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.