Beauty

What is beauty? Should art be beautiful?

Last week during the presentation of Alex de Wolf’s work (one of the participants in this AIR project) we had an interesting discussion about beauty and art.
He showed a temple surrounded by electricity wires.
He painted exactly the image he saw in his framing.

But the painting was not so much appreciated by the Japanese audience. They appreciate the beauty in a painting, when it’s an idealistic view. And electricity wires are esthetically not so much related to beauty. ‘This is something we see every day!’, someone said. ‘This is gallery work / museum work and not for the temple or in house.’

This quality to shift from every day life to an idealistic view will possibly be the reason for not bothering about ugly ventilation systems (in- and outside), electricity wires and junk in the corner.

@Alex de Wolf, oktober 2011

Veranda machiya

Garden of Fine Art, Tadao Ando