Making Magic: Beauty in Word and Image

"Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror...and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to destroy us." –Rainer Maria Rilke

Beauty. We all know what it means–as long as we don't think about it too much. It's a combination of qualities that pleases the senses or intellect. It's in the eye of the beholder...and it's only skin deep. We have beauty marks, beauty shops, beauty queens, beauticians, and beauty sleep. Stuff that's new, bright, clean, being born, blossoming, or happy is beautiful;… Show more stuff that's old, dull, dirty, dying, withering, or sad is not beautiful. The prevailing wisdom in academic circles says it's a cultural construct that has no intrinsic meaning. Yet creative people have been obsessed with beauty since the cave painters of prehistoric France and Spain, and continue to claim it for themselves using techniques both familiar and unconventional. Organized by the Michener Art Museum and drawn in part from the Michener's collection, this exhibition explores beauty not through aesthetic discourse but through the eyes and ears of contemporary artists. From the endless ways of seeing beauty, the exhibit loosely defines four overlapping types–lyrical, corporeal, transforming, and empathic–and explores these ideas using the work of photographers and poets from the Philadelphia region. Through word and image, this unusual exhibition takes a fresh look at an ancient concept, and also invites viewers to share their own thoughts about what is beautiful in their lives.

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