The Condition of Beauty

The condition of beauty and whether or not it should defined as art, is extremely controversial.  A great deal of art has depicted real life horror, violence and unhappiness throughout history.  We viewed many pieces of work from various artists which showed cultural horror, personal struggle and the imperfections of humanity.  Artists such as Frida, Otto, Goya, Lucian Freud and Dega, set out to create real life scenarios and depictions, trying to capture the world and humanity at a specific time in history.  The paintings we looked at although they were not easy to because they were so grusome, were in their own way beautiful.  The colors, detail and the quality of the work is what makes it beautiful in may ways.  These artists created objective art, showing the impurities of humanity through their artwork.
The question: is beauty dead, in art today?, is an important one.  This question can be debated.  We heard one oppinion that suggested contemporary art is the beauty of ugliness.  Art makes people wake up, pay attention and then continue to think about a certain piece after seeing it.  Even disturbing or horrific pieces of art grabs views attention and in many ways can be seen as being beautiful.  Examples and controversies regarding this topic, are pieces of artwork such as La Pieta and Piss Christ.  
John Baldessari is a conceptual artist and has his own take on what pure beauty is.  He believes that art is a way of doing something that shows your understanding of the world, where things are continually changing.  His technique and the way he creates conceptual art is through collage, and putting words and images together.  His wok is relatable and beautiful.  It shows culture and in many instances, his views and opinions of issues occuring in the world at that time.  His collages are made up off things that come out of our everyday culture (magazines, photos), and are alliterated so that the images have meaning.  He shows that art can be words on a colored background.  His work is beautiful and brings you to attentiveness.  

Mia Powers