Why Beauty Matters... or does it?

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Remember, beauty is only skin deep.



But ugly goes all the way to the bone.

 

[Pinkymcfatfat]

Lucian Freud makes some amazing paintings of some very ugly people.

 

[Travis]

My point is this. Lack of physical attractiveness doesn't mean they won't be having and making babies.

Been a pretty damned big impediment for me so far.




As to art....isn't the idea of just trying to find beauty a bit shallow? Shouldn't art provoke thought instead of just being pretty?

 

[Morrigan]

Been a pretty damned big impediment for me so far.

Sorry, no. The impediment is without a doubt the constant self-loathing and utter lack of confidence, if your forum personality is anything to go by. But that's not the right thread for this so moving on...

As to art....isn't the idea of just trying to find beauty a bit shallow? Shouldn't art provoke thought instead of just being pretty?

Agreed. Or if not thought, at least emotions. Art is the expression of human emotions, which are not limited to the awe of pretty things.

 

[CWL]

Claiming that the purpose of art is to create beauty without defining "beauty" (flummery about "the divine" doesn't really do the trick) is pretty woo-wooesque to begin with. Thus one could argue that the very premise of Scruton's argument is flawed.

Again, I also believe that the purpose of art is to stir emotions - and emotions can be both good and bad.

 

[Morrigan]

^ Exactly. For example, would someone try to claim that these two artworks aren't "art" because they aren't "pretty"?

http://www.metal-archives.com/images/1/5/2/4/1524.jpg (Painting by H.R. Giger)
http://www.metal-archives.com/images/2/2/8/5/228522.jpg (Painting by Per Haagensen)

 

[Ikarus]

"Modernism" was (a lot of things, but mainly) a reaction to classical schools such as the Beaux Arts, which was basically manierism: This is what beauty is, and we need beauty to get in touch with the divine, so build like this and use these ornaments. It was the modus at that time, the standard. That was how architecture was made. And the modernists disagreed. Expressionism had shown already that copying natural examples was not the only way to getting in touch with emotions and a feeling of seeing something that evokes a feeling of "wow", or "divine" as Scruton calls it.

So the early modernists tried to find beauty in abstractions of reality, then even geometric arrangements; exciting our senses in new ways.

And right at the beginning, there were indeed the famous words of Louis Sullivan: "Form follows function". And that has been ripped out of it's context and abused to mean something along the lines of "it doesn't matter what it looks like, as long as it functions". And that is actually not what he meant and it's not what architects did (bar few exceptions). It was in fact part of a quote in a book, following observations in nature, which he loved. And you can see his love of nature in the many rich ornaments on the Carson building entrance, for example:

It is worth quoting the whole paragraph to start to get an idea of what he meant...
"It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic,
Of all things physical and metaphysical,
Of all things human and all things super-human,
Of all true manifestations of the head,
Of the heart, of the soul,
That the life is recognizable in its expression,
That form ever follows function. This is the law."

A tree doesn't have legs. It has leaves and grows upwards. It has roots which grow towards wherever the water is.
A shop has a big window: inevitable if you want to expose products to a public outside. A theatre a grand entrance: to invite people inside.

Form follows function is a big step away from "Form follows precedent". And that is why it is an important quote. To stand in front of a utilitarian building and claim that this quote is at the root of the perceived evil in design is malinformed. As already hinted in this thread, economic reasons probably have a lot more to do with the downfall of the area.

And economic reasons are also why there are these huge ugly apartment blocks in otherwise picturesque cities. In the 60s, the baby boom generation was starting to develop a huge demand for housing, a sector which was essentially still recovering from WW2.

Ornament was sacrificed. Because it was costly; Adolf Loos' (influential German architect) view that sculpting ornaments was a waste of labour, time and money because it didn't add anything to the act of living. Because it was perhaps unnecessary; "People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it." (Actually a quote by Rem Koolhaas in S,M,L,XL published 1995) Maybe it was also sacrificed because Roman ornament doesn't make sense in these times and people were uneasy with repeating the past without adding to it. Because art was going towards minimalism, which was fashionable. "Less is more"; a famous quote by Mies v.d. Rohe, who built beautiful things such as the Neue Nationalgalerie.


Another excersize in minimalism and transparency comes from the American Philip Johnson, with the Glass House.

They are beautiful by omission. Essence. And (certainly in the case of Rohe's works) of material and craftsmanship. "Tectonics".

That there are now massive amounts of abandoned, graffiti'd apartment towers littering our horizons in Europe, does not prove that it was a wrong step. It was needed at the time and perhaps no longer now.

Eventually, the Modernism project became a dogma, with ideas about divinity and perfection and the ideal, like the Beaux Art, and by doing so, it gave birth to Post Modernism, which is looking at yet other things, like social constructions. Trends govern what is good and fashionable. And we consume designed products without regard for their design. How come? Where did we get this alienation from? When we place a urinal in a museum, we look at it, while we usually don't. How can we miss such big parts of our reality from our conscious? Suddenly, the museum is outside, in our artificial world. There people and machines have created a world full of things, mundane, pretty, seductive or merely functional, forming a system that is as admirable as a patch of grass with a shoddy fence and some fat contorted trees.

Damien Hirst is also making us look at something that is mundane, and at the same time holy: Death. Scruton dismisses his art as just an idea without creativity necessary to bring about the artpieces. But he also says that death and love are divine moments, which art then tries to describe in countless poems and paintings. Bear in mind: Death and love are also ideas... What Hirst is showing is death. And how we have difficulty understanding it.

The above artwork is titled "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living". I happen to find it aesthetically pleasing as well. But it is a poem, too. When floating here, in the middle of the tank, it seems dormant.

This is art that explores both art and ourselves. But according to Scruton, we're losing touch with a mystical place called home. It seems rather clear that Scruton's home is an arbitrary idyllic place in the past. He preaches a theory of loss, without properly looking at all the beautiful things we've created between Beaux Arts and the year 2010. -Not beautiful in a traditional idealist sense, but beautiful in a multi-faceted, diffuse, blurry sense where we are invited to pick up messages and emotions beyond the obvious. And to believe that we are losing a sense of beauty in society... Projection?

 

[Fiona]

A caveat to start with: I am afraid I think Roger Scruton is a buffoon and I could not watch much of this because of that.

From what I did watch I did not see he had any evidence at all to support his somewhat sweeping statements. Scruton wants to live in a version of pastoral england, so far as I can tell and it is a version which never existed. For example he says that educated people would have said the point of art was beauty. I wonder what El Greco would have had to say? Or Bosch? or even Hogarth? I wonder what Whistler's response would have been? Ruskin certainly did not think Whistler was aiming for beauty.

It seems to me that artists have always disturbed. Many we now think of as great artists were condemned because they didn't do what the people of the time expected. Duh...in some ways that is what makes them artists. They see beauty in new ways and they show it to us: and it takes us time to see it.

I think the premise is partial at best.

It also occurs to me that we should compare like to like: old buildings/paintings/pieces of music/ books etc which have survived so that we know of them (if not directly then at least as a style) presumably did so because they had merit. I cannot see any reason to suppose that they were not special. Are we to believe that they represented most of what was around in their own time? Were there no trashy books or jerry built buildings? I doubt it.

A building which has stood for 200 or 500 years is not your average apartment block: but they must have had cheap places for people to live and work, and in our own time such places are not expected to stand for even a hundred years. I honestly doubt that the world was composed of picturesque cottages and half timbered town houses, though you would get that impression from a lot which remains.

But I visited the guggenheim in Bilbao last year: and that is a truly beautiful and moving building. I think it will stand for a long time and I would expect its claim to beauty will stand with it. And if we are to make the claim Scruton is making then that is what we must compare, in fairness. Much will not stand that test of time: but some will.

And to say we do not seek beauty or value it today seems to be arrant nonsense to me. Compare the homes of ordinary people in 1400 or 1900: what did they have of beauty? Of ornament? As much as they could is probably the answer: and that was not much at all. For much of our history all the colour and light of man-made beauty was in church: or perhaps in the homes of the gentry where you could only see it if you were of that class, or working as a servant there. We have far more beauty to experience and share than they ever had. I think of Morris:" have nothing in your home which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful". Well I think a lot of the working people in the past followed that maxim but sadly most of what they had was useful only. We have pictures and we have computers which can let us see wonderful things any time we want. Do you look at pictures or movies on tv or on the net? Read books? We are saturated in beauty in ways our ancestors could not even dream of: and do we look for novelty? sure: and some of it is merely fashion and some of it has lasting value. Perhaps we do not know which is which yet: but that is nothing new. What seems to be true in my world anyway is that people have things in their home which are there because they believe them to be beautiful: so where is he evidence we are not alive to it as much as people ever were: and I would argue more because we have more experience

 

[Travis]

Sorry, no. The impediment is without a doubt the constant self-loathing and utter lack of confidence, if your forum personality is anything to go by. But that's not the right thread for this so moving on...

Yeah but a truly "hot" person could have that and still have no problems. But that might be a discussion for another thread.

Agreed. Or if not thought, at least emotions. Art is the expression of human emotions, which are not limited to the awe of pretty things.

This whole "art is beauty" sounds like a ret-con meets "the good old days". They've found what they think is "beauty," saw it was from the past, and just constructed this entire flawed premise around it.

 

[GreyICE]

Damien Hirst is also making us look at something that is mundane, and at the same time holy: Death. Scruton dismisses his art as just an idea without creativity necessary to bring about the artpieces. But he also says that death and love are divine moments, which art then tries to describe in countless poems and paintings. Bear in mind: Death and love are also ideas... What Hirst is showing is death. And how we have difficulty understanding it.

Okay, I liked your post in general, but this entirely rubs me the wrong way. Damien Hirst is the worst hack to hit the art world and make a splash in quite a while. Possibly, in... ever.

He doesn't even do his own art. He has farms of artists, and he takes what he wants and displays it under his own name. God even knows what the actual artists get paid. A hell of a lot less than what that hack does.

When he turned his 'hand' to painting, the result was a horror show, terrible painting.

Hirst doesn't show crap in his works, except everything that is currently wrong with the art field. He's a sue-happy hack.

 

[HansMustermann]

For my own 2c, I'll mostly side with The Shrike.

While beauty is subjective, I'm thinking that most of modern art isn't even trying.

And while beauty is indeed subjective, workmanship isn't, and that's what old art tends to have. It shows a certain degree of skill with a brush or chisel or whatever. Most of modern art is IMHO stuff that a third grader could reproduce.

E.g., I've been at a gallery recently and, honstly, every single painting was some variation of... well, let me just describe how you can make your own. Take an A3 sheet of paper. You can go for black or brown paper for more artistic effect. Take your pick on landscape or portrait orientation. Take a broad brush and dip it in, say, blue paint. Swish it vigorously left and right, roughly in the center third of the sheet, as much as the paint will allow. We're not even aiming for uniform cover or anything.

Well, that was the basic pattern. Some had variations like, say, having a horizontal strip of fake veneer glued over the painted part. Some were actually 3 sheets of paper which had obviously been laid in the form a continuous strip, painted like that over all 3, then put into 3 different frames.

Or I remember from someone's private collection, stuff like a series of... dunno, I can't call them paintings. It was actually just sheets of plain old paper, folded out in various ways, then straightened back out and framed.

Or there was a painting which... well, do you know Tetris? It looked like a screenshot of a Tetris game. A grid with the squares filled with one of about 4 different colours. Actually 5, if you count the black too. What struck me as odd was that there was a full row that hadn't been removed like in Tetris, so maybe it was symbolic of something or another

Or in the "sculpture" category, stuff like a big sheet metal box. Really, that was it. A big effing rectangular box made of sheet iron.

I'm sorry, but it fails to convince me that there is any talent or skill involved. When I look at David, since that one was brought up already, I'm thoroughly impressed that a guy with a chisel could turn a block of stone into that. That's skill. When I look at the aforementioned sheet metal box, I just don't get the same feeling, you know what I mean? It's something that could be -- and probably was -- stamped in less than a minute by any workshop with a hydraulic press.

I'm not even requiring art to be a copy of nature. Salvador Dali is my favourite example. You couldn't mistake his paintings for a photo. But you can see that there was a certain amount of skill involved. You couldn't give a brush to a toddler and have him paint a copy of, say, The Persistence of Memory (the famous clocks melting painting.) But I'm pretty sure I could give my preschooler nephew a brush and have him make an outstanding copy of the aforementioned left-right paint smear from that modern art gallery.

 

[TheAnachronism]

I am about halfway through watching the documentary, and I tend to agree with a lot of Roger Scruton's opinions. However, "modern art"--and I use that word as a genre, and not just reflecting the period in which it's created--and classical art have two entirely different goals. Even Mr. Scruton would agree with this. After all, art pieces like "Oak Tree" are not meant to align with any aesthetic sense of beauty. There is something more cognitive involved.

So, what is the purpose of modern art? I don't know. But there is no reason to suppose that the aesthetics of modern and classical art cannot exist simultaneously in the world.

 

[TheAnachronism]

It also occurs to me that we should compare like to like: old buildings/paintings/pieces of music/ books etc which have survived so that we know of them (if not directly then at least as a style) presumably did so because they had merit. I cannot see any reason to suppose that they were not special. Are we to believe that they represented most of what was around in their own time? Were there no trashy books or jerry built buildings? I doubt it.

Completely agree with your whole post, but I had to comment on this portion particularly.

What I find ironic is that what early "modern" artists like Duchamp were trying to do in their bizarre installations was separate and object from its context, so that the object could be seen as itself--seen in a new light. It was a commentary on the sort of ideas that Mr. Scruton holds--the modern artists understood that part of what made something beautiful was its context. A 16th century farmhouse would have been completely utilitarian in its day, but now it becomes an object of beauty.

And trashy literature has been around since writing existed. Up until the early 19th century, novels were considered trash simply because they were not utilitarian--they existed to please, to entertain, to be beautiful, but they did nothing to further a man's education, so they were relegated to the lot of genteel women. At the time Jane Austen was writing, the prejudice against the novel was beginning to fade, and you can clearly see her defense of the novel in Northanger Abbey:

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

 

[Niggle]

Disclaimer: I couldn't watch the linked video; my computer is suffering from some kind of choking hiccups, and my DSL connection is apparently on the fritz today as well. I'm basing my commentary on what others have said about the video.

I was an art major for about half a semester in college, and I had to change majors because I just couldn't "get with the program" of piling junk together, smearing it with paint (or worse), and calling it art. Literally; the art professor advising me told me very plainly that if I couldn't bring myself to "do" modern art, I might as well not bother doing art at all.

Most of what I see labelled "art" today would be called vandalism outside the art gallery. Sure, the artist might be making a statement of some kind, but I can't bring myself to call it art. The stuff reads more like a pictorial representation of the Letters to the Editor of the local paper.

No, I don't insist that all art be beautiful, however you want to define that. I tend to prefer that "art" be esthetically pleasing, but that's only my opinion, and I realize that others may put a higher priority on other aspects of art. That's okay, too. Art doesn't necessarily have to provoke thought, though; it can just be enjoyed for its beauty (IMO, of course). But since everyone's idea of beauty is different, there can't possibly be an "objective" standard of beauty to establish, and anyone who tries (as it seems Scruton is) is just being arrogant.

I also would like to see some degree of skill displayed in the execution of the piece. Sticking a dead shark in a tank and putting a sign on it is not art, by my definition. See above comment about editorial opinions. Since it has to have a sign on it to explain what the artist intended, it fails even at that. Make your own representation of a shark, emphasizing the aspects of it that show what you mean to say about it as representing death. THAT would be art. Even if the representation of the shark were not supremely lifelike, the style of it could be used to great effect to get your point across.

/end useless personal opinion; please carry on

 

[Niggle]

Claiming that the purpose of art is to create beauty without defining "beauty" (flummery about "the divine" doesn't really do the trick) is pretty woo-wooesque to begin with. Thus one could argue that the very premise of Scruton's argument is flawed.

Again, I also believe that the purpose of art is to stir emotions - and emotions can be both good and bad.

I think A purpose of art CAN BE to create beauty, but it doesn't have to be.

Likewise, A purpose of art CAN BE to stir emotions (which, yes, can be both good and bad). I think, rather, that the purpose of art is to show what the artist has on his/her mind, and that the emotions are stirred (or not) as a consequence of how well or poorly the artist's idea is expressed and/or how the viewer feels about the subject matter.

I don't believe the divine is required for any part of that. However, if the artist is spiritual and wishes to express that in art, that can be another level of emotion that is stirred by the art. Devotional works can, indeed, be art (The Pieta comes to mind).

 

[Vortigern99]

The purposes of art as a monolithic entity (as opposed to mere craft) are multi-faceted. Here are a few which spring to mind:

To create beauty
To express the emotions and/or philosophies of the artist
To provoke the emotions of the viewer
To inspire controversy and debate
To critique society
To depict historical and/or religious events or figures
To be playful and absurd
To worship or honor one's deity

Thus I cannot agree with Scruton's premise that the goal of art begins and ends with beauty, with stirring the emotions or invoking the divine. Art is, or may be those things, but it is or can be more, and it is or can be less than those things as well.

In short, Scruton's definition of art seems limited to his own predilections.

Meanwhile, for every signed urinal, glass of water or stack of bricks presented as "art" in a contemporary gallery, there are thousands of works from the past of surpassing beauty and craftsmanship, which are viewed, daily and globally, in museums and galleries. Those works have not been removed from the modern definition of art, extracted from the continuum of art or eschewed by either the art-viewing public or the art world. They still exist and can be admired, studied and appreciated.

To hear Scruton bemoan the loss of beauty, one might think he's forgotten to check out the Renaissance paintings or the classical sculpture wing at whatever galleries or museums he's been attending.

Ugliness and absurdity, which have dominated some pockets of the contemporary art world since the early 20th century, are not the only styles or approaches available in modern art. There is much being produced out there that is beautiful, that does provoke awe and admiration of craft. If that stuff doesn't get as much press, or is not presented as prominently by gallery owners, it does not mean it doesn't exist.

I suspect Scruton is cherry-picking ugly and silly works just to support his position that beauty has left the art world. A visit to a contemporary art museum, and a perusal of the vast number of styles, techniques and approaches on display, will disabuse anyone of that notion.

 

[tuc0]

I remember seeing an interview with David Lynch where he showed off his collection of bizarre photos, paintings etc. He had a picture of a smiling deformed girl. The interviewer asked him if he thought she was beautiful.

"I think she's very beautiful," said Lynch.

"Why do you think that?"

"Because she's happy."

 

[HansMustermann]

The purposes of art as a monolithic entity (as opposed to mere craft) are multi-faceted. Here are a few which spring to mind:

To create beauty
To express the emotions and/or philosophies of the artist
To provoke the emotions of the viewer
To inspire controversy and debate
To critique society
To depict historical and/or religious events or figures
To be playful and absurd
To worship or honor one's deity

Well, yes, but some fail to really do any of those, except maybe via an "Emperor's New Clothes" effect.

E.g., that painting that resembled a Tetris game-over screenshot, well, what emotion or critique was I supposed to get from there? (I'll assume that the others don't apply, since I don't see how.) I suppose that as a gamer who knows Tetris, I could take it to represent futility (we all lose the game sooner or later) or the unfairness of life (since a full row hadn't been removed) or both. But I don't think that's what the artist had in mind as a target demographic, so I'm probably just bringing my own ideas to it. So what emotion or critique are to be conveyed by a grid painted in 5 colours?

That artist who filled a small gallery with _only_ sheets of paper painted with broad-brushed colour swishes and variations thereof. What's it supposed to critique? Art? The establishment? Paper? And was it _really_ necessary to make that point two dozen times? Or maybe, you know, Occam's Razor and all... maybe that's all he can paint.

Meanwhile, for every signed urinal, glass of water or stack of bricks presented as "art" in a contemporary gallery, there are thousands of works from the past of surpassing beauty and craftsmanship, which are viewed, daily and globally, in museums and galleries. Those works have not been removed from the modern definition of art, extracted from the continuum of art or eschewed by either the art-viewing public or the art world. They still exist and can be admired, studied and appreciated.

That doesn't mean one can express dismay at the present or at any other period.

I mean, by that token, when Petrarca coined the infamous "dark ages" meme, the writings of antiquity hadn't all been destroyed yet.

Plus, from another point of view, I don't have the Renaissance paintings shoved in my face, while some modern art _is_ pretty much shoved in everyone's face. When a city displays some twisted sheet metal as a statue in a major crossroad, or a company adorns its walls with reproductions of famous brush-swishes and its front lawn with a stamped sheet-metal monstrosity... well, you have pretty much no choice but to see them. Daily.

As someone already said, some of those would count as vandalism outside of a gallery, if they weren't paid for "works of art".

And then there's architecture, since he mentions that too. You can't ignore that as you navigate your way to work, since, well, that's how you know where you are and when to make that left turn. And there are whole styles nowadays -- brutalism being probably the biggest offender -- which ought to count as vandalism.

To hear Scruton bemoan the loss of beauty, one might think he's forgotten to check out the Renaissance paintings or the classical sculpture wing at whatever galleries or museums he's been attending.

See above.

Ugliness and absurdity, which have dominated some pockets of the contemporary art world since the early 20th century, are not the only styles or approaches available in modern art. There is much being produced out there that is beautiful, that does provoke awe and admiration of craft. If that stuff doesn't get as much press, or is not presented as prominently by gallery owners, it does not mean it doesn't exist.

And I think that's a reason to bemoan it by itself. It's not like people who can paint or sculpt like a Michelangelo have gone extinct, and I don't think anyone believes that. I don't think that's the point he's making, at least. He's saying that we're turning our collective back on beauty, not that it's absolutely gone extinct. It's not become completely extinct, but it's become _unfashionable_.

I think the best criticism is actually Han van Meegeren's work. The exact same painting style which passed for a genuine Vermeer, and got acclaimed to heck and back when signed "Vermeer", was brutally panned when it was signed with his own name and dated as a 20'th century work. And when it became known which of them are forgeries, again you see curators and critics in interviews going, basically, "yeah, well, it wouldn't have fooled _me_. You can see those are teh ugly stuff, unlike the real Vermeer paintings."

I couldn't possibly illustrate it better than _that_.

I suspect Scruton is cherry-picking ugly and silly works just to support his position that beauty has left the art world. A visit to a contemporary art museum, and a perusal of the vast number of styles, techniques and approaches on display, will disabuse anyone of that notion.

I think the point is that ugly and silly works have become the norm. The show has been stolen by the hacks who sign an urinal, and by... well, those who play a modernized version of the townsfolk in the Emperor's New Clothes story. The art world equivalent of the "audiophiles" who hear how much better something sounds with a wooden volume knob, just because all the other superior people hear it too.

 

[Ikarus]

Okay, I liked your post in general, but this entirely rubs me the wrong way. Damien Hirst is the worst hack to hit the art world and make a splash in quite a while. Possibly, in... ever.

He doesn't even do his own art. He has farms of artists, and he takes what he wants and displays it under his own name. God even knows what the actual artists get paid. A hell of a lot less than what that hack does.

When he turned his 'hand' to painting, the result was a horror show, terrible painting.

Hirst doesn't show crap in his works, except everything that is currently wrong with the art field. He's a sue-happy hack.

Apparently his tactic is worth a lot of money. I think that means it must have relevance.

Might be bad at making paintings (and maybe installations himself, too), but the guy's not crazy. Maybe he's a great bluff. Or just a superb marketer. Maybe his patrons and clients are crazy or easily seduced? But doesn't that say something about the way money flows, then?

Certainly the skull made of diamonds and platinum has something to do with "value"; market value and marketing: The skull itself doesn't seem to represent anything external to it and despite its shininess, it's too vulgar to be really pretty. Its price and cost are frequently mentioned, though... What does this mean? Also, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam had it on display for a while to "boost it's image".

Perhaps he is a crucial element in a dialectic: He makes ugly shocking things, which makes another artist burst out into a frenzy of creating soothing beautifulness.

Or maybe Hirst is part of a process that degenerates and kills art, so that it can retain meaning: Because art is perhaps a simulation which needs to be dismantled constantly to not become part of reality; If it isn't being killed, the difference between simulation and reality might fade away. If a simulation is a construction within reality which can be stopped and controlled, then if you don't, it becomes quite indiscernible from reality. If reality would be so great, we wouldn't need museums and artists at all. Nor tv. Nor most of the books and poems in the world. (Nor jails, but I'm going a little far here). Basically, what this argument comes down to, is that we need people to **** on art, in order to enjoy the whole body of art.

I can tell you, it was quite a shock for most art-lovers of the middle ages when Masaccio decided that maybe a painting could depict a 'real' person, in a 'real' space. He took a step away from "idealizing". He more or less took a dump on all the traditional lessons of beauty and holiness. Of "divinity", as a Scruton would've called it back then. His paintings were severe, architectural, unpleasant, sharpish, painful.

1: What we could call 'Divinity': Jesus on the cross by Giotto. (1305 A.D.)
2: Masaccio's 'Mathematical' painting: Also Jesus on the cross. (1425-27 A.D.)

1.

2.

I don't think Masaccio knew where he was taking the art world. He was only 28 when he died, and Masaccio was his nickname: 'the clumsy'. With his raw, unelevated, unholy style, with its sharp forms, I think he, at the time, caused many a discussion on what art should be. And there were probably many Scrutons arguing "Where is the beauty going?!" But he survived history and influenced many great artists after him. He was an artist. It was art.

As for Hirst: Worst hack to hit the art world. Maybe. Hard to tell. But there's something about his works that makes them end up in museums and renders em priceless. I'd like to know what that is if you don't need any artistic skill at all for it, because I wouldn't mind having a few million dollars on my bank account. How does he convince artists to work for him? That's neat.

 

[Vortigern99]

Well, yes, but some fail to really do any of those, except maybe via an "Emperor's New Clothes" effect.

I really admire your post and I agree with just about everything you've written below.

I do want to clarify, though, that my list of "art's purposes" -- "To create beauty;To express the emotions and/or philosophies of the artist"; etc. -- is not meant to be comprehensive. Art doubtless has other functions that I haven't listed, and each work of art may partake of one or more of these, including ones I haven't listed.

Your example of the "Tetris game-over screenshot" might be expressing the philosophies of the artist, whatever those might be, or it might be an exercise in the formal arrangement of imagery, which is a function I neglected to list. It might be an exercise in craft. It doesn't have to be a social critique or a religious contemplation to be art.

As to the rest of your post, I think you've expressed beautifully the flip side of the argument, the side I recognize as unfortunate but which I feel is fleeting, momentary, a flash in the proverbial pan. Yes, works of ugliness, brutalism, meaninglessness, and absurdity are all prevalent, pushed in our faces, held up as something meaningful or important by the art world, when they're really just ugly and thoughtless (IMO). But they're also fleeting, short-lived, destined for extinction, as people such as yourself and Scruton justly decry the trend.

It's an issue I encountered again and again in pursuit of my art degree from Texas State in the late 80s/early 90s. Here we were in Art History learning about beauty, craft, precision, the search for truth; while in Painting 1 we were taught to smear paint haphazardly on canvas, scribble some cryptic words across the surface, and call it "Abstract Expressionism". Sure, fine, it's art, whatever. It's crap, essentially (IMO). But that style is not here to stay. The trend towards beauty and precision will come back around again; its resurgence is evident if you look for it, even today.

E.g., that painting that resembled a Tetris game-over screenshot, well, what emotion or critique was I supposed to get from there? (I'll assume that the others don't apply, since I don't see how.) I suppose that as a gamer who knows Tetris, I could take it to represent futility (we all lose the game sooner or later) or the unfairness of life (since a full row hadn't been removed) or both. But I don't think that's what the artist had in mind as a target demographic, so I'm probably just bringing my own ideas to it. So what emotion or critique are to be conveyed by a grid painted in 5 colours?

That artist who filled a small gallery with _only_ sheets of paper painted with broad-brushed colour swishes and variations thereof. What's it supposed to critique? Art? The establishment? Paper? And was it _really_ necessary to make that point two dozen times? Or maybe, you know, Occam's Razor and all... maybe that's all he can paint.



That doesn't mean one can express dismay at the present or at any other period.

I mean, by that token, when Petrarca coined the infamous "dark ages" meme, the writings of antiquity hadn't all been destroyed yet.

Plus, from another point of view, I don't have the Renaissance paintings shoved in my face, while some modern art _is_ pretty much shoved in everyone's face. When a city displays some twisted sheet metal as a statue in a major crossroad, or a company adorns its walls with reproductions of famous brush-swishes and its front lawn with a stamped sheet-metal monstrosity... well, you have pretty much no choice but to see them. Daily.

As someone already said, some of those would count as vandalism outside of a gallery, if they weren't paid for "works of art".

And then there's architecture, since he mentions that too. You can't ignore that as you navigate your way to work, since, well, that's how you know where you are and when to make that left turn. And there are whole styles nowadays -- brutalism being probably the biggest offender -- which ought to count as vandalism.



See above.



And I think that's a reason to bemoan it by itself. It's not like people who can paint or sculpt like a Michelangelo have gone extinct, and I don't think anyone believes that. I don't think that's the point he's making, at least. He's saying that we're turning our collective back on beauty, not that it's absolutely gone extinct. It's not become completely extinct, but it's become _unfashionable_.

I think the best criticism is actually Han van Meegeren's work. The exact same painting style which passed for a genuine Vermeer, and got acclaimed to heck and back when signed "Vermeer", was brutally panned when it was signed with his own name and dated as a 20'th century work. And when it became known which of them are forgeries, again you see curators and critics in interviews going, basically, "yeah, well, it wouldn't have fooled _me_. You can see those are teh ugly stuff, unlike the real Vermeer paintings."

I couldn't possibly illustrate it better than _that_.



I think the point is that ugly and silly works have become the norm. The show has been stolen by the hacks who sign an urinal, and by... well, those who play a modernized version of the townsfolk in the Emperor's New Clothes story. The art world equivalent of the "audiophiles" who hear how much better something sounds with a wooden volume knob, just because all the other superior people hear it too.