Jeffrey Carduner, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes:

“What All Art Has—& Our Everyday Lives” is this year’s first issue of TRO. It tells what art is, and why it matters! Through a landmark essay and moving poem by Eli Siegel, and a clear, thrilling commentary by Ellen Reiss, you’ll learn that all art 1) is about you and everyone, and 2) contains the reason the world itself can be honestly liked, even as we intensely criticize things in it. There’s nothing more important and hopeful to read as 2022 begins than this great issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.

The commentary by Ellen Reiss begins:

Dear Unknown Friends:

This issue contains an essay—historic—describing what all art is at its very center. The essay, by Eli Siegel, is “The Aesthetic Center,” and the basis of Aesthetic Realism is in it. It was published first in 1962 in the journal Definition, where the following note also appeared:

Does art begin with the world itself, with the way it is, is made? Are the opposites the everlasting, lively structure of the world, lured into art by the agog, seeing, individual minds of earth? The Aesthetic Realism answer is Yes.

In that prefatory note I think one can feel something of the largeness with which Aesthetic Realism sees art and reality—and something also of the simultaneous delight, loveliness, pleasure in this way of seeing.

The essay is a rich illustration of the following Aesthetic Realism principle: “In reality opposites are one; art shows this.” In “The Aesthetic Center,” Mr. Siegel is speaking about the philosophic opposites of being and change, and the various forms of those opposites, including unity and diversity, rest and motion….Read more