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"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.
If any woman gave her life to the understanding of art in all its forms and in all its historical modes, it was Helen Gardner, Professor, in 1936, of the History of Art in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Miss Gardner's mighty work, Art Through the Ages (Revised Edition, Harcourt, Brace, 1936), tells carefully of Etruscan art, medieval Russian art, and certainly the art of Renaissance Italy; tells of the art of the American Indian and of United States art.... In Miss Gardner's book, art unifies the world." —Eli Siegel more
Selected Talks and Papers
"I have been greatly affected by the work of Philip Guston and I think his drawings, his paintings, and what he says about himself can be a means of understanding some of the largest questions artists, and all people have about ourselves...." > more
"When, in the 1960's, I first saw Robert Indiana’s Love, it really took me, as it did people across America — it was the design for the biggest selling US postage stamp ever issued and also the best-selling Christmas card ever put out by the Museum of Modern Art...." > more
[About
Monet's Autumn Effect at Argenteuil and Aesthetic Realism Consultations.] "I tell here what I am learning about my own life from a painting by Monet....The one way to be just to people, things, ourselves, is to have the respect an artist does as he looks at an object...." > more
" It is likely Dora Maar could feel, as I did, like a different person looking at herself than she did looking at the world, but Picasso, as he depicts her simultaneously facing us, and looking within, shows a coherence among various attitudes in Dora Maar, and that is one reason I feel this portrait is so kind. She is presented both profile and full face. Then, one eye is shown looking inward...." > more
"....I shall be talking tonight about my life, what a woman learned in Aesthetic Realism Consultations and about the famous 20th century American artist whose works, as one critic put it, "embody the supreme level of pictorial ambition," and whose tumultuous life is the subject of the recent film made by Ed Harris...." > more
"From the moment I first saw them, I felt Jackson Pollock’s action paintings had something I was yearning for—something deeply composing and satisfying to me. I learned from Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded by Eli Siegel in 1941 and taught in New York City, that these paintings have something every person is looking for...." > more
"For over a century, Beatrix Potter's art, her wonderful imagination have affected children and adults all over the world. There's hardly a person who doesn't know The Tale of Peter Rabbit! Her pictures and stories while charming and delightful, are also deep — and they show something vital and thrilling about imagination which every person, every parent, every child needs to know...." > more
"In
1918, the architect Gerrit Thomas Rietveld designed a chair that affected
not only furniture design, but the history of architecture. Rietveld's "Red and Blue" chair is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art,
and it is a chair I love...." > more
[Portrait of Madame Pierre Gautreau by the American painter John Singer Sargent]
"In A Woman Is the Oneness of Aesthetic Opposites, Eli Siegel writes about
15 pairs of opposites in women. And this is what he writes about Advancing:
Recessive: 'Towards something is in the feminine mind importantly....
But how much retreat is in woman, too, the unseen sinking, the leaving
for a previously chosen background.' I think Sargent's Madame X is
an opportunity to study these opposites, which all women have...."
> more
"I am going to talk about what I learned which has had such a tremendous effect on my work and myself. I shall also talk of the 17th century Spanish painter, Diego Velázquez whose study of objects and great paintings of the Spanish court put together those opposites without which, I have learned, there would be no art: pride and humility...." > more
Useful Resources for Artists and Teachers:
• Works on this site: Anuszkiewicz, Blaustein, Burckhardt, Di Cerbo, Hall, Henry, Hung, King, Kranjac, Koppelman, Longo, Michael, Rackow, Romano, Roth, Schmidt, Sloat, Stadnik
• Further Sources: Aesthetic Realism Online Library: TRO, Poetry, Reviews, Essays; Aesthetic Realism Consultations; Teaching Method K-12; Friends of Aesthetic Realism—Countering the Lies; Reviews/Critiques
• Discussions in the press & at the Terrain Gallery: Bernstein, Bruegel, da Vinci, Gee's Bend: Quilts, Guston, Homer, Indiana, Koppelman, Lange, Monet, Picasso: Dora Maar Seated, Picasso: Minotauromachy, Picasso: Guernica, Pollock, Pollock: Number One 1948, Potter, Rietveld, Sargent, Sloan, Terrain Gallery [1}, Terrain Gallery [2], Terrain Gallery [3], Velazquez, Vermeer |
TERRAIN GALLERY
 AESTHETIC REALISM FOUNDATION ONLINE LIBRARY
141 GREENE ST., New York City In SoHo, off West Houston
(212) 777- 4490
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