Bennett Cooperman & Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman
What We Learned from Aesthetic Realism
First presented in a public seminar at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, New York City
The blade of certainty and the smoke of doubt. — Eli Siegel, “Prosody Is Ours” The way men are decisive and indecisive has confused and even tormented us—it did me. I learned there can be a good kind of indecision in a man that comes from his desire to know, the thing in him that […]
First presented at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, NYC
In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known Eli Siegel writes: The pleasure we are proudest of, the emotion that is largest, arises from knowing the world as it is, wholly as it is, exactly as it is, tremendously as it is, poetically as it is, scientifically as it is, personally as it is. […]
I once prided myself on being a practical guy who could take care of myself with an everyday, no-nonsense approach to life. I thought I was a tough person to fool, and was often suspicious of people who showed large emotion, thinking it was inevitably insincere. But I was also desperate to have big feelings […]
First presented in a public seminar at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, New York City.
Though men have been in a fight about it, I’ve seen through my own life and the men my colleagues and I teach that what a man truly wants from the people he knows is honest criticism, not flattery. Men haven’t known this consciously, and also have been terrifically misled by the false way criticism […]
With a consideration of the film, “The Apartment.” First presented at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, NYC
Like many men, I thought I would be sure of myself if I made a lot of money, had nice clothes, a substantial career and impressive friends. Though I tried to act like a “nice guy,” I went after these things aggressively. But even as I got many of them I felt empty, and with […]
