| Front | aesthete or esthete \ES-theet\ |
|---|---|
| Back | noun 1. Someone who has or affects high sensitivity to beauty, especially in art. 2. One whose pursuit and admiration of beauty is regarded as excessive or affected. [Back-formation from aesthetic. Via Latin from Greek aisthesis (sensation or perception). Ultimately from the Indo-European root au- (to perceive) which is the source of other words such as audio, audience, audit, obey, oyez, auditorium, anesthesia, aesthetic, and synesthesia. Earliest recorded use 1881. This modern back-formation grows out of the equally modern notion that "art" is ruled by feelings (Greek "aisthesis"). As Ananda Coomaraswamy points out, however, the ability to feel is a trait we share with all other animals; we are more likely to become human by thinking about what we feel. Art, from this perspective, is not an object, but a method by which (traditionally, at least) we clarify and share ideas and truths. An "aesthetic", on the other hand, is merely a reaction, rather than a value or a standard by which to judge what is "art" and what is not. Coomaraswamy, who was curator at the Boston MFA, said "A real art is one of symbolic and significant representation; a representation of things that cannot be seen except by the intellect." And "the appeal of beauty is not to the senses, but through the senses, to the intellect."] "Alex is a secret aesthete, a slum-dwelling intellectual who finds redemption through Beethoven rather than the pumping dance beats down at the Korova milk bar." |
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