On May 16, 2008, at 10:44 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The phrase, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," is interesting
but lax.
Certainly, "Response is in the eye of the beholder," can be
defended, and the
response can be very favorable in someone who would nevertheless not
invoke the
word 'beauty' about the favored work. Anyone who cried "Beautiful"
about
Lucien Freud's "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" would be using the
word differently
from me.
It's not a beautiful painting? That's what they said about
Pearlstein's nudes, when they were first exhibited in the 70s. The
models were not paragons of human form, will sagging flesh and wrinkly
parts, hum-drum visages, etc., made all the more less appealing by the
way Pearlstein painted the cast shadows that seemed, in many cases, to
run counter to the shading of the body contours and, in all, produce
splotchy or jarringly mottled effects. But his paint handling and
brushwork, not to mention the actual anatomical fidelity, are marvelous.
Derek applies the term "art" to designate works he deems to reach an
certain degree of exalted achievement; here, you seem to use "beauty"
to signify the degree of felicity or pleasantness in the model. But of
course, I may be looking at the right notions department, eh?
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Michael Brady
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
