Philosophy

Beauty may be in for rather a long exile (Danto, 1998). Arthur Danto, on his essay Beauty and Morality, talks about beauty on art and how artists think about it. He made transparent comparisons between different artists work and how beauty was applied on them.

One of the works he pointed out is the Kants thesis that says the judgment of beauty is always disinterested an object may be deemed beautiful only when it pleases apart from all interests (Danto, 1998). With this analysis, Danto raises a question doubting if it is appropriate to respond to something by creating beauty, and if beauty is still right to be used when interest is morally prescribed. This argument shows that Danto pays greater attention and importance to morality than beauty.

He also pointed out that there are works which are not beautiful but are great. He explains that sometimes things are better off for not being beautiful. Since they might be artistic failures if they were, so to speak, aesthetic successes-that is to say inappropriately beautiful (Danto, 1998). This speaks for Dantos wide range of understanding as how he sees things. Although morality is his priority, beauty is also important for him in terms of the work of art, but is just an ingredient.
As many artists aim beauty to be included in their works, Danto cited that there are also artists, who do activist art, that avoid beauty because beauty induces the wrong perspective on whatever it is the activist wants something done about (Danto, 1998). Generally, he is pertaining to the idea that beauty and interest may not be compatible which somehow affect moral aspects. Interest and art may be incompatible as well. This is the challenge for the artists to overcome as they aim to attain beauty and morality on every work.

I always seem to be wrapped in the melodrama of vulgarity (Kuspit, 1998). This line by Willem De Kooning basically shows that he is no ordinary man. Aside from being an artist, there is more that people find interesting about him, and they have different things to say about it.

Donald Kuspit wrote Venus Unveiled De Koonings Melodrama of Vulgarity. He describes De Kooning as not fascinated by contradictions but trapped by them (Kuspit, 1998). Kuspit even describes him as neurotic as he unable to break out or resolve the contradictions. De Kooning unusual approach on his painting was pointed out as Kuspit says that his art is fraught with a neurotic experience of contradiction a neurotic experience of woman (Kuspit, 1998). This was based on De Koonings gestures and painting which are mostly destructive. His painting tries to convey that woman is for him. For all their demonstrativeness and forcefulness, his gestures are calculated, indeed, preordained careful steps in a male mating dance-a kind of psychobiological strutting-designed to attract and engage the female body with their display of visceral energy (Kuspit, 1998). Kuspit pointed out that the key image in De Koonings art is not of woman but of her genitals.
Because of his vulgarity, De Kooning received several critism. Others admired his unusual thinking and talent. Sigmund Freud strongly said that occasionally neurotic men speak of the female genital as uncannyThen it is proper to substitute therefore, in the interpretation, his mothers genitals or body (Kuspit, 1998).

His vulgarity is clearly shown on his paintings. Others like it, but most of them who like the paintings at first, tend to change their mind after knowing De Koonings stories behind them. Kuspit wrote
De Koonings gestures-intense and supple not only because of their energy, but because they are indecisive and inconclusive-seem to bear the weight of a Freudian interpretation, not only because they are impulsive, and as such signify psychic energy, but because the numerous accidents their impulsiveness invariably leads them into suggests the raging conflicts in his psyche. Nonetheless, his gestures are too material and particular, not to say idiosyncratic, to readily lend themselves to metaphoric use and generalization they resist interpretation.  But the way they inform his image of woman does not. (Kuspit, 1998)

For most people it may be hard for De Kooning to be fully understood and accept his views, but being an artist, he is wisely using his state of mind to come up with a more artful painting. One must really go take a longer and deeper look at the image, and even research for the story behind it, in order to see and understand the bitter meaning of De Koonings art. It may take awhile for people to appreciate every idea he had, but in the name of art, his paintings are still great contributions to the industry. It may take some time for the industry to have someone like him again.