Héctor Tajonar "On Beauty and Ugliness in Art"

it's with great pleasure that I introduce you to mr. Hector tahun our mister Tana is an editor and co-author of art publications as well as an award-winning documentarian focused on art and culture he's been a consultant at the Getty conservation Institute and curated a grand art exhibition at the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City in nineteen oh no not nineteen good heavens 2014 he has been director of cultural projects at Televisa national coordinator of cultural media at the Ministry of Culture and visiting fellow at the Center for us-mexico studies at UCSD he writes a column as if he has nothing else to do he writes a column in political magazine proceso his intriguing topic today is beauty and ugliness in art in which he will explore how the relevance of beauty and art has changed over the centuries intriguing isn't it so please let's give a warm welcome to mr. Hector tapenade good morning ladies and gentlemen and thank you very much for being here Linda thank you very much for your kind introduction though if I may I would like to add the most important part of my CV I am Brooks Anna Velasquez husband it is a great pleasure and honor to be part of the docents sponsored lecture series thank you for your invitation and I want to congratulate all in each one of the docents of the San Diego Museum of Art for the time and knowledge they graciously share with this community and the visitors of this museum congratulations for your generosity on beauty on beauty and ugliness beauty and art have been intimately related for more than 25 centuries we could not think one without the other though this is change of it but why speaking of ugliness isn't that a contradiction in terms we'll see I'm sure each one of you has their own concept of beauty there's a Latin Maxim that says the gustibus non East dispute anthem which means in matters of taste there can be no disputes tastes about beauty vary from one person to another and more broadly according to the cultural and historical context however I think that tastes can be educated refined or indeed deteriorated the purpose of this talk is to analyze the development of the concepts of beauty and art in the Western world to approach this vast complicated controversial and fascinating theme I would share with you some images and ideas while trying to answer the following questions what is beauty is beauty an essential feature of art can ugliness be compatible with art and what is art anyway let's see what I can do in 50 minutes I'll have to rush what is beauty first of all let me say what beauty is not I think we must distinguish the concept of beauty from what we usually call pretty nice lovely charming funny entertaining or fashionable and most importantly beauty is not a commodity the nature of beauty is one of the most enduring and controversial themes in Western philosophy in art it is also the key to understand value and enjoy the artworks created through world history of course everybody has the right to hang in their house wherever his or hers tastes and pocket allow however beauty is more than simple decoration that's why museums exists beauty is what pleases when we see it it also pleases our sensitivity and our intelligence it is a quality that we find in nature and can also be created by gifted to human beings in fact to create and to appreciate beauty is what makes us humans man was born with a with art the dawn of humanity arose when man was able to express visible reality in ancient cave paintings some 40,000 years ago beauty is one of the main things that makes our existence worth living we can recognize beauty even if we are not able to define it most of us will agree that this painting but by Lucas Cranach the younger the nymph of the spring is indeed beautiful have it is the latest acquisition of the San Diego Museum of Art congratulations for adding this masterpiece to the permanent collection of this museum here we see the nude reclining Venus with symbols of the Roman goddess of art the love at the upper right there is a Latin inscription eye nymph of the sacred spring and resting do not disturb my sleep the horse reason not really sleeping her masterly face reveals crack the elders hand her gait her gaze with lowered eyelids shows she's aware and proud of her own beauty the scene is openly erotic moreover I would say his work is a visual statement of the feminine body as a source of beauty pleasure desire love and respect this painting discloses the Renaissance recovery of classical mythology and of the depiction of human beauty in contrast to the medieval view that considered the female body as the origin and producer of evil surprisingly that sense of chastity still exists in the 21st century in 2008 this other Venus by chronically elder holding a trans fan strip was chosen by the Academy of Arts super-mo to the retrospective and the artists but it was rejected by the company that manages the London Underground and just last week the posters that promote Egon Schiele a centennial retrospective in Vienna were also censored in London Cologne and Hamburg and last January 26 this painting by John William Waterhouse Helias and the nymphs was removed from the walls of the Manchester art gallery in Northern Ireland these examples show that moral or religious beliefs may influence our conception of beauty I hope none of the images I have included in this presentation will offend anyone in the audience one of the San Diego Museum of Arts greatest masterpieces is your Jonas portrait of a man known as San Diego Zoo Mona Lisa the label is not unjustified George Jonah's brushwork who infuses life of this face through the freshness of the flesh his skin shows us light the flash the one day beard the smoothness of the hair the printed treating gaze confidently directed to the viewer his melancholic and enigmatic expression makes this unique portrait comparable to Leonardo's masterwork both show a command of some tomato tomahto a technique of all painting that the Vinci described as a blending of colors without line supporters in the manner of smoke Giorgione as you know is the founder of the high Renaissance style in Venus in Venice sorry that changed the course of art just as Leonardo had done in fourths George honest biography is surrounded by an aura of mystery since little is known about his life and few works can definitely be attributed to him mystery is one of Giorgione's exceptional gifts in addition to the elusive and poetic quality of his work his Sleeping Beauty Venus has Joe Jonas is the honest one of Joe Turner's finer works which he left and finished because of his death and it might have been concluded by his friend Titian it was soon considered as one of your Jonah's greatest works and even the archetype of Venetia art for just for such a pose and composition there was no president in the art of antiquity or in italian painting up to that date but many will follow starting with ditions venice Ogilvy know who stares directly to the viewer with in disguised hellenism dispelling any mythological or platonic metaphors up to - Olympia clearly an homage to titi and painting which caused shock and astonishment during his first exhibition in 1865 Paris alone now let's go back in time a bit and consider the Venus of Willendorf created more than 20,000 years ago he might have been carved to represent the female features related to fertility though it has an archaeological interest rather than an aesthetic one it could be classified as primitive art and might not meet our standards of taste unless we are fans of Lucian Freud's painting this one reflects Freud's personal style of portraying human beings with unmerciful realism ten years ago this campus was sold in christie's for more than 33 million dollars this figure shows that in contemporary art world the market has raised itself into a force so powerful as to become indecisive criteria to define the quality of both artists and artworks this may be good news force maybe not good news for aesthetics but it is an undeniable fact how do we identify beauty as I said before that depends on our own taste however the beauty Canon that prevailed in western art until the mid 19th century came from the bricks in the center of the famous fresco the School of Athens Raphael painted the two fathers who were some philosophy on the Left Plato the idealist depicted with the lawn ro da Vinci's face holding his book time ears and pointing to the top of surah knows the world of the perfect and absolute ideas and the right holding the his Nicomachean ethics Aristotle the realist points to the world of empirical reality in the time ears Plato postulated a concept of absolute beauty originated in the perfection of the universe designed by it emerge who based on mathematical laws gave order proportion and harmony to the pre-existing chaos Plato states that worldly beauties are mere shadows that need to comply with imputable an eternal beauty we owe to Plateau the two most important concepts of beauty in the history of aesthetics Beauty as harmony and proportion between parts and beauty as splendor which can only be admired through intellectual sight and philosophical knowledge not through the senses the Greek and Roman artists were inspired in this in these ideals sculptures and painters focused on the beauty and perfection of the human body does this Roman copy of the Greek sculpture make like poly cleitus as demonstration of his written treatise in light entitled the Canon undoubtedly the the Canon of harmonious and balanced proportions of the male body inspired Michelangelo's David though the Italian master had managed to add movement flesh and life to his Greek immoral greco-roman motto Plato's aesthetic influenced the Roman architect Vitruvius postulated that the perfection of the human body reflects human cosmic harmony therefore it should be possible to inscribe a man within the square and a circle the ideal geometric shapes as the beam she did did in his celebrated Vitruvius man also known as the Canon of proportions Plato's ideas also influenced look up a trolley author of the Davina proporciona on divine proportion a book of mathematics of the golden ratio which includes illustrations by Leonardo da Vinci asks Batali to teach him geometry to help him understand the linear perspective which he used to design his mural The Last Supper in exchange of paw Patrol is tutoring Leonardo drew geometric diagrams for the book Davina proporciona including this open dodecahedron the shape that symbolizes the universe in Plato's Tamils what is is beauty the essential feature of art a second question if we look at most of the works from the San Diego Museum of Art the answer would be a conclusive yes because they please when we see them in this masterpiece by the Spanish baroque once Sanchez cotton reaches a perfection an exquisite delicacy the impressive realism of the still life reveals the artist command of light and shadow volume depths Sanchez cotton was a cartoon moon monk who managed to turn to simple fruits and to humble vegetables into an ode to nature's harmony as an expression of divine beauty Sanchez Cotton's ability to achieve the illusion of reality influenced the work of silver Anna as it shows in this a news day another delightful visual imported metal or combining his faith was technical excellence suberin transformed a yearling sheep into a mystical image in contrasts georgia o'keeffe doesn't search God in nature but rather the sensuality of forms as we can see in white trumpet flower and purple hills in this monumental masterwork of science and Young Museum of Arts permanent collection Henri masterly henri mooré masterly merged the figure originally inspired in the Mayan choc mall were the abstract forms by separating the torso from the arch legs within its modernity this sculpture has harmony proportion and hence beauty in contrast one of the exceptions of to the kind of beauty that we find in this museum is this painting by Jean Dubuffet the leader of the movement known as Art Brut rough art whose purpose was to erase the difference between the beautiful and the ugly by embracing the latter we've said that beauty this wood pleases when we see it and it does so when the object has order proportion harmony and symmetry however there was something missing in plateaus theory human suffering and pain the imperfections of nature and the cruelties of history human evil in his poetics Aristotle wrote that the unusual the unpleasant and even the irrational can be expressed in arts he was referring to the Greek tragedy but can but come the Greek tragedies themes be expressed in sculpture this impressive marble named la cone and Hassan's depicts the myth narrated in Virgil's Aeneid do not trust the horse Trojans whoever it is I fear the Greeks even bearing gifts said lakorn a priest of poseidon trying to prevent the Trojans from the assault of the Greeks his advice was disregarded and he threw his spear at the horse as a reprisal Minerva sent sea serpents to strangle lakorn and his two sons lakorn lifted to heaven horrendous Christ writes Virgil this sculpture caused a polemic between two great thinkers of the German Enlightenment which is central to a theme on the one hand got hold of Lessing argued that poetry may describe actions and include the disgusting facts however I quote painting and sculpture being arts that can only depict one instant cannot express ugliness because it provokes an unpleasant reaction to the viewer whereas Johann Benkelman contended that visual arts can indeed depict suffering and considered this sculpture as the archetype of Roman artists in art I quote him lock horns bodies pain is masterly blended with the greatness of his spirit and his suffering gets deep into our soul I agree with Bill Goodman when I first saw this sculpture in the Vatican Museum it made me feel for the first time in my very distant youth what we call an aesthetic experience which is a unique and mysterious feeling very difficult to describe our entire being is infused with a sense of pleasure and awe then both not only our sight but also our intelligence and our imagination and most of all our emotions and our sensitivity aesthetic experience is one of the highest and most delightful moments in which we are able to feel the miracle of being human beings I've also experienced aesthetic experience in front of Michelangelo masterpieces whose genius to instill life in spirit to into marble is unsurpassable and also with two works by Bernini the father of Baroque sculpture that are inside churches in Rome the ecstasy and scent Teresa depicts the image of the nun and poet though during her mystical transformations or religious ecstasy Bernini was inspired with by opponent in which Teresa describes her mystical rapture the other one is called blessed Ludovic Albert Toni was made by Bernini only he was 71 years old it's one of his last sculptures and it shows Ludo Vica at the moment of mystical communion with God these two master works convey the blending of mysticism and eroticism only sublime art is able to achieve this wonder which can also be found in Saint Teresa's own poetry in Saint John Doe crossbones and in the Bible in Solomon Song of Songs so yes Beauty is an essential feature of art but can also express suffering and pain this leads us to a third question can ugliness be compatible with art in the birth in the birth of tragedy sorry in the birth of tragedy Frederik Nietzsche established a dichotomy between the Dionysian and the Apollonian two forces that struggle for the control over human existence the footin former moved by erotic passion the rationality and chaos the later guided by reason prudence and order nietzsche argues that tragedy of ancient greece was the highest form of art due to its mixture of both Apollonian and Dionysian elements into one seamless whole allowing the spectator to experience the real complexity of the human condition as in the footprints in the Greek tragedy the visual arts depiction of suffering or cruelty is not meant to produce the light but to create passes passes that is a feeling of empathy or compassion between the work and the spectator therefore the representation of pain a form of ugliness can also be great art this is the case of Frida Kahlo's the broken column which depicts the drama of her own suffering with a unique expressive power another masterwork is guru Nevada's crucifixion of Christ which conveys Jesus suffering with dramatic realism and artistic excellence in man it may not be pleasant to watch but it certainly produces an aesthetic pathos that goes beyond religious beliefs this painting by Geronimo's Bosch's workshop belongs to the permanent collection of this museum the word and the work contrasts Christ's peaceful attitude with the violent and grotesque expressions of the characters that surround him Bosh's most outstanding work is the Garden of Earthly Delights owned by the Prado Museum one of the most original and astonishing paintings in art history the triptych conveys Bosh's prodigious imagination and his capacity to cast aside the artistic conventions his sign the high Renaissance bosses genius is the result of his mental independence and inventiveness he was convinced that intelligent and artistic creativity should not be based on cliches or canons but rather on the artists own inventions that is what makes him unique in the history of art none of these fantastic and amazing creatures and situations had ever been seen before be it in paradise or in hell see for example the being sitting in a high chair with a human body in a bird face devouring a person and the extreme right there's no but you see in the the extreme right besides the crocoduck with a human leg Bosch portrayed himself with impeccable realism he's staring at us with an unwavering gaze bashas unique imagination and inventiveness was only equalled four centuries later by the surrealist movement though he was never surpass surpassed Nietzsche claimed that art is capable of redeeming ugliness however he referred to literature and music not to visual arts but indeed art can redeem ugliness we are looking at an outstanding example of this paradoxical mixture this portrait of the bearded woman by giuseppe de rivera represents surely the ugliest woman in art history and at the same time one of the greatest paintings not only of Rivera but of the Spanish baroque ugliness an art are blended together through a master depiction of an aberration of nature with a perfect and unmerciful realism influenced by the use of Caravaggio's Kyra school how come we explain the aesthetic and indeed unforgettable experience originated by this painting in which shock aversion and all come together only art can produce this marvel gorian know that the sleep of Reason produces massive monsters and so dough does nature as we have seen in history as we shall see Goa is regarded as the first modern painter because he expressed the dark side of humanity as in the series of engravings called the disasters of war and also in this old painting that depicts the repression of the Spaniards who reveled against the imposition of Joseph Bonaparte a Napoleon's brother as king of Spain Charles Baudelaire in him to beauty is a poetic the poetic origin of the transformation of the concept of the beautiful do you come from heaven or rise from the Abbess Beauty whether you come from heaven or hell who cares Oh beauty huge fearful ingenious monster if you make the world less hideous in the minutes less legend so yes the power to sublimate sublimate ugliness and coexist with ugliness art has its power but what is art anyway by the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th a new year or era arose which drastically changed our view of the world and the concept of beauty the great technological discoveries electricity the x-rays the Telegraph the I phoned the local mood of the car of the airplane and the great scientists and thinkers who made those discoveries brought about labelled epoch an idea of man as the controller of the universe but then came will war one besides the impress identity Islands and accept extermination it brought it also caused the collapse of optimism about humanity the artistic avant-garde in Europe emerged in that historical context that ISM surrealism cubism and abstraction is in radically transformed the classical to static cannon and the history of art as a whole that is the main purpose was to confront the status quo by making fun of the items of Western art and bourgeois morals they wanted to epithelia bourgeois when producer pronounced in French this the name of this work is an obscene pun Duchamp was one of the great revolutionaries in art history and one of the main figures of the artistic avant-garde that took place in the beginning of last century he liked to play chess few artists have changed the curse of art history as he did by challenging the very notion of what is art and its relation to beauty when he was 25 years old Duchamp became the living symbol of the pictorial avant-garde with this new descending the stairs his synthesis of cubism and futurism intense of painting movement though he had success as a painter he gave a painter because as he declared he was interested in ideas not merely in facial products besides being an artist Duchamp was a thinker that is why his influence was so profound Duchamp didn't reject it what he called retinal art intended only to please the eye disregarding the mind his ready-mades defied the notion that art must be beautiful moreover he argued that an ordinary object could be elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist this concept destroyed the very essence of artistic creation Duchamp's work and thought is based on provocation transgression any delirious yet rational sense of humor which he called meta irony the bride stripped bare by her bachelors known as the large class considered his masterpiece is one of the most hermetic works in the 20th century the bachelors who were in the low part in the lower part depicted as a sort of robots just watch the bride who's in the top but they never touch her the work could be interpreted as a metaphor of the impossibility of love visa Vee sexual desire he worked on it 8 years and left it definitely unfinished 19:23 when everybody thought that Duchamp had abandoned hard to play chess and breathe he came up with this work known as it tongue Oh Dhoni given the waterfall the illuminated glass he worked on it in secret during 20 years it is an erotic installation as we can see the symbolic figures can only be seen through a pair of peep holes on a wooden door so that the viewer turns into a voyeur a tang Tony has been interpreted as the figurative version of the great glass though it remains open to many interpretations it can be seen as a great class in the Philadelphia Museum of Art according to Duchamp the creative act is not only achieved by the artists The Spectator puts to work in contact with the external world trying to decipher and turn interpret its internal features therefore adding his own contribution to the creative art Duchamp sought to create a bond between the artists vital expression and the life of the viewer not only his site therefore he decided to shock the conventionalism of artistic addition by destroying complacency Duchamp created a new artistic language which includes the most radical avantgarde but also the criticism to that avant-garde an individualist to the end Duchamp did not join danezaa muscle realism though both groups considered him part of them during all his life he was respected as a kind of Oracle of artistic modernity his influence in pop art conceptual art and other versions of what we call post-modernism are clear and not always fortunate and three baritone the founder of surrealism proclaimed that beauty had to be conclusive the surrealist subversion sought to find and express super reality through the world of dreams the subconscious an absolute freedom of imagination an artistic creative creativity sense of humor and smiling eroticism surrealist reject his social and religious atavisms as well as the artistic tradition the Santino Museum of Art has important works related to su realism George Orda Kirikou developed a poetic aesthetics which he later called metaphysic painting invaded by enigma and melancholy in this painting we see his studio full of easels and a painting of Turin in 1919 he spent a few days in that city in his way to Paris and was profoundly moved by what he called the metaphysical aspect of Turin this painted reflects that in that impression changies vocation as a painter started he saw a work by the Kirikou in them in this mysterious landscape he used the surrealist method of psychic automatism the solid objects seem to have life and time has evaporated along with the horizon psychic optometry zoom leads to the hidden land of the unconscious discovered by Freud Salvador Dali blended his prodigious surrealist imagination with his love of old masters whom he sought to emulate as he did in his sacrament of the Last Supper inspired in Leonardo's masterpiece see the geometric restructure in the background the dodecahedron we saw before by Leonardo and the transparency of Jesus body to reflect his double nature surrealism invites us to close our eyes in order to learn how to see the visual metaphors of the painter poet rené Magritte expressed the hidden reality concealed behind physical reality it's stunning images are visual paradoxes that lead us to the Marvel of the ordinary Magritte created a witty surrealism his painting make us smile but also make us think Sala bird by Jean Mead always a playful sculpture that could be part of a carousel it is a sculpted gang in which Aurora's ISM is blended with a rather naughty sense of humor in this painting of an apparently harmless lady diego rivera adopted surrealist style to trip the viewer he called it mandragora in a cottage plant with a fleshy root that resembles the human body and has been used as a for satanic of magical rituals you can see it in the upper right corner the lady's gaze is both inviting and sarcastic cubism totally disfigured reality and radically broke with traditional painting by decomposing the objects into geometric elements seen simultaneously from different points of view while suppressing perspective these SU paintings by Pablo Picasso and George back represent analytical cubism which is mainly monochromatic and represents the purest and more most rigid version of copy cubism though it didn't last long cubism was a major stimulus for the development of abstract art Lily Demoiselle d'Avignon regarded as the first Cuba's painting represents a turning point in the history of art he is also one of Picasso's most famous works and it shows the influence of so-called primitive art Picasso distorted the human anatomy to the extreme of monstrosity Picasso most celebrated work isn't out Lee Guernica which dramatically and masterly expresses the horrors of war after the German aerial bombardment of the city of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War since 1937 when it was presented in the Spanish pavilion at the International Exhibition in Paris this painting has been the symbol of brutality of brutality of massive extermination women screaming with terror one of them homes her dead son in her arms like a pietà in the left another comes out of a window holding a gas lamp on a man lies dead in floor there also a bull a horse in a big lamp at the center of the composition each of them with symbolic meanings open to interpretation Guernica is the image of destruction suffering and cruelty it is the most radical fusion of monstrosity with art it goes beyond the Greek tragedy because it portrays a real catastrophe Guernica is a great tragic scene of our time no other art has expressed with such power the universal history of infamy this monumental painting changed the can't changed the concepts of beauty and art forever by uniting them with the darkest side of humanity Guernica is the origin and the parentage of 20th century art beauty ceases to be only what pleases the eyes and turns as in the Greek tragedy into a source of pathless and all the aesthetic experience one might feel in front of this masterpiece may not be pleasurable but it is impressive and unforgettable Guernica was not created to the light VI but to shock the soul and indeed it does cubism disfigure rated reality data ISM mocked it surrealism tried to transform it an abstraction erased it in his Pioneer book on the spiritual in art can't in ski declares that the artist has a mission to create a new pictorial universe the verse divorced from external reality and capable of reflecting the spirit of things and a producing a vibration as the one we feel with back knows music inspired in Theosophical doctrines heels who claimed that connor is a medium to exert a direct influence over the soul the relationship between painting and music is key to the conception of abstract art and its aspiration of purity Malevich took abstraction to his extreme by his black painting and his white and square / white canvas by suppressing any reference to visible reality abstract art represents the most profound transformation of the artistic avant-garde of the last century abstraction has endured the most as an artistic movement without standing aesthetic outcomes in the United States and many other Western world countries Abstract Expressionism is the first and most celebrated international art movement originated in the United States in the second half of the 20th century Mark Rothko continued the legacy of the founders of abstract art including its spiritual content content though enriched by his readings of Nietzsche Freud and Jung and as well as the classical Greek tragedies and his own personal experience in world war ii with a simple yet extraordinary combination of vibrations reflections and hues Rothko created metaphors of the infinite that the light both the spirit and the eye through his painting painting barnett newman aspired to reach the sources of tragic emotion by replacing the concept of beauty with the idea of the sublime understood as the overwhelming force that creates both all and terror a graduate in philosophy at Stanford Robert Motherwell was inspired to make this painting in a poem by his friend Octavio Paz that says door of being allow me to see the face of this night black covers almost all the huge canvas only with a window and touches of red and occur oka through which we can explore the mysteries of obscurity Jackson Pollock desacralized as abstract art and created the emblematic works of abstract expressionism through his unique artistic style the use of gesture colors textures and materiality of painting Pollock's innovation was not the result of intellectual speculation but of the intuitive inspiration of an artist insert in search of his own pictorial language in this work we can see the transition from figurative painting and philosophical doctrines to his personal and unmistakable style by using the dripping and pouring technique and by removing the canvas from its upright easel position to the floor pollo created a series of free-flowing lines in which drawing and painting are fused and indistinct from each other number one a is the first of his emblematic paintings using his entirely new and original style within Western art what came next according to Duchamp who said the ideas that led to post-modernism and what followed art is either transformation or plagiarism it is very difficult to go beyond Duchamp he might have had some talented followers but also shameless imitators it is important to distinguish among them drug court labelled pop artists as charlatans and young opportunists however the supporters of this movement claimed that pop art was a critique of the consumer society the fact is that it coincided with the youth movement youth movements of the 60s and that it was the primary style of a generation controversy continues we have to remember that we are in the age of post truth and post aesthetic arts the classical Canon of beauty has been challenged and removed by most contemporary artists and the general taste has changed accordingly we are au various species in the absence of clear aesthetic references to tyrannies have prevailed easiness and the abuse of the market the easy way never leads to excellence least of all in the field of art unless you Arden Shama Picasso and Matisse but until now I haven't seen any geniuses of that caliber around though I do not discard there could be some of them hidden in their own Studios far from the noise and chaos that surround the Contemporary Art for art fairs and galleries dominated by frivolity trivialization entertainment business and marketing money money money don't get me wrong don't get me wrong I'm not against the art market as such only of its excesses the market has turned into the most important judge that defines whose talent a talented artist and who is not works of art tend to be valued not for those ethic qualities but for the price which is determing by marketing strategies these marketing strategies are not only applied to contemporary art but also to old masters as the obscene case of the work attributed to Leonardo da Vinci that was recently sold for more than four hundred and fifty million dollars though it's certainly no Mona Lisa no main Mona Lisa as the promoters boasted fortunately there are many exceptions to that rule but how do we identify them again that depends of each one's taste well let me give you my my point of view I'm about to finish summing up beauty pleases our eye our imagination and our sensitivity art has the power to redeem ugliness and create pathos and all art can also shock us and lead us out of complacency while alerting our intelligence and our conscience but artists also even create a living creature so we want maybe so we may want to broaden our view about what art is and what art is for in our conflicted world it's good to be open to new forms and media of artistic expression but it's also convenient to be aware of fake art since they are no aesthetic canons anymore distinguishing art from trash is not easy so we have to trust our eye and taste while trying to educate and refine them impossible besides observing the visual and iconographic features of an artwork it might be useful to discover what lies behind the piece its historical context the symbolic values there this worldview the intention with which he created his work this is what curving Panofsky calls iconology regardless its medium of expression i think that artistic excellence is achieved on an artist and his or her work has one or more of the following birches beauty and harmony or gravitas and splendor technical and conceptual rigor inventiveness critical and creative passion a sense of mystery a symbolical dimension and an undeniable commitment to the greatness of art we may also ask ourselves am i move by the piece what does it tell me do I feel the special attraction to it or something near to an aesthetic experience in judgments about art it's better not to be gregarious or driven by fashion and very important having nostalgia a beauty always helps let me conclude with a personal anecdote my son Alejandro who is 14 and helped me doing this PowerPoint gave me a lesson of mystics about five years ago Roxanna and I were trying to engage him with the great Giacometti Rothko's in the pollak at la MOCA he listened but didn't say in anything then we turned to the next gallery and we saw this installation spontaneously and emphatically Alejandro exclaimed give me a break don't tell me that sword thank you very much position [Music] [Applause]

Channel: The San Diego Museum of Art

Views: 2,089

Keywords: lecture, beauty, ugliness, art, duchamp, andre breton, sandiegomuseumofart, hector tajonar

Id: zRYGh22Luwc

Length: 53min 30sec (3210 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 16 2018