Nice feisty statement, Ellen, but what supports it? There's great deal of commentary that doesn't. See www.neotericart.com then check on its 2011 essays my essay Can Art Be Moral Again? Or I can send you a copy to your non-list email.
The beaux-arts aesthetic ideal, called The Style, was regarded as combining truth, beauty, goodness in form. Each of those attributes required applications of taste and morality (where morality meant good intentions toward truth and beauty expressed as refined taste. (Taste being one of the primary aspects of the aesthetic when the notion was first defined as a philosophical issue). The development of modernism dismantled The Style and all the attributes it enshrined. Some theorists wanted to restore it but without the metaphysical elements of goodness and taste, or even truth. They centered on the objective qualities of form and formalist organization. Thus Significant Form. In my view they only resurrected the The Style but saw it more broadly than before. In other words, my view of modernism is that it is a gradual expansion of earlier aesthetic ideas/ideals and not a reversal of them at all. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, August 27, 2012 12:00:00 PM Subject: Re: Aesthetic Ideal aesthetic ideals aren't about being good. Or taste. -----Original Message----- From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, Aug 27, 2012 10:03 am Subject: Re: Aesthetic Ideal The best art always is excessive. A good artist will always go past, way past, the supposed limit of good taste. Look at the best art of any era and compare it to other work of that same era. In its context, it is excessive. If the context is generally bombastic, say, then the 'excessive' best will be spare. And so on. If Berg would simply reverse all of his assumptions, he'd be in tune with a contemporary mindset. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, August 27, 2012 3:26:59 AM Subject: Re: Aesthetic Ideal On Aug 27, 2012, at 3:33 AM, joseph berg <[email protected]> wrote: >> Do you have one? >> Over time, did it change? >> If so, in what way? > > Shouldn't an aesthetic ideal address the necessity of curbing the desire > for excess and novelty to avoid decadence, decline and demise? No. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
