10/11 • Modernist Concepts of Beauty & Art

Readings for class on Tues 10/11

1. Massimo Vignelli on Form and Function

2. Read the outline of modernism below.

FOUR CONCEPTS OF BEAUTY IN MODERNISM

At least four basic concepts of beauty and its relationship to the nature and purpose of art can be identified with high classical modernist aesthetics. Each strain of beauty can be traced to Kant’s theory of aesthetic experience.

1. FUNCTIONALISM : To be beautiful is to be well-designed, to exhibit functionality. Beauty is the look of utility. Ornamentation is merely pleasurable, not truly beautiful. The limit of the concept is that: sometimes functionalism isn’t functional. (e.g. Le Corbusier).

2. FORMALISM or NON-OBJECTIVISM : Something is an artwork if it embodies a specific kind of form, “significant form”, or if it allows the viewer to appreciate it from a purely ‘formal’ attitude of aesthetic appreciation. The limit of the concept is that: formalism seems to deny that art can ever be about something other than itself. (e.g. Clement Greenberg)

3. UGLY BEAUTY : To be beautiful art is to first appear ugly, because of how the artwork violates conventional notions of taste and habituated modes of aesthetic judgment. The value of ugly beauty is that it signals the overcoming of the interia of perception dimmed down through narcissus narcosis. The limit of the concept is that: it is implausible that we can be said to understand or appreciate a work of art only if we see it as beautiful. (e.g. G. E. Moore)

4. NON-AESTHETIC BEAUTY : The uniquely new concept of beauty that emerges through the extreme violence and dislocation of the Great War in Europe is that it is immoral and a lie to create beautiful artworlds in a world made ugly through violence and fragmentation. Thistory of appreciation does not always culminate in the appreciation of beauty. Artistic goodness is not identical with beauty and the perception of artistic goodness is not always the aesthetic perception of beauty. The limit of the concept is that: it fails to explain or justify the importance of beauty for a happy, meaningful life.(e.g. Marcel Duchamp).

Recommended: Clement Greenberg, "Taste"