I agree about the beauty aspect, and one of the things I found most interesting in Fendrich’s writings and interviews was her explication of how it comes in to abstract painting. But she is not so optimistic in some of her writings or in this interview:

Q: Do you find that beauty is making a comeback among contemporary painters?

LF: I think beauty is in deep trouble today, both in art and in the culture at large. And no, I don’t think it’s making a comeback. Precisely the opposite. People just don’t believe in its value any more–for reasons that have to do with the slow takeover of the materialist view of life. The bottom line is that a lot of serious artists think beauty is trivial and superficial. This puts serious artists who do care about it–and I’m hardly alone in this–in an isolated position.

However, I don’t think it necessarily matters if the general “art world” turns toward beauty or toward abstraction; I’m sure there will always be excellent artists working that way, and buyers looking for them.

Took a little time to look in on Laurie Fendrich and I must thank you for bringing her to our attention.

Re: the Kalydascope thing. I, like the rest of us, go into Google mode when such a term comes up. And, presto, Kalydascopes abound. Take the term for a misspelling or follow the Google string in search for an insight?

The beauty in abstraction comes when abstract painters create marks, shapes, forms, and colors that tap into unseen but universal, psychologically beautiful forms and shapes. The marks and colors, since they range so widely in painting, bring to abstract paintings the poignancy of the individuality of each human being. I said I’m almost a complete Platonist, but I’m not a complete Platonist. I think deviation, or falling away from perfect form, is what makes something profoundly beautiful. Perfect beauty is different from profound beauty; the latter is always partly tragic and has something wrong with it, always, and without exception. The “something wrong” part is the handedness, or the individual way a painter paints, which points to the fleetingness of our lives. But it’s really simpler—beauty either is or isn’t, once a painting is done. If it knocks the socks off someone who sees it, and that someone is a deep and sensitive person, that’s the test. Period.

I don’t follow the Kalydascope reference. Could you expand on that?