Jesse Waugh

“ This is the awful (though not awesome) conundrum we find ourselves in at the end of the Modern era: we find ourselves worshiping death, rather than the dynamo constructed by the thrilling natural opposition of beautiful life contrasted with terrifying death – chiaroscuro only exists where there is also light present. ”

“ Nihilists worship nothingness in the same way that idolaters worship somethingness – both are only half of the whole. It is in the interplay between opposites that we find the truth – and the truth, as put forth by John Keats in his Ode on a Grecian Urn is that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." ”

“ But it has to have merit if life is to have value. Otherwise we live in pure relativity, with no meaning.
Furthermore: If everything is relative, then nothing is relative. If everything is subjective, then nothing is subjective. For subjectivity to exist, there must be objectivity. And straight to the point: If relativity is to exist, then there must be an absolute. Any other line of thinking is logical fallacy.
Therefore it stands to reason that a given individual can rationally assign an absolute position to Beauty as the purpose of art. ”

“ Fortunately, we have solid historical records of the mid-19th century art movement which overtly championed the creation of beauty as the noblest human endeavour, and as the highest human ideal: the Aesthetic Movement. ”

“ In other words, like a Puritan who has tried his hardest to rid the world of evil, Hirst has focused on trying to rid the world of life, although his use of butterflies might be considered a sort of penance to make up for all his sad morbidity, if there is indeed any sincerity in any of his art. ”

“ Many Hindus would argue that Kali or Durga worship brings them closer to god. Let’s accept this for the sake of argument and ponder what the varying forms of Hindu immolation – which tend to result from the veneration of death and destruction embodied in deities such as Durga – might achieve: Do they achieve sublimation? Is total destruction sublime? By definition it cannot be, as it actually destroys its participant. The sublime can be terrifying, but once it crosses the line into actual destruction it kills its audience. ”

“ Attracting support among a fashionable stream of English upper and middle-class society between the 1870s and 1890s, it promoted the supremacy of beauty and the notion of 'art for art's sake', a philosophy that often spilled over into the kind of hedonism characterized in the lives of the playwright Oscar Wilde and the artist Aubrey Beardsley. It was in fact a Frenchman, the poet Theophile Gautier, who coined the phrase 'l'art pour l'art' when discussing Symbolist poetry, but it was in England that this religion of beauty was most widely applied to the visual arts. ”

“ Gallery Space Recall serves as an example to illustrate that while Modern Art may not be dead per se, the Modern era with its conceptualist aftermath is most certainly over. I personally entertain hopes that a New Beauty Era is emerging. ”

“ But this veneration of the awesome does not usually focus on the worship of trash, as does its superficially resemblant Western cousin – contemporary, conceptual art. There is respect for beauty inherent in the Kami and Chi (life-force) worship normal to Oriental religions. Without respect for beautiful order, there can be no sublimity and no transcendence.
Tantrism, as opposed to Zen, does indeed, in certain instances, put forth death, decay, destruction, and degradation as objects of worship. ”