Fwd: Bureau for Open Culture presents Calling Beauty

February 17, 2010

Ryan McGinley Fireworks Hysteric, 2007-2008 C-print, 40 x 30 inches Courtesy Mark Fletcher and Tobias Meyer	Columbus College of Art & Design Bureau for Open Culture presents Calling Beauty February 17 - April 10, 2010 Opening reception: February 17, 5-7p.m. Thorsten Brinkmann, Moyra Davey, Elizabeth Gerdeman, Ellen Harvey, Matts Leiderstam, Ryan McGinley, Anna Molska, Susan Sontag, Eve Sussman/The Rufus Corporation, Darren Waterston Curated by James Voorhies Bureau for Open Culture Columbus College of Art & Design 60 Cleveland Avenue Columbus, Ohio http://www.bureauforopenculture.org
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In her essay "An Argument About Beauty," American author and literary theorist Susan Sontag examines what we call beautiful. She traces beauty from the rare and exclusive to the less discriminatory criteria of minimal standards. Whereas beauty has been inextricably linked to high culture, class and refinement and connected to works of art by old master and modern artists, Sontag delves into alternative considerations of what is beautiful in art. The exhibition Calling Beauty does not serve to illustrate Sontag's essay. But amidst the numerous theories, ideas and texts regarding beauty, from Plato and Kant to Wilde and Warhol, Sontag's words serve as remarkably salient points of entry and focus for thinking about what has been viewed as beautiful, how that view has influenced contemporary art and whether or not it has shaped, paradoxically, an aesthetics of the everyday. Has the virtue of beauty become its liability? Has beauty turned on itself? And, if so, is that a good thing? With a consideration of these questions, Calling Beauty is organized around four long-established genres of representational art: still life, landscape, nude and portraiture. Works by participants in this exhibition draw peripherally and specifically on traditional subjects and iconic images in the history of art. Their practices bring to the surface a retreat from that tradition to a reconsideration of it, thus a renewed and contemporary engagement with historic artistic conventions. Available March 15, the accompanying publication will feature the essay "An Argument About Beauty" by Susan Sontag with generous permission to reprint by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. The exhibition is supported by Greater Columbus Arts Council and Ohio Arts Council. Media support provided by CD101. Become of a Fan of Bureau for Open Culture on Facebook.

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