Art
"What is Art For?" by Eli Siegel / July 27, 1977
Aesthetic Realism sees the purpose of art as, from the beginning, the liking of the world more....It is well to look at an American history of world art to ascertain whether art puts into action the deepest desire of man, with that desire being to like the world....more
"The Opposites Theory" by Eli Siegel / published in a series of TROs beginning February 21, 2007:
In this issue we begin to serialize The Opposites Theory, a work Eli Siegel wrote in the late 1950s. It is a discussion, scholarly and vivid, of the explanation of beauty on which Aesthetic Realism is based—the principle that "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." ...more
- The Beauty of Art & the Pain about Love / #1687
- Beauty, Contempt, & Ourselves / #1688
- The Opposites—in Everyday Confusion & in Art / #1689
- Prose & Parents / #1690
- Ugliness, Beauty, & Appreciation / #1691
- Ugliness & Beauty, Contempt & Art / #1692
- Spontaneity & Plan—in Art, Ourselves, a Nation / #1693
- The Weighty & Light—in Ourselves & Art / #1694
- The Human Drama / #1695
- Slowness & Speed—in Art & Us! / #1696
- What Our Lives Are For—& the Moment / #1697
- The Ease & Difficulty We're Looking For / #1698
- What Art Has—& the Fight in Every Person / #1699
- Art and the Purpose of Our Lives / #1700
Art Tells of—and Criticizes—Sadness / Number 1940, November 16, 2016
...This final section [of Mr. Siegel's 1975 class on Music and "Questions for Everyone"] is casual, conversational. But it’s about a tremendous matter: that what may trouble us most is present in art in a way that makes for beauty. And the beauty comes not because the artist has somehow decorated the trouble, but because he or she has seen it truly. What makes for every instance of art, Aesthetic Realism explains, is this: something is seen truly, in its specificity and relatedness; and so the world itself as structure—the oneness of such opposites as rest and motion, order and freedom, continuity and change—is felt, seen, heard. That is true whatever the art—and whatever the subject, from a rose to a bad mood....more
This issue includes:
- Ellen Reiss's commentary relating what Mr. Siegel says in his 1975 discussion to Miss Havisham from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, an Aesthetic Realism lesson Eli Siegel gave to Ms. Reiss's grandmother, and great lines from Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
- The conclusion of Music and "Questions for Everyone," in which Mr. Siegel speaks about 3 of his questions about unhappiness—showing how the art of music presents unhappiness with form
There Are Music & the Sinister / Number 1939, November 2, 2016
...In the part of the discussion [on Music & “Questions for Everyone”] published here, Mr. Siegel has reached question 7: “Have I suddenly wanted other people to feel bad? or to be unlucky?” And in keeping with his purpose, he looks at the feeling asked about—not in terms of its cause—but in relation to music. Meanwhile, because that 7th question is about something so ordinary, yet also about some of the largest brutality in history—the inflicting of pain on other human beings—I’ll comment a little on the question in terms of people’s lives....more
This issue includes:
- Part of Eli Siegel's 1975 discussion of the relation of music to his "Questions for Everyone," incluidng Question 7: “Have I suddenly wanted other people to feel bad? or to be unlucky?” in which he speaks about music that has a sinister sound, including bagpipe music
- Ellen Reiss's commentary on the relation of this question to bullying, and to something affecting America now: the "scary clown" phenomenon
Everyone's Confusion—& Music / Number 1938, October 19, 2016
...The section [of the 1975 class by Eli Siegel on Music & “Questions for Everyone”] included here is much about a pair of opposites that are together beautifully, mightily, in all good art: the known and the unknown. Yet these opposites trouble people immensely in life. And so, by means of introduction, I’ll comment on some of the tumult about them....
Millions of people right now feel insulted by the unknown; fear it; even hate it. They feel humiliated and angry that they don’t understand themselves, and deeply outraged that they can’t make sense of someone close to them, and life as such. For instance, husbands and wives have a tendency, foolish and also mean, to think they’re authorities on their spouse; then they’re annoyed, even furious, when something occurs making it clear that there are things in the person they’re close to that they don’t understand....more
This issue includes:
- A commentary in which Ellen Reiss writes of people's confusion about how to see the known and unknown, inclluding in how these opposites are in another person
- The next section of Mr. Siegel's class on Music & “Questions for Everyone.” He looks at what music says about these questions: “Do I think I am two persons or one person?” and “Would I be afraid to know everything about myself?”
- "Sureness & Unsureness: A Drama" by Sally Ross, from a recent Aesthetic Realism public seminar
Music Is about Your Life / Number 1937, October 5, 2016
...[The subject of the paper published in this issue, criticism and kindness,] has tormented people—because they have seen criticism as unkind, and have seen kindness, really, as an evasion of their own intellect and personal need. That is, people have felt that to be kind to someone they had to put aside what they might question about him or her, and also put aside their own desire to take care of themselves. Aesthetic Realism grandly and mercifully shows that this view of things is incorrect.
It happens that this human matter of kindness and criticism is related to the technical art matter Mr. Siegel speaks of here: concord and discord. Both pairs of opposites are forms of the big primal opposites For and Against....more
This issue includes:
- Ellen Reiss's discussion of how Aesthetic Realism sees the important matter of criticism and kindness, including how it is present in a poem by Eli Siegel: "Behold, Love Is Criticism"
- The second part of Mr. Siegel's 1975 on Music & “Questions for Everyone,” in which he speaks about the relation of concord and discord in relation to the question: "Have I sometimes felt that I hated everything?"
- "Can We Be Both Critical & Kind?" by Len Bernstein, from an Aesthetic Realism public seminar
"Do You Want to Be Like Music?" / Number 1935, September 7, 2016
It is an honor to begin a serialization of Music & “Questions for Everyone,” a class of 1975, taught by Eli Siegel. “Questions for Everyone: To Be Thought about and Discussed” was published early in the history of Aesthetic Realism, in 1949. It contains 27 questions, and they are beautiful—kind and critical: they get to what most troubles people inwardly. In the class we’re serializing, Mr. Siegel comments on the first ten—in relation to music. All 27 are reprinted in issue 750 of this journal: http://www.aestheticrealism.net/tro/what-man-is.html.
...Eli Siegel is the critic who showed that art is essential to what every human being is, including people who think they’re not interested in art. That’s because, in order to make sense of who we are and to be as we truly hope to be, we need to see how art does what we’re trying to do: how it makes opposites one....more
This issue includes:
- A commentary in which Ellen Reiss writes of how Aesthetic Realism shows the meaning of art for people's lives, including through questions Mr. Siegel asked her about music when she was a child
- Part 1 of the 1975 class by Mr. Siegel, in which he discusses the first two of his questions: “Do I feel the same alone as I do with other people?” and “Have I thought that no one knew me or cared for me?”
- “Women, Confident & Unsure,” by Marion Fennell, from a recent public seminar at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation
What & Who Are Important? / Number 1856, August 28, 2013
[In the lecture by Eli Siegel being serialized here,] he shows that every new movement in art arises from the sense that the world has not been seen with enough justice; things have not been valued; their meaning has not been brought forth! We’re ashamed, we have guilt, when we’re unjust. And an artist welcomes the guilt and feels, I must give to these misseen, undervalued things the form, the beauty, they deserve!
Never was such a feeling stronger than during the romantic movement, at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. Romanticism said: The ordinary things you take for granted have wonder! Things you consider distant from you, strange, even grotesque, can tell you about yourself! People who have been thought lowly have importance, dignity, even grandeur! ...more
This issue includes:
- A vitally important commentary in which Ellen Reiss writes about the importance of the recent strikes by fast-food workers in America
- Part 2 of Eli Siegel's Romanticism and Guilt of 1963, in which he says: "Art is an evoker. It takes the ego-stained wraps off. It takes the selfish grease off." And he discusses William Blake's poem Milton
- An article by educator Leila Rosen from a public seminar titled “Being Important: What Does It Mean, & What Mistakes Do We Make about It?”
Confusion & Clearness about Praise / December 26, 2007
This issue contains a short essay by Eli Siegel about beauty. It seems to be of the late 1950s, and is written as a letter to author Waldo Frank, who, it appears, had asked Mr. Siegel about what beauty is....more
Art versus Ill Nature / Number 1617, June 30, 2004
Eli Siegel wrote the work printed here, “With Acting in Mind,” on January 27, 1961—the same month that he wrote “Remarks on Acting” and “Acting,” published in issues 1585 and 1531 of this journal. The ten points that comprise “With Acting in Mind” are about the very fabric of acting—they’re technical—yet they’re also about the feelings of everyone, actor or not. And the writing’s style is beautiful; it has charm and depth....more
This issue includes:
- Ellen Reiss's discussion of what makes for ill nature in people, with lines from the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge describing ill nature
- "With Acting in Mind"— a work by Eli Siegel that describes technically what actors need to think of
- "Is Good Nature Intelligent?" by consultant Robert Murphy, from an Aesthetic Realism public seminar
Art and Anger / Number 1585, August 20, 2003
We’re honored to print “Remarks on Acting,” by Eli Siegel. They were written in January 1961, in a notebook he kept, about the same time he wrote “Acting,” the 22 great, humorous instances for actors to perform which we published last year in TRO 1531. These shorter “Remarks” are beautiful—they present both the grandeur and the factual, workmanlike quality of acting at once....
Part of what makes the knowledge of Aesthetic Realism so important and needed is what [the article included here is] about: Aesthetic Realism shows that anger, and other large emotions—such as fear, hope, like, dislike—each has two forms, one good and one bad....more
This issue includes:
- A commentary by Ellen Reiss about the way Aesthetic Realism sees two kinds of anger—one hurtful, and one on behalf of justice, including in art
- "Remarks on Acting" by Eli Siegel
- "Should Men Understand Anger?"—part of a paper by consultant Bennett Cooperman from an Aesthetic Realism public seminar
The Best in Us—and the Worst / Number 1256, April 30, 1997
...Aesthetic Realism, greatly, shows that, with all the various purposes human beings have—to succeed in a career, find love, dress well, be entertained—there are two central, warring purposes that all the other purposes are about. One of these two purposes is the best thing in humanity; the other is the worst: and everybody has both. Until we understand these purposes and can love that best thing and criticize that worst thing in us, we will be mixed up about all our other purposes and never know or get clearly what we want. The best and deepest purpose of everyone, Mr. Siegel showed, is “to like the world on an honest basis.” This purpose, become intensely impelling, wide, rich, deep, is the drive to art. “Art,” Mr. Siegel writes, “goes for justice to all that is and all that lives. It welcomes subtly. It welcomes universally.”...more
This issue includes:
- Ellen Reiss's commentary, with an important instance of literary criticism, and the criticism of self, as she looks at how novelist and poet Emily Brontë exemplifies the human fight between respect and contempt—the former making her an artist, the latter causing her pain
- An introduction by Eli Siegel to a seminar about art: "Is the Drive to Art Different from the Personal Drive?"
- Consultant and filmmaker Ken Kimmelman's article: "Justice—or Conceit?" from an Aesthetic Realism public seminar
Hardness and Softness—in Art and Ourselves / June 21, 1989 (reprinted 2012)
Here is “The Drama of Hardness and Softness in Painting,” by Eli Siegel. This beautiful essay, inestimably important in art criticism, is a presentation of the greatest single idea there is: “All beauty,” Eli Siegel showed, “is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” All people need to study Aesthetic Realism—to study that principle—in order to like themselves, be kind to other people and fully alive. Let us take the opposites Mr. Siegel writes of here:
Children don’t respect a parent who is “soft,” who goes along uncritically with what a child does; and they don’t respect a parent who is tough, doesn’t want to see the feelings of a child. There is distress in the homes of America because parents have not been able to put these opposites—hardness and softness—together... more
The Greatest Gift: Authentic Criticism / December 21, 1988 (reprinted 2007)
We publish here the great essay "Art as Criticism," by Eli Siegel. Written in the 1950s, it is an exemplification of the fact that Aesthetic Realism has explained what beauty is, and what the human self is. In the essay, Mr. Siegel is writing about the thing every person needs and wants most, however much a person seems to go after something else. That most needed thing is criticism....
[Mr. Siegel writes:] "When an artist paints a picture, he is saying that the thing he has painted is good for himself and good for other people. Every picture, then, is a criticism of the world, or things, and is a favorable criticism. The painter is saying that if this and this were seen right, and I am trying to see it right, this and this would have a good effect on people, and would praise the meaning of the world. Every painting, then, is a work of criticism and devotion."...more
[Includes a discussion of the Cave paintings of Lascaux, Goya, Degas, and early Roman sculpture.]
"All the Arts" by Eli Siegel / Number 212, April 20, 1977
Aesthetic Realism has tried to make two things clear, both of value to the life of man. The first of these is that all the arts, at their beginning, have something in common; and that this common thing in all the arts is the oneness of opposites, felt and worked with by an individual mind....more
[Includes discussion of Byron, Beethoven, Delacroix, and Michelangelo.]
"As We Were Saying" by Eli Siegel / Number 85, November 13, 1974
As Aesthetic Realism sees it, the oneness of opposites is the main or decisive thing in all the arts; and in every instance of art. This is so because the world itself is the oneness of opposites....more
