Lectures on Aesthetic Realism & Art
In 1976 Marcia Rackow presented, as part of the Barnard College MAC Lecture series, "I Thought I Knew Art, But...".
On September 8, 2004, at the PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS, in Philadelphia, as part of their series Art-at-Lunch: artists and Aesthetic Realism educators Marcia Rackow and Donita Ellison spoke on "Aesthetic Realism Shows What’s Going on in American Art & in Ourselves"
They looked at the work of contemporary realists in relation to this great principle stated by Eli Siegel, American critic and founder of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”
"What are American Realist painters doing today that people want to do in their lives? " they asked:
Central in all realist art is the seeing that the commonplace also has grandeur, the everyday moment has intense and wide significance.
This was shown through the work of Jacob Lawrence, Richard Estes, Alex Katz, Bo Bartlett, Duane Hanson, and Chuck Close."
Together with Dr. Arnold Perey, Ms. Rackow presented "Aesthetic Realism, Art, & Anthropologyy: Or, Justice to People" at the annual meeting of InSEA, the International Society for Education in the Arts. See: < http://www.perey-anthropology.net/insea.pdf>
This paper was later published in International Conversations through Art: Proceedings of the 31st InSEA World Congress 2002, Prabha Sahasrabudhe, Editor (Center for International Art Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York: 2003).
