Some follow up

I wanted to post a few things as follow-up to today's visit to Moore.

First, a little reader's guide to beauty. As I mentioned, this was a huge 'issue' in the art world at the end of the 1990s through the beginning of the last decade. The Elaine Scarry essay I used to introduce the topic of ornament was one among a huge number of recent writings on the subject. Here's a brief bibliography:

• Beckley, Bill (editor). "Uncontrollable Beauty". Allworth, 2001.
• Benezra, Neal. "Regarding Beauty:A View of the Late 20th Century". Hirshhorn Museum, 2000.
• Hickey, Dave. "The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty:. University of Chicago Press, 2009 (revised and expanded from 1993 edition) (added: A really awful overview appeared in the March 14, 2009, issue of Newsweek. A link is provided on the understanding that you will use this only as a thumbnail sketch of his ideas)
• Gilbert-Rolfe, Jeremy. "Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime". Allworth, 1999.
• Steiner, Wendy. "Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in 20th Century Art". University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Next, I wanted to address an idea that came up a couple of times in our conversation - that idea of subjectivity as it relates to the perception of beauty. This is a worthwhile thing to mention as we are a small but very diverse seminar. Really, do we really have anything in common? Before we get to that level of detail, I think it's important to approach this through theory. Semiotics tells us that anything meaningful has two simultaneous properties - it's arbitrary (there's nothing that divinely ordains that a cake symbolizes a birthday) and it's conventional (we all agree that the cake is a fitting way to celebrate Jose's birthday. This paradox, fundamental to all forms of signification, is often forgotten in academic debate. One the one hand, there are those who skew to the arbitrary side, saying that if nothing has any fixed meaning, all interpretation is hyper-subjective. This is as inaccurate as saying that there is one authoritative meaning for any given image or text. Though we may differ in terms of taste in specific objects, as a culture we have some common ground about the idea of beauty and what is or ought to be thought of as beautiful, or the words themselves would be meaningless. Art's job is often to achieve consensus where none existed before (Scarry, 8). So though we may find different things beautiful, the plurality of these examples doesn't diminish the fact that we approach the idea of beauty in similar terms.



Finally, to the idea about 'quality of life' and how we might (conventionally) think about it. Let's not try to take the job away from those who do it. The term originates in economics and describes the non-monetary factors that enhance life. Clearly, the arts have limited economic benefit. A primary argument for their existence in a market economy is the QOL benefits they confer upon their audience. Some of those benefits we explored today - visual pleasure, etc. Others, including social cohesion, economic revitalization and others, are the topics of the conference next week. In transition from this week to next, and in preparation for next week's meeting, I want you to think about the role your work plays, if any, in quality of life issues, and whether such issues are actually within the range of art to affect.