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.
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 source of all unkindness between people, including economic injustice, racism, war. And the means to change contempt is 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.
THE FACULTY
Consultants and Associates provide public seminars, individual consultations, workshops for teachers, theatrical and musical special events, classes; and there is a speakers' bureau. The Foundation's very successful Outreach Program includes presentations and workshops for senior citizens in both English and Spanish, and for young people at community centers, schools, and libraries throughout the New York metropolitan area, as well as anti-prejudice workshops for people of all ages.
AT THE FOUNDATION
There are courses in poetry, anthropology, the visual arts, music, marriage, and more. 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.
PUBLIC SEMINARS
Seminars take place each month, on subjects such as: “The Debate in Every Person: To Have More Feeling or Less?”; “Real Communication in Marriage—How Can We Have It?”; “The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method Succeeds: Knowledge Wins, Prejudice Loses!” Individual consultations may be had in person at the Foundation or via telephone throughout America and abroad.
SATURDAY EVENING PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS
These feature dramatic readings of some of the great lectures on literature, ethics, history, and art given by Eli Siegel, as well as reenactments of Aesthetic Realism lessons he taught, and talks by artists and scholars on this new way of seeing all the arts and sciences.
Carol McCluer, Bennett Cooperman, Anne Fielding, Timothy Lynch, Carrie Wilson, Derek Mali, of the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company
THE AESTHETIC REALISM THEATRE COMPANY
[www.AestheticRealismTheatreCo.org] The company presents dramatic and musical matinees, such as “Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream; or, Earthy Whirl,” by Eli Siegel; “American Ethics, American Song”; and “Symmetry & Fury—in Sheridan, Handel, and Our Lives!”
THE TERRAIN GALLERY
The gallery first opened in 1955, and presents exhibitions of contemporary paintings, prints, drawings, and photographs, with comment based on Eli Siegel's now historic Fifteen Questions, “Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?”
Terrain Gallery exhibition
IT IS ALSO POSSIBLE to study Aesthetic Realism anywhere in the world, through the Foundation's website and biweekly periodical, The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, and via telephone consultations.
PROFESSIONAL CLASSES for Aesthetic Realism Consultants and for Associates studying to teach Aesthetic Realism, are conducted by Class Chairman Ellen Reiss.
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, keener, deeper, and happier. Aesthetic Realism is education urgently needed by America and the world.
Filmmaker & Consultant Ken Kimmelman speaks to elementary school students about how prejudice can end.
