Thursday, February 24, 2005

"All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." --Eli Siegel

NEWS


On Saturday, February 26, 2005, at 8:00 pm, the Terrain Gallery in New York City will celebrate its 50th Anniversary.

Eli Siegel's definitive Fifteen Questions: "Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?" presented by Dorothy Koppelman, Chaim Koppelman, Carrie Wilson.

Also: AESTHETIC REALISM SHOWS WHAT'S GOING ON IN AMERICAN REALIST ART & IN OURSELVES

This talk by Marcia Rackow and Donita Ellison, first presented at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, looks at works by Jacob Lawrence, Alex Katz, Chuck Close, Duane Hanson, and others. The speakers say:

"Central in all realist art is the seeing that the commonplace also has grandeur....And one of its great values is that it is critical, through form, of the ways we can lessen reality, divide it, be disproportionate."

Here is the announcement

The Terrain Gallery / Aesthetic Realism Foundation is located in SoHo, at 141 Greene Street, off Houston, New York, NY. Telephone: 212 777-4490.

Some history: "The Terrain Gallery is the first gallery to be based on a philosophic way of seeing reality itself, including art--Aesthetic Realism. It opened in New York City in 1955, with artist Dorothy Koppelman as director, publishing in its first announcement, the now historic 15 Questions, "Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?" by Eli Siegel, founder of Aesthetic Realism. In continuous exhibitions of contemporary art, as well as notable discussions on the art of the world, the criterion for beauty presented in these questions has been shown to be true about art of every style, time, and place." --Alma Vincent

Following you will find links to articles about some of the great art of the world:


Sargent's Madame X; or, Assertion and retreat in Woman—Explained by Aesthetic Realism by Lynette Abel


In "A Woman Is the Oneness of Aesthetic Opposites" Eli Siegel writes about 15 pairs of opposites in women. And this is what he writes about Advancing: Recessive: "Towards something is in the feminine mind importantly.... But how much retreat is in woman, too, the unseen sinking, the leaving for a previously chosen background." I think Sargent's Madame X is an opportunity to study these opposites, which all women have.


Gerritt Rietveld's Red and Blue Chair, and What Learned about Rest and Motion in Myself by Anthony C. Romeo, AIA

In 1918, the architect Gerrit Thomas Rietveld designed a chair that affected not only furniture design, but the history of architecture. Rietveld's "Red and Blue" chair is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and it is a chair I love....


Our Selves Are Aesthetic! by Ruth Oron

About Claude Monet's Autumn Effect at Argenteuil and Aesthetic Realism Consultations


"Can We Be Expansive and Contained Like Van Gogh's Starry Night?" by Miriam Mondlin

"I learned the reason I loved this painting, and why it has stirred people for more than 100 years: what makes this painting beautiful is the way it puts opposites together, and these are the same opposites we are trying to put together in our lives.


MORE TO COME