I'll Know When I See

I'll Know When I See It - My mom's an artist. She used to run a little city art gallery in the middle of North Dakota. Every now and then, in between displays of art from the town's elementary school kids, she's bring in an installation by some regional artist or another. Now, I'm pretty literate about some art - music and literature, certainly - but visual art has never been a forte of mine.

Still, in looking at the art of people like Eric Budd, I did develop a bit of revulsion for the subgenre of art that grew up around the notion of aestheticizing the reprehensible.

Charles Freund, on the aestheticization of 9/11 by artists who are blessed with greater senses of aesthetics than empathy.

One conclusion is that these artists represent an aesthetic barbarity not evident since the painters and writers of prewar Italy and France celebrated violence, destruction and martial strength as necessary to create a fascist order. These, too, saw something positive -- something wonderfully aesthetic -- in force, blood and mayhem, which is why the German critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin charged fascism with "aestheticizing" its repellent politics.

In that sense, these artists and those for whom they speak may be "aestheticizing" their own politics as well. Until such time as these artists applaud the obliteration of Hiroshima in a wonderfully novel burst of light, or celebrate Hollywood for its beautifully choreographed violence, or embrace the American right to bear arms for its aesthetic potential -- until then, we can justly speculate that it is only when Americans are murdered that the act is revealed as grand art.

The Vanishing Feminist - Catherine Seipp on organized feminism's relevancy gap.