Jeffrey Carduner, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes: In America and everywhere, there is confusion about how to see one’s family, and people very much hope to make sense of that big matter. “A Daughter, a Mother, & the World” shows beautifully, with depth and logic, how a daughter began to see her mother newly, with comprehension,… Read more

Nancy Huntting, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes: “How Should We See the World?” describes the central fight in the human mind—and it explains, too, how this fight is dividing America right now. And in some of the greatest, most thrilling literary criticism you’ll ever read, learn how the poet John Keats was after what we ourselves… Read more

Michael Palmer, Aesthetic Realism associate, writes: In his 1953 essay “Art as, Yes, Humility,” Eli Siegel explains something that people have ached to know: how to be genuinely proud of our lives. I once felt that to be proud, I had to impress people with a prestigious job in which I made a lot of… Read more

Jeffrey Carduner, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes: Reading “Keats, Beauty, & Ourselves,” you’ll be thrilled as you learn the meaning of one of the great poems of the world, and what that poem has to do with our own lives in the 21st century. There is, here, a magnificent understanding of love, of what interferes with… Read more

Harvey Spears, photographer and Aesthetic Realism associate, writes about this article by John Stern, published in The Municipal Engineers Journal: What can we learn about ourselves from one of the most historic buildings in NYC? In his article “Grand Central Terminal: A Study in Beauty and Meaning,” John Stern, Tri-State Regional Planner (ret.) and Aesthetic… Read more

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… Read more

Marion Fennell, singer with the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company, writes: I think this article by artist and Aesthetic Realism consultant Marcia Rackow is wonderful. In it, she writes about the great 20th-century sculptor Alexander Calder and the surprising and thrilling way heaviness and lightness are present in his work. She shows vividly not only why… Read more

Jeffrey Carduner, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes: People have loved works of art, and have returned to look at paintings again and again.  But they haven’t known that all art is about themselves too, their own lives.  And people haven’t seen that what makes for the beauty in art is ethical: that art has answers to the most… Read more

Nancy Huntting, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes: How can we see the world—all that’s outside us—more truly? How can we see ourselves more sensibly? Is beauty, the beauty of art, a guide for pride and happiness in a human being?—and in a nation? The good news is: there are answers to these questions. And that news is… Read more

Derek Mali, Aesthetic Realism consultant and actor, writes: When I first read Eli Siegel’s essay “The Ordinary Doom,” I was astounded—I felt, “This describes me!” Though I hadn’t met him, I felt he wrote the essay with me in mind. In it, Mr. Siegel explains the loneliness people take for granted—that they walk around with… Read more