Vienna Art Week 2016 Explores the Concept of Beauty with Seeking Beauty Theme

The Vienna Art Week 2016, held from November 14-20, adopts the theme 'Seeking Beauty' to explore the concept of beauty in art and philosophy. The festival features a digital flower logo created with Photoshop, symbolizing artificial beauty. Notable participants include French body artist Orlan, who will give a lecture at the MAK (Museum of Applied Arts) as part of an Interview Marathon, discussing her surgical performances in pursuit of ideal beauty. A roundtable on Thursday, November 17 at Palais Dorotheum will compare Roman and Viennese art spaces, moderated by critic Maria Alicata, with Italian curators Luca Lo Pinto (Kunsthalle Vienna), Francesco Stocchi (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam), Flavio Ferri (Fondazione Arte), Bartolomeo Pietromarchi (MAXXI), and Pier Paolo Pancotto. The Dorotheum auction house will hold sales of contemporary art on November 22 and 24, and modern art on November 23. The festival references Umberto Eco's 'History of Beauty' and engages with philosophical debates on beauty from Plato to Hegel, while notably omitting the concept of ugliness, despite Karl Rosenkranz's 'Aesthetics of the Ugly' and Eco's 'On Ugliness'.