WHAT IS A BEAUTIFUL EMOTION?

by Dennis Clerkin

Aesthetic Realism taught me what I needed to really be myself.  In his magnificent essay, “There is Individualism,” Eli Siegel, writes:

"True Individualism can be described as the affirmation, completing of self through the courageous and just relation of the self with more and more things."

I had thought my individuality would come from proving how different I was from other people.  I am learning from Aesthetic Realism that to be truly ourselves we need to see how we are the same and different from other people. I know from my own life that when a person sees his relation to the whole world, he feels more alive.  Within the structure of art is the answer to the questions of our lives, and this joyous photograph exemplifies that idea.

Alfred Eisensteadt has said that this photograph of a Drum Major and children at the University of Michigan, which first appeared in LIFE magazine in 1951, is one of the photographs he wants to be remembered by.  In his book Eisenstaedt on Eisenstaedt, he writes of how this photograph came to be:

"It was early in the morning and I saw the little boy running after the [Drum Major], and all of the children on the playing field ran after the boy, and I ran after them."

I care for this photograph very much and I think it shows vividly how one man, showing unreservedly his joy in just being, can affect people so much they want to do the same thing.

1. Sameness and Difference
In his historic broadside of 1955, “ Is Beauty The Making One of Opposites?” Eli Siegel asks about Sameness and Difference:

"Does every work of art show the kinship to be found in objects and all realities?—and at the same time the subtle and tremendous difference the drama of otherness that one can find among the things of the world?"

As the children join and follow the drum major, each child happily takes a place in line and they all march proudly forward with their heads up and their faces into the sun.  As they follow him, they are asserting themselves.  The positions of their bodies, the way they are dressed, the expressions on their faces, are different. The boy who is directly behind the drum major carries a baton as he leans forward at a diagonal.  The second boy, more upright, is completely off the ground with such ease as he swings his arms forward and back.  The third boy swings his leg up and the little girl at the end of the line gracefully stretches her arms out wide.  Seeing their different positions in relation to each other, we see the particularity of each person more.  Eisenstaedt presents what Eli Siegel describes as “the subtle and tremendous difference, the drama of otherness that one can find among the things of the world.”   It is beautiful.

As I grew up in Brooklyn, I didn’t like the world as far as I knew it; it was confusing, and I thought I shouldn’t be affected by too many things in it.  My individuality I thought, was in showing how cool and reserved I could be and I saw it as part of my charm, a way of being powerful.  But I was lonely.  I had scorn for people who got excited about something, and I also envied them.  In my first Aesthetic Realism consultation, I spoke about seeing the world as unfriendly, and began to learn about how I had interfered with my own happiness.  I was asked: “Have you protected yourself by not having too much feeling?" And they asked me: “If a person sees the world as one’s enemy, would he not want to be affected by it?”

Through these questions, I felt understood for the first time.  I had seen what was different from myself as a threat, something to be afraid of.  I learned that this is contempt, which Eli Siegel described as “the disposition in every person to think he will be for himself by making less of the outside world.”  Because of how I saw, I didn’t venture out of the neighborhood I grew up in, and then, I wondered why I didn’t meet new people; I felt stuck, and remember often walking down the street and feeling encapsulated, separate from things, like I was walking through the world and not really part of it.  When I went into a store I had never been in before I often felt nervous.  As I began to learn how I was related to other people and objects because they and I had the same structure of opposites and heard criticism of my contempt, I began to feel like I was living in the whole world, not passing through it.  Through consultations I learned I was trying to put opposites together, such as firmness and flexibility, repose and energy.  And as I saw that my father and mother were trying to put together these same opposites, we became closer.  I was learning that the world had an aesthetic structure and that included my parents.

The purpose of an artist is directly opposed to the purpose of contempt.  The artist looks for a relation among things that makes their meaning greater.  In this photograph, the straight line of the drum major and children is like the line of the wall and trees behind them.  Both have regularity and irregularity.  The direction of the marchers with their heads up and the sun on their faces takes us out of the photograph in the same way as the trees rise up out of the frame of the picture.  Is this a way of saying that there is a relation between what is far away and what is close to ourselves?  I think it is.  The shadow in the foreground comes from a tree we cannot see and is related to the trees and shadows on the wall in the background.  The marchers join near and far, foreground and background.
 One of the most beautiful things that happens to a person as they see their relation to the world, and I am so grateful it happened to me as I studied Aesthetic Realism, is that you are truly freer.  In Aesthetic Realism consultations, something that I thought would never happen did; my feelings were understood and I learned that other people had feelings like mine.  I learned that I wanted to see my feelings as only different so I could feel superior to people and feel that I was deeper than everyone else.  The haunted, desperate feeling I had my whole life of never being known changed, and I felt I came into the sunlight.  My individuality, who I really was, came into the light through relation.

When I began to study this, I made the mistake of taking the drum major out of relation to everything else and making him too different.  Then I saw how the powerful sweeping line of his supporting leg and upper body is continued in the trunk of the tree in the background, and see how the white hat he wears is like the white cloud nestling in the branch of the tree.  The drum major is so free while one foot is firmly, definitely on the ground, as the freely floating cloud is close to that solid building.  It is like a friendly conversation between things that are so different.  They are related through the opposites of light and dark, freedom and order, precision and abandon.  As I saw this, I learned something about how important it is to see our relation to things in order to be ourselves.

2. Freedom and Order
I had thought if I showed enthusiasm or abandon, I wouldn’t be sensible.  I doled out my response to everything.  I wanted people to run after me because I wanted to be superior to them, to have an affect without being affected myself.  This is so different from what we see in this photograph, which shows that real power, real individuality, real freedom is the same as being able to respond justly to the world.

In, “Is Beauty The Making One Of Opposites?” Eli Siegel asks about the opposites of Freedom and Order:

"Does every instance of beauty in nature and beauty as the artist presents it have something unrestricted, unexpected, uncontrolled?—and does this beautiful thing in nature or beautiful thing coming from the artist’s mind have, too, something accurate, sensible, logically justifiable, which can be called order?"

As a photojournalist in Germany in the 1930’s, Eisenstaedt was a pioneer in the use of the 35mm camera which enabled him to capture the fleeting moment.  As I studied the composition of this picture, I was thrilled to see that all of this exuberance and abandon was part of a geometric form—the triangle.  It is formed by the line of shadows under the marcher’s feet, the bottom edge of the brick wall and the body of the drum major.  How wonderful it is that all of this difference has such a neat form.  As the photograph goes to the left, the lines widen as they meet the drum major who forms one whole side of the triangle.  I was surprised to see how he joins the energetic marchers to that more reposeful brick wall, and he, as his head is thrown back and his leg reaches out so widely, seems to rejoice in his relation to these children and the whole world.  The little girl at the end of the line, with her leg in that straight line and the dark shadow of a tree behind her, seems a buoyant anchor to the line.  The message of this photograph is exuberance can be the same thing as exactitude.

In my job as a supervisor of security at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I have the opportunity to study the relation of opposites in art to my own life.  I know that Aesthetic Realism is true.  Once as I walked down the street there was nothing that really interested me.  I now most often have a camera in my hand, looking to be affected by the world and find meaning in it.  I believe that Eli Siegel is the greatest and kindest critic that ever lived, because he has defined for the first time in history, what makes for beauty in art and in life. 
He said, “ All beauty in the making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”  This is the most important and beautiful statement I know.