Sartre claimed he felt safer on an airplane when there was
a beautiful woman on board -- nothing terrrible could happen
to such beauty -- believing admittedly that this pagan notion
in the protective cloak of beauty was superstitious.
He also claimed his own ugligness protected him from
excessive vainglory and narcissism, and perhaps perversely
opposed to the appeal of beauty, attracted beautiful women
to him. They told him he gave comfort compared to attractive
men who gave trepidation and anxiety.
Beautiful architecture's seductive appeal has that conflicting
attribute of hypnotic subliminity and self-disgust in the beholder
who feels dominated by the structure's aesthetic power, not
empowered by beauty but weakened by it.
The ugly in art is sometimes called the forerunner of new
beauty yet unrecognized. And it does seem to be the case
that the ugly has an appeal which disarms the observer, who
is beguiled, disarmed, by feeling superior to the ugly object.
I admit to being more susceptible to ugly architecture and
non-architectural structures (not to be confused with the banal)
than by what passes for sublimely beautiful (which too often
appears to me to be formulaicly banal -- blockbuster in the
MoMA-corporate-museological lexicon).
Most seductive of all are architectural ruins, not the romantic
kind celebrated by poets and historic preservationists, but the
remnants and detritus of decay and dilapidation, if not willful
destruction such as occurs in war.
"The Bombed Buildings of Britain," portrayed WW2 devastation
in a kind of pornographic fashion, aestheticizing that which
horrified at the time of occurrence.
What will be made of the pornographic potential of WTC and
now the US gigantically-mirrored devastation in the Middle
East? Some European artists are exploring this, and at
least one is filming a comedy of it.
Congrats to the Brit who won the Turner Prize for filming
Texas as a bellweather tragedy of America's future of
flagwaving and flag-draping thousands of coffins -- cloaking
senseless, horrific deaths with Sartrean, aircraft-superstitious
banalized beauty.
a beautiful woman on board -- nothing terrrible could happen
to such beauty -- believing admittedly that this pagan notion
in the protective cloak of beauty was superstitious.
He also claimed his own ugligness protected him from
excessive vainglory and narcissism, and perhaps perversely
opposed to the appeal of beauty, attracted beautiful women
to him. They told him he gave comfort compared to attractive
men who gave trepidation and anxiety.
Beautiful architecture's seductive appeal has that conflicting
attribute of hypnotic subliminity and self-disgust in the beholder
who feels dominated by the structure's aesthetic power, not
empowered by beauty but weakened by it.
The ugly in art is sometimes called the forerunner of new
beauty yet unrecognized. And it does seem to be the case
that the ugly has an appeal which disarms the observer, who
is beguiled, disarmed, by feeling superior to the ugly object.
I admit to being more susceptible to ugly architecture and
non-architectural structures (not to be confused with the banal)
than by what passes for sublimely beautiful (which too often
appears to me to be formulaicly banal -- blockbuster in the
MoMA-corporate-museological lexicon).
Most seductive of all are architectural ruins, not the romantic
kind celebrated by poets and historic preservationists, but the
remnants and detritus of decay and dilapidation, if not willful
destruction such as occurs in war.
"The Bombed Buildings of Britain," portrayed WW2 devastation
in a kind of pornographic fashion, aestheticizing that which
horrified at the time of occurrence.
What will be made of the pornographic potential of WTC and
now the US gigantically-mirrored devastation in the Middle
East? Some European artists are exploring this, and at
least one is filming a comedy of it.
Congrats to the Brit who won the Turner Prize for filming
Texas as a bellweather tragedy of America's future of
flagwaving and flag-draping thousands of coffins -- cloaking
senseless, horrific deaths with Sartrean, aircraft-superstitious
banalized beauty.