1. The deepest desire of every person is to like the world on an honest or accurate basis.
2. The greatest danger for a person is to have contempt for the world and what is in it. Contempt can be defined as the lessening of what is different from oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it.
3. All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.
The Foundation is dedicated to the understanding of, and greater respect for, people, art, and reality.
Aesthetic Realism explains that the largest fight in every person is between liking the world on an honest basis and having contempt for the world. There is no more important contribution to human thought than Eli Siegel's identification of contempt as the big weakener of mind and source of all unkindness, including economic injustice, racism, war. And the way to defeat contempt is through the aesthetic criticism of self: Aesthetic Realism is the study of how we want to put together the opposites that are one in art—including care for ourselves and justice to the world.
AT THE FOUNDATION
At once widely cultural and of the most practical personal value, Aesthetic Realism is education of a new kind, taught by a distinguished faculty of Consultants and Associates. Classes offered on a semester basis include: The Aesthetic Realism Explanation of Poetry; Anthropology Is about You and Everyone; The Opposites in Music; The Art of Drawing: Surface and Depth; Acting, Life, and the Opposites. There are monthly workshops: Understanding Marriage; Learning to Like the World, a class for young people between the ages of 5 and 12; and Critical Inquiry: A Workshop in the Visual Arts.
The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method Workshop is a class for educators, and for over 30 years this method, used by public school teachers, has enabled students at every level to learn with new enthusiasm and ease.
| The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method Workshop is taught by Consultants Barbara Allen, Patricia Martone, Arnold Perey, and Rosemary Plumstead. |
PUBLIC SEMINARS
On the first Thursday of every month the Aesthetic Realism Consultants and Associates present public seminars. Representative subjects include: “Real Communication in Marriage—How Can We Have It?”; “What's the Difference between Wowing People & Liking Yourself?”; “Kindness: Is It Strong ?”; “The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method Succeeds: Knowledge Wins, Prejudice Loses!”
SATURDAY EVENING PRESENTATIONS
These feature dramatic readings of some of the great lectures on literature, ethics, history, everyday life, and art given by Eli Siegel. There are reenactments of Aesthetic Relaism lessons he taught, upon which Aesthetic Realism consultations today are based. And there are groundbreaking talks by artists and scholars in many fields—including jazz, architecture, photography, film—on this new way of seeing the arts, sciences, and reality itself.
AESTHETIC REALISM CONSULTATIONS
In consultations, a person's individual life questions are understood and explained, through the principles of Aesthetic Realism. People find that the matters which confuse them most are made sense of at last, with cultural width, immediacy, and satisfying logic. Consultations may be had in person at the Foundation or via telephone throughout America and abroad.
THE AESTHETIC REALISM THEATRE COMPANY
Pioneering dramatic and musical presentations take place at the Foundation, and elsewhere as part of the Foundation's Outreach Program. These productions—a new dramatic form with performance and comment—include “Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream; or, Earthy Whirl,” by Eli Siegel; “Rock 'n' Roll, the Opposites, & Our Greatest Hopes!”; “Ibsen, Bach, & What Interferes with Love”; and more.
THE TERRAIN GALLERY
The Terrain Gallery opening of “The Drama in Things: Three Photographers— |
Amy Dienes, Steve Poleskie, Perry Hall” |
The Terrain is the first gallery to show the inextricable relation between the technique of art and people's lives. Since its opening in 1955 in New York City, the Terrain has presented exhibitions of contemporary paintings, prints, drawings, and photographs, with comment based on Eli Siegel's historic Fifteen Questions, “Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?” Among the artists exhibiting have been Will Barnet, Chaim Koppelman, Robert Blackburn, Ad Reinhardt, Clare Romano, Andre Kertesz, Elfi Schuselka, William King, Richard Sloat. [TerrainGallery.org]
OUTREACH PROGRAMS
The Foundation provides speakers on a wide range of subjects, from education to love; jazz to parenting; architecture and film to the combating of prejudice.
Barbara Allen & Robert Murphy, Consultants, teach the workshop |
“Do You Want to Be Like Music?” at an after-school center. |
The Foundation' provides speakers on a wide range of subjects, from education to love; jazz to parenting; architecture and film to the combating of prejudice. The Foundation's very successful Outreach Program—loved throughout the New York metropolitan area—includes presentations and workshops for senior citizens in both English and Spanish, such as "Using Love, the Family, & Age to Like the World," and "Memory Shows We're Connected to the Whole World!"
Consultants Anne Fielding and Jeffrey Carduner conduct the workshop "Using Love, the Family, and Age to Like the World" at a senior center, with Dr. Jaime Torres translating into Spanish. |
For young people, at community centers, schools, and libraries, there are classes such as “Books Tell You: the World & You Are a Deep & Surprising Team," and the series "Learning to Like the World," as well as workshops against bullying. And there are anti-prejudice workshops in many venues for people of all ages, for instance, “The Heart Knows Better —Changing Prejudice to Kindness!”
Filmmaker & Consultant Ken Kimmelman speaks to university film students about his film, "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana," based on Eli Siegel's Nation prize-winning poem. |
It is possible to study Aesthetic Realism anywhere in the world through the Foundation's Website and Online Library. These are rich with articles; poetry; works on literature, philosophy, the social sciences, the arts—all in relation to life as people live it. The biweekly international periodical The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known [TRO] features groundbreaking commentaries by Ellen Reiss on immediate life, world happenings, economics, the arts. In TRO, people can study landmark works by Eli Siegel, and writings by Consultants and Associates.
Professional classes for Aesthetic Realism Consultants and for Associates studying to teach Aesthetic Realism are conducted by Ms. Reiss, whom Eli Siegel appointed Chairman for education.
The effect of the Aesthetic Realism education on people's lives is tremendously beneficial, and thrilling. Men, women, and young persons learn to see other people, the world, and themselves more exactly—with honest respect and therefore much more pleasure. They like the world and themselves more, feel freer, are more expressed, kinder, deeper, keener, and happier. Aesthetic Realism is education urgently needed by America and the world.
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