The salvation of the Beautiful
11
Oct
I read the Spanish version of another good book by the Korean-German 
Byung-Chul Han, undoubtedly an urgent theme in times of ugliness and a certain confusion between art and bad taste.
He comments on works by Jeff Koon, who calls himself soteriologic, because he promises a redemption different from Christian redemption, but hewn from positivity to hedonism, the positivity he calls the “polished world” (page 16), giving the example of the sculptor Balloon Venus, among others.
To understand what positivity is, the author exemplifies the work of Andy Wharol that even if he declared himself in favor of a “beautiful and satiny” surface (page 14), his work is not without negativity, for example, in “Death and disaster”.
He comments through Roland Barthes (the work cited is Mitology) reminiscent of the tactile model of the car Citröen, which also recalls the interactivity of the media, but seeks to emphasize that the tactile is the most demystifying of the senses, while the vision is the most “magical” “.
He comments that by calling “Baptism” an exposition that contrasts with Christian culture, Jeff Koons work exerts a sacralization of the read and impeccable “(page 17), and although it sounds” new “it is idealistic and seeks to hide the “wound,” which is essential for art, according to Gadamer, as quoted by Chul Han, from which the call to “change life” arises (page 17).
The author affirms “today the polished is not only turned to the beautiful, but also the ugly” (page 19).
On the difference between eroticism and hedonism, the author resorts to the work of G. Baittaile “eroticism”, where he realized that the ugly is the dissolution of limits and release, remember that the author has a specific work on the subject: “The agony of eros”.
Idealist perfectionism is seemingly pacifying and “beautiful,” but it is conservative because it fails to point out what can and should be changed, it is the “wound” that saves art.
HAN, Byung-Chul. La salvación de lo bello. The salvation of the beautiful. Barcelona: Herder Editorial, 2015
