Steven Weiner, Computer Specialist and Aesthetic Realism associate, writes:

“Beauty Always & Right Now” is about something that art critics and others have tried for centuries to understand, and which Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded by Eli Siegel, explains: what art is—what every instance of real art has in common. And you’ll see: Aesthetic Realism also makes clear that real art of any time and place has the answers to the biggest questions in every person’s life! Further: “Beauty Always & Right Now” comments amazingly—and deeply—on something millions of people are now experiencing on a daily basis: internet video conferencing. You’ll never think the same way again about beauty, yourself, and what you experience in a video conference, after you read this up-to-the-moment and eternal issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known!

The commentary by Ellen Reiss begins:

Dear Unknown Friends:

Here is part four of the lecture we are serializing: the great and seminal How Aesthetic Realism Sees Art, by Eli Siegel. Its basis is the following principle: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” Eli Siegel was the philosopher to explain that the human self, the self of each of us, is an aesthetic matter: though we don’t know it, we need, for our happiness, pride, and true intelligence, to do what art does, make opposites one.

Attending the class were working artists, many of whom were present at an Aesthetic Realism class for the first time.

In this section of the talk, Mr. Siegel speaks about opposites in many arts. And he says—in 1956: the oneness of opposites “is present in any new art that may come up. It is present at the moment in television.” So I am going to comment on something that is certainly new, and not dreamed of when this talk was given. It’s not art in the fullest sense; but it is aiming to do what the Roman critic Horace said poetry does: “miscuit utile dulci,” put together usefulness and sweetness. I am referring to internet video conferencing, which has come to have tremendous importance during the Covid pandemic. I’ll comment a little on opposites in video conferencing, particularly conferencing that involves many people—in education, for instance, and in various business and governmental meetings. As I do, I’m very glad to say that a web conferencing platform is making it possible for Aesthetic Realism to be taught more widely than ever at this time of pandemic—to people across the nation and abroad—in (for instance) classes on anthropology, the visual arts, marriage, poetry, music, the cinema….Read more