REFLECTION ON BEAUTY

We hear more and more voices decrying the loss of beauty in our time, especially in art forms. Whether it’s music, visual arts, architecture, poetry, writing, or drama, the charge is repeatedly made that beauty is, by and large, fading from the contemporary landscape.

Brahms hesitated to compose symphonies for a long time, feeling his efforts were not worthy of such a monumental task. He stated it was difficult to conceive of a symphony when he could hear the footsteps of a giant behind him. The giant was Beethoven. Had Brahms not moved beyond this fear the world would be deprived of much beauty.

As artists we may often feel much the same as Brahms. Hearing the footsteps of the greatness behind us, we can easily become paralyzed and abandon our efforts, feeling our art is not worthy.

A=εbc : ART THAT DANCES
THE BEER-LAMBERT LAW AND ART
We sense it when we look at a piece of visual art. Something is happening. We’re not quite sure what it is, but we somehow know it: art is not static. There’s a kind of inner knowing that something is afoot. It’s as if the piece is dancing. In fact, it is.

Images and symbols are powerful. They speak to us in mysterious ways. Our tendency to interpret images and symbols in absolute ways imprisons and freezes them, taking the life out of them. Whenever we look at works of art and seek to interpret their elements symbolically, assigning specific meanings to colors, shapes, textures and symbols, we paralyze them.

STRETCHING BEYOND LIKENESS

The hushed reverence of the gallery can fool you into believing
masterpieces are polite things, visions that soothe, charm and beguile, but actually they are thugs. Merciless and wily, the greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your sense of reality.  Simon Schama in THE POWER OF ART.

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