APAIMONYSUS

1. APAIMONYSUS Transcending Polarized Dialectics in Visual Art

2. PERSONIFICATION OF THE POLARITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN ANCIENT GREEK MYTHOLOGY Apollo (Sun God) Dionysus (God of Wine) Governs: -Reason -Intellect -Order Governs: -Intuition -Emotive/ Erotic Impulses -The Irrational Mind

3. Joseph Kosuth conceptual artist “Art After Philosophy” (1969)

4. In “Art After Philosophy,” Joseph Kosuth outright rejects formalist art and criticism which in his words “accepts as a definition of art one which exists solely on morphological grounds.” Why? -Because it doesn’t question the nature of art. In other words, it is not an “analytical proposition.” Formal art is “minimally creative” and is only art by virtue of its resemblance to previous art. -Because it relies on a model of traditional morphology, “accepting the nature of art to be the European tradition of a painting-sculpture dichotomy.” -Because formalist criticism bypasses the conceptual element in works of art and concentrates solely on morphological qualities. This leads to a) a heavy bias in favor of traditional formats and b) a critical discourse dependent on taste, subjective rather than analytical.

5. Why reject aesthetics? I argue that it is still possible to frame a work as “conceptual” while retaining signifiers of beauty. The gratification of the senses is not a terrible thing; in fact it enhances our ability to perceive an analytical proposition. The Inevitability of Subjective Evaluations of Art The same way a formalist critic sides with formalist art, a critic with a conceptual bias will write about and praise conceptual art. ANY evaluation of art is going to have some kind of subjective bias regardless of a claim to objectivity.

7. Hans Hoffman Wassily Kandinsky “push/pull” painter “On the Aims of Art” (19something) coined “abstract” as a term to describe his work “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” (1914?)