1 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? —Eli Siegel, from Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?

I love how the opposites of freedom and order are composed in this work. We expect rectangles to stay put, but here they seem to move forward and back, side to side. You feel the restricting order of the straight line, along with a bold spilling over and “unexpected, uncontrolled” merging of color and forms.

The top, mostly blue rectangle, with its neat sharp edges, juts beyond its boundary at the top left, and ends with a flourish at the bottom right corner, setting it in motion. The large rectangle at center left, an explosion of green and white, bursts forth beyond its boundaries.

I’ve prided myself on being exceedingly careful, and didn’t know how much I longed to let go with big emotions that were also exact. In an Aesthetic Realism class, Chair of Education Ellen Reiss asked me: “Do you think you associate logic with a certain quiet imperturbability, and not with some of the greatest stir that ever was?” I see in this work wonderful and unexpected stir, as it’s precise. It surprises as it satisfies our desire for order.     –Joe Spetly

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