"Beauty" Author Stefan Sagmeister's Gorgeous Art Wishlist HOW BEAUTY CAN CHANGE THE WORLD

World-renowned designer Stefan Sagmeister, along with Jessica Walsh, set out on a mission: to find out what beauty is and the many ways that it impacts our lives. They turned to philosophy, history, and science to understand why we are drawn to beauty and how it influences the way we feel and behave, and the results of their research are beautifully illustrated in Phaidon's newly released book Beauty. Determined to translate their findings into action, Sagmeister & Walsh show us how beauty can improve the world.

We asked the iconic designer to comb through Artspace's massive online collection of artworks to select those he thought best exemplified the highest standards of beauty. Here's what Stefan Sagmeister had to say about his collection below.

Most artists in the 20th and the 21st centuries do not care if their art is seen as beautiful or not. While I completely understand this stance from a historic perspective, Duchamp did need to end the 19th century with an anti-aesthetic statement by exhibiting his urinal, through after 100 years of endless repetition, this strategy of concept-over-form has lost its luster and has become, well, boring. 

When selecting these pieces, I focused solely on their formal qualities. I did not care about their concepts, paid no regard if they were questioning my preconceived notions about social notions, I only cared about their beauty.

-Stefan Sagmeister