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Notes -
Beauty and "sunshine and roses" are not the same thing. The Fall of Icarus is both extremely beautiful and eloquently says as much about the human condition as some existentialists could only do in a whole book.
It's also wrong to conflate style with demandingness. Someone who wants more beautiful art isn't necessarily asking for more laziness. Again, I point to Bruegel's best works, which works at multiple levels: you can enjoy them at the level of their beauty, but you can also study and think about their details for hours, especially if you are familiar with their historical and intellectual context.
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