EDITOR’S LETTER
The dividing line. The right middle, quoting the philosopher Epicurus. Horace’s golden moderation. In short, call it what you will, but often losing that centre of gravity leads to exaggeration. To trespass, to change adjective or noun: from sensual one overflows into the vulgar, passion becomes aggression, appreciation becomes violence. The latter has various forms, not necessarily physical, such as prevarication, insistence, intimidation. And each of them crosses the famous line we are talking about.
The social problem -we could even call it a social problem- today, is that that middle ground is hardly ever respected! We are in the midst of what Baudelaire called the ‘dissimilar correspondences’, writing that ‘every brain bears within itself two infinities, heaven and hell’.
We are convinced that avoiding ambivalence and maintaining a balance -aesthetic or verbal as it may be- contributes to the diffusion of a beauty too often dispersed in the meandering meanders of excess.
The artist, then, has a considerable responsibility: to make an impulse manifest while keeping intact the boundaries of what is socially or ethically acceptable.
Even if his creative vein often, if not always, springs from strong contrasts, pain, destructive experiences. The true intellectual exercise is precisely the reconciliation of extremes in the fertile soil of beauty.
Here at Art&Glamour we are practising this virtuosity (and hopefully achieving it!) on glamour photography: Eros holds its positions without prevaricating, with measure and with elegance.
Every now and then we do what Oscar Wilde did when he said ‘I worked all morning on the draft of my poems and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back’.
But you know, that of perfection is a magnificent obsession….
