Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1997 12:58:26 -0500 (EST)
From: Christine Mills <cmills-AT-astro.ocis.temple.edu>
Subject: Re: Req. sublime and lyotard


>from Toward the Postmodern: "With the beautiful, it is pure happiness, 
the miracle of promise, but with the sublime, it is impossibility, the 
imminent threat of non-being. The beautiful is an event of birth; the 
sublime, one of death" (155)
 for me, part of the answer lies in the threat of 
non-being. a response by the artist that is not about soothing, not about 
comfort, but is instead about the reaction of the viewer in the face of 
kant's "absolutely large". an object that resists apprehending. the sheer 
force of that resistance brings a fear of "non-being", a fear of 
destruction in the presence of a work that not only does not invite 
participation and understanding, but actively deflects it.

this is almost an inversion of the goal of (especially high) modernism 
(though i speak more about 2-D art and literature, i'm not well-versed in 
late 20th c. architecture). Lyotard also speaks about the "ravishing of 
sensitivity" and i think that may be relevant as well...

cm

On Thu, 16 Jan 1997 9336801-AT-lewis.sms.ed.ac.uk wrote:

> I am looking at the subject of late twentieth century architecture in the 
> context of the proposal by Jean-Francois Lyotard that, "It is in the 
> aesthetic of the sublime that modern art (including literature) finds its 
> impetus and the logic of the avant-gardes finds its axioms."
> 	I want to know how Lyotard would answer this question himself.
>