#esthetic

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern. ↗

— Alfred North Whitehead

#art #enjoyment #experience #imposing #our

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

I endeavored to renounce society, that I might avoid temptation. But it was a poor religion; so far as it prevailed, only tended to make me gloomy, stupid, unsociable, and useless. ↗

— John Newton

#legalism #temptation #religion

Consider your house from an aesthetic point of view. ↗

— Anthea Turner

#consider #house #point #point of view #view

An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it. ↗

— Kazuo Ishiguro

#art #artist #beauty #art

The more people explore the world, the more they realize in every country there's a different aesthetic. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. ↗

— Helena Christensen

#beauty #beholder #country #different #every

Actors aren't stupid, mostly, and if there's a sensibility and an aesthetic that a director's going for, if you're aware of that too, you can do things to help that. ↗

— Alan Cumming

#aware #director #going #help #mostly

Your ethnic or sexual identity, what region of the country you're from, what your class is - those aspects of your identity are not the same as your aesthetic identity. ↗

— Stanley Crouch

#aspects #class #country #ethnic #identity

One does afford oneself the luxury to come into the studio and all day, every day, spend one's life making aesthetic propositions. What an immense luxury. ↗

— Anish Kapoor

#afford #all day #come #day #does