Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward a New Aesthetics (Aesthetics Today) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1880559900 ISBN 13: 9781880559901

Publisher: Allworth Press / School of Visual Arts, 1998

Synopsis

The notion of beauty and its relationship to contemporary art is once again arousing passionate discussion and wide-spread debate among artists, writers, critics, and curators. Uncontrollable Beauty is the first anthology to capture this new wave of critical discourse, examining the role of beauty in twentieth-century art and culture in order to redefine it for a new generation of artists and writers.

Encompassing three central themes: Theory, Ownership, and Practice, the thirty essays, writings, and poems explore how we define beauty, where we locate it in art, and its complex links to issues of gender, morality, and universalism. Included are works by John Ashbery, Agnes Martin, and Carter Ratcliff, as well as a conversation with Julia Kristeva and an exclusive interview with Louise Bourgeois. Anyone wanting to stay current with contemporary art criticism will find this book a stimulating selection of dialogue, debate, and philosophical insight.

Contributors: John Ashbery; Louise Bourgeois; Hubert Damisch; Arthur Danto; Max Fierst; David Freedberg; Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe; John Hejduk; Dave Hickey; James Hillman; Ariane Lopez-Huici; Kenneth Koch; Julia Kristeva; Donald Kuspit; Jaqueline Lichtenstein; Agnes Martin; Thomas McEvilley; Robert Morgan; Frank O'Hara; Carter Ratcliff; William Rubin; Meyer Schapiro; Peter Schjeldahl; David Shapiro; Robert Farris Thompson; Kirk Varnedoe; Marjorie Welish; John Yau.

Uncontrollable Beauty is co-published with the School of Visual Arts as part of the Aesthetics Today series.

About this title

Review:

What ever happened to beauty? Since the late 1960s she seems to have been in exile. Postmodern artists traded her in for flirtations with truth, strength, and purity of form. It was then that women started stripping off their heavy makeup and Barbie doll clothing in an effort to gain equal footing with men. And men, anxious too to break some of society's molds, shed their business suits and leisurewear--then the paragons of male beauty. But as art critic Dave Hickey unwittingly predicted during the '80s, that quality--which Plato believed to be eternal and absolute--is the "issue of the '90s."

After three decades of playing wallflower because she was thought by many artists to be frivolous, easy, tired, and even shallow, beauty is dancing again. Uncontrollable Beauty is filled with exciting essays by artists, critics, curators, and philosophers whose definitions of this elusive quality are often at odds with the Platonic ideal. When beauty besets critic Peter Schjeldahl, his mind is "hyperalert," his body eases, and he is often aware of his "shoulders coming down as unconscious muscular tension lets go." Renowned sculptor Louise Bourgeois also experiences beauty as opposed to encountering it: "Beauty is a series of experiences. It is not a noun ... beauty in and of itself does not exist." Artist and coeditor Bill Beckley blames beauty's banishment on Wittgenstein--who, in a 1938 lecture at Cambridge, said that beauty is most often meant as an interjection "similar to Wow! or rubbing one's stomach"--and his undue influence on conceptual artists of the '60s and '70s. Each essay collected here is rigorous in its definition of this elusive yet powerful force in art and aesthetics. Taken together, the writings are an invigorating read for artists and viewers alike.

From the Publisher:

Chosen one of the best art books of 1998 by the editors of Amazon.com, the hardcover edition was the subject of reviews and articles in such respected media as the New York Times, New York Magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, Art in America, and Communication Arts. "Uncontrollable Beauty seeks to examine the changing role of beauty in the twentieth century and give beauty a kind of critical makeover," the New York Times wrote. "Thus, while turning to Kant, Freud, John Ruskin, and even Dr. Seuss for inspiration, many of the writings offer beauty a fresh face, casting it as a healing, personal, unpredictable, ungovernable experience."

About this edition

• Publisher: Allworth Press / School of Visual Arts
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1880559900
• ISBN 13: 9781880559901
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 423
• Editor: Bill Beckley, David Shapiro