Why is Everyone So Afraid of Beauty?

Jasper Johns (American, b. 1930), Moratorium, 1969. Offset photolithograph.

Why is Everyone So Afraid of Beauty? is the title of a post on edward_ winkleman's blog today. He has it as an open thread and already 59 people have already written comments.

The fact that so much of high-end contemporary art is indifferent or even hostile to beauty has long fascinated me. In the book Regarding Beauty: A View of the Late Twentieth Century Neal David Benezra wrote:

The assault on beauty by the contemporary art world has left a confused and baffled art-viewing public uncertain about one of the very cornerstones of Western art and culture, namely, the pursuit of beauty.

Interestingly art selected for hospitals is often beautiful.

Any ideas on why that might be?

Comments

[Steve Knight]

A few weeks ago I heard a podcast interview of the late John O'Donohue by Krista Tippet from the radio show 'Speaking of Faith.' He has written a lot about beauty. (One of his books is called 'Beauty the Invisible Embrace') The interview touched briefly on the role of beauty in healing. It made me wonder if the world of evidence based art research tries to get at this question of the beauty and health.

[Bill Knight]

Henry, I don't have a response to your question, which is probably better answered by others than me. I did reflect on the nature of beauty, though, and ended up reading Peter Schjeldahl in an interview on line:

"Well, beauty is a physiological reaction. As I said, beauty is not an object."

[Bill Knight]

More Schjeldahl, who you have read much more closely than I, Henry:

"The beauty thing seems to me a red herring in terms of being directly about art, as it had more to do with the approved and prestigious ways of talking about art.."

"Beauty is an event. Beauty is something that happens. There is no such thing as a beautiful object or a beautiful woman. These things do not come near it—the experience of beauty, the event of beauty. The anxiety about it is what makes it such a central concern of culture and makes us so interested in it."

Schjeldahl seems to be suggesting that beauty and anxiety come hand in hand, and that the world of art is only one of many places they turn up as a couple.

I think of the anxiety of the teenager's crush during years when, in a welter of beauty, embarrassment and rejection temper rash responses. The stove is hot. Dispassion is learned.

[hdomke]

Bill,
So say that "beauty is a physiological reaction". That seems reasonable to me. But why, should making objects that trigger this physiological reaction suddenly be rejected? Why should art suddenly become more cerebral than emotional?

[Bill Knight]

Well, there is much more to life than beauty! :^)

[Bill Knight]

OK, so how about some wild hypothesizing?

Technology?

At the turn of the last century the perfection of the fully equalized temperament destroyed the inherent moods of the keys and music no longer was organized around the dominant intervals that had organized music for centuries.

In the visual arts the camera came into use. Crazy, random, entropy-loving nature could now be captured and place on your wall with little to no influence of the measuring influence of the human touch. The alien organization of plant and landscape could now be rendered without mediation of the artist's mind and eye. For a while, painters still had the say on color, but then color photography came into it's own and happenstance took over.

Technology has given the arts over to randomness. The touch and feel of method and accumulated history of practice (culture) is no longer a given in the arts. Now it is a choice. The craftwork of measure, harmony and balance was built in in a way that it no longer is.

How's that for wild guessticulation!

[Bill Knight]

The reason I come out such uniformed blather is that I am not capable of reading philosphy.

Henry, I've learned a new word today:Kalliphobia.

http://tinyurl.com/6m4urp.

Can you read Danto? I find aesthetics very hard going.

[hdomke]

I gather "Kallophobia" means the reaction against beauty that is seen with contemporary art?

"Can you read Danto?"
No. I've tried and I have to say, like a lot of serious writing on aesthetics, it tends to drift into economics, politics and philosophy. Plus, there seems to be a rule that you can only use words that will require your reader (at least this reader) to constantly be referring to a dictionary.

If you want to read something interesting on Aesthetics, consider trying "The Art of Seeing: An Interpretation of the Aesthetic Encounter" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I see that Amazon has it used for $14.

[Dallas Smith]

The trend to dismiss classical "beauty" in modern art finds a parallel trend that is mirrored/echoed in the world of music. Sociologists like to interpret these trends as a reaction against classicism and regarding the trends as a reflection of the chaos and ugliness experienced in the modern world. Personally, in both music and art, I know when something appeals to me or makes me feel good, as opposed to making me feel uncomfortable, etc. I suppose I have my own personal preferences for balance in the continuum of consonance and dissonance in art and music. Just as a patient is often powerless to influence the hospital environment in which s/he is placed, art and music affect each of us involuntarily according to our personal aesthetic perceptions. Thus, those of us who create art and music for the hospital patient have the responsibility to offer artistic products that will be an analogue to the beauty of healing, which every patient seeks.

[Henry Domke]

"Sociologists like to interpret these trends as a reaction against classicism"
I thought with visual arts (I don't know much about music), that most contemporary "High Art" today would be considered "Postmodern" rather than a reaction against classicism.

Most authorities (and I'm not one!) would call the conceptual, installation and video art made today postmodern.

I agree with you that those who create (and buy) art for patients have a responsibility to be sensitive to their special needs.