It's very hard to figure out if Derek is primarily interested in ridiculing those who think differently than he does about art or if he's really interested in art. I think it's the former since he eagerly uses his secret valuation of artworks and art as a mouthpiece to shout disdain for anyone having the stupidity to care about nuanced views of art. For instance, his unreasoned opposition to 18C notions of aesthetics and beauty, taste, and the like, are so rigid and simplified as to demand commonsense agreement. When issues are reduced to obvious true-false conditions, one must choose sanely. Trouble is, the case for Beauty, for example, is not easily resticted to the true-false choices wherein the only true Beauty is the pretty and the charming, the decorative or the pleasing, as Derek would have it.
Even though the concept of Beauty is not part of philosophy prior to the 18C and may in fact now be dead, we need to know why. We need to be sure if Beauty is dead by examining the whole corpse, as it were, and not simply its extremities. Beauty can be be a fundamental concept akin to Aristotelian "Agent Intellect", later developed in Aquainas' notion of inner enlightenment activiated by an intuitive and creative transcendence and later still by Maritan's notion of conscious and unconscious radiance. These notions are of course very much out of fashion in our current worldview and they threaten the dogma that art is a purely subjective, cultural or "institutional" construction, that objects cannot have beauty or be art in themselves. I am not so sure that this one-sided outlook is really correct. I am thinking of Kandinsky's idea of internal neccessity, a catalyst for unifying self with nature's spirititual essence and enlivening both. This idea, and its anologous ideas in Aquainas, Maritan, (and Hegel?) suggests that there is some independent quality of things that is manifested by our conscious and unconscious extension and fusion with them. It is a kind of empathy, I suppose, a transcendence that may indeed involve the formless, the oceanic, the awe and dread of chaos, that is, the sublime. Is not the sublime a facet of Beauty? Is not the formless, the loss of coherence, the negation of order and measure, a quality of Goya's most distressing art? Is not the ugly and the brutal merely the Dionysian side of Beauty, its transcendent formlessness and freedom from material measure and meaning? Possibly, and possibly not. It is a issue worthy of thought. Ugliness subsumed by Beauty is the sublime. Ugliness posed as Beauty is banality. Perhaps Derek is right to limit Beauty to the simple outlines of the pretty, the pleasurable, the nice, the charming, the graceful, harmonious, the measurable and ordered. If so, then what is gained thereby? Are we satisfied to find Bouguereau as the centerpiece of Beauty? Is that all there is to Beauty, cloying, saccharine, fussy and trite but pretty and all the rest, too? No, Beauty is a powerful, very large and complex, even paradoxical -- no, always paradoxical -- idea, as effulgent in Goya's most frightful works as in Raphael's most lyrical or in equally diverse examples from literature, poetry, music, architecture, etc. In truth, the more squeezed and purified, simplified and formally warped Beauty is, as in some Bouguereaus, the less it exists. I suppose Derek may reply, as he usually does when subtle thinking is called for, that my words don't make sense. And why not? Is it because I advocate Beauty, the spiritual self, the underlying agent intellect or "radiance" of existence, in existence, belonging to it, the ISNESS of beauty and the transcendent? I say go look at Maritan and other wrongly marginalized philosophers following Aquainas who offer a way out of the banality of commonplace and the trivialization of art and beauty. And read Kandinsky, too. I know Derek has me in mind when he advises those who find Beauty in, say, Goya (I'd claim it's a mutual creation by God, Goya and me) to give up talking about art. On the contrary, art talk must not be abandoned to the one-dimensionalists, the simplistic reductionists, the excluders and the arrogantly stubborn solipsists tramping around in the cultural landscape. WC --- Derek Allan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > There is an exhibition of Goya's etchings at the > Petit Palais in Paris at > the moment. Anyone (such as umpteen contemporary > aestheticians I have read) > who is still wedded to the 18th century idea that > art is explicable in terms > of beauty should spend some time looking - really > looking - at Goya's > etchings, especially the Caprices and the > Disparates. If he/she comes away > still wedded to the same idea, then in my view > he/she should give up talking > about visual art altogether. It is just not their > thing. Goya's works are > fascinating, powerful, haunting, and disturbing, but > one thing they are > certainly not - and very very obviously make no > attempt to be - is > beautiful. The very word seems ridiculous - derisory > - in their presence. > > With a bit of time left I wandered through the rest > of the Petit Palais and > saw their permanent exhibition. In one corner of a > large gallery there is > perhaps the most sickly Bouguereau I have ever seen > - a Virgin with Angels > all encased in a suitably ornate gilded frame. > After the Goyas it was ... > how was it? - like listening to one of those awful > cloying melodies from > Sound of Music after listening to Mozart or > Monteverdi, or being forced to > read some sickly romance novel after reading > Dostoyevsky. > > If your famous search for 'a.e's' has anything to do > with beauty, Cheerskep > and Chris, forget it. Much of the world's greatest > art has nothing at all > to do with beauty. Goya for a start. > > -- > Derek Allan > http://www.home.netspeed.com.au/derek.allan/default.htm
