Aesthetic Realism


 * This article refers to the philosophy founded by Eli Siegel in 1941 called "Aesthetic Realism". See aesthetics for the general subject; realism in the arts for applications by artistic genre; and the realism disambiguation page for other uses of the term.

Aesthetic Realism is the philosophy founded by Eli Siegel (1902–1978) in 1941. It is based on three core principles. First, according to Siegel, the deepest desire of every person is to like the world on an honest or accurate basis. Second, the greatest danger for a person is to have contempt for the world and what is in it—contempt defined as the false importance or glory from the lessening of things not oneself. And third, it is the study of how what makes for beauty in art is a guide for a good life: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."

The philosophy is principally taught at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation based in SoHo, New York City, through a variety of lectures, classes in poetry, anthropology, art, music, and individual consultations.

The Foundation faced controversy for its assertion that men changed from homosexuality through study of this philosophy, and in 1990 it stopped presenting this change. Some former students have said that Aesthetic Realism is a cult, but other former students say it is nothing of the kind.

Philosophy
Aesthetic Realism is based on the idea that reality, or the world, has a structure that is beautiful. Eli Siegel identified beauty as the making one, or unity, of opposites.

In Siegel’s critical theory, “the resolution of conflict in self is like the making one of opposites in art.” A successful novel, for example, composes opposites that people are trying to put together: oneness and manyness, intensity and calm, sameness and change. His studies led him to conclude that any successful work of art or music combines essential dualities. In the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism, Siegel developed this concept, writing that the arts and sciences all give evidence that reality has an aesthetic nature. He described the world as having a construction like art: it, too, is composed of opposites. In Siegel's eyes, freedom at one with order could be seen in an electron, a tree, or the solar system. Siegel reasoned, "If...the structure of the world corresponds to the structure [of art], that much the world may be beautiful in the deepest sense of the word; and therefore can be liked."

A primary concept of Aesthetic Realism is that the world can be liked honestly by seeing it as an aesthetic oneness of opposites. Further, a core teaching of Aesthetic Realism is that it is “every person's deepest desire to like the world on an honest or accurate basis.”

But Siegel recognized another competing desire which drives humans away from such an appreciation—the desire to have contempt for the world and what is in it, in order to make oneself feel more important. Siegel argued that when a person seeks self-esteem through contempt—"the addition to self through the lessening of something else"—he or she is unjust to people and things. Contempt, the philosophy maintains, may seem like a triumph, but ultimately results in self-dislike and mental distress, and lessens the capacity of one's mind to perceive and feel in the fullest manner. Siegel held that, in the extreme, contempt causes insanity.

Aesthetic Realism attests that one’s attitude to the world governs how all of life's components are seen: a friend, a spouse, a lover, a book, food, people of another skin tone. Accordingly, Aesthetic Realism argues, individuals have an ethical obligation to give full value to things and people, not devalue them in order to make oneself seem more important. Aesthetic Realism states that the conscious intention to be fair to the world and people is not only an ethical obligation, but the means of liking oneself.

The philosophy identifies contempt as the underlying cause of broader social problems as well: societal evils like racism and war arise from contempt for “human beings placed differently from ourselves” in terms of race, economic status, or nationality. Siegel stated that for centuries ill will has been the predominant purpose in humanity’s economic activities. The philosophy asserts that humanity cannot overcome its biggest problems until people cease to feel that “the world’s failure or the failure of a[nother] person enhances one’s own life.” Siegel stated that until good will rather than contempt is at the center of economics and in the thoughts of people, “civilization has yet to begin.”

Major texts
The philosophic basis of Aesthetic Realism was set forth systematically by Siegel in two major texts. The first, Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism,  was written from 1941-3. Individual chapters, including “Psychiatry, Economics, Aesthetics” and “The Aesthetic Method in Self-Conflict,” were printed in 1946. The full text was published in 1981 (NY: Definition Press). His second text, Definitions, and Comment: Being a Description of the World, completed in 1945, defines 134 terms used in the philosophic thought of Aesthetic Realism, including Existence, Change, Fixity, Freedom, Thought, Will, Wonder, Fear, Hope, Negation, Reality, and Relation. The work was published in 1978-9 as a series in the journal The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.

Poetry
Eli Siegel stated that ideas central to the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism were implicitly present in “Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana,” the poem that brought him widespread fame when it was awarded The Nation's esteemed poetry prize in 1925. The philosophic principle that individuality is relation, “that the very self of a thing is its relations, its having-to-do-with other things,” is in this poem. It begins with a hot, quiet afternoon in Montana and travels through time and space, showing that things usually thought of as separate and unrelated “have a great deal to do with each other.” These are lines near the end of the poem:


 * Hot afternoons are real; afternoons are; places, things, thoughts, feelings are; poetry is;
 * The world is waiting to be known; Earth, what it has in it! The past is in it;
 * All words, feelings, movements, words, bodies, clothes, girls, trees, stones, things of beauty,
 * books, desires are in it; and all are to be known;
 * Afternoons have to do with the whole world….

The search for that which connects all branches of knowledge led Siegel to discover a key concept of Aesthetic Realism: “The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.” Aesthetic Realism classes were scholarly and demonstrated that poetry was related to the problems of everyday life. The viewpoint of Aesthetic Realism is that “what makes a good poem is like what can make a good life.” contradicts the Freudian view of art as sublimation.

Siegel defined poetry as “the oneness of the permanent opposites in reality as seen by an individual.” In Aesthetic Realism classes he explained that the greatest desire of a person is to put together opposites, as, in a good poem, “emotion changes into logic: there is no rift between the two.” He maintained that music distinguishes true poetry, whatever the language, period or style; the music of a poem shows the poet has honestly perceived opposites as one, and sincerely united personal feelings with the impersonal structure of the world. “Poetry,” he wrote, “arises out of a like of the world so intense and wide that of itself, it is musical.” Therefore, Aesthetic Realism teaches, even a poem that in substance seems to condemn the world, in its technique and music is praising the world, seeing it truly.

In thousands of Aesthetic Realism lectures, Siegel demonstrated the centrality of poetry to every aspect of life, including "Poetry and Anger," "Poetry and Love," "Educational Method Is Poetic,” "Poetry and Time," "Poetry, Money, and Good Will," “A Poetic Technique of Parenthood,” “Poetry and History,” and “Hamlet Revisited; or, The Family Should Be Poetry.” His students affirm that an important aspect of the philosophy continues to be the study of how a good poem has within it “the composition, beauty, sanity we want in ourselves." This education, they assert, “makes it possible for poetry to be, as Matthew Arnold said, a criticism of life.”

Lectures and classes by Eli Siegel
In 1946, Siegel began giving weekly lectures at Steinway Hall in New York City, in which he presented what he first called Aesthetic Analysis (later, Aesthetic Realism), “a philosophic way of seeing conflict in self and making this conflict clear to a person so that a person becomes more integrated and happier.” From 1948 through 1977, Siegel continued teaching in his library at 67 Jane Street in Greenwich Village, where he also resided. Individuals studied Aesthetic Realism in classes such as the Ethical Study Conference, the Nevertheless Poetry Class, and classes in which Aesthetic Realism was discussed in relation to the arts and sciences, history, philosophy, national ethics, and world literature.

The arts
Among the earliest students of Aesthetic Realism were Chaim Koppelman (1920–2009), a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and founder of the printmaking department of the School of Visual Arts, and his wife, painter Dorothy Koppelman, who opened the Terrain Gallery in 1955, introducing Aesthetic Realism to the cultural scene of New York City with art exhibitions and public discussions of the Siegel Theory of Opposites in relation to painting, sculpture, photography, poetry, and later, music, theatre, and architecture.”

Chaim Koppelman’s interviews of Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Anuszkiewicz, and Clayton Pond, in which these artists discussed the relevance of Aesthetic Realism and Eli Siegel’s Theory of Opposites to their work, are now part of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. Artists began utilizing Aesthetic Realism in writings about their fields, including Ralph Hattersley, editor of the photography journal  Infinity, and Nat Herz, author of articles in  Modern Photography and of the Konica Pocket Handbook: An Introduction to Better Photography. Aesthetic Realism: We Have Been There (NY: Definition Press, 1969), a book of essays by working artists in the fields of painting, printmaking, photography, acting, and poetry, documents how the Siegel Theory of Opposites "relates life to art and is basically a criterion for all branches of aesthetics".

Some artistic productions inspired by the philosophy were surrounded by controversy. A theatrical production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler by The Opposites Company of the Theatre, in which the title character was presented as “essentially good”, in keeping with Siegel’s interpretation of the play, was highly praised in Time magazine, but severely criticized in the New York Times, which also published Siegel’s response to the critics.

The Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company, composed of actors, singers and musicians, has appeared throughout the country in both musical performances and dramatic productions based on Eli Siegel's lectures on Shakespeare, Moliere, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Ibsen, Strindberg, Eugene O’Neill, George Kelly, Susan Glaspell, and others.



Aesthetic Realism Foundation
The not-for-profit Aesthetic Realism Foundation was established by Siegel's students in 1973. Located at 141 Greene Street in SoHo, New York, it is the primary location where the philosophy is taught, in public seminars and dramatic presentations, and in consultations for individuals. The Foundation offers classes in poetry, anthropology, art, music, acting, and singing, and classes for children.

[[File:Ellen Reiss - 20050815.jpg|thumb|left|150px|Ellen Reiss

Chairman of Education]]

In 1977, Eli Siegel appointed Ellen Reiss chairperson for the teaching of Aesthetic Realism. Since that time, she has conducted the professional classes for the Foundation's faculty. Herself an Aesthetic Realism consultant since 1971, Reiss also taught in the English departments of Queens and Hunter Colleges, City University of New York. She is a poet, editor, co-author (with Martha Baird) of The Williams-Siegel Documentary (Definition Press, 1970), and instructor of the course "The Aesthetic Realism Explanation of Poetry".

Eli Siegel died on November 8, 1978. His work is continued by Reiss, whose editorial commentaries on literature, life, and national ethics appear regularly in the periodical The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.

Aesthetic Realism and homosexuality
A controversial aspect of the philosophy concerns the assertion that men and women could change from homosexuality through studying its principles. In 1946 writer and WW II veteran Sheldon Kranz (1919–1980) was the first man to report that he changed from homosexuality through Aesthetic Realism. Kranz said that as his way of seeing the world changed, his sexual preference also changed: from a homosexual orientation (he was no longer impelled toward men) to a heterosexual one that included love for a woman for the first time in his life. Kranz was married for 25 years (until his death) to Obie award-winning actress Anne Fielding.

In keeping with its general approach, Aesthetic Realism views homosexuality as a philosophic matter. A fundamental principle of the philosophy is that every person is in a fight between contempt for the world and respect for it. Siegel stated that this fight is present as well in homosexuality. He explained: “All homosexuality arises from contempt of the world, not liking it sufficiently. This changes into a contempt for women.” According to the philosophy, in the field of love and sex, a homosexual man prefers the sameness of another man while undervaluing the difference of the world that a woman represents. This undervaluing of difference is a form of contempt for the world; therefore, as a man learns how to like the world honestly, his attitude towards difference changes and this affects every area of his life, including sexual preference.

Beginning in 1965 supporters of the philosophy began an effort to have press and media report on the change from homosexuality through Aesthetic Realism. In 1971 men (including Kranz) who said they changed through Aesthetic Realism were interviewed on New York City’s WNET Channel 13 Free Time show and the David Susskind Show, which had a national syndication. The book The H Persuasion, published that year, contained writing by Siegel detailing his premise about the cause of homosexuality, transcripts of Aesthetic Realism lessons, and narratives by men who said they changed, describing both why they changed and how. In response to requests from men and women wanting to study Aesthetic Realism, Siegel designated four consultation trios, one of which, Consultation With Three, was for the purpose of teaching men who wanted to change from homosexuality. In 1983, five other men who said they had changed from homosexuality were interviewed on the David Susskind Show. The transcript of this interview was published in the 1986 book The Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel and the Change from Homosexuality.

Some men who began to study to change from homosexuality discontinued their study. Others, who at one time stated they had changed, later decided to live a gay lifestyle. Still others indicate that the change from homosexuality they first experienced in the 1970s and 80s is authentic and continues to the present day.

Victim of the Press
With the exception of a brief 1971 review calling The H Persuasion “less a book than a collection of pietistic snippets by Believers,” the New York Times never reported that men said they changed from homosexuality through Aesthetic Realism. Students of the philosophy who said they changed from homosexuality or in other large ways accused the press of unfairly withholding information valuable to the lives of people. In the 1970s they mounted an aggressive campaign of telephone calls, letters, ads, and vigils in front of various media offices and at the homes of editors. Many wore lapel buttons that read “Victim of the Press”.

In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. In 1978, ads were placed in three major newspapers stating “we have changed from homosexuality through our study of the Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel.” They were signed by 50 men and women. With few exceptions, the press in general either ignored or dismissed the assertion of persons who said they changed.

The gay press and gay reporters were generally hostile to Aesthetic Realism. A 1982 Boston Globe article written by “the first openly gay reporter” on its staff, interviewed primarily gay therapists and then reported that the “assertion” of change through Aesthetic Realism was “a claim staggering to psychiatrists and psychologists.” About 250 people protested the article on the Boston Common. The Globe’s ombudsman later wrote in his column that the article was biased against Aesthetic Realism and that it contained “strong, negative words without attribution” and “inaccuracies”.

Some gay advocacy groups and gay activists presented Aesthetic Realism as “anti-gay”, accusing the philosophy of offering a “gay cure” and expressing skepticism that homosexuality could or should change. Persons within the gay pride movement associated the desire of a man to change from homosexuality with a lack of pride in a gay identity, and saw Aesthetic Realism as biased against those living a gay lifestyle. The Aesthetic Realism Foundation stated unequivocally that it supported full, completely equal civil rights for homosexuals, including the right of a man or woman to live their life in the way they chose. In 1990 the Aesthetic Realism Foundation discontinued its presentations and consultations on the subject of homosexuality, explaining that it did not want to be involved in the atmosphere of anger surrounding this matter, and saying that “we do not want this matter, which is certainly not fundamental to Aesthetic Realism, to be used to obscure what Aesthetic Realism truly is: education of the largest, most cultural kind.”

Opposition to prejudice and racism
In one of his earliest essays, “The Equality of Man” (1923), Siegel criticized writers who were promoting eugenics, the theory that intelligence is inherited and some people belong to superior breeds or races, while others are born inferior. He argued that thus far in the history of the world, people have not had equal conditions of life, to bring out their potential abilities, and he asserted that if all men and women had “an equal chance to use all the powers they had at birth, they would be equal.”

According to Aesthetic Realism, racism and prejudice of all kinds begin with the human inclination towards contempt, “the addition to self through the lessening of something else.” Students of the philosophy assert that the racist attitude is not inevitable, but can change if one learns to recognize and criticize contempt. In public forums, individuals of diverse nationalities and cultural backgrounds have described how, through study of Aesthetic Realism, their racism and prejudice changed, not into mere “tolerance” but into a respectful desire to know and to see that the feelings of another are “as real, and as deep, as one’s own.”

On an international level, proponents advocated the study of contempt and good will, as described by Aesthetic Realism, as “The Only Answer to the Mideast Crisis,” in a 1990 advertisement on the op-ed page of the New York Times. To oppose prejudice they recommend that persons of nations who are in conflict “write a soliloquy of 500 words” describing the feelings of a person in the opposing land.

The UN commissioned filmmaker Ken Kimmelman, a consultant on the faculty of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, to make two anti-prejudice films: Asimbonanga, and Brushstrokes. Kimmelman credits Aesthetic Realism as his inspiration for these films, as well as his 1995 Emmy-award winning anti-prejudice public service film, The Heart Knows Better, based on, and including, a statement by Eli Siegel.

Another noted speaker on the subject of Aesthetic Realism and how it opposes prejudice and racism is Alice Bernstein, whose articles on the subject have been published in hundreds of papers throughout the country, including in her serialized column, “Alice Bernstein & Friends.” Mrs. Bernstein is the editor of The People of Clarendon County (Chicago: Third World Press, 2007), a book that includes a play by Ossie Davis re-discovered by Bernstein, together with historical documents, photographs, and essays about Aesthetic Realism, which she describes as "the education that can end racism." The late Ossie Davis, noted actor and civil rights activist, stated: “Alice Bernstein has dedicated her life to ending racism in this country. ...[She] is writing an introduction [to my play] based on what she has learned about people and history from Aesthetic Realism which she has studied for decades."

A production of The People of Clarendon County—a Play by Ossie Davis, & the Answer to Racism, presenting Aesthetic Realism as the educational method that explains and changes prejudice and racism, was staged in the Congressional Auditorium of the US Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, DC on October 21, 2009, with introductory remarks given by House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn.

Criticism and response
The organization has also been accused by some ex-students and cult researchers for operating as a cult. Aesthetic Realism supporters have stated that the technique of the people attempting to discredit Aesthetic Realism is “1) [to] find out what characteristics a cult is supposed to have, 2) then [to] say Aesthetic Realism has them (though of course it doesn’t).”