Beauty Seen, Beauty Sought
Beauty
by Stefan Sagmeister & Jessica Walsh
Phaidon, 2018, 280 pages, $59.95
__________________________
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” Keats effused in Endymion. “Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.” His 1818 poem about the shepherd so handsome he was beloved by immortals was poorly received, and Keats regretted publishing it. But whatever Endymion’s demerits, Keats’s outlook attests to a time when beauty was taken seriously, regarded as a worthy aspiration for artists and a subject of intellectual attention.
For Keats, as for many others before him and since, beauty was associated intimately with the classical world as reflected in Arcadian myth, or represented by ode-worthy Grecian urns and the astounding statuary then being salvaged from Levantine rubbish tips and carted back to English country houses by Grand Tourists. But he was also a Romantic, so combining within himself the twin poles of Western aesthetics, the…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins