Aesthetic Realism; or, Why I Love Teaching Art

Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana

2011-06-06T09:30:00.007-04:00

HOT AFTERNOONS HAVE BEEN IN MONTANA is a poem by Eli Siegel that won The Nation's Poetry contest in 1925. I love the beginning lines:

Quiet and green was the grass of the field,
The sky was whole in brightness,
And O, a bird was flying, high, there in the sky,
So gently, so carelessly and fairly.

Along with its beautiful music, the visual images created by the words are amazing. These images, accompanied by Eli Siegel himself reading this great poem, are powerfully together in the film Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana, by Emmy award winning filmmaker, Ken Kimmelman.

This film will be shown this coming week at Temple University. If you are in the Philadelphia area, check out the times it will be screened.

"Aesthetic Realism Explains Art and Life" at El Museo del Arte de Puerto Rico

2011-04-30T13:12:00.000-04:00

Aesthetic Realism Explains Art and Life April 13, 2011 at the Raul Julia Theater, El Museo de Puerto Rico, Santurce, PR. Check out this article about the event in El Nuevo Dia

New Photography Exhibition in NYC

2011-04-30T10:55:00.018-04:00

Katz's Deli by David Berstein

There is a great photo show in NYC at the Terrain Gallery--"This Great, Diverse City: How Should We See It?" It's a must-do for anyone in New York, or who will be coming during the summer. Check it out on-line, but for a really thrilling experience, see it in person. One of the things I love about it is that it shows the beauty in so many different aspects of the city--from the iconic images of the Empire State Building and the NYC skyline, to the more mundane things like pigeons and park benches, workmen and subway riders. And, it shows how the art of photography can enable us to see the world we live in better--and that includes not only the place where we live but also the people who live there with us.
This is open through September 2011. Hope you see it!!!

Just In: Check out this review in the July issue of Journal of the Print World.

Aesthetic Realism, Anthropology and Us!

2007-04-29T22:04:00.000-04:00

I once thought that anthropology was a "kind-of" interesting subject, but rather distant and cold from life as I lived it in the American Midwest. That was until I heard anthropologist Dr. Arnold Perey speak so warmly and with scientific carefulness about what his study of Aesthetic Realism enabled him to see--that early man, "primitive" man, was not so different from ourselves living in a "modern" society. Some of what Arnold Perey learned about people, including himself and yes ourselves, through his field work in Papua, New Guinea and his study of Aesthetic Realism with its founder Eli Siegel will be the subject of the dramtic presentation "Gwe: Young Man of New Guinea," Sunday June 10th at 2:30, at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. This presentation is based on his recently published "Gwe: Young Man of New Guinea--a Novel Against Racism. Also, another important resource of note is Dr. Perey's illustrated book "Were They Equal?--An Anti-Prejudice Book for Children, complete with illustrations. As a teacher, I feel this story--both delightful and deep--can have children and teachers kinder, more just to other human beings. It is a must for every classroom.

Exhibition at the Terrain Gallery

2007-04-01T22:02:00.001-04:00

Just this past weekend, March 24, 2007, the Terrain Gallery opened with a new photography exhibition that is stunning: EMOTION — in BLACK & WHITE and COLOR: 15 PHOTOGRAPHERS. I love this show! True to the title of the exhibition, EMOTION is conveyed in every photograph, and looking at them one gets a site of the great wondrous variety of things in this world and the feelings that attend each. If you live in New York or are planning a visit to New York make sure to spend some time seeing this exhibition.

The Beauty of New York City

2007-03-17T15:48:00.000-04:00

From the first time I visited New York City, I loved it!--the lights, the tall buildings, the hustle and bustle of activity, the people. It is a beautiful city and I am thrilled that its beauty is described at Aesthetic Realism Looks at New York City. It is a MUST see web site!

Art and Science Truly Related

2006-03-19T19:21:00.001-05:00

Growing up I largely felt that art and science were two exclusive disciplines and that I had to choose one or the other as to which represented me. I felt that my care for science could not flourish if I chose to continue my study of art. When it became clear to me that the direction of my life was to go towards art, I felt that science would simply have to be sacrificed.
Many artist have joined the arts and sciences in notable ways--most importantly Leonardo DaVinci. He was an artist and a scientist, but what made for both?

What convinced my heart and mind that art and science are not in separate realms, but are in fact two aspects of one thing, is Eli Siegel's logic on the subject. In a lecture titled "Educational Method Is Poetic" he explained:

The relation of art and science is a relation of opposites. The purpose of art
is: from feeling to get to truth. The purpose of science is: from truth to get
to feeling or emotion. But they are about the same thing, with different
direction

Looking at the drawings of Leonardo don't we feel that he honors art and science from their beginning--from feeling to truth and from truth to feeling? We do! As art teachers we need to be able to encourage students to feel that art and science represent two large and deep aspects of humanity and their very own dear selves. The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method enables a teacher to do this.

The lecture "Education Method Is Poetic" can be read in its entirety at the Aesthetic Realism Online Library.

To learn more about the relation of art and science, see the important work of my colleague and science educator, Rosemary Plumstead, including in her thrilling paper "Aesthetics, The Human Heart and Ourselves!" And also this report of an Aesthetic Realism class by Eli Siegel titled "Presence and Absence; A Consideration of the Arts and Sciences" by Lynette Abel.

What Art Can Show Us About Our Lives?

2005-10-05T09:22:00.002-04:00

Today I post examples illustrating how the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism founded by Eli Siegel, American poet, educator and critic, show that art has the answers to some of the biggest matters in our lives. As you will see in the links below, the great art of the world can teach us about our very selves!!!

John Singer Sargent
Sargent's "Madame X"; Or, Assertion and Retreat in Women
by Lynette Abel

Jan Vermeer
Vermeer's "Young Woman With a Water Jug"--and What Men and Women Are Hoping For in Marriage
by Julie and Robert Jensen

Diego Velazquez
What Will Make Us Truly Proud of Ourselves? A Study in the Art of Diego Velazquez
by Dorothy Koppelman

Pablo Picasso
Picasso's Dora Maar Seated--or, Full Face and Profile: How Do They Show the Self?
by Meryl Simon

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

Robert Indiana
What Are You Looking For In Love, Robert Indiana's "Love"
by Ken Kimmelman

Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollack's Number One 1948; or, How Can We Be Abandoned and Accurate at the Same Time?
by Lore Elbel-Bruce

Claude Monet
Our Selves Are Aesthetic! Monet's "Autumn Effect at Argenteuil"
by Ruth Oron

Dorothea Lange
What Does a Person Deserve? The Answer Found in a Great Photograph of Dorothe Lange
by David Bernstein

Paul Cezanne
Art Opposes Injustice; or, Cezanne's "Still life With Onions"
by Nancy Huntting

Pieter Bruegal
How Can We Be Composed?: Bruegel's Hunters In The Snow
by Nancy Huntting

Aesthetic Realism Shows the Relation Among Things

2005-09-30T21:49:00.000-04:00

One of the large things that the education of Aesthetic Realism enables a person to do, is to see how things are more related than we know. The basis for that relation is in this principle stated by Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism: "The world, art and self explain each other, each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites." I list here links to imporant articles about Aesthetic Relaism that show new relations between art and life, culture and oneself.

Aesthetic Realism and Jazz
Aesthetic Realism and Anthropology
Aesthetic Realism, Ethics & Literature
Aesthetic Realism and Self Expression
Aesthetic Realism and the Understanding of Art and Art History
Aesthetic Realism, the Flute and Marriage

Hurricane Katrina & Our Emotions

2005-09-26T22:35:00.000-04:00

Like people across the nation, I and my students are very affected by the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina and the shameful way that our fellow citizens of New Orleans were so horribly abandoned by the Federal Government at time of such great need. How can we make sense of this? In her commentary to the current issue of the The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known titled "What Emotions Do We Really Want," Ellen Reiss describes what makes for a good emotion and that the main question we have about the Katrica is ethical "What does a person deserve by being a person?" Every person in American will get strength reading this issue of The Right Of.

Art and Love

2005-09-24T07:53:00.000-04:00

As I have said in other places on this blog, Aesthetic Realism shows that art has the answers to questions every person has in life, including about love! Here are some examples I invite you to read.

"Simplicity and Complexity: Roy Lichtenstein's "Stepping Out" by Steven Weiner who a computer specialist and labor union official.

"What Are You Looking For In Love? Robert Indiana's "Love" by Ken Kimmelman who is an Emmy award winning filmmaker and Aesthetic Realism Consultant.

The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method

2005-09-21T18:18:00.000-04:00

This semester I am teaching three of my great loves--printmaking, ceramics and scultpure. As a new school year begins, I am proud to able to tell the high school students I teach that the purpose of education is "to like the world through knowing it." The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method enables a teacher, as it has me for 22 years, to convincingly show through every lesson, that the world has a structure that can be liked because it is aestethic--a oneness of opposites.
Read more about this teaching method in The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.
Also, see the work of my students--linoleum prints-- at Artsonia.com.

We Begin With Surface

2005-08-11T12:13:00.000-04:00

I am very honored to be giving a talk at the Spiva Center for the Arts in Joplin, Missouri on Sunday August 28th. The talk is "We Begin With Surface--20th Century Prints From the Cochran Collection."

Printmaking begins with surface--a woodblock, an etching plate, a lithography stone, a frame stretched with silk; and ends up on a surface--paper. Yet in every technique of printmaking, and in its meaning, surface is always at one with depth! The works in the Cochran Collection of 20th Century Graphics vibrantly illustrate this statement by Eli Siegel, art critic and founder of the education Aesthetic Realism: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." Every print is guide in how to see the opposites of depth and surface in the world around us, in the people we know, and in our very selves.

This Exhibition includes prints by Rosenquist, Thiebaud, Calder, Frankenthaler, Picasso, Katz, Wesselman, Indiana and more!

For more information see the website of The Spiva Center for the Arts, the community events calendar at the Joplin Globe, or Arts of the Four States.

Aesthetic Realism Shows What's Going On In American Realist Art & Ourselves

2005-02-09T20:55:00.000-05:00

I want you to know about a great event in the history of art--the 50th Anniversary of The Terrain Gallery in New York City. For half a century this gallery has had as its critical basis Eli Siegel's "Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?" On February 26th, this great fact will be celebrated at the Dramatic Presentation of Aesthetic Realism. This will be presented by Carrie Wilson, Art Historian and the esteemed artists Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman.

Also presented on this evening will be "Aesthetic Realism Shows What's Going On in American Art & In Ourselves." This is a talk that I'm proud to have given at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia as a guest lecturer together with artist Marcia Rackow. We look at the works of many 20th century contemporary Realist artists, including Thomas Hart Benton, Jacob Lawrence, Alex Katz, Leon Golub, Duane Hanson, Bo Barlett, Claus Oldenburg.

This evening celebrates how Aesethetic Realism shows that art has everything to do with our lives!

Visit The Terrain Gallery for further information.

The Opposites In Sculpture

2005-02-02T20:25:00.000-05:00

I love scultpure. It always amazed me how tons of bronze or marble could be so crafted that it became a person or an animal or simply a well fashioned shape. When I was an art student at Southwest Missouri State University, I first learned of Aesthetic Realism and its explantion of beauty. Eli Siegel is the critic who gave a criterion for understanding what beauty is. I had been very much of the opinion that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Then I began to look at "Is Beauty The Making One of Opposites?" in which Siegel asks 15 questions about the nature of beauty. I studied these questions, tested them and saw them to be true.

When I first read the question about heaviness and lightness, immediately I felt this is what scultpture is!! Here is the question:

"Is there in all art, and quite clearly in sculpture, the presence of what makes for lightness, release, gaiety?--and is there the presence, too, of what makes for stability, solidity, seriousness?--is the state of mind making for art both heavier and lighter than that which is customary?"

"Lightness," "release" and "stability" are in Michelangelo's David as solid marble expresses the inner tension and turbulent thought of David. They are in Claus Oldenburg's monumental Clothespin in Philadelphia that soars forty five feet yet seems to delicately meet the ground, with stability. I am sure that heaviness and lightness will be in Christo's Central Park Gates which will soon be on view in New York City.

And Aesthetic Realism taught me that the opposites I so loved in scultpure were opposites I was trying to put together in myself. How I went from feeling burdened to being giddy didn't make sense to me, but when I saw heaviness and lightness in a scultpure, like in the Venus DiMilo for example, I felt composed.

My study of how scultpure puts together heaviness and lightness goes on with great pleasure and includes studying it with my students. Aesthetic Realism also taught me that these opposites not only belong to scultpure, they are everywhere!!! To learn more about the opposites in art and life go to the following articles:
Lynette Abel on Sergent's "Madame X."

Alan Shapiro on Duke Ellington and Wagner

Nancy Huntting on a Cezanne Still Life .

Michael Palmer on "Basie, Williams & the Blues."

Len Bernstein on photography.

There's more to come, but that's all for now.

The Opposition to Racism is in Art

2005-01-18T15:00:00.000-05:00

In honor of the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, I can think of nothing more important than to tell you about how the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method makes it possible for teachers and students to convincingly see that the opposition to racism and prejudice is in the very subjects studied in school. This is most definitely true of the subject I teach, art.

In art, the opposites of sameness and difference beautifully enhance one other, make each other stronger. One very basic example is how complimentary colors which are opposites on the color wheel and have no common color between them, make the other more vivid and brighter when placed next to each other. We see this very much in the work of Vincent VanGogh. And in the article "Can We Be Expansive and Contained Like VanGogh's Starry Night" Miriam Modlin discusses another pair of opposites crucial in justice and art.

Another example that is great, is Michelangelo's Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel. The drama of sameness and difference bewteen God and Adam is mighty. God, with his angels is airborne, while the weight of Adam's body is earthbound, yet the curves of their bodies mirror each other. There is also sameness as their arms reach towards the other, and their arms together create and continue a strong horizontal line. And one of the most moving relations of sameness and difference in art is in their hands. Adam's wrist slightly rises as his hand falls somewhat limply. The arm of God with outstretched finger has a powerful impetus and we feel that through his hand and that finger the spark of life will be transmitted. Look at how closely alike the position of their hands are and how different in feeling--one inert and heavy, the other charged with the vitality of life.

In racism the opposites of samness and difference are used against each other, as the difference of another person is seen with contempt, the feeling that another person has less reality, not more. How Aesthetic Realism is the education that explains the cause of racism and can have it change is the subject of a newly published book by Alice Bernstein and Others titled, Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism. An important film for teachers is the anti-prejudice film by Ken Kimmelman and Imagery Films, "Brush Strokes" which delightfully has children and students of all ages see the how prejudice begins with a preference for what is like oneself and a contempt for what is different.
Also a deep and delighful anti-racism source for teachers and students is in "Were They Equal" a book by Dr. Arnold Perey. This book is suitable for children of all ages.
Here are some other important resources on the subject are:

Artists Talk On Art

2005-01-15T14:53:00.000-05:00

Yesterday in the 3 printmaking classes I teach at LaGuardia High School in New York City, my students--all 90 of them--had a great time printing their final portfolio of prints done with dry point etching. In fact, many of these 10th graders stayed in the studio well beyond class to continue. It was so rewarding to me as a teacher to see how much they were enjoying themselves and how they were so thoughtful about their work. I heard them asking each other for suggestions about how their prints could be better and giving each other technical advice.

The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method explains that when we like something it is because opposites are together in a friendly way. A crucial pair of opposites in printmaking are surface and depth. In drypoint etching the image to be printed is scratched into a hard surface of metal or plastic acetate. My students were using plexiglass. The lines are filled with ink, then the ink on the surface is cleaned away. The image below the surface is printed as the pressure of the printing press pushes the paper into the inked lines. Literally depth becomes surface as the ink deep in the line of the plate is now on the surface of the paper! This always thrills me and my students!

I learned about the opposites in printmaking when I was a student at the School of Visual Arts. My teacher was Chaim Koppelman. When he critiqued our work he had a basis and that basis was this explanation of beauty as stated by Eli Siegel: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."

Over the years I have seen the prints of Chaim Koppelman in many exhibitions and I think his work is a beautiful oneness of dark and light, and I love how he shows things with immediacy and infinite mystery. There is so much more I want to say about his work and will at a future time. But if you live in New York City, or close to it, you'll have a chance to hear him speak about his work on January 21st when the School of Visual Arts presents "Aesthetic Realism: The Opposites in Art & Life."

Hope to see you there!!

Aesthetic Realism; or, Why I Love Teaching Art

2005-01-11T23:12:00.000-05:00

I have been teaching art in New York City high schools for 21 years, primarily sculpture and printmaking, and my love for teaching and pleasure doing so increases with every year.

For these 21 years the teaching method I have used enables a teacher and her students to see that art is not only about what goes on in a classroom but is related to one's life and the whole world. And by the whole world I mean that art is related to history, mathematics, science. The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method enables one to see this relation in an important new way through this principle by the founder of Aesthetic Realism, Eli Siegel:

The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.

I will be saying much more about this in future entries.