I fear that our culture is dying and that the lack of beauty is a symptom. I live at the gateway to the Texas Hill country, and I witness the sacrilegious paving over of knee-high grass and live oaks daily. I have nothing against growth, but we don’t even consider beauty as part of the development. Why can’t strip malls be beautiful? This question will seem absurd on its face to most people, but why? At the very least we could replace natural beauty with man-made beauty so that the sum-total of beauty in the world would not have been reduced by too much.
It doesn’t stop there. Compare what passes for contemporary art. Does anyone want to seriously argue that contemporary art photography even considers beauty an esthetic end? Consider these two quotes:
“Man is the vicegerent of God on Earth…His work is to make the invisible reality of God visible. To make…to be an artist. That is what art is.”
Norma O. Brown
Probably as an art-world reaction to art of previous times, overly religious art (unless critical of religion or treating it purely as a social phenomenon) went completely out of fashion in the contemporary art scene and has sat on the fringe for the last 50 years. Likewise beauty. Beauty for the sake of beauty was also out of fashion for a long time. The currency of the contemporary art world is ideas, not imagery. The resulting art piece is how you communicate the ideas, rather than an end product in itself.
HP Blogger
Art to be Art must include some form of beauty or it is not Art; it is social, political, or psychological reportage if it does not. This is not a criticism of that type of work, but it is to call something what it is. The absence of beauty in our culture, even where one might expect it, is very troubling. Why do we not demand beauty in our lives? Why don’t we seek to preserve or increase it? Why don’t we seek higher forms of beauty? Why don’t we even believe in objective beauty? Is it because we asked God to leave, and honoring our free will he did?
No. 22: Is our culture dying?
I fear that our culture is dying and that the lack of beauty is a symptom. I live at the gateway to the Texas Hill country, and I witness the sacrilegious paving over of knee-high grass and live oaks daily. I have nothing against growth, but we don’t even consider beauty as part of the development. Why can’t strip malls be beautiful? This question will seem absurd on its face to most people, but why? At the very least we could replace natural beauty with man-made beauty so that the sum-total of beauty in the world would not have been reduced by too much.
It doesn’t stop there. Compare what passes for contemporary art. Does anyone want to seriously argue that contemporary art photography even considers beauty an esthetic end? Consider these two quotes:
“Man is the vicegerent of God on Earth…His work is to make the invisible reality of God visible. To make…to be an artist. That is what art is.”
Norma O. Brown
Probably as an art-world reaction to art of previous times, overly religious art (unless critical of religion or treating it purely as a social phenomenon) went completely out of fashion in the contemporary art scene and has sat on the fringe for the last 50 years. Likewise beauty. Beauty for the sake of beauty was also out of fashion for a long time. The currency of the contemporary art world is ideas, not imagery. The resulting art piece is how you communicate the ideas, rather than an end product in itself.
HP Blogger
Art to be Art must include some form of beauty or it is not Art; it is social, political, or psychological reportage if it does not. This is not a criticism of that type of work, but it is to call something what it is. The absence of beauty in our culture, even where one might expect it, is very troubling. Why do we not demand beauty in our lives? Why don’t we seek to preserve or increase it? Why don’t we seek higher forms of beauty? Why don’t we even believe in objective beauty? Is it because we asked God to leave, and honoring our free will he did?