If you must indulge in conclusions, let them have the taste of a wide knowledge. Remember that your first duty is to be as complete as possible—to make as perfect a work. Be generous and delicate and pursue the prize. - Henry James
The Aesthetikon
Imagine, if you will, a pilgrimage deep within the engine of art. Around us churn the gears of invention in multiple harness, their interplay transforming the power of creative individuals into aesthetic life. To paint a portrait of the clank and whirr of this generative mechanism—to draw nothing less than a blueprint of the engine of creation—is the ambition to which we aspire.
History has seen many attempts to define the nature of art. The Aesthetikon is the first to build a house of knowledge upon a foundation of special firmness: the words of artists themselves. The evidence to which the book awards the highest rank is the commentary of that person engaged with oil on palette and willing, even compelled by love of labor at hand, to provide for our understanding a report of the spark cast by the formative fire.
Nearly two dozen contemporary artists and half again as many creative individuals of earlier times, then, lend their comments to the support of our work's critical postulates. These artists are engaged with a variety of media including the photograph, oil painting, acting, dance, theater, motion picture, novel and music. [ You are invited to click here to see the artists. ] Despite our appeal to the report of the individual of origination, our goal will be less the documentation of the thought of the artist and more the creation of a new organism, its body invigorated by the testimony of those engaged with the levers of life.
A portrait of the creative process
The philosopheme that throughout our work these artists refine is this: Restriction is the driving gear of the aesthetic mechanism. To state the matter another way, artists create powerful works through the exploitation of their media's formal limitations. Enmeshed with the teeth of this first dynamic are the multitudinous gears of the machinery of art, the dynamics of which it is the will of The Aesthetikon to command the portrait. It is in recognition of the necessities requisite to this ambition that our title imports a Greek amalgamation of art and machine.
You are invited to participate as reader and inspirator in the creation of The Aesthetikon. Let us prepare ourselves for a stimulating intellectual journey.
- Walter Idlewild