Aesthetic beautification is a familiar artistic phenomenon. Even as they face death, heroes and heroines in operas still sing glorious music. Characters in Shakespearean tragedies still deliver beautifully eloquent speeches in the throes of despair. Even when depicting suffering and horror, paintings can still remain a transfixing delight for the eyes. In such cases, the work of art represents or expresses something to which we would, in ordinary life, attribute a negative valence, but it does so beautifully. Doubtless there is (...) not a single explanation for what transpires in art of this sort or in our experience of it. With some aesthetically beautified art, its foremost goal might be giving aesthetic pleasure, and the beauty of the aesthetic form, even when depicting horrors, is in the service of this primary aim. In other art, the beautification might seek to be jarring and thought-provoking, highlighting a disconnect between the aesthetic frame and what is portrayed. These routes explain much of aesthetic beautification. But I am particularly interested in considering another, still more specific, response: finding ourselves somehow consoled by the beautification. I begin with some reflections on aesthetic beautification in general, and then turn to consider how beautification and consolation might be connected, and what to make of this. (shrink)

En este texto me propongo examinar algunas aporías que se siguen de la caracterización del arte como significado encarnado defendida por A. Danto y de su rechazo a que la dimensión estética de las obras de arte juegue un papel esencial en la constitución del significado artístico. Pese a que Danto ha recuperado cierto papel para la dimensión estética del arte -a través de su concepción de las propiedades estéticas como moduladores del contenido artístico, de su distinción entre belleza interna (...) y belleza externa y, por último, de su analogía entre la noción kantiana de “ideas estéticas” y su definición de obra de arte como significado encarnado-, no parece que reconozca al carácter estético de la obra de arte el papel que debería poseer en la conformación del significado artístico, dada su propia concepción del arte como significado encarnado. (shrink)