder.
So if you are in the process of 'composing' art or design you could certanly use principles which have proven valid for some
while to be seen as 'pretty' for many. Those principles can be found in nature, as we are part of and therefore influenced by it.

Symmetry, asymmetry, coloration, shape - you name it - can be found within nature and many of those are quite appealing
to most people.

By using such principles within artistry or design is certainly no guarantee that the outcome will be outstanding, yet it may help
to avoid total failure in some ways. Again, all of this depends on ones taste and liking, so there is not much to argue about if
such applied rules is good or not. In my eyes it definitely is a good point of orientation and to start from, yet it schould not supress
any other ideas possible.

The 'golden ratio' is also taught to artists, designers, architects as one way of harmonic subdivision of length, area and volume
and can be found in artwork and architecture of the past and at present.

If you are interested, you can find some examples in which it was used here:

http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMT668/EMAT6680.2000/Obara/Emat6690/Golden%20Ratio/golden.html

Very famous in using the 'golden ratio' is Leonardo Da Vinci who also sketched the proportions of an human body which became
quite popular even today. Also in his well known painting 'Mona Lisa' this rule can be found, but again, this is not the reason for
the success of this picture, it just became, cleverly used, a part of it.