NEOSUBLIME — Kathy Varadi

Meteorologists and chemists claim that contemporary sunrises and sunsets are more brilliant and colorful than in the past because of air pollution from air borne particles and chemicals. In the movie “Manufactured Landscapes” (2006) there are phenomenal scenes of the effects of global industrialization on the natural world, but the director deliberately avoids social and political comments, leaving that task to the audience. And for them, the sights and sounds are beyond belief and the fear of the end of the world is inescapable. Although afraid of impending doom, the viewer is in a safe place, watching the movie and freely enjoying the amazing scenes of global overproduction.

A feeling of overwhelming awe and fear flows over the observer like fog in the painting “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” (1818) by Caspar David Friedrich. Misty fog over mountains, horrific storms at sea, crashing thunderstorms all remind viewers of natural powers greater than themselves. Great philosophers such as Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant described this sensation in their treatises on beauty and the sublime. In their writing they made references to God-made entities such as nature, infinity and the cosmos.

By adding a new dimension to the philosophies of the sublime by Burke and Kant the Neosublime offers an answer. Neosublime refers to the sensations of pleasure and fear someone experiences when observing catastrophic earth-shattering global events like climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and political turmoil and chaos, and then they realize these events are not the result of god or nature, but of humans. Each one of these events are the result of humans affecting the world and not that long ago.

YouTube for complete presentation: https://youtu.be/bMuniix-0iE

Kathy Varadi, Neosublime 1, 2020, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. $1200 — Kathy Varadi, *Neosublime 1,* 2020, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. $1200

Kathy Varadi, Neosublime 2, 2020, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. $1200 — Kathy Varadi, *Neosublime 2,* 2020, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. $1200

Kathy Varadi, Neosublime 3, 2020, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. $1200 — Kathy Varadi, *Neosublime 3*, 2020, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. $1200

Kathy Varadi, Neosublime 4, 2020, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. $1200 — Kathy Varadi, *Neosublime 4*, 2020, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. $1200

Kathy Varadi, Neosublime 5, 2020, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. $1200 — Kathy Varadi, *Neosublime 5,* 2020, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. $1200

Kathy Varadi, Neosublime 6, 2021, Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 inches $800 — Kathy Varadi, *Neosublime 6,* 2021, Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 inches $800

kathy.varadi@gmail for purchase information