Talk:Aesthetic Realism/Sources

Definition of Aesthetic Realism

Siegel's letter in the Village Voice, Nov. 14, 1956

Of late I have come to feel that the following is a functional definition of Aesthetic Realism which includes, besides, its intellectual or ontological basis: Aesthetic Realism is the art of liking oneself through seeing World, Art, and Oneself as the aethetic oneness of opposites.

Simply as philosophy, Aesthetic Realism can be defined in this way: Aesthetic Realism is the seeing of the world, art, and self as explaining each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites. source

Ad in the Village Voice, Jan. 16, 1957, p. 3

Aesthetic Realism is the art of liking oneself through seeing the world, art, and oneself as the aesthetic oneness of opposites. —Eli Siegel

Reliable third party and secondary sources

Contemporary Authors, Thomson Gale

Eli Siegel, Sketch by Deborah A. Straub
Siegel continued to [develop a] new philosophy of life and art....Known first as Aesthetic Analysis and later as Aesthetic Realism, this philosophy sprang from Siegel’s belief that “what makes a good poem is like what can make a good life . . ., for poetry is a mingling of intensity and calm, emotion and logic.” Siegel composed “Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana” with this principle in mind, taking “many things that are thought of usually as being far apart and foreign and [showing], in a beautiful way, that they aren’t so separate and that they do have a great deal to do with each other.” In essence, stated the philosopher, Aesthetic Realism teaches that “the resolution of conflict in self is like the making one of opposites in art.”

Psychology Today Omnibook of Personal Development by Katinka Matson (NY: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1982)

The basic tenet of Aesthetic Realism is that all reality is united in an aesthetic union of opposites: This is beauty itself. According to Siegel...the arts and sciences can be viewed aesthetically...they express the way the world works, opposites as one....Siegel analyzes what he calls "failures" as personified in the work of certain men, Sigmund Freud and T.S.Eliot among others. Siegel believes their common failoure to be the neglect of seeing "the large continuous purpose of man as good will for everything, animate an inaminate." Freud "appealed to incompleteness in man." He confined man's possible view of self by emphasizing his sexual anxieties and death instinct as the keys to mental disorder. According to Siegel, Freud entirely avoided man's unconscious desires for good will.

Something to Say, ed. James E.B.Breslin (NY: New Directions Books, 1985)

pp.249-252
from the Letter of William Carlos Williams to Martha Baird, Nov. 3, 1951
It's all right to speak of aesthetic realism and you've done good work to get behind a man such as Siegel...Only today do I realize how important that poem is in the history of our development as a cultural entity--a place which is continually threatened and which we may never attain unless we develop the position which HE has secured for us. I say definitely that that single poem, out of a thousand others written in the past quarter century, secures our place in the cultural world.
This is powerful evidence of a new track. The mind that made that mark is a different mind from ours. It is following different incentives. The eyes back of it are new eyes. They are seeing something different from ours. The evidence is technical but it comes out at the non-technical level as either great pleasure to the beholder, a deeper taking of the breath, a feeling of cleanliness, which is the sign of the truly new. The other side of the picture is the extreme resentment that a fixed, sclerotic mind feels confronting this new. It shows itself by the violent opposition Siegel received from the "authorities" whom I shall not dignify by naming....

Quintillions, by Robert Clairmont (NY: American Sunbeam Publisher, 2005)

Introduction by Ellen Reiss, pp. 13-23
Eli Siegel...founder of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism...[showed that] every true poem...has come from a person's seeing something so justly that he or she has perceived in the immediate object the structure of the world itself: the oneness of opposites. And we hear that structure as poetic music. Poetry, he wrote, "is the oneness of the permanent opposites in reality as seen by an individual." That is true about every instance of good poetry--no matter what its style, or language, or in what century it was written. On the other hand, an unauthentic poem, however impressive, however praised, is insufficiently sincere...lacks that honesty which is a self at its very center meeting what an object really is.

Dictionary of Psychology, by Raymond J. Corsini (NY: Psychology Press, 1999)

aesthetic realism: (E. Siegel) A philosophy and a method of therapy based on these points: (a) a person should learn to like the world; this calls for (b) the understanding of the aesthetic oneness of opposites; and (c) the greatest danger is to have contempt for the world(p.24).

A Book of Nonfiction, Joseph T. Brown (NY: Macmillan, 1965)

Eli Siegel examines th[e] problem of human separation and loneliness." (pp. 250-255)

Modern American Poetry, ed. Corbett & Boldt (NY: The Macmillan Company, 1965)

Siegel's poetry reveals a view of reality in which "the very self of a thing is its relation, its having-to-do-with other things." It is in the relations of things that he finds meaning and music, and this gives a deep coherence to his work.(Editors, p. 144)

The Nation Magazine, Alexander Laing (1965)

Sept. 20, 1965, Vol 201, No. 8 (p. 212)
The Nation and its Poets, by Alexander Laing, p. 212, This year they chose 'Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana' because it seemed to them "the most passionate and interesting poem that came in."...The author, Eli Siegel, aged 22, had been quite unknown. The vigor of The Nation's influence was demonstrated in an immediate editorial uproar across the country....Much of it assumed the form of raucous parody....[T]he award to Siegel helped to dramatize, for a large audience, a transition in the perception of literary values which at this midpoint of the 1920s was already evident, although still arcane. If The Nation's choice, "Hot Afternoons," is thought of as nothing more than a catalyst, the magazine's willingness to stand up for the unorthodox in poetry was symbolically important. <http://ead.dartmouth.edu/html/ml53.html>

Prize Poems, 1913-1929 (NY: Charles Boni, 1930)

Edited by Charles A. Wagner, Introduction by Mark Van Doren
"The Nation"...prize awarded annually by a magazine of more than purely literary complexion. Its choices being in most years radical, the reception over the country was invariably stormy. Yet it was always a spectacle to be looked forward to, and the fame which came to certain poems like Stephen Vincent Benet's "King David" and Eli Siegel's "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana" was an interesting index of the importance attributed by the lay public to poetry." (p.19)

Primary Sources

Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems, by Eli Siegel (NY: Definition Press, 1958)

p. xi
Poetry, like life, states that the very self of a thing is its relations, its having-to-do-with other things....The technique of poetry aims for the intensification of a thing through showing the likeness of what is in that thing to something else--to everything else, as different. Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana is a poem about things having to do with each other.

Articles in mainstream press

The Boston Globe Ombudsman Robert L. Kierstead (1982)

Op Ed Page, May 24, 1982
In the case of The Boston Globe and the Aesthetic Realism Foundation of New York City...The Globe, once it decided to do the article...also assumed an obligation to spare no effort in thoroughly researching and investigating an organization which espouses a philosophy which is both complex and controversial. In other words, the burden was on The Globe to do as complete, balanced and fair a job of reporting as possible. [Assistant Living Editor Ed Siegel] believed that under the circumstances involved the story was fair....
The ombudsman disagrees.
The story, as published, contains a preponderance of material based on interviews with representatives of the gay community who, for the most part, are not un-biased in their views of Aesthetic Realism....The ombudsman believes the article, not intended as an expose, contained a negative tone and strong negative words without attribution. It also contained inaccuracies.

James H. Bready, The Baltimore Evening Sun (1982)

Baltimore, Wednesday, July 28, 1982
Eli Siegel's system lives
by James H. Bready
This is to report that the movement founded by Eli Siegel lives on and...Aesthetic Realism thrives....[Siegel's] main intellectual interest was always aesthetics, extended outward into poetics, philosophy and anti-Freudian psychology. [I]t all came together, at first under the phrase aesthetic analysis, in a working manuscript called "Self and World." ... In brief, the Siegelian lifeview holds "all reality, including the reality that is oneself, [to be] the aesthetic oneness of opposites." Motion and rest, surface and depth, love and anger, and so on, once identified, can and must be reconciled....There are always belittlers, who speak of Siegel as a Village guru and call his followers a cult. From time to time, the foundation wheels up a cannon, such as Huntington Cairns. From his lair at Kitty Hawk, N.C., he scatters the unbelievers with a single aimed volley: "I believe that Eli Siegel was a genius. He did for aesthetics what Spinoza did for ethics."
http://www.aestheticrealism.net/Balt-Evening-Sun-Bready.htm

Michael Kernan in The Washington Post (1978)

"From Here to Oblivion," by Michael Kernan, August 16, 1978
Who is Eli Siegel, and what is Aesthetic Realism?...It seems to begin with a poem..."Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana," a dazzling 99-line Whitmanesque song to life and the world...What is Aesthetic Realism?...[It] celebrates "the constant oneness of aesthetic opposites. There are two elements: oneself and everything that is not oneself, which he calls "the world." These two opposites must be brought into harmony: By liking the world, one can come to like oneself. If, on the other hand, one feels disdain, or what he calls contempt, for the world, unhappiness results. "Contempt can be defined as the lessening of what is different from oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it," he says.
http://www.aestheticrealism.net/Wash-Post-Article-Kernan.htm

Ralph Hattersley in Popular Photography (1963)

“The Psychology of People-Pictures,” Nov. 1963, Vol 53, No. 5, pp. 168–182)by Ralph Hattersley
Aesthetic Realism ...attacks the problem of meaning in art on a very broad front and with great sensitivity and intellect...[It] argues that studying the reasons why one makes a picture or writes a poem can help him make sense out of his life.(Page 174.)

Donald Kirkley in The Baltimore Sun: Poet Outlines a Philosophy (1946)

August 2, 1946, by Donald Kirkley
Eli Siegel...tonight launched a movement designed to introduce a new "philosophical and ethical" system on which he has been at work for many years...Aesthetic Analysis...the system is called....More than 160 persons, some of whom assert they have been "changed" for the better by Mr. Siegel's teachings, attended the introductory talk. Subsequent lectures will be given weekly at Steinway Hall....It is, he said, "a philosophic way of seeing conflict in self and making this conflict clear to a person so that a person becomes more integrated and happier." Mr. Siegel attacked Freud for blaming so much on sex problems, rather than aesthetic one....He stated repeatedly that "aesthetic analysis" does not deal with bodily ills and rejects any notion that it has to do with medicine.

Cultural Influence of Aesthetic Realism

157th Commencement of The City College of New York, May 31, 2003

Address by President Gregory H. Williams
But what, exactly, are you "commencing?"
The short answer to that question--and it's not all that reassuring--is simply: I don't know. You are launching yourselves into a time of great uncertainty, and possibly great peril. In recent months and years we've seen the world turned upside down again and again; the nightly news brings a steady drumbeat of terror alerts and terrorist acts, war, corporate greed and SARS...Closer to home today, the economy that you are graduating into hardly seems to offer the possibilities that so many of you have worked so hard to earn....American poet and philosopher Eli Siegel wrote: "Intelligence is the ability to welcome the new." More than any exam or any paper--more even than the degrees that you are justifiably so proud of today--your ability to welcome the new will be the measure of how smart you really are. Now, much of what is "new" seems hardly comfortable, or even friendly, so what does it mean to welcome it? [note: the rest of the commencement address attempts to answer this question.]

Chinese Music (2004)

(Chinese Music Society of North America) Vol. 27, no. 4 (2004) Zhou Long and the Future of Chinese Music: An Interview with Commentary"
By Edward Green
I learned from Aesthetic Realism that art and life explain each other....Eli Siegel said...All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves. "This interests me very much," Zhou Long said. "And it clarifies something to me. In my piece The Ineffable, I know I was thinking very consciously about contrast: how to have things broken, and yet also continuous. I was thinking also about activity and quiet."

Hickory Daily Record (2009)

"Back to School Rally Offers Answer to Racism" By Susan Smith, Hockory Branch, NAACP
Friday, 21 August 2009 The Belk Centrum Theater at Lenoir Rhyne University was packed Saturday for an intellectually stimulating Back to School Rally sponsored by the Hickory Branch NAACP....A diverse crowd...learned about...the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method based on the philosophy founded in 1941 by Eli Siegel.
Rev. T. Anthony Spearman, Hickory Branch NAACP President was very pleased with the high turnout saying, "This demonstrates that people in this area are ready for new ideas in education and race relations."
Aesthetic Realism views contempt as the cause of racism, "the addition to self through the lessening of something else," and as the source of all unkindness between people, including economic injustice, and war. The criticism of contempt, including in oneself, and learning to see that the feelings of other people are as real and as deep as one's own, are essential in ending racism. The philosophy proposes that "the deepest desire of every person is to like the world on an accurate basis," and views the purpose of education is to have students "like the world by knowing it."...
They demonstrated how biology, math, social studies and science lessons could be taught based on this principle stated by Eli Siegel: "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites." They showed how opposites are the structure of the world and therefore every subject in the curriculum. This teaching method helps students appreciate how differences are equally good in the whole, improving their ability to learn and get along with others across all racial or socioeconomic lines.

The Pioneer (Illinois local newspaper)(2009)

July, 2009, by Patrick Butler, staff writer
Founded in 1941 by poet and social critic Eli Siegel, Aesthetic Realism celebrates the beauty of opposites and breaks down racial, economic and national barriers.

The Italian Voice (2004)

"The Architecture of Andrea Palladio" (01-08-2004 ) New HYork City architect, Anthony Romeo looks at the life and work of Andrea Palladio and asks, "Can we learn from the architecture of Palladio about the questions of our lives, including love?" Mr. Romeo shows the answer to this question is YES!
Anthony Romeo, whose career spans nearly three decades...designed the award-winning U.S. Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport. With colleagues from the Aesthetic Realism Foundation faculty, he has spoken at the American Institute of Architect's 2000 convention, at Harvard, Boston University, Dickinson University, at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York and in the series, "Art Answers the Questions of Your Life" at the Terrain Gallery in SoHo....Mr. Romeo demonstrates that pride and modesty, intimacy and wideness are made one in the villas of Palladio, particularly in his beloved "La Rotunda," which has profoundly affected architecture throughout Europe and America."

The Philadelphia Sun (2004)

"Harlem audience cheers Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism" By Mariana Willows 10 October 2004
The speakers gave evidence from their own lives of how study of Aestheric Realism changes contempt--not into tolerance, but into true respect for other people, and an understanding that we need the difference of the world to be all we can be!
First to speak was Captain Allan Michael of Circle Line Tours, who three years ago, on September 11th, valiantly ferried people from New York safely to New Jersey. He described what black people have endured from the time of slavery to today's racial profiling, which he personally experienced. "I know that Aesthetic Realism is the means to end racism," he said with conviction.
The audience was rapt as Julie Jensen, born in Nazi Germany, spoke courageously about the contempt Hitler appealed to in German people and how it was welcomed by her family and herself as a child. What she has learned from Aesthetic Realism, Mrs. Jensen said, enabled her to have sincere regret about the holocaust...To hear a German speak of how her attitude towards Jews changed, and an Israeli write passionately about the need for justice to the Palestinian people, was powerful evidence that knowledge exists which can end the cycle of terror and destruction in the Middle East and throughout the world.

Book: The Gothic Vision, Dani Cavallaro (Continuum, London & New York, 2002)

According to Dorothy Koppelman, Guernica ‘shows that, even as it takes on the cruelty and seeming non-sense in the world, there is form, there is organization, there is something larger than man’s “inhumanity to man”’. This statement reflects the ethos of Aesthetic Realism as theorized by Eli Siegel in Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?, where it is argued that ‘in every work of art’ one may detect ‘a certain progression…a design which makes for continuity’ and, at the same time, ‘the discreteness, the individuality, the brokenness of things: the principle of discontinuity’ (Koppelman 1999, p. 121).
In viewing Guernica as a major instance of the collusion of continuity and discontinuity, Koppelman also maintains that the painting is able “to make the ugliness of things bearable’ and ‘to show those things as continuous with what we see as beautiful’, and thus demonstrates the interdependence of appalling brokenness and life-affirming progression (Koppelman:website). If this hypothesis is accepted, then Guernica could be said to reflect the operations of fear by virtue of its ability to function simultaneously as a paralyzing record of intolerably sinister forces and as an illuminating reminder of the omnipresence of darkness and of the need to come to grips with it(p.122).
referencing: Koppelman, Dorothy (1999) “Aesthetic Realism and Picasso’s Guernica: for Life”
http://www.aestheticrealism.org/GUERNICA_dk.htm

Trudie A. Grace in Journal of the Print World (2004)

Vol. 27 No.1 Winter 2004, second section, page 36
Same Objects/Different Visions
Etchings by Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman
by Trudie A. Grace
[Note: Trudie Grace has a long professional career at the Naional Academy, Artists Space, etc. The notebooks of Chaim Koppelman are now in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian.
Before beginning their shared etching sessions, the Koppelmans drew many ordinary objects. In 1949, Chaim Koppelman began drawings for an "object book" when Eli Siegel, the founder of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, suggested that every day he draw an object that interested him and write three descriptive sentences about it, the purpose being to see the world freshly every day and to appreciate it more fully.
Since then Chaim Koppelman has filled numerous sketchbooks with detailed drawings, always of a different object and usually of a type similar to those selected in his etching sessions with his wife. Likewise inspired by Aesthetic Realism, Dorothy Koppelman has also kept objects books since the 1940s; she, however, prefers drawing in a larger scale, she has been less assiduous and her works are much larger.....The Koppelmans study of the same objects has produced not only a large body of works, some of which have been exhibited, but also has had other results. ....They have further applied their understanding of their artistic differences to reinforce their acceptance of their personal differences. Opposites, they note, are at play in their married life--stubbornness and yielding, for example--and both have learned to be firm and yielding in a way that is friendly and non-confrontational. The process of creating an etching, they also point out, depends on opposites--for example the softness of the ground versus the hardness of the etching tool and plate, and the brief or extended biting of the plate. Overall, the differences and similarities in the paired etchings by the Koppelmans and the dynamics of their personal relationship are affected by their study of Aesthetic Realism, which defines beauty as the making one of opposites.

Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting, Jimmy Webb (NY: Hyperion, 1998)

(p. 68) Bernstein continued, reiterating his consistent and recurring belief in the duality at the very core of creativity. (The Unanswered Question, Bernstein's Lecture at Harvard.) Philosopher Eli Siegel seems to have come to the same conclusion. "Poetry is exactitude and value at once. There can be exactitude about the unseen. Poetry gets to the music resulting from authentic, precise and entire examination," he wrote, and then added, "Poetic music, among other things, is a junction of pride and humility, endeavor and rest." (The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, Letter #170, June 30, 1976, The Aesthetic Realism Foundation).

Navarro, Pomplona, Spain (1976)

Review of David Bernstein’s Photography Exhibit in Pomplona, Spain Appeared in el Tiempo of Pomplona, Spain, January, 1976
By Tomas San Sebastian
American photographer, David Bernstein...belongs to the Aesthetic Realism School, founded by Eli Siegel and he has a conception of photography rather more pragmatic and dynamic than a good many Spanish photographers. In essence, says Bernstein, "in photography, the opposites are crucial. The inner self and the outside world are opposites and photography--like other forms of art when they are successful--makes a one of them....Bernstein is interested in all types of themes, from portraits, flowers to street scenes. Because photography, as he himself states, is "visual love," and because life is something in continuous motion, Bernstein is interested in subjects such as "flowers and trees, life in the hustle and bustle of the street, photos of people where they live or where they work and the way in which light penetrates and reveals to us everyday objects." For these reasons, his photographs seem somewhat unfinished, they never are idyllic, even at times they are imperfect, but...alive and flowing. Truly, Bernstein has found out the essence of photography. [Translation by J.Torres and M.Simon]

Book: The New Humanist: Art in a Time of Change, by Barry N. Schwartz (1974)

p. 172: Chaim Koppelman...principles of Aesthetic Realism...

Northport Journal (Long Island, NY) (1999)

Dec. 16, 1999
Filmmaker Tackles Homelessness Issues, by Carol Parker
This is Kimmelman's second film based upon a statement by Siegel. His first, The Heart Knows Better was an anti-prejudice film that won an Emmy Award in 1995. It has been shown worldwide....Kimmelman has produced films for the United Nations and received numerous awards including the Newark Black Film Festival's Paul Robeson Award.

The Amsterdam News (1995)

"The Heart Knows Better" 28 October 1995 By Isaac J. Black
The Heart Knows Better produced by Ken Kimmelman of Imagery Film Ltd., was just awarded the Emmy for Outstanding National Public Service Film. The film addresses racial prejudice and was inspired by this...statement of Eli Siegel, the American poet and founder of Aesthetic Realism: "It will be found that black and white man have the same goodnesses, the same temptations, and can be criticized in the same way. The skin may be different, but the aorta is quite the same."
This film is a large means of opposing racism, encouraging people to like the way they see other people by having them feel that something deep within a person different than oneself is like oneself.

The Bergen Record (Bergen, NJ) (1999)

March 26, 1999
Promising the world By Filomena Gomes, Staff Writer
"Everything that begins where your fingertips end is the world." That...proverb is the Aesthetic Realism Foundation’s secret to getting kids to like books.
[E]ducators at the non-profit foundation, established by Eli Siegel, work with children... to help them learn to use books as a tool to appreciate the world and the people around them....The world, according to the foundation’s philosophy, is made up of opposites: outside and inside, rest and motion. Similarly, children want to feel excited and feel at ease at the same time....[B]ooks can spark children’s interest and make them want to learn about the world around them. “In this class, children...feel more related to other people…not so separate,” Allen said. “Feelings of another person can be put down on a piece of paper on the pages of a book,” said Allen. “And as you read about them, those feelings come into you and add to you.”

Ralph Hattersley in Popular Photography (1964)

“Form and Content in Color” Popular Photography July 1964, (Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. 84-87). [note: Hattersley was editor of Infinity and is quoted in the biography of Andreas Feininger in Wikipedia. Opposites give life meaning Opposites are a part of all life as we know it; when properly understood they make life meaningful. Not understood, they make it hell….Opposites not understood are also called conflicts (to use a more familiar term) are are central in all emotional distress.
The solution to our problem with opposites and the use we can make of photography in finding it is pointed to succinctly in the...dictum, “In reality opposites are one. Art shows this.” Siegel has, incidentally, a considerable influence on my thinking about photography; but to hold him directly responsible for any of my statements would be to make him considerably less of a philosopher and critic than he actually is.

The Journal of Music and Meaning, Summer 2007, section 3

Edward Green: Aesthetic Realism & Mahler's Sixth
"All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves" (Siegel, 1997:13), Mahler's Sixth Symphony, as I intend to show, exemplifies this idea."

BroadwayWorld.Com

North/South Consonance, Inc. celebrates its 30th consecutive season of advocacy on behalf of music by living composers with a special chamber orchestra concert at New York City's Merkin Concert Hall (129 West 67th St) on Monday, March 8, 2010 at 8 PM. Edward Green...Fulbright Senior Specialist (CIES) in the field of American music…has been a professor...since the mid-1980's....In two contrasting movements, Green's Concerto for Clarinet (in A) and Strings is based on the philosophy of Eli Siegel's Aesthetic Realism: "the resolution of conflict in self is like the making one of opposites in art." While the first movement of the work explores emotions such as pain and yearning, the second movement is carefree and humorous. Clarinetist Arthur Campbell will perform the solo part in the premiere.
http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/NorthSouth_Consonances_30th_Anniversary_Gala_Held_38_20100212

New York Institute of Photography

from New York Institute of Photography's Associate Dean, Jerry Rice, writing on the Photo of the Month, "Hand in Hand, by David Chapman of Kanagawa, Japan.
Surely the opposites in the photograph have powerful meanings. Consider the Japanese girl vs the American one, the traditional kimono and the polka-dotted jumper, the pigtails and long hair of the one as compared to the more stylized Japanese style replete with decoration, the clog type of sandals and the canvas gym sneakers. Outwardly these items differ and help to make the girls different. But the philosopher-poet Eli Siegel, when writing about Aesthetic Realism, said: "The world, art, and self explain each other, each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites."...As different as traditional Japan and modern America may have once been (extreme opposites) the ethnic differences are not so evident today. The opposites are merging into one with all mankind perhaps reaping the benefits.
www.nyip.com/ezine/pictureofthemonth/handinhand.html

Artists Talk on Art (ATOA), May 12, 2006

Aesthetic Realism: The Opposites of Technique and Feeling in Film
The noted Emmy award-winning filmmaker Ken Kimmelman, President of Imagery Film, Ltd., will screen his latest film, Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana, based on the 1925 Nation prize-winning poem by Eli Siegel. Kimmelman will also show his short social and political issue films, some produced for the United Nations, and speak about what he's learned from Aesthetic Realism.
http://www.atoa.org/Spring2006/May.htm
===C.W.Post Orchestra: Orchestral Music (2003) Monday, April 7, 2003 Tilles Center for the Performing Arts 8 p.m. C.W. Post Campus/Long Island University ORCHESTRAL MUSIC INFLUENCED BY LITERATURE & POETRY Five Pieces from Music for Shakespeare Susan Deaver has selected five sections from it for tonight's concert. The music--an inventive mingling of Elizabethan and modern sounds, with an emphasis throughout on melody--was composed by Edward Green in 2000, and was premiered by the Minnesota Sinfonia. It has been performed often here and overseas, including--last summer--at St. Martin's in the Fields, London.... Mr. Green had the honor to study with the great American poet and educator, Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism. This important philosophy, which honestly relates art and life, is based on the principle: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." In recent months Edward Green...has been invited by several major educational institutions to speak to their students about the value of Aesthetic Realism for music education--including Dartmouth, the University of Montreal, Denver University, and the Tanglewood Institute. He is also well-known for his Smithsonian Institution-sponsored talks on the music of Duke Ellington.
http://www.liunet.edu/~svpa/music/ensembles/cwpo040703.pdf

Online sources: Aesthetic Realism Influence on Business

Neil Brady and David W. Hart, “An Aesthetic Theory of Conflict in Administrative Ethics”

[note: Eli Siegel’s Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism is cited as a reference in F. Neil Brady and David W. Hart’s article “An Aesthetic Theory of Conflict in Administrative Ethics” in the journal Administration & Society (2006; 38: 113-134).
Normally, one would think of conflict in administrative ethics as something to be avoided or resolved. This article, however, explores the possibility that conflict in ethics is essential and productive. Great art is beautiful precisely because of tension, not in spite of it, and the authors argue that administrative ethics is more like art than science. Therefore, the authors adopt an aesthetic point of view that examines tension and balance and reveals a wide range of types of conflict in ethics. In fact, the authors articulate 15 types of conflict and argue that the recognition of conflict is necessary for its proper management.

Key Words: administrative ethics • management • conflict • tension • dilemma • art • aesthetics

Mary Nishikawa, in "Organizing Information in a Corporate Intranet" (2001-2005)

In the following peer-reviewed publication, Mary Nishikawa provides a source for concepts of Aesthetic Realism used in the Wikipedia article: "Organizing Information in a Corporate Intranet" in Aggregated Proceedings for the Extreme Markup Languages® Conferences (2001-2005). The URL for the reference to Eli Siegel’s Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism in her article is: http://conferences.idealliance.org/extreme/html/2002/Nishikawa01/EML2002Nishikawa01.html#siegel-1981 This is Nishikawa:

The philosophy of Aesthetic Realism has been indispensable to me as I try to solve complex problems, or create or critique any kind of work. Eli Siegel poet, critic and founder of Aesthetic Realism states that "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites."

In Self and World, he writes:

When things are well or beautifully arranged, in every instance, the side of them which can be seen as separate goes along rightly with the side of them which can be seen as together.... No matter how many objects are concerned, two, and only two, opposite things are involved. When we talk of the composition of materials, say, the problem is how to place these materials so that their separateness does not conflict with their togetherness. For all objects can be seen as being away from other objects, discordant with them; or as close to them, mingling with them serenely.

Reviews in mainstream press

New York Times Book Review, Kenneth Rexroth (1979)

Hail, American Development review by Kenneth Rexroth, March 23, 1969
I think it's about time Eli Siegel was moved up into the ranks of our acknowledged Leading Poets.
http://www.aestheticrealism.net/reviews/Review-Rexroth-NYT.htm

Smithsonian (1982)

February, 1982, Review by Professor Linda Ann Kunz (Faculty, City University of New York, and student of Aesthetic Realism) of Eli Siegel's Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism
Self and World and the doctrine of Aesthetic Realism are saying that the only way to like yourself is to like what's not yourself, and the only way to like what's not yourself honestly is to do all you can to see it the way an artist sees his subject—that is, as a oneness of esthetic opposites. All the arts and all the sciences, says Siegel, are at once the evidence of man's hope to like the world and the basis on which he can like it through knowing it.
http://www.aestheticrealism.net/reviews/SAW-smithsonian-review.htm

Library Journal, January, 2008

Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana [film by Ken Kimmelman, Imagery Film Ltd.] Reviewed by Jeff Clark, James Madison Univ. Libs., Harrisonberg, VA
This award-winning 1925 poem--praised by William Carlos Williams and aptly called "magisterial" by historian Howard Zinn--was recorded in 1969 in the voice of its author, Eli Siegel, with whom the film-maker studied. Kimmelman's belief that the poem is "so visual, I felt it had to be made into a film" has resulted in a striking one...[T]he film helps make poetry more accessible to today's young viewer. As you "read" the film's images, the words of the poetry seem to become more palpable to the ear, beyond the distinction lent them by Siegel's voice. A lovely short film for audiences from young adult and up.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6516174.html http://www.imageryfilm.com/Library-JournalReprint.pdf

Parent Guide Magazine (2003)

VOl 21, Number 8, August 2003
Children’s Guide to Parents & Other Matters(Definition Press) is the ideal way to better understand your kids and prepare them for the world around them. This newly-released edition of “little essays for children & others” touches upon a wide variety of important topics such as getting along with parents, caring for others, dealing with money, expressing anger, and much more. Author Eli Siegel is an acclaimed American poet and philosopher, as well as the founder of the education known as Aesthetic Realism. Build a stronger bond between you and your child starting right now by picking up a Children’s Guide to Parents & Other Matters today.

Library Journal, September 1, 1969

Aesthetic Realism: We Have Been There; Six Artists on the Siegel Theory of Opposites Definition Pr. 1969. ISBN 910492-11-5. lc 69-17523.
Heraclitus, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and even Martin Buber have posited contraries and polarities in their philosophies. Eli Siegel, however, seems to be the first to demonstrate that "all beauty is the making one of the permanent opposites in reality." Since the 1940's, this poet-philosopher-aesthetician has been advocating Aesthetic Realism: "that the structure of reality is aesthetic." He has also been demonstrating the practicality of and the necessity for the aesthetic criticism of self. The Siegel Theory of Opposites relates life to art and is basically a criterion for all branches of aesthetics.

Popular Photography (1969)

Ralph Hattersley in Popular Photography, November, 1969
Aesthetic Realism: We Have Been There—Six Artists on the Siegel Theory of Opposites by David Bernstein, Lou Bernstein, Anne Fielding, Chaim Koppelman, Dorothy Koppelman, Ted van Griethuysen, Anne Fielding and others: with essay by Eli Siegel. Paperback, 119 pages, 22 illustrations. Definition Press, N.Y., 1969.
This is an attempt by six artists to explain the basic tenets of a philosophy called Aesthetic Realism...[and] to explain...how they've benefited, as artists and people, from studying under Siegel....Aesthetic Realism means what its name implies: that the structure of reality is aesthetic. This philosophy says that man sees both the world and himself as composed of opposites—conflicts, polarities. If one learns to see both self and world aesthetically, the opposites will merge, for "in reality opposites are one." Art is seen as a prime means for studying and achieving this oneness in self. The opposites in art are the same ones we find in ourselves. To learn about art is to learn about self...The book is well written and well conceived. I think it deals with fundamental truths concerning the nature of man, art and reality.

Art News (1959)

L.L. reviews "Odd an Even," at the Terrain Gallery (Dec. 1959)
"Odd and even” [Terrain; to Jan. 15], or the union of opposites as the life-giving property of a work of art and the essential quality of all life, is the basic tenet of a philosophy called “Esthetic Realism” and the criterion for selection of this show of sculpture, paintings and graphics. The term “odd” here is used as that which is different, separate, or detailed and “even” as the general, flowing and smooth. Rudolf Barank shows two paintings: a landscape that is reduced to slabs of color, and Spring, a view of a tabletop; in both there is subtlety and strength of vision. Raymond Andrew Parker shows a collage that is almost all pale color, almost completely empty except for a grouping of stones on a table that is defined by a quivering line.

Bennett Schiff in the New York Post (1959)

“In the Art Galleries” by Bennett Schiff, Sunday, December 13, 1959,
Speaking of opposites brings up the current exhibition—a large and comprehensive one employing examples of painting, sculpture and graphic arts—at the Terrain Gallery, 20 W. 16th St. The show, composed of the work of more than 20 artists, uses the elements of each thematically to express the philosophical and esthetic conviction of the gallery that life, thought and expressiveness are completely made up of opposites.
The show has been ingeniously installed to show the value of this concept, which is based on the principles incorporating a philosophy by the poet-philosopher Eli Siegel.
The exhibit can be enjoyed in its single parts, since a number of accomplished artists are represented. But it is an ex[traordinary] experience to consider it from the point of view of its organization: [a] way of looking at it that m[akes for] additional stimulation and material for reflection.

Fairfield Porter in ArtNews (Summer, 1958)

by Fairfield Porter
Terrain Gallery will have a changing exhibition dedicated to a metaphorical understanding of the nature of art: that the context, expressing either the artist's personality or his ideas can be illuminated by a comparison to a pair of visual or tactile opposites; and so Maier's drawing is shown beside sheet music, and Kennedy's paintings of women and children beside a piece of cotton and a piece of wire."

Arts (February, 1958)

"DESIGN INTO EMOTION: Chaim Koppelman, Gersom Leiber and Vincent Longo are three distinguished artists whose present showing, although marred by excursions into unfortunate and discomfiting manifestoes, is powerful, accomplished and enormously rewarding."

Vincent Starrett in the Chicago Sunday Tribune (1957)

Part 4, Page 4--July 28, 1957, by Vincent Starrett
Thirty odd years ago there was a stir of interest in Siegel when--in competition with all the big name poets of the day--he won the Nation's poetry prize for 1925 with a poem called [to the huge delight of columnists and critics] "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana." Dr. Williams, with extraordinary enthusiasm, now calls this one of the important poems of our cultural development and hails Siegel as an artist of the first rank....
Aesthetic Realism, he says, is "about [how] the having-to-do-withness or relation of people is they, is themselves." This could describe all his poems.

William Packard in the Village Voice (1958)

January 8, 1958, by William Packard
Aesthetic Realism...is an echo of "Monadology" by Leibnitz, in which each of the simple entities finds its identity by reflecting all other simple entities--we know a thing in so far as we know its relation to other things.

New York Post (1957)

Sunday, October 20, 1957 (no author)
A fine and rewarding group show presenting opposites in contemporary art in many styles and showing their essential unity at the Terrain Gallery, 20 W. 16th St.

New York Post (1957)

Sunday, June 16, 1957
“In the Art Galleries” by Bennett Schiff
An interesting aspect of the cultural life of this city within the past three years has been the development of the Terrain Gallery.[T]here probably hasn’t been a gallery before this like the Terrain, which devotes itself to the integration of art with all of living, according to an esthetic principle which is part of an entire, encompassing philosophic theory. The gallery was organized and launched about three years ago by a group of young, cultivated persons including writers, artists and teachers, all of whom held a fundamental believe in common. This was the validity of the theory of “Aesthetic Realism” as developed and taught by Eli Siegel, a poet and philosopher whose work has received growing recognition...“Aesthetic Realism,”... is: "The art of liking oneself through seeing the world, art, and oneself as the aesthetic oneness of opposites.”
Chaim Koppelman, a printmaker [said] “When a work of art unifies opposites, that art has value...If an aratist is sound, even if he accents motion, there will be rest in it,” he explained.
The gallery has therefore presented a number of shows based on specific themes illustrating its theory and viewpoint. The exhibitions have titles such as: Black and White, Logic and Emotion, Abstract and Concrete, Tension and Symmetry. The show on view currently is called Rest and Motion, and by the juxtaposition of paintings and sculpture in the spacious gallery, the theory is exemplified.
It is important to note that the gallery does not require the artists who show their work there to be exponents of the theory.
The most striking thing to a casual observer of the theory espoused by the gallery is its essentially affirmative quality. It is a building, positive vision.

New York Post (November 7, 1956)

(no author) Chaim Koppelman, a leading member of the Society for Aesthetic Realism, has just won a $1000 Louis Comfort Tiffany scholarship in graphic arts. One of the prints considered by the jury was Koppelman’s “There Is a Way,” recently acquired by the Library of Congress. Others of his works are now on view in the current exhibit – “Aesthetic Realists and Friends” – at the Terrain Galllery.

Peer-reviewed journals

Texas State University College Music Society Refereed Journal (Vol. 5, No.2, ISSN 1445-2271, 2007)

Kelley Thurmond, on Aesthetic Realism in relation to Mahler...

Music Educators Journal

Vol. 92, No. 3 (Jan. 2006)p.15
"Appreciating an Old Favorite: Sousa's All-Time Hit" by Karen Van Outryve
According to American poet and educator Eli Siegel (1902-1978), who first articulated the philosophy known as Aesthetic Realism, "the resolution of conflict in self is like the making one of opposites in art" (The Aesthetic Method in Self-Conflict, New York: Definition Press, 1946).
[JSTOR-Trusted Archives for Scholarship] http://www.jstor.org/pss/3401123

British Journal of Aesthetics

“A Note on Two Conceptions of Aesthetic Realism” by Edward Green Volume 45, Number 4, October 2005 , pp. 438-440(3).

“The American philosopher Eli Siegel called the philosophy he founded in the 1940s Aesthetic Realism. His philosophy has as its central principle: ‘The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.’"

http://bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/45/4/438

Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology

Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM04), edited by R. Parncutt, A. Kessler & F. Zimmer; Graz/Austria, 15-18 April, 2004.

”The fundamental texts of musicology from Grosseteste to the Prakempa to Schopenhauer to Zuckerkandl imply that there is a philosophic basis to music. It was Eli Siegel in the 20th century who explained what that basis is: "All beauty is a making one of opposites," he showed, "and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves" (1949). Opposites which are in every reality—a leaf, a person, physics itself—such as oneness and manyness, motion and rest are in the music of every region. The opposites make for beauty—for isn't every good song, for example a unity with rich diversity? Exciting and also composing?”

Local Newspapers, Trade Journals

William Packard in newsArt, The Smith

“How a Major Poet Is Ostracized by Lit Cliches: Eli Siegel in View”
by William Packard.
Published in newsArt The Smith (1978?).
The [Aesthetic Realism] method has two distinct advantages: first, if you can learn to criticize yourself accurately, chances are you will come to like yourself more honestly and openly. And second, the method fills a cultural void, it helps supplement a civilization which is conspicuously lacking in a balanced, objective approach to reality.
The opposites can be seen in action everywhere, and this explains Siegel's multifariousness. Opposites are in art, in love, in politics, in religion. They are in economics.
For fifty years, Eli Siegel has been persisting, and his critics have not been able to get him away from his central thesis of Aesthetic Realism. And so far not very many people have been up to making an assessment of the whole approach, fairly and objectively.

Soap Opera Digest

All My Children: Melanie, by Suzanne Weyn (c.1984)
She began studying the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism...It's a philosophy and an education. It was founded by Eli Siegel in 1940..."It's a philosophy of how to see the whole world. It's the study of how to like the world on an honest basis, through seeing it as a oneness of opposites. It's the world, art and self. You study all three things as having the same structure of opposites."
Carol finds her study of Aesthetic Realism particularly helpful in fleshing out the character of Melanie Sawyer....[H]er studies have helped her understand herself better, and she is frank in talking about how that self-knowledge has helped her portray Melanie.

Oswego Palladium-Times (1982)

Local Actress Finds Peace, by Mary Beth Roach, Staff Writer
Sat., March 27, 1982, p. 5
After several years...she was able to find both happiness and true success in Aesthetic Realism, a philosophy which was founded by poet and critic, Eli Siegel, in 1941...[A]ccording to Siegel's teaching, success is the power of every person to like himself through how he sees the world.
The way in which one views the outside world is the focus of Aesthetic Realism and the point which sets it apart from other philosophies. While many of the other philosophies centralize on one's selfl, Aesthetic Realism deals with one's attitude about the outside world. How one views the world determines how one feels about himself, according to Aesthetic Realism. In other theories, it is how one views himself that determines how he views the world.
The "Four Statement of Aesthetic Realism" are: (1) every person is always trying to put together opposites in himself; (2) every person in order to respect himself has to see the world as beautiful or good or acceptable; (3) there is a disposition in every person to think he will be for himself by making less of the outside world; (4) all beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves....The structure of the world is explained by opposites according to Aesthetic Realism....[T]he philosophy is not a religion, Ann stressed.

The Villager, NYC, September 20, 1956

Eli Siegel, poet and philosopher, founder of Aesthetic Realism, has been teaching and lecturing on his philosophy for sixteen years. He has defined Aesthetic Realism briefly as “the art of liking oneself through seeing the world, art, and oneself as an aesthetic oneness of opposites.”

The Villager, NYC, July 26, 1956

“Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana”…won the Nation Poetry Prize in 1925. There is, Mr. Siegel has said, a deep relation between what is in that poem, what poetry is just so, and the principles of the Aesthetic Method as he has written of them. This relation of poetry and aesthetics to what a person feels and thinks, goes through in any day of his life, is the unique contribution of Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy taught by Mr. Siegel.
B.K.S.J. (talk) 19:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC) Updated.Trouver