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The Quest for Beauty against the Arrogance of Art

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Abstract

Thanks to national policy incentives and the demands of consumer society, art is enjoying a peak in prosperity. However, the premium placed on artistic production today belies a lack of attention to beauty. Aesthetics – not beauty – has the stranglehold on our imaginations, illusions and representations – in one word, our phantasma. Aesthetics underpins the full range of human activity, from the investment economy to the fabrication of mass-media idols and the televised contrivance of alluring virtual realities. This article argues that art, to be meaningful, has to engage in a quest for beauty. But the further removed aesthetics are from reality, the harder it is for art to cultivate an idea of beauty.

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There is a long line of scholarship on the demiurgic function of art, attesting to its timeless origins in many communities’ sacred rites and beliefs. Enshrined in imagery, symbolism, fiction and myth, the arts command the deep-seated forces of the human imagination, both individual and collective. UNESCO’s founders were aware of this and insisted that the organization’s scope exceed the ‘solely political and economic arrangements’ between nations, and envisaged its task of ‘wide diffusion of culture and the education of humanity’ as a ‘sacred duty’ of these nations. Today’s increasingly interconnected and multicultural global setting calls for renewed thinking and research into how art can and does make a difference.
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Sontag discusses war and atrocity imagry. "The understanding of war among people who have not experienced war is now chiefly a product of the impact of these images". Meaning and response to a photo depends on words. Photos are useful against an unpopular war but "absent such a protest, the same antiwar photograph may be read as showing pathos, or heroism." Photos help us remember, but not understand. "Narratives can make us understand. Photographs do something else: they haunt us." "Image-glut keeps attention light, mobile, relatively indifferent to content. Image-flow precludes a privileged image". Images are meant to invite reflection and consideration but "cannot dictate a course of action".
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