A Call for New Aesthetics
We, Patrick and Tyler, have differing views of the artistic merits of Bauhaus, but we are both very impressed by the movement’s success: they sought to define an aesthetic for the twentieth century, and basically did. Bauhaus obviously sits as part of broader tides—functionalism, constructivism, De Stijl, etc.—but the project also shows how intentional artistic ambition can succeed. Everything from modern offices to modern tech hardware is in some sense downstream of Bauhaus.
We’re more than a quarter way through the new century and we can now ask: what is the aesthetic of the twenty-first century? Which are the important secessionist movements of today? Which will be the most important great works?
Today, futuristic aesthetics often mean retrofuturistic aesthetics. So, what should the future actually look like? There will not be a singular answer to that, but we are very interested in attempts to answer the questions.
In particular, we would like to fund some artists who are thinking about this.
Tyler: Circa 2026, beauty can be found in strange and unusual places. It does not always announce itself as such. It can violate our expectations in unreasonable ways. It often springs from an understanding that the world has changed fundamentally, and matters of the aesthetic need to recognize and respond to that. What can you do that that will surprise and inspire me?
Patrick: In 1925, Ortega y Gasset said “modern art, on the other hand, has the masses against it, and this will always be so since it is unpopular in essence; even more, it is antipopular.” Sagmeister and Walsh argue that we’ve stopped trying to produce beautiful work, and Nicholas Boys-Smith shows empirically that modern buildings are substantially less favored than designs that respect the specific character of the place. So, what are new directions forward? What is new and also beautiful?
Grant. We are seeking to fund artists, architects, and designers who are consciously working to define New Aesthetics.
- Our primary interest is in visual arts and architecture, but open to all mediums.
- AI presumably opens interesting new opportunities, though we haven’t seen much great work that only uses AI. (If jazz didn’t exist, could you prompt Suno to create it? This seems like an open problem.) As such, we’re neutral on the use of AI.
- We will not fund work that is already ubiquitous today.
Mechanics
- Grant size: $5k – $250k.
- Deadline: Applications are open until March 31, 2026.
- Selection: Reviewed on a rolling basis. Applying sooner is probably better than later, because we might at some stage decide that we’ve funded enough.
- Application: Include some examples of your work along with a rough description of what you’d use the grant to do. We don’t know how many applications we’ll receive, so please make your work as easy to assess as possible. Whether or not English is your first language, we much prefer applications written by humans over those written by AIs.
- Declines: To keep logistics simple, we will not inform declined proposals of our decision.
To apply, just email [email protected].
TC again: Here is the website.