Beauty
Painting With Pills
For some art critics, calling a painter’s work “beautiful” is a subtle dis — a code for pleasing but shallow. Calling a work “decorative” is a total slap in the face. Fred Tomaselli’s work is decorative. It is also smart and provocative. Tomaselli’s canvases are full of beautiful arcs, ovals and swirls. And he creates […]
Special Guest: Elaine Scarry
Kurt Andersen and his guest, Harvard philosophy professor Elaine Scarry, look at different kinds of beauty. Elaine Scarry is the author of On Beauty and Being Just. A professor of aesthetics at Harvard University, her interests are wide-ranging; she is also the author of The Body in Pain, Dreaming By the Book, and a forthcoming […]
Special Guest: Elaine Scarry
Kurt Andersen and philosophy professor Elaine Scarry, examine at how contemporary artists embrace and reject notions of beauty. We’ll look at artists who not only see beauty in unusual subjects — but in the unorthodox tools they use to create. A professor of aesthetics at Harvard University, Elaine Scarry is the author of On Beauty […]
Painting with Pills
For some art critics, calling a painter’s work “beautiful” is a subtle dis while calling a work “decorative” is a total slap in the face. But Fred Tomaselli’s work is decorative. It is also beautiful, smart and provocative. Tomaselli covers his canvases with beautiful arcs, ovals and swirls that he creates with medicine — actual, […]