Our
Selves Are Aesthetic!
By Ruth
Oron
Important news for every person is in what I learned from Aesthetic Realism, the education founded by Eli Siegel. It
is described by the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism, Ellen Reiss:
The consciousness
Aesthetic Realism brings to humanity is in this principle stated
by Eli Siegel: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making
one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." We can know
at last that our selves are aesthetic: we are, every moment — in our domestic
life, our work, our thoughts to ourselves, our bewilderment — trying to
put reality’s opposites together, trying to be like art.
I tell here what I am learning about my own life from a painting by Monet
in relation to questions I was asked in Aesthetic Realism
consultations.
In consultations a person comes to see their life thrillingly as a work
of art in process and learns that the one way to be just to people, things,
ourselves, is to have the respect an artist does as he looks at an object.
The art purpose, I have learned, is completely against the greatest cause
of pain in people’s lives, which Aesthetic Realism explains is contempt,
"the addition to self through the lessening of something else."
When I first saw Claude Monet’s "Autumn Effect at Argenteuil," I was swept
by its shimmering delicacy and power.
Claude
Monet: Autumn Effect at Argenteuil
As I studied it, and read
what Eli Siegel has said about Monet, I learned how deeply he makes a one
of opposites people, including myself, have been troubled by — sureness
and unsureness, the vague and the definite. In a radio interview of 1963 Eli Siegel said:
Monet made the vague, the
uncertain, the trembling triumphant. We have a tendency to give edges and
tidiness to reality when, it could be felt, reality says: "I am not
that tidy, and I don’t have those glaring edges." So, Monet wanted
to see what happened at noon, and what happened at twilight....
Before I met Aesthetic Realism, I did not give the attention to things
they deserved — I made them hazy, distant. Yet, I also asserted my opinions,
fought with people over them, while the subject got lost in heated arguments
and I felt tremendously unsure of myself. I gave things "glaring edges,"
as Mr. Siegel put it, and also obliterated them in a haze.
My life began anew when I began having Aesthetic Realism consultations.
In one consultation I was asked: "Miss Oron, what do you think is your
worst character trait?" "Vagueness," I said. And they said: "Yes, you have
vagueness, but what is the opposite of vagueness? Do you think you’re also
a manager?" I answered, "Yes, very much." My consultants explained:
Eli Siegel showed
in lessons as he spoke to people, the relationship between managing, manipulating
and confusion. Do you think that one, because you’re confused you can manage,
and two, your managing can make you confused?
I saw I wanted
to manage without being affected by what things are, which is contempt.
And this was the very thing that made me painfully unsure of myself
and lonely.
In "Autumn Effect at Argenteuil" of 1873, Monet shows reality as a beautiful
oneness of the vague and the definite. The whole painting seems to be in
a state of lovely tremulous motion as the daubs of paint — the dazzling
bright golds and greens of the trees, the pinks and blues of the sky, the
white clouds, and the buildings — blend and mingle with each other and
you can hardly see where the trees end and their reflections begin. Yet
in all this vagueness there is a definite structure.
Look at the buildings and their reflection in the water. The reflection
of the white of the buildings becomes vague, more uncertain, in the rippling
water, yet these reflections extend the buildings into four vertical lines
which help to anchor this wide horizontal composition. The clouds above,
so freely painted, have the same colors as the buildings. The spire of
the church is definite, yet its point seems to melt into the sky. Monet,
Mr. Siegel explained "was looking to have gravity shimmer...."
Detail
As a person who liked to "keep my edges tidy," I was surprised by these
questions which I heard in a consultation:
Do you think that
there is a constant fear in people that if they let the world affect them
too much their selves would vanish? Do you think you could feel surer of
yourself if you really feel there is no limit to how much you want to think
about the depths of other things?
How much Monet wanted to think about "the depths of other things" can be
seen in this quote from the book, Monet, A Retrospective, edited
by Charles F. Stuckey:
A leaf, a small
pebble, a ray of light, a clump of grass stop me for an infinite length
of time; and I study them eagerly....I savor a mysterious, delightful joy
as I separate their imperceptible tones and their elusive reflections.
And I realize that I had never really looked at anything. Ever. That’s
all to the good.....Sometimes I stop, stunned suddenly to discover dazzling
things the existence of which I never suspected.
Because Monet wanted to think about "the depths of other things," to see
their meaning, see how light affected and changed things, he was able to
see the essence of a tree, a river, a cloud; to see that each is the oneness
of reality’s opposites, of the vague and the clear, the certain and uncertain.
Aesthetic Realism in teaching that art answers the questions of our lives,
gives every person a new dignity — a true beauty. It has made possible, in my life, feeling I never thought
I’d be able to have — a pride and happiness that I treasure.
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