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A PETITION TO THE ART PRESS FOR COMPLETE FAIRNESS TO ELI SIEGEL AND AESTHETIC REALISM

We are persons in the arts who want the injustice of the art press to the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism and to Eli Siegel, its founder, to stop now.
Aesthetic Realism is based on the idea that "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." This was stated for the first time by Eli Siegel in the early 1940s and taught by him for almost four decades, in relation to thousands of works of art in every field, and to the lives of thousands of people.

Lawrence Campbell, who knows the history of the Terrain Gallery, said in his review of Eli Siegel's Self and World for the Art Students League News:

Since 1955 the Terrain Gallery...has headed the announcements of its exhibitions with the motto: "In reality opposites are one; art shows this"[Eli Siegel]. Although its exhibitions have been consistently of high class...silence has been the usual response; silence and a turning away...as though if silence could only be preserved long enough, the unpleasant (to the critics) reality of the Terrain Gallery would quietly fade away.

In the book The Press Boycott of Aesthetic Realism: Documentionat, (1978) artist and Aesthetic Realism consultant Chaim Koppelman wrote:

In 1955 there was a boycott of the Siegel Theory of Opposites.
At the same time these three things happened:
1.  Art editors and critics became vividly aware of the central importance of opposites in every aspect of art;
2.  The thoughts of artists themselves about their own intentions and technique were crystallized;
3.  This knowledge, without acknowledgement, has affected the art and art criticism of America these twenty-two years.

Most recently, in Artspeak, (11/16/83), a critic writing an otherwise very favorable review of Mr. Koppelman's work still did not give the name of the philosophy or its founder; "Since Chaim Koppelman's aesthetic philosophy derives from the union of polarities...."  Chaim Koppelman, in a letter published in Artspeak, (12/1/83) responded:

Even now, five years after he died, Diana Freedman in her review of my show at the Terrain, like others before her, tries to make believe Eli Seigel and the philosophy he founded simply don't exist....As has been well known in the art world for years my aesthetic philosophy "derives from" my study for almost forty years of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism with its founder Eli Siegel.

The lack of common decency with which Eli Seigel was met, and the cruel unwillingness to recognize the existence of new, important thought, is a shameful thing in the cultural history of America; it hurts both art and life.  It is not being asked that critics praise Aesthetic Realism.  We ask members of the art community, artists, and the art press to be completely fair to Eli Siegel and Aesthetic Realism.

Name  City/State  Occupation  print perm.

TERRAIN GALLERY/141 GREENE/NEW YORK CITY 10012

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