Word: exhibition
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...maybe we have forgotten. Grasping the essential character of the beautiful has long been the object of philosophical and theoretic interest and finds expression through this exhibit's formalist regard. In recent years, there has been a revival of aestheticism; witness the Regarding Beauty exhibition last year at the Hirshhorn. Recent literary investigations also suggest an atmosphere of palpable eagerness to explore beauty topically. The revival is a kind of return to beauty for art's sake, liberated from any service or subordination to a social or political climate of interpretation...
This critical connection between the "Idea" or artistic visualization and its materialization in "form" is important for the analytic sensibility of the exhibition. Enlisting a work of art for a cause, arguably outside the field of the discrete work, seems to make it easier to cut out the artist, to make the art stand for something else. Directly opposing that kind of conception, the emphasis on the creative act recalls the artist. The exhibit emphasizes that art is crafted. As for the analytic sensibility, coupling the artist with the art serves to isolate the identity of the work...
...what happens when the proverbial beholder turns his eye on the artist's intention? The emphasis seems altogether independent from distinguishing "beauty" in its transcendent character. This antinomy, premised on beauty's universality, with its divergent conclusions about art, comes across in the exhibit's presentation as the tension between objectivity and subjectivity...
Most conspicuously located in the exhibit is Claire McConaughy's series of paintings, "Memory Flood." Reminiscent of massive footprints or glimpsed clouds, the deep indigo ink imprinted on stretched paper covers its own wall. It is held together by its own repeating patterns, its kaleidoscopic structure, yet is full of a necessary and freeing space. Across the room, Emily Cheng's oil-on-canvas "Silent Elaborations" overtly draws the eye to its center. It's a two-dimensional theater, drapery framing the precious vision of a highly ornate object, the jeweled product of careful work...
...glass flowers exhibit--formally called the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants--is one of the University's most popular art collections and has been on continuous display in its entirety since...