Sunday, November 14, 2010

A Call to End Media Prejudice in the Arts




I know...its not quite got the same urgency as Civil Rights or Equal Rights.... but still...
How many times have I heard critics, academics, curators, collectors, dealers and yes.... even artists, for God’s sakes, publically trotting out their ignorant and insufferable belief that working in certain media is somehow lesser than another.
SHAME ON YOU!!!!!
Critics, academics, curators, collectors and dealers: get a clue. Mediums are media. They mediate. They are the thing that’s in between the artist and the work of art...you know, the thing that really matters? Why care if the substance is glass, ceramics, oil paint, paper, poop or bubble gum? Isn’t the entire point what’s being done with it?
I have heard that glass is a ghetto. That craft is a ghetto. I was once uninvited from a speaking gig because the painting department head heard I worked in glass (she never even bothered to look at the work)!
Is it a ghetto? Well, if we insist on making it one, I suppose so.

Here is the issue that this prejudice is based on, as I understand it: “Craft is based on technique and materials rather than intellect”. OK, so I have to ask: and that’s bad and wrong why exactly? Wait—I’ll pretend to be one of these people and answer that myself:
1. Body dysmorphia: In setting up Art versus Craft as a dichotomy of mind versus body, or brawn versus brain, the body is going to be the loser because its seen as stupid, and often disgusting. Bodies are messy and make embarrassing demands. Then they die.
2. False Idol Worship: In setting up Art versus Craft as a dichotomy of materials versus concepts the material will lose because its, well...materialistic. Material seems fetishistic; overly commodifiable and it reminds us we are greedy and using up our natural resources. Concepts don’t have that problem. They are lofty and ethereal and make us look immortal and morally righteous.
2A. More False Idol Worship: In committing one’s work to a singular branch of material knowledge (i.e. being a “glass artist” or a “clay artist” etc) one is deliberately and willfully elevating material above all else at the expense of more profound content. It is a form of misguided monomania because it is believed that the materials should fit the idea and not vice versa.
3. Class Issues: In setting up Art versus Craft as a dichotomy between process and technique versus analysis and discourse, process and technique will lose because virtuosity is seen as showing off and as a performance rather than a philosophy... Skill and labor remind us a little too much of.... slavery...either in the standard sense of horrific exploitation of others or in the sense of slavish devotion—unhealthy obsession.
4. For Artists Only: there’s more money and clout in being called an artist than a craftsperson or “glass artist” or “oven mitt maker” or whatever. See above for the reasons why.


But........what's going on here?..............is this stuff true? NO!!!!!!!!...........wait for it......!!!...........These are all false dichotomies. Duh. We need to unify mind/body not banish them from one another. We need material and concept to cohere, not collapse. We need technique and analysis to be a dialectic, not a fight.
Marriage, peeps, not divorce. Stop gnawing your arms off trying to get away from what scares you cuz it ain’t going away!!!!! Deskill ALL YOU WANT; all it means is more outsourcing. Not to mention the loss of a BODY of knowledge that is irreplaceable and priceless.

A special word to artists working in craft media who insist on supporting these prejudices. THAT’S BAD!!!!!!!!!! STOP IT!!!!!! Have some effing pride for goodness sakes!
Militant Ornametnalists, unite! And don’t cow to these harmful and ignorant beliefs. Stand up for the gloriousness of your chosen profession and be happy and secure in the knowledge that devotion to materials and process are just as righteous a path to enlightenment as anything else. Just because monomaniacal devotion is out of fashion doesn’t mean you should apologize—if anything monomaniacal devotion is one of the surest paths to discovery, originality, and deep spiritual truths. And god help us if those are out of fashion.

As Louis Pasteur once famously said*: “There’s no such thing as applied science and pure science, just good science and bad science” So, if we must dispatch with stuff, can it just be the crap in any medium instead of, oh, say the whole category known as “Craft” or “Glass art”?
Can’t we all just get along?
*Actually, supposedly he didn’t really say this. Too bad, cuz it’s an awesome quote.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

demoliciousness


Its been a while!
I don't want anyone to stop chatting up this blog's more arcane topics because its rockin' my world...
but here's a demo in case you are jonesing for one.

This is what this piece currently looks like on the light table. Her arms aren't done yet, that's why they are blue and not purple.
She is comprised of two layers. On the left is St. Just Blue on Clear #11. Very pale. Never underestimate how much color pale tones are in stained glass. The red is Lambert's R/cl 1001b.
About that red layer: people get freaked out about sandblasting "too much". The glass is pricey, yes, but you are paying for the layers, not the color. Sometimes you just have to be brave and sandblast like a maniac. Trust me on this.


This is the sketch (which I colorized in photoshop just for amuse myself.)


Here are some of the stages of the work: on the top left she's been sandblasted as a silhouette and I made some magic marker indications. I have done a little work with the flex shaft--but mostly I am starting to file the tones into the figure. The top middle shows a bit further along the process and the top right shows all the highlights filed into it.
The bottom row is the two firings I did of the painting. As always I use stencil black vitreous paint. I did only the two firings.

The whole bod.
This is a close up of the two layers together. She's purple now because I wiped some transparent red oil paint on her. I want to emphasize that its a teensy tinsy amount...and it has this huge effect of the color. This isn't lightfast. DON'T put oil paint on a window intended to receive UV light (that's THE SUN). This is not a technique that is appropriate for work installed in architecture.


OK--this is important so listen up!!!!!! I don't know how I want these windows to look like finished. I prefer to find out as I go. One of the things that's most important is trying things out in layers. So here are four pictures with sample layers taken from my "Bulk Failure" boxes to see what looks interesting--I'm just messing with colors and patterns here. This is crucial and one can learn a TON doing this. Don't assume you know what a layer is going to look like ahead of time. You don't! Its really amazing what happens and its a lot of fun, to boot.

It will eventually inspire the rest of the piece. Right now, I don't know who she is or why she's wearing a fishnet bodystocking that makes her look like a cheese hanging in the Italian Market. As soon as she's happy with her outer layer, I am certain she'll let me know!

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Deep Thoughts


I was reading this blog by an old friend of my family’s. I was fascinated by this particular post in which he discusses the mind/brain problem. Now, I am very interested in anything pertaining to the mind/body because I would say that therein lies the dilemma, the drama, the delight of ART but I’ll get to that in a minute.
It would seem that culture has encouraged a widening of the mind/body gap that has the chasm getting bigger and bigger, like two tectonic plates determined to form continents that will be settled eventually by warring tribes. I have my theories why. To reduce them to a single sentence? I would say we despise our bodies because they DIE—best to focus on the soul which we can’t usually observe rot so we can pretend its eternal. The Industrial Revolution didn’t help with the mind/body split problem as it reinforced the idea of physical labor being the realm of the poor, the uneducated and unfortunate and entirely a separate thing from those who were rich and schooled and could live an intellectual existence and a leisurely life thinking deep thoughts. I hate that. Especially as a craftsperson. Of course, I work with my hands and I can see clearly its not just the head that is intelligent and that hand skills are a vast body of knowledge—and one our culture undervalues to the point where we are in danger of losing it altogether. Let’s see where that gets us shall we? Outsourcing, anyone? Its gonna be a bitch if society collapses or the bombs drop.
Mechanization certainly enabled us to imagine our thoughts as being entirely divorced from our senses and our physical existence. Everyone knows their soul doesn’t look nasty like a spleen. It looks like this. Or, I guess, like this! (Perhaps they could rename it the “Penile Gland”?)
OK, bear with me here—I will try to relate these concepts at some point!
Because I am evil, I asked my students at NYAA to define art. Not in the personal sense, but the universal. Cuz I’m just nutty that way, I assume commonalities—that all peoples have always made artistic stuff and I wanted the students to think about some sort of baseline definition.
I then gave a power point about the definition I came up with... which I have since decided was a bit overly wordy and I have simplified it. Before I poison you with my definition however, I shall insert an absorbing graphic so you can come to your own conclusions without the influence of my own incredibly persuasive mumbo jumbo.
OK—done? Please add it to the comments!
My universal, all encompassing definition of ART is thus: the marriage of form and content.
I have also asked my students at times, to define creativity. I define it, not as “an original idea” but as creating relationships between disparate ideas. Now if Art is the marriage of form and content its sort of the ultimate union of two incompatible ideas.
Think about language: that’s putting ideas into forms too—no wonder most of my students answered the art definition as some variation on the idea of communication. I actually think that art’s communicative power is sort of a side affect and that we have verbal cognition for a reason!! Art is no replacement. It’s more like telepathy than talking. And its very personal, one to one communication—it’s not preaching (lest it become propaganda)
So, to marry physical form to mental content sounds easy. Hahahahahahaha! Joke’s on you. Artists know that it’s damned near impossible to do in any original way or with any finesse—you non-artists try it sometime! Get back to me with pictures, please.
But my point here is that the artist is re-enacting the greatest creative connection in the universe. That of spirit to matter—content to form. Perhaps it’s why religious people can see artistic creation as being in competition with God-the-Creator. To actually, successfully turn the intellectual, the emotional, and the inspirational into a physical THING is pretty miraculous.
The aware (sometimes even enlightened) human soul is packaged in this gloppy, wrinkly object... Where do they actually connect? Where does the soul begin and the brain end? I’m guessing in that synaptic leap. If it’s something scannable then maybe someday we can diagnose artists!
It’s enough to make you religious....

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Wanamaker Organ




If you are from Philadelphia you are probably familiar with the organ in what used to be Wanamaker's (now a Macy's)
A friend of mine and UArts alum, Scott Kip, is part of the team that works restoring and preserving it and he gave me and some friends an inside tour. Its five stories of rooms--very labyrinthine and compressed in terms of space. It is very much analogous to being inside a body as it seems to have a circulatory system, a nervous system, lungs (so MANY lungs! its pneumatic, after all) and intestines. Just an incredible place.
Click here to see the album of pics.

Monday, September 20, 2010

harpy engraving




click to enlarge! This is on a piece of Lambert's blue on clear flash glass "B". Its about 13" x 17"
The procedure:
Sandblasted the silhouette--no detail. Just a light blast.
Traced drawing on glass with a razor point sharpie.
Engraved highlights and roughed out some of the shading (not too much)
Used a file to smooth out the tones.
There's some sharpie marker on the mouth. I don't really want to paint that on but I may.

The bottom image is me trying out a layer on the lightbox. That red is an outtake from my piece "Nature".

Friday, September 17, 2010

Eastern State Penitentiary project

From my proposal--a photoshopped image of what a cell might look like filled with the colored light cast by a stained glass window.
Example of the amazing spaces at Eastern State.

Hi all! I am super excited about this bit of breaking noose!
I have been chosen as one of the artists to do an installation at the historic ruin, Eastern State Penitentiary.

For many years, this has been my dream venue--its a truly amazing place. Each cell has chapel-like proportions and a window aperture reminiscent of a cathedral architecture. Not to mention the beauty of the decay....its an amazing place. I aim to make ten windows in all.

I am also working with United State's Artists Project Site to help raise funds. This site has a number of features that may interest people in that one can follow the project, interact with me etc. If you do choose to participate by funding--hey I will send you a present! And its not a tote bag, I promise! Pledges start at 1$, FYI.

You can access my page here!

I will have a blog at that site where I update my progress and my thoughts about the project...feel free to follow along.

I thank you so much for your interest and your support...!!!!♥♥♥♥

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Rat or wolf?

This is what the sketch looks like in real life.
And this is what it could look like (when I do it in glass)--this is a photoshop fix. The only difference is a shorter muzzle and the tail.

I am curious as to whether or not the fixed one actually looks more wolf-like to you. Because I dunno if I should bother changing it.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Cassandra


Cassandra. Click to enlarge...seriously as she looks much better a bit bigger.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Harpy


what I did this weekend. Besides bonk my head while attempting to "garden".
As usual, click to enlarge.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

David Byrne weighs in on art vs craft debate....

For the most part I really liked this article...
BUT then he said:

"A song is not better because it has more chords, and it certainly isn’t better because I labored over it longer...odds are, that extra labor might mean it’s simply overworked."

With all due respect to one of my punk rock gods, this made me quite angry as I see this response to labor, skill and technique as the knee jerk post modern de rigueur elevation of intellect which implies that it is somehow a separate process from hand work. Bad punk rock man!

Second of all, the relationship of labor to results is not so simple. I have often really struggled with work only to have the really easy ones be the best. NO KIDDING. But does this mean I should stop doing that? No way! It just means that some are easier. More importantly, I assume the intense labor from the hard ones informs the easy ones. Or at least gets me to a new level...

Sometimes more labor improves a piece and sometimes it does not. I feel very strongly that teaching restraint is a HUGE mistake. Overwork things, then edit. Seeing how far you can push things is way more informative that seeing how good you are at stopping. Overworking leads to discovery. Restraint, not so much.

But to say "odds are ..its overworked" is ludicrous. The odds are that most people are lazy and don't put enough work into their stuff. Occam's razor. 99% of people are in NO DANGER of working too hard!

Saturday, June 19, 2010

stuff I'm kind of working on....

If you are a long time reader of this blog, you may recall this hooded face was a demo some months back. She has acquired a body at long last! I may change the color of her gown by adding another layer (although I kind of like it this way...dunno yet...)
And this one I blogged about a few posts back....



On the light table they seemed to be interacting....hmmmmmmmm.....

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Beauty revisited


I rewrote the essay...and...uh...I think I nailed it this time! Not only are some of the muddled parts less muddled, but there is an expanded section on prettiness and ugliness...plus a thrilling joy ride into Tall Poppy Syndrome!

I will spare you all and put it behind a cut.

Click to show the rest of article



PART I: Introduction

I am not interested in ideas about beauty. I don’t find it thought provoking. On the contrary, I find beauty to be thought annihilating. Which is as it should be. I believe the experience of beauty to be universal. Every culture has a sense of beauty—although we could argue the details and the semantics.
The real question isn’t “is beauty in the eye of the beholder or is it a quality in the beheld” anyway—the real question is: “do we desire something because it’s beautiful or is it beautiful because we desire it?” It’s a chicken/egg question.

Because beauty is really not a particularly verbal or intellectual experience, critics, theorists and philosophers can argue forever that its irrelevant and we can all even agree on that point...basically, you can deny it all you want, and still, the appetite continues to rage completely unfazed, unabated and entirely undiminished. Similar to the smitten lover who knows they’ve chosen an inappropriate partner, passionate love blazes on regardless of all rational logic.

What is “beauty”? Because for this talk to have any meaning there needs to be a definition put forth at the outset. So here’s my provisional definition, which keeps getting revised with invasive surgery every time I visit this topic!
“Beautiful” is a sacrosanct term reserved for the extra special peak aesthetic experience that appeals to our “soul” as well as to our senses; “Beauty” is the transformative experience of being filled with desire and inspiration. The simplest way I define “aesthetic Beauty” is that it is the object, the embodiment, of our love, which we perceive as attractive in appearance. So now you can relax while I digress a bit...

I want to be clear, that in discussing “beauty” I am distinguishing between “beautiful nature” and “man made beauty” and also between “beautiful ideas” and “beautiful objects”. As an artist I am interested in the aesthetics of man-made objects.
Nature is beautiful. No kidding—one hears this ALL the time, its hardly a burning debate. But it’s not really very interesting in a discussion of aesthetics because we are not responsible for creating it and we have no impact on its meaning. A flower, a tiger or a sunset is ultimately utterly without morals or meaning. A sunset only means the earth is still in rotation...unless it’s a painting of a sunset. Art can embody intentional metaphor, and narrative—even though it can be deployed exploitatively rather than empathetically. At the very least, it has the potential to address humans on their own terms.

Beautiful ideas are similarly uninteresting—world peace, caring for others—all beautiful ideas but they are cheap, easy to come by and not particularly in contention. Yet they STILL need aesthetic help in selling them to humanity. Any fool can and they often do have good ideas but it’s the guy who writes the best song who gets the followers who are actually inspired to make changes. This is why I find much conceptual art is so dreary.

I believe "beauty" and "pretty” are, by definition, two different things. A pretty object needs something more to make it beautiful. But beauty doesn't need anything more to make it relevant. Pretty is only skin deep—but beauty is much, much deeper as any ugly person can tell you.

PART II. Prettiness and Ugliness

Pretty is the word we give to a superficial attractiveness that gives pleasure or is emotionally neutral. “Pretty” appeals to our senses and maybe our egos (think “trophy wife” to get a sense of what I mean). Pretty is hedonistic and provides a low level boost of instant gratification. Since all humans share the same biology, the same five senses, and that is more than enough to ensure that there are aesthetic qualities that are universally agreed upon. The human mind cannot tolerate much ambiguity or constant incompletion. It seeks patterns and imposes them on disorder. We are biologically wired to be alert to color contrasts, patterns, symmetry, and radiant light. I say alert—because its not always attraction=consumable. The biological imperative seems to be to notice, then analyze the red berry rather than gobble it down or toss it out without thought. We also have much software we have devoted to facial recognition and the fact that mirror neurons fire like crazy whenever we see anything resembling a person. Apparently we find the most mathematically average faces the most attractive. So that’s what “pretty” is, its inert, powerlessly pleasing. Pretty is “nice”.

But lately, the idea of PRETTY has begun to really pique my interest. Because I am not sure the issues of beauty are really debatable, as I have (and will continue in a few moments) to define them. What’s bugging the art world isn’t whether or not someone’s is having a real moment with an artwork! What’s irritating is the demand that it be good looking. So the real issue isn’t beauty at all but prettiness. Should an artwork look pretty? And for most culturati, the answer is no. For example, if you tell someone they made a pretty painting you are really asking to be socked in the kisser! Because artists are generally reaching for the higher goal of sublime, or awe inspiring or at the very least something profound calling it “merely pretty” is quite the insult.
And I agree art shouldn’t linger too long at the pretty level—but why isn’t it seen as a stepping-stone to something more visually intense? Why can’t it be a means to another end, a tool? In the desperation to be profound, is it necessary to jettison prettiness? Why must it be reflexively dispatched with entirely in order to ensure the primacy of meaning?
I like some art that’s pretty—I’m not afraid to admit that in public—but I demand it be pretty and beautiful too!
So as I continue with my remarks about beauty—keep in mind that one way—maybe even a major way, to reach beauty is via prettiness.
Thus I will repeat that pretty appeals to the senses. It is attractive to the eyes, it draws you in. And it is universal—in the object itself, not the eye of the beholder.
These pretty things are:
CONTRAST (of material, form, shape, color, texture, line),
RANGE (how diverse are the elements comparatively),
DESIGN (proportion, pattern, repetition, rhythm, symmetry),
LIGHT (radiance, warmth, shadow)
MIMESIS (by which I mean that representation activates recognition and empathy.
SKILL (I include this because, for better or worse, we are turned on by displays of skill).

There are two ways these principals are manipulated by artists to be interesting and possibly beautiful—either harmoniously or disharmoniously and the level of intervention can remain merely attractive or can scale the heights all the way to beauty. But these are the things that get our visual cortex humming. They prepare us to have a beautiful experience...and when we don’t we get disappointed which is why, I think we hate pretty so much.

So if pretty is pleasing to the senses (and the ego) then ugly is the opposite—displeasing to the senses (and ego). But beauty’s vastness can contain both—they just don’t happen to intersect, as seen in the top diagram. I don’t think that if pretty and ugly were to overlap, as in a traditional Venn diagram, you would get anything like “beauty”...more likely it would just compound the nauseating factors! A sugar coated turd, if you will.

Ugliness is usually more interesting than pretty, though, because it’s associated with the repulsive and things tend to be repulsive for a good reason. Thus, they are more psychologically loaded. It takes more energy to process something negative than positive--it stands to reason that prettiness doesn’t really require any real effort, but ugliness must be dealt with somehow—either avoided, transformed, or disposed of. Again—if an artist is intent on avoiding the dreaded “pretty” dead end and adopts the strategy of making work ugly for its own sake... if they imagine that’s a recipe for guaranteed artistic depth, well then I’m more a little concerned. Ugliness can be a profound, powerful experience but only if its wielded appropriately—otherwise it just gets tossed in the trash can.

Some notions of ugly derive from self loathing and fear of our bodies not putting us in the best light with its chaotic, unpredictable, dirty, smelly, demands and its insistence that it someday will die. Furthermore, it makes sound biological sense to not to consume what is rotten or mate with the horrifically asymmetrical or those with festering sores –no matter how politically incorrect and just plain cruel that may seem.
Now this is where ugliness gets really interesting. What should be repulsive is always going to get a portion of passionate defenders. People can be open minded and often perverse—we have a huge capacity to find attractive things that could easily lead to self-destruction. Its not as simple as unhealthy=repulsive and good for you=attractive.
We are a tricky species. Perhaps the biological imperative to analyze applies to the ugly as well. Or we may initially feel repulsed—but maybe we are turned on by the intensity of our response alone.

But seduction involving a hefty component of ugliness is not something one can typically accomplish by a full frontal assault. Transformation across domains is necessary. So you can manifest an ugly idea with good design and it changes from a bad idea to a beautiful one.

So we have an elevated awareness and fascination with the grotesque. The word grotesque derives from the word grotto, and a grotto is a moist cave. You don’t have to be Freud to know why dark, moist caves are going to be an emotional hot zone.

Pretty is the biologic attraction to appearance and ugly is repellant appearance. Since both involve a heightened response, they can be used to create beauty.



PART III: What is Beauty?
To repeat what I said above: “Beautiful” is a sacrosanct term reserved for the extra special peak aesthetic experience that appeals to our “soul” as well as to our senses; “Beauty” is the transformative experience of being filled with desire and inspiration.

The impact of beauty is nothing short of fierce. Nancy Etcoff points out that many of the words we use to qualify “beauty” are violent: bombshell, knockout, drop-dead gorgeous. Rapturous...This is how bad we want it; this is what we are willing to risk getting it. Beauty provokes a gut “WOW!” response, which is why I called it “thought annihilating”—it doesn’t really appeal to the intellect.

Beauty is also always positive, meaning, “life affirming”. But it’s rigorous (where prettiness is not) because it’s not about gratification at all. It is more about anticipation rather than relief and release. As long as we are filled with desire, we are engaged with something and probably not looking to end it all. So beauty is hope-full. The chicken/egg question is a positive feedback loop—we desire it because it’s beautiful and it’s beautiful because we desire it. So we keep after it.

But there’s a dark side--beauty can be so powerful it can transform meaninglessness and atrocity into a union with the cosmic. Because this experience is so glorious, so fleeting, mysterious, erotic, traumatic, even, it is always calling attention to its own inevitable loss. Therefore, beauty embodies a healthy measure of anxiety and fear. It takes courage to take the risks of engaging beauty.


Beauty fills us with desire.
I think we want two things in life. We yearn to be complete and we want to know there is a good reason for suffering and profound meaning in all that seems random and troublesome. Beauty, like love or truth or god, belongs to the category that promises catharsis, completion and enlightenment rather than simply pleasure and we imagine that possessing beauty will bring relief once and for all.

Beauty is to art what love is in life. Beauty is something without which, you suffer. Something you will go to great lengths to experience.
The desire for beauty defies rationality and common sense. It can cause one to abandon safety and self-interest in its pursuit. Under its influence one feels vulnerable, out of control. The loss of beauty causes pain; its death causes more pain. However, beauty is all the more poignant because it is transitory, and it cannot actually be possessed although it tantalizes us with this possibility and that keeps us awake, alive and feeling.
(This is why I find man-made beauty the most interesting, or a flower--a rainbow, a sunset can only be itself and follow its own independent destiny which includes its inevitable demise. But art can address our desires both directly and eternally; it has nothing better to do, in fact!)

Beauty fills us with inspiration.
I think as a species, we have a nagging sensation we are incomplete and we yearn for the long lost missing thing that will make us whole again, take us home again. We want to fit in—and we want to be unique simultaneously.

This is why we enjoy being full for the most part; like all galactic matter, we enjoy expanding and contracting and there’s nothing like a big bang every now and then. We like to define, refine and confirm our barriers to protect our sense of uniqueness and identity and yet we like to let the outside in- to prove we are not empty and not alone--as in breathing, eating, or sexual union— but also metaphorically, as in “full of inspiration” or “full of love”. Nancy Etcoff, whom I mentioned above, is a neuropsychologist at Harvard who has studied both prettiness and happiness. It would seem that what for many years was called “the pleasure center” of the brain is more about anticipation than results. If you stimulate that section of a rat’s brain every time it pushes a lever, it will push it until it dies of exhaustion. This may sound a lot like addiction (and certainly explains addiction as a spiritual crisis wherein one replaces an abstraction with a chemical substance) but the reward is not so important as hope and faith…so ladies and gentlemen—it’s not really about the climax so much as the penetration, if you catch my drift. (Don’t worry people—it’s not really a gender thing, OK?)

When we are full—our boundaries become fuzzy—we become at-one, or a lot less hungry or lonely, if you will. The hole becomes a whole. But something happens to one’s sense of being a discreet being in these cases.
Which brings me to the role of “self” in beauty. Beauty is not only is thought annihilating and language annihilating but also ego annihilating—it allows one to transcend the self which is why it feels so good. When someone surrenders their ego, they are for the moment, anyway—AT-ONE. with something larger than the self. The petty miseries of life seem to dissolve away. “Get over yourself” is more than a glib phrase—it's a path to enlightenment.

One of the things inspiration does is it completes a circuit, jumps a synapse. “Inspiration” literally means to be taking a breath—the opposite of which is expiring, a synonym for death. And in the case of art, one is symbolically inhaling the life of another. As a viewer you take in the artists inspiration when you engage with the artwork and it inspires you. So there’s transference here. The inspiration travelled from the artist, into an object and then into you. It’s a form of deep human communication and empathy that transcends time, space, and even death. So beauty is a momentary triumph of eternity. Seeing an object made well made intelligently and with care and love, made to be special or beautiful collapses barriers, and for a second, you share an understanding. Even though the maker may be long gone, you can see exactly what they dreamed, as they were able to see how you feel.

Beauty is the aesthetic expression of Eros.
The metaphor of transferring life force with one’s breath is the original myth of Eros. And one could easily see beauty as the aesthetic expression of this Eros. I got this idea from Rollo May, the great existential psychologist, who discusses Eros as “the power which drives men to god” (Atheists, please understand that’s metaphorical). Eros was originally a creator:

“When the world was barren and lifeless, it was Eros who ‘seized his life-giving arrows and pierced the cold bosom of the Earth’ and ‘immediately the brown surface was covered with luxuriant verdure.’.... Eros then breathed into the nostrils of clay forms of man and woman and gave them the ‘spirit of life’.”

Originally, Eros was the force that propelled the self towards its highest expression—towards mature self-fulfillment and union with the divine. Apparently, Eros became “sexy” later. In a later telling of the myth, the Earth is barren until Venus lifts her curse and allows smitten Eros to consummate his love for Psyche.
The kiss of life is no joke—when it comes to beauty and its attendant passion and inspiration this is not “artificial respiration” but metaphorical. The transference of the life force of one creator into another.


The experience of beauty is transformative. It can transform the awful into the awesome.
In addition to being the promise of that long lost thing, perhaps beauty’s function is its ability to transform chaos into something transcendent and meaningful. To transmute suffering into a beatific state (whence “beauty”). To transubstantiate our mortal flesh into something more eternal, more metaphorical.
This explains why so much of we call beautiful art must reference heartbreak and tragedy. There’s no transformation from joy to joy—obviously there’s no need to change that particular situation! Nor is there any transformation from emptiness to emptiness or ugliness-to-ugliness, this is just a reaffirmation of our worst fears.

Beauty is empathic, empathetic and embodies the notion of pathos in everyway possible with the exception of apathy. Beauty makes it possible to face, even embrace, the unbearable and traumatic, which would otherwise be too painful to contemplate. Beauty’s power is transformative because it assists us in feeling our feelings in a richer, deeper way, and it is a full spectrum emotional experience in which all is fair game to express. This certainly explains the appeal of tragedy. One can call an absence of pain and sorrow “happiness”, but joy can really only exists in contrast to darkness.

Beauty is dangerous.
Because the thing we desire makes us feels so positive we hope that it is good--we struggle to find these desires noble and moral. There is a long historical confusion between beauty and goodness—no doubt arising from the positive feedback loop. But anything we desire can be exploited for nefarious purposes and beauty can and has been used to sell people just about everything. But beauty is amoral and may deliver one to some odd conclusions, not always in line with society’s rules. There’s a lot open to interpretation with beauty and who knows what the brain of the beholder is bringing to the experience. Beauty is ironic—it promises everything but it delivers just about anything it wants to—from a momentary peek at the deepest mystery of our existence to the cheap euphoria of a commercial jingle. No wonder it’s so dangerous and threatening. No wonder it gets abolished from time to time.

Beauty, truth, the meaning of life, god, and love: these are all just synonyms for the same thing, the thing that makes it all worth the trouble. And to me, this makes beauty something worth fighting for.

PART IV: Creating Beauty
Trying to make something beautiful because you wish it to be so is almost as ludicrous as trying to make something meaningful. Interacting with the material world to create a physical object involves a lot more than intention and wishing. One can take “the beautiful” as subject matter and illustrate it directly. But to transcend apery, the image or form must actually embody the experience, not just parrot it back to the audience, which is why so much falls flat.

In order for an artwork to transcend pretty and become beautiful the appearance of the object itself must invoke a sense of...of...of...what? Imperative desire? Intense pleasure? Deep emotional longing? Shock and awe? Mystery and/ or the miraculous? Love? Hate? All the above and more?
If none of this makes any sense, well here’s a more usable, concrete definition:
Beauty is the formal elements of art (line, color, shape, pattern, texture, composition, rhythm) and the concept --it’s intelligence and it’s emotional tones-- in a confluence that results in a visual equivalent of “love”. Perfection, being the completion of something is the death of it—it demands admiration but does not allow for much empathy. So I think most so-called perfect images are rather boring and end up just being pretty, ironically.

Beautiful art is MORE than the sum of its parts. Of course, one can’t find a recipe to follow or even hope that with the right attitude and ability, beauty will result. You can only have intuition, faith and hope that beauty will arise out of a righteous quest based on love. Does that sound silly? Oh well.

The biological qualities we find attractive or pretty: symmetry, recognizability and familiarity, bright color, pattern, shape are “beautiful” when they are emphasized, ornamented, enhanced, exaggerated and celebrated. When they are made WRONG in the RIGHT way. Artists draw your attention to these qualities by tweaking them a bit so they are unexpected. There is something about beauty that is familiar, yet unique. Obvious, yet mysterious. Easy, yet difficult. Comfortable yet disturbing. Lovely, yet hateful. And in every case, a lot in between.

Part V: Beauty’s Banishment from Art
So why did beauty go out of style in the art world in the 20th Century?
The first reason is TALL POPPY SYNDROME. This is the yearning to be all-inclusive, homogenous, equal and fair at the expense of extreme accomplishment. Great for short poppies, I guess, but not much else.
Technique, materials and process became an issue. After the Industrial Revolution, a pernicious mind/body split became manifest in the art world. One might observe that mass production was, in part, to make things more democratic—decent plates and bed sheets for the proletariat at last! But at a cost—I don’t just mean that machine-made things are bereft and depressing. They ARE bereft and depressing (as the social experiment with public housing so deftly illustrated) or “objects always reflect the character of their maker so when that maker is a soulless automaton, you will be eroding the human condition” I do believe that, but perhaps that’s an argument for another day. —But I refer to the unwinnable contest between hand and machine—I am saying when machines do it cheaper, beauty becomes a social and economic battle and extremely undemocratic as unique human made objects (objects made with love and intelligence) are mostly available only to the wealthy (and those who can make them, of course!). Albeit, beautiful objects have always been more valuable and the better they are the less affordable. So status is always lurking in the margins making kind, generous, liberal people very uncomfortable. When the middle class arose, it was out with the “wall bling” and in with the Wal-Mart.

Obviously, making something beautiful requires ability and time. Whether that comes from hands–on practice or raw talent, it doesn’t really matter—either way—its totally at odds with middle class democracy as it is either merely a coincidence of genetics or the result of having a lot of spare hours and money to indulge on an expensive hobby. And if the plates and sheets from Wal-Mart are nice enough...well why gripe? So judgment became suspect—is became hierarchical elitism based on obsolete patriarchies and exclusionary practices. It seems to be kind and generous to “level the playing field” and see everyone as equal. Perhaps we are born with that potential, but as we grow we make choices, we must face our limits and it’s utterly disingenuous to treat all aesthetic experiences as equally moving.

Body dysmorphia is another reason for beauty’s suspect position in contemporary art. We just can’t seem to reconcile our brains with anything below the neck. Perhaps its because of all the embarrassing and undignified noises and demands our bodies make on us that we would prefer to launch our heads into outer space. We want to liberate them from our crotches, our stinky feet. Or maybe its just because our bodies and the bodies of even the most loved of loved ones will betray us by dying and rotting.

Safer to emphasize the idea, then one can farm it out to a pair of invisible, contracted skilled hands at no cost to the concept. Then, not only have you created needed jobs and the artist doesn’t have to rely the capricious talent of some mutant savant (probably of the idiot variety if “Amadeus” taught us anything) nor do they need filthy lucre to be considered worthy. Thus, technique became mindless labor entirely divorced from the sublime, lofty philosophies of the Artist. The issue became polarized: sweaty toiling cattle tilling the fields versus pure inspiration and the clean zaps of an enlightened brain thinking deep thoughts. Of course, the brain is a moist and goopy organ with plenty of obnoxious physical needs. How can we ever feel at-one with some greater context if we simultaneously deny our own bodies? The mind/body split will only lead to a dead end until we are at last the artificial intelligence we seem to be slouching towards. Bionic brains, here we come!

The other devastating blow to aesthetic beauty was World Wars I and II. If beauty is analogous to high passion it was never more obvious how much tragedy and atrocity that can lead to. Best to stay cool, and the Birth of Cool was the death knell for beauty. People became afraid of passion and sought to devalue it. War also spelled out in bold type how frivolous and luxurious beauty can be. With all that suffering, is not the indulgence in individual pleasure not insulting, idiotic, a fearful escapist denial or glitzy sugarcoating of the truth?
Beauty became an insult. It became economically impractical. Everyone can see how utterly unfair it is, OFF WITH ITS HEAD!

And voila! The head and the body are two separate things!

And yet we still desire beauty, just as much as we ever did, despite our best interests. And you know why? Because despite what it seems—it is still an experience available to ALL. Anyone can get a glimpse of who we are and why we are.... Beauty absolutely can deliver on its promise of love, completion and enlightenment to anyone as long as they are open to it.
Would you feel better knowing how many lives had been saved by beauty? So many.

©Judith Schaechter 2010


Saturday, May 29, 2010

Talk in Brooklyn June 5

At The Observatory Room in Brooklyn.

Here's the press release:

“The Beautiful Experience” with Judith Schaechter

Date: Saturday, June 5th
Time: 8pm
Admission: $5
Presented by Phantasmaphile

World-renowned stained glass artist, Judith Schaechter (AW shucks!), will share her thoughts on Beauty through an image-rich presentation based upon her own research and ruminations.

Her talk is in response to the growing dialogue in the art world started by Dave Hickey 17 years ago, when he first published his book “The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays in Beauty.”

In Ms. Schaechter’s words: “As someone who’s always approached the fine arts from a sort of wonky angle — a female craftsperson from Philadelphia who is adamantly figurative and decorative — I have a personal stake in the notion that beauty is not ALWAYS in the eye of the beholder, but sometimes in the object beheld.”


Further note from moi:

This will be a super souped up, amped up revisiting of the Chicago talk with side digressions and elaboration. All this to say: it will not be a mere reiteration at all but a new improved in-depth probing.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Show opens this coming Saturday!!!!!





Please come!!! Saturday May 22 6-8 pm at Claire Oliver Gallery! Located at 513 West 26th Street, New York, NY .
I am super psyched--hope to see you there! If I don't know you, don't hesitate to introduce yourself. I am told I am somewhat friendly and not at all morose like my work.......

Friday, May 14, 2010

Books!


There's two widgets on the right side of the page...in case you didn't notice!
The top one's for a 10"x8" book of recent work--including prints, drawings etc. The lower one is for a 7"x 7" version--less expensive--fewer images.
I hope you enjoy them if you are inclined to purchase one!

Thursday, May 13, 2010

recent dabblings

Hey look! Its a "sketch*"! (*In quotes because the head is from one sketch, the body is from another and each of the two hands are from still yet other sketches--all put together in p-shop.)


So here's the head. Its three pieces of glass --red/clear; turquoise/clear; goldpink/clear.
On the left above is the red/clear layer with the goldpink On the right is the red/clear with the turquoise. The red layer has glass paint and silver stain fired on.
On the left is the red/clear and the turq/clear before the silver stain and second paint firing. On the right is red/clear; turq/clear and goldpink/cl before silverstain.

Here's the three layers after sandblasting and engraving.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Beauty

PART I: The Beautiful Experience
I am not interested in ideas about beauty. I don’t find it thought provoking. On the contrary, I find beauty to be thought annihilating. Which is as it should be. I believe the experience of beauty to be universal. Every culture has a sense of beauty—although we could argue the details and the semantics.
The real question isn’t “is beauty in the eye of the beholder or is it a quality in the beheld” anyway—the real question is: “do we desire something because it’s beautiful or is it beautiful because we desire it?” It’s a chicken/egg question.
.Because beauty is really not a particularly verbal or intellectual experience, critics, theorists and philosophers can argue forever that its irrelevant and we can all even agree on that point...basically, you can deny it all you want, and still, the appetite continues to rage completely unfazed, unabated and entirely undiminished. Similar to the smitten lover who knows they’ve chosen an inappropriate partner, passionate love blazes on regardless of all rational logic.
What is “beauty”? “Beautiful” is a sacrosanct term reserved for the extra special peak aesthetic experience that appeals to our “soul” as well as to our senses; “Beauty” is the transformative experience of being filled with desire and inspiration.


I want to be clear, that in discussing “beauty” I am distinguishing between “beautiful nature” and “man made beauty” and also between “beautiful ideas” and “beautiful objects”. As an artist I am interested in the aesthetics of man-made objects.
Nature is beautiful. No kidding—one hears this ALL the time, its hardly a burning debate. But it’s not really very interesting in a discussion of aesthetics because we are not responsible for creating it and we have no impact on its meaning. A flower, a tiger or a sunset is ultimately utterly without morals or meaning. A sunset only means the earth is still in rotation...unless it’s a painting of a sunset. Art can embody intentional metaphor, and narrative—even though it can be deployed exploitatively rather than empathetically. At the very least, it has the potential to address humans on their own terms.

Beautiful ideas are similarly uninteresting—world peace, caring for others—all beautiful ideas but they are cheap, easy to come by and not particularly in contention. Yet they STILL need aesthetic help in selling them to humanity. Any fool can and they often do have good ideas but it’s the guy who writes the best song who gets the followers who are actually inspired to make changes. This is why I find much conceptual art is so dreary.


I believe "beauty" and "pretty are, by definition, two different things. A pretty object needs something more to make it beautiful. But beauty doesn't need anything more to make it relevant. Pretty is only skin deep—but beauty is much, much deeper as any ugly person can tell you.
Pretty is the word we give to a superficial attractiveness that gives pleasure or is emotionally neutral. “Pretty” appeals to our senses and maybe our egos. Since all humans share the same biology, the same five senses, and that is more than enough to ensure that there are aesthetic qualities that are universally agreed upon. The human mind cannot tolerate much ambiguity or constant incompletion. It seeks patterns and imposes them on disorder. We are biologically wired to be alert to color contrasts, patterns, symmetry, and radiant light. Not to mention how much software we have devoted to facial recognition and the fact that mirror neurons fire like crazy whenever we see anything resembling a person. So that’s what “pretty” is, its inert, powerlessly pleasing. Pretty is “nice”.


PART II: What is Beauty?
The impact of beauty is nothing short of fierce. Nancy Etcoff points out that many of the words we use to qualify “beauty” are violent: bombshell, knockout, drop-dead gorgeous. This is how bad we want it; this is what we are willing to risk getting it. Beauty provokes a gut “WOW!” response, which is why I called it “thought annihilating”—it doesn’t really appeal to the intellect.

Beauty is also always positive; by which, I mean, “life affirming”; and by this I am referring to beauty’s momentary triumph over time and death (which I will get to momentarily). Because this feels so good we hope that it is good--we struggle to find these desires noble and moral. There is a long historical confusion between beauty and goodness. It doesn’t help that anything we desire can be exploited for nefarious purposes and beauty can and has been used to sell people just about everything.


Beauty fills us with desire.
I think we want two things in life. We yearn to be complete and we want to know there is a good reason for suffering and profound meaning in all that seems random and troublesome. Beauty, like love or truth or god, belongs to the category that promises catharsis, completion and enlightenment rather than simply pleasure and we imagine that possessing beauty will bring relief once and for all.

Beauty is to art what love is in life. It is more about desire and anticipation rather than relief and release. Beauty is something without which, you suffer. Something you will go to great lengths to experience.
The desire for beauty defies rationality and common sense. It is dangerous because it causes one to abandon safety and self-interest in its pursuit. Under its influence one feels vulnerable, out of control. The loss of beauty causes pain; its death causes more pain. However, beauty is all the more poignant because it is transitory, and it cannot actually be possessed although it tantalizes us with this possibility and that keeps us awake, alive and feeling.

This is why I find man-made beauty the most interesting, or a flower--a rainbow, a sunset can only be itself and follow its own independent destiny which includes its inevitable demise. But art can address our desires both directly and eternally; it has nothing better to do, in fact!


Beauty fills us with inspiration.
I think as a species, we have a nagging sensation we are incomplete and we yearn for the long lost missing thing that will make us whole again, take us home again. We want to fit in—and we want to be unique simultaneously.

This is why we enjoy being full for the most part; like all galactic matter, we enjoy expanding and contracting and there’s nothing like a big bang every now and then. We like to define, refine and confirm our barriers to protect our sense of uniqueness and identity and yet we like to let the outside in- to prove we are not empty and not alone--as in breathing, eating, or sexual union— but also metaphorically, as in “full of inspiration” or “full of love”. Nancy Etcoff, whom I mentioned above, is a neuropsychologist at Harvard who has studied both prettiness and happiness. It would seem that what for many years was called “the pleasure center” of the brain is more about anticipation than results. If you stimulate that section of a rat’s brain every time it pushes a lever, it will push it until it dies of starvation. This may sound a lot like addiction (and certainly explains addiction as a spiritual crisis wherein one replaces an abstraction with a substance) but the reward is not so important as hope and faith…so ladies and gentlemen—it’s not really about the climax so much as the penetration, if you catch my drift. (Don’t worry people—it’s not really a gender thing, OK?)

When we are full—our boundaries become fuzzy—we become at-one, or a lot less hungry or lonely, if you will. The hole becomes a whole. But something happens to one’s sense of being a discreet being in these cases.
Which brings me to the role of “self” in beauty. Beauty is not only is thought annihilating and language annihilating but also ego annihilating—it allows one to transcend the self which is why it feels so good. When someone surrenders their ego, they are for the moment, anyway—AT-ONE. with something larger than the self. The petty miseries of life seem to dissolve away. “Get over yourself” is more than a glib phrase—it's a path to enlightenment.




One of the things inspiration does is it completes a circuit, jumps a synapse. “Inspiration” literally means to be taking a breath—the opposite of which is expiring, a synonym for death. And in the case of art, one is symbolically inhaling the life of another. It’s a form of deep human communication and empathy that transcends time, space, and even death. Seeing an object made well, made intelligently and with care and love, made to be special or beautiful collapses all barriers, and for a second, you share an understanding. Even though the maker may be long gone, you can see exactly what they dreamed, as they were able to see how you feel.

Beauty is the aesthetic expression of Eros. (In the older sense of the word*.) The kiss of life is no joke--it is not “artificial” respiration but metaphorical--Eros and Psyche's kiss. “I need your kiss, in the coldness of the night, to worm my senses and my feelings. I want fall in your breath and find the reason why humans can't live without air, as I can't live without your kisses.”


The experience of beauty is transformative. It can transform the awful into the awesome.
In addition to being the promise of that long lost thing, perhaps beauty’s function is its ability to transform chaos into something transcendent and meaningful. To transmute suffering into a beatific state (whence “beauty”). To transubstantiate our mortal flesh into something more eternal, more metaphorical.
This explains why so much of we call beautiful art must reference heartbreak and tragedy. There’s no transformation from joy to joy—obviously there’s no need to change that particular situation! Nor is there any transformation from emptiness to emptiness or ugliness-to-ugliness, this is just a reaffirmation of our worst fears.

The transference of empathy is important—beauty is empathic, empathetic and embodies the notion of pathos in every way possible with the exception of apathy. Beauty makes it possible to face, even embrace, the unbearable and traumatic, which would otherwise be too painful to contemplate. Beauty’s power is transformative because it assists us in feeling our feelings in a richer, deeper way, and it is a full spectrum emotional experience in which all is fair game to express. This certainly explains the appeal of tragedy. One can call an absence of pain and sorrow “happiness”, but joy can really only exists in contrast to darkness.


Beauty is dangerous.
Beauty can be so powerful it can make meaninglessness and atrocity into a union with the cosmic. Because this experience is so glorious, so fleeting, mysterious, erotic, traumatic, even, it is always calling attention to its own inevitable loss. Therefore, beauty embodies a healthy measure of anxiety and fear.
Beauty is also amoral and may deliver one to some odd conclusions, not always in line with society’s rules. There’s a lot open to interpretation with beauty and who knows what the brain of the beholder is bringing to the experience. Beauty is ironic—it promises everything but it delivers just about anything it wants to—from a momentary peek at the deepest mystery of our existence to the cheap euphoria of a commercial jingle. No wonder it’s so dangerous and threatening. No wonder it gets abolished from time to time.



Beauty, truth, the meaning of life, god, and love: these are all just synonyms for the same thing, the thing that makes it all worth the trouble. And to me, this makes beauty something worth fighting for.
PART III: Creating Beauty
Trying to make something beautiful because you wish it to be so is almost as ludicrous as trying to make something meaningful. Interacting with the material world to create a physical object involves a lot more than intention and wishing. One can take “the beautiful” as subject matter and illustrate it directly. But to transcend apery, the image or form must actually embody the experience, not just parrot it back to the audience, which is why so much falls flat.

In order for an artwork to transcend pretty and become beautiful the appearance of the object itself must invoke a sense of...of...of...what? Imperative desire? Intense pleasure? Deep emotional longing? Shock and awe? Mystery and/ or the miraculous? Love? Hate? All the above and more?
If none of this makes any sense, well here’s a more usable, concrete definition:
Beauty is the formal elements of art (line, color, shape, pattern, texture, composition, rhythm) and the concept --it’s intelligence and it’s emotional tones-- in a confluence that results in a visual equivalent of “love”. Beautiful art is MORE than the sum of its parts. Of course, one can’t find a recipe to follow or even hope that with the right attitude and ability, beauty will result. You can only have intuition, faith and hope that beauty will arise out of a righteous quest based on love. Does that sound silly? Oh well.

The biological qualities we find attractive or pretty: symmetry, recognizability and familiarity, bright color, pattern, shape are “beautiful” when they are emphasized, ornamented, enhanced, exaggerated and celebrated. When they are made WRONG in the RIGHT way. Artists draw your attention to these qualities by tweaking them a bit so they are unexpected. There is something about beauty that is familiar, yet unique. Obvious, yet mysterious. Easy, yet difficult. Comfortable yet disturbing. Pretty, yet ugly. Lovely, yet hateful. And in every case, a lot in between.

I believe what I am describing here is, in a sort of reductive extreme, called “peak shift”.


Part III Banishing Beauty from Art
So why did beauty go out of style in the art world?
First of all technique, materials and process became an issue. After the Industrial Revolution, a pernicious mind/body split became manifest in the art world. One might observe that mass production was, in part, to make things more democratic—decent plates and bed sheets for the proletariat at last! But at a cost—I don’t just mean that machine-made things are bereft and depressing. They ARE bereft and depressing (as the social experiment with public housing so deftly illustrated) or “objects always reflect the character of their maker so when that maker is a soulless automaton, you will be eroding the human condition” I do believe that, but perhaps that’s an argument for another day. —But I refer to the unwinnable contest between hand and machine—I am saying when machines do it cheaper, beauty becomes a social and economic battle and extremely undemocratic as unique human made objects (objects made with love and intelligence) are mostly available only to the wealthy (and those who can make them, of course!). Albeit, beautiful objects have always been more valuable and the better they are the less affordable. So status is always lurking in the margins making kind, generous, liberal people very uncomfortable. When the middle class arose, it was out with the “wall bling” and in with the Wal-Mart.

Second of all was the recognition that making something beautiful requires ability and time. Whether that comes from hands–on practice or raw talent, it doesn’t really matter—either way—its totally at odds with middle class democracy as it is either merely a coincidence of genetics or the result of having a lot of spare hours and money to indulge on an expensive hobby. And if the plates and sheets from Wal-Mart are nice enough...well why gripe? So judgment became suspect—hierarchical elitism based on obsolete patriarchies and exclusionary practices. It seems to be kind and generous to “level the playing field” and see everyone as equal. Perhaps we are born with that potential, but as we grow we make choices, we must face our limits and its utterly disingenuous to treat all aesthetic experiences as equally moving.

Body dysmorphia is another reason for beauty’s suspect position in contemporary art. We just can’t seem to reconcile our brains with anything below the neck. Perhaps its because of all the embarrassing and undignified noises and demands our bodies make on us that we would prefer to launch our heads into outer space. We want to liberate them from our crotches, our stinky feet. Or maybe its just because our bodies and the bodies of even the most loved of loved ones will betray us by dying and rotting.

Safer to emphasize the idea, then one can farm it out to a pair of invisible, contracted skilled hands at no cost to the concept. Then, not only have you created needed jobs and the artist doesn’t have to rely the capricious talent of some mutant savant (probably of the idiot variety if “Amadeus” taught us anything) nor do they need filthy lucre to be considered worthy. Thus, technique became mindless labor entirely divorced from the sublime, lofty philosophies of the Artist. The issue became polarized: sweaty toiling cattle tilling the fields versus pure inspiration and the clean zaps of an enlightened brain thinking deep thoughts. Of course, the brain is a moist and goopy organ with plenty of obnoxious physical needs. How can we ever feel at-one with some greater context if we simultaneously deny our own bodies? The mind/body split will only lead to a dead end until we are at last the artificial intelligence we seem to be slouching towards. Bionic brains, here we come!

The other devastating blow to aesthetic beauty was World Wars I and II. If beauty is analogous to high passion it was never more obvious how much tragedy and atrocity that can lead to. Best to stay cool, and the Birth of Cool was the death knell for beauty. People became afraid of passion and sought to devalue it. War also spelled out in bold type how frivolous and luxurious beauty can be. With all that suffering, is not the indulgence in individual pleasure not insulting, idiotic, a fearful escapist denial or glitzy sugarcoating of the truth?
Beauty became an insult. It became economically impractical. Everyone can see how utterly unfair it is, OFF WITH ITS HEAD!

And voila! The head and the body are two separate things!

And yet we still desire beauty, just as much as we ever did, despite our best interests. And you know why? Because despite what it seems—it is still an experience available to ALL. Anyone can get a glimpse of who we are and why we are.... Beauty absolutely can deliver on its promise of love, completion and enlightenment to anyone as long as they are open to it.
Would you feel better knowing how many lives had been saved by beauty? So many.
---------------------------------
©Judith Schaechter 2010
Thanks to Crispin Sartwell and Sharon Church