Roger Scruton has always been a Maggie's intellectual hero. Beauty and Desecration - We must rescue art from the modern intoxication with ugliness. One quote:
Wherever beauty lies in wait for us, there arises a desire to preempt
its appeal, to smother it with scenes of destruction. Hence the many
works of contemporary art that rely on shocks administered to our
failing faith in human nature—such as the crucifix pickled in urine by
Andres Serrano. Hence the scenes of cannibalism, dismemberment, and
meaningless pain with which contemporary cinema abounds, with directors
like Quentin Tarantino having little else in their emotional
repertories. Hence the invasion of pop music by rap, whose words and
rhythms speak of unremitting violence, and which rejects melody,
harmony, and every other device that might make a bridge to the old
world of song. And hence the music video, which has become an art form
in itself and is often devoted to concentrating into the time span of a
pop song some startling new account of moral chaos. Those phenomena record a habit of desecration in which life is not
celebrated by art but targeted by it. Artists can now make their
reputations by constructing an original frame in which to display the
human face and throw dung at it.
When I was an adolescent, we thought that "beauty" was old-fashioned, for the old fogies, and that rough and ugly was hip. Little did I know then about how beauty can be so elusive, temporary, and precious.
I suppose this is a companion piece to my post last week, Beauty and Transgressive Ugliness. From a review of John Armstrong's important new book, In Search of Civilization - Remaking a Tarnished Idea: Greeks’ and theologians’ dour double di
Tracked: May 18, 13:37