#aesthetic

The asymmetry of power that cuteness revolves around is another compelling reminder of how aesthetic categories register social conflict. There can be no experience of any person or object as cute that does not somehow call up the subject’s sense of power over those who are less powerful. But, as Lori Merish underscores, the fact that the cute object seems capable of making an affective demand on the subject—a demand for care that the subject is culturally as well as biologically compelled to fulfill—is already a sign that “cute” does not just denote a static power differential, but rather a dynamic and complex power struggle. ↗

— Sianne Ngai

#cute #experience

I want to say something about bad writing. I'm proud of my bad writing. Everyone is so intelligent lately, and stylish. Fucking great. I am proud of Philip Guston's bad painting, I am proud of Baudelaire's mamma's boy goo goo misery. Sometimes the lurid or shitty means having a heart, which's something you have to try to have. Excellence nowadays is too general and available to be worth prizing: I am interested in people who have to find strange and horrible ways to just get from point a to point b. ↗

— Ariana Reines

#baudelaire #philip-guston #sentimentality #intelligence

The danger of that - and there's a grave danger that I, myself, have to be very aware of - is that you become so involved and intrigued in the language that sometimes you lose track that that is only a means to an aesthetic experience that the listener has to get. ↗

— Leo Ornstein

#aware #become #danger #experience #get

Today, with a recording, he can hear the thing enough times until he really gets acquainted with the language, and then he can begin to make an estimate of the intrinsic, aesthetic value of that piece of music. ↗

— Leo Ornstein

#aesthetic #begin #enough #estimate #gets

It's my own personal unconscious that ultimately creates the novel's aesthetic facade. ↗

— Manuel Puig

#creates #facade #my own #novel #own

Aesthetic matters are fundamental for the harmonious development of both society and the individual. ↗

— Friedrich Schiller

#both #development #fundamental #harmonious #individual

If you get it out into the urban field it's going to be used or misused but it'll also probably provide a way of people acknowledging what the aesthetic is about because people have to confront it every day. ↗

— Richard Serra

#acknowledging #aesthetic #also #because #confront

I like going to Church for aesthetic reasons, rather than spiritual ones. ↗

— Andres Serrano

#church #going #i #like #ones

No student of history can fail to see the moral interest of the Middle Ages, any more than an artist can fail to see their aesthetic interest. ↗

— Goldwin Smith

#ages #any #artist #fail #history

In the life of the individual, an aesthetic sensibility is both more authentic and more commendable than a political or religious one. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#life