Re: ' Somebody said that all beauty implies completeness. Is not, Derek, your examples of not beautiful Goya's or Isenheim Altarpiece have that spiritual completeness?"
But why this obsession with the idea of beauty in relation to art anyway? Because it is taught in aesthetics courses? Because certain 18th century philosophers thought it important? Isn't it time we had a long hard look at the world of art as we now know it and, leaving all these conventional ideas aside for a moment, asked ourselves if beauty is really a general characteristic of all art as we know it today (not as Kant knew it - whose knowledge of art was quite limited anyway) ? Think of the examples I have given - Goya, Gr|newald, Bosch if you like, various forms of African and Oceanic art and so on. And in literature, writers like Dostoyevsky or Kafka. How much sense does it make to keep plugging the tired old beauty line in the face of that? It can only be done by stretching the idea to absurd lengths and turning it into something unrecognisable. (Beauty = "completeness ", blah blah etc). Why go into such bizarre intellectual contortions? Why not simply say that there is a lot of art in which beauty plays no significant role? The heavens won't fall. And we may have a much more realistic basis to talk about art from. DA On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 7:47 AM, Mike Mallory <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: Beauty? I think not! > > > Somebody said that all beauty implies completeness. > > Is not, Derek, your examples of not beautiful Goya's or Isenheim > > Altarpiece > > have that spiritual completeness? > > Even reasoning is beautiful when it has flavor of completeness. > > Boris Shoshensky > > > > ______________________________________________________ > > While "completeness" doesn't have to imply finality, I thought I would > alert you to > Only a Promise of Happiness: > The Place of Beauty in a World of Art > by Alexander Nehamas > http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8357.html > This is a 2007 publication. I found it both honest and insightful. > Nehamas argues that "Beauty" is an open concept defering finality. He > sees "beauty" as the promise of happiness. To say that something is > "beautiful" for Nehamas is to claim a fulfilling, yet perpetually incomplete > state of contentment. We keep returning to beautiful things in the hope of > discovering the Omega point of happiness, but if we ever reach the point > where a work of art no longer has more to say, we are at once disillusioned > and discontent. > I was persuaded to accept Nehamas' point of view, with a side of Spinoza. > You may recall that Spinoza defined Joy as the promise of perfection. I > prefer Spinoza's construction to Nahamas' so I now regard the experience of > Truth, Beauty and Goodness to be Joy in Spinoza's sense of the promise of > perfection. > What is perfection? I use that term in a relational way based on the > context of the particular. In the case of The Great He Goat, The Witches > Sabbath, it may be a perfect appreciation of my own animalistic nature or > perhaps the role of Bacchanalian archetypes in my life. > My POV may be a little incomplete, but I think it has a lot of promise. > :) > Mike Mallory > -- Derek Allan http://www.home.netspeed.com.au/derek.allan/default.htm
