Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward a New Aesthetics

Rating:
Summary: A refreshing antidote to the dilemna of today
Review: UNCONTROLLABLE BEAUTY: Toward a New Aesthetic is easily some of the most beautiful writing I've ever encountered. Editor Beckley ( who also writes well) has selected poets, critics, painters, sculptors, philosophers to write about where we place Beauty on the scale of art importance in the past thirty years. The very fact that this issue is being addressed bodes well for those of us who have been concerned about recent past trends in art of all forms. Being ugly, controversial, in your face, violent, frivolous, mocking, sadistic has been the criteria for what gets press and thus what the public is spoon-fed as what is "in". So many of us tire of these stale and selfish agendas which don't seem to have a life much past the opening of the show that features them. But why did we get that way? Is there a possibility that we have become so overinformed as to how to see that that most sacred aspect of creativity - beauty - has become a dinosaur? Accordingly to lyrically beautiful essays the answer is a decided "No!". Almost every way of describing beauty, feeling beauty, thinking beauty, seeking beauty is given in this eloquent book. This is not always easy reading.....but there is beauty in making the effort, too. Bravo and welcome back to the age of hope!

Rating:
Summary: A refreshing antidote to the dilemna of today
Review: UNCONTROLLABLE BEAUTY: Toward a New Aesthetic is easily some of the most beautiful writing I've ever encountered. Editor Beckley ( who also writes well) has selected poets, critics, painters, sculptors, philosophers to write about where we place Beauty on the scale of art importance in the past thirty years. The very fact that this issue is being addressed bodes well for those of us who have been concerned about recent past trends in art of all forms. Being ugly, controversial, in your face, violent, frivolous, mocking, sadistic has been the criteria for what gets press and thus what the public is spoon-fed as what is "in". So many of us tire of these stale and selfish agendas which don't seem to have a life much past the opening of the show that features them. But why did we get that way? Is there a possibility that we have become so overinformed as to how to see that that most sacred aspect of creativity - beauty - has become a dinosaur? Accordingly to lyrically beautiful essays the answer is a decided "No!". Almost every way of describing beauty, feeling beauty, thinking beauty, seeking beauty is given in this eloquent book. This is not always easy reading.....but there is beauty in making the effort, too. Bravo and welcome back to the age of hope!