"We no longer have time for the good,
the beautiful,
or whether or not something is true.
We have only time for conversation." -- John Cage
No, do not go. Rest easy here awhile. This will take time, true, but the good, the true, and the beautiful always does. Here "Roger Scruton presents a provocative essay on the importance of beauty in the arts and in our lives, making a case for restoring it to the centre of our civilisation."
Part I: "What is shocking the first time round is boring and vacuous when repeated. This makes art into an elaborate joke but one that has ceased to be funny."
Part II: "The greatest crime against beauty the world has yet seen. The crime of modern architecture."
Part III: Nothing is more useful than the useless. People come here because it is the last bit of life around and the life comes from the building.... Our feeling for beauty is a spiritual and not a sensual emotion. Beauty is a visitor from another world. We can do nothing with it save contemplate its pure radiance. Anything else pollutes and desecrates it. Destroying its sacred aura."
Part IV: We need only the eyes to see it and the heart to feel. The most ordinary event can be made into beauty by a painter who can see into the heart of things.... Science explains things, but its account of the world is incomplete.... Beauty is discovered in the world by people.... Yes, beauty shines on us from ordinary things. But is it a feature of the world or a figment of the imagination?
Part V Sacred Moments: There has been, among today's artists, a desire to destroy and to desecrate.... This willful desecration is also a denial of love; a desire to remake the world as though love were not a part of it.... Conceptual art is entirely word-bound. It is a work of art is exhausted in its description.
Part VIThe ugliest of modern art and architecture does not show reality but takes revenge on it. The call of beauty is what gives our life meaning.... We must look for the path back from the desert, the place where the real and the ideal may still exist in harmony.... The sacred and the beautiful stand side by side. Two doors that open onto a single space, and in that space we find our home.
Posted by Vanderleun at December 27, 2009 5:43 PM
Sometimes, I wish I'd gone to college, so that I could come up with this sort of brilliance on a dime. Alas, I am but edurbated, which means that things still surprise me when I discover them, and I giggle a lot.
Posted by: Jewel at December 27, 2009 11:33 PMOne of my other "professors":
http://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Beauty-Listeners-Recovery-Modern/dp/0966059743/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261985846&sr=1-1
I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. It's "beauty" stupid.
In the Louvre there is a sculpture section that can take your breath away with its beauty.
I'm not moved, excited or disturbed by the "urinal." I'm bored. Like he said I'd be.
I bet most of us that come here, don't have to wait to be told when something's art. And when someone tells us a beaker of urine with a Crucifix is art we don't need to be told it isn't.
Posted by: mare at December 28, 2009 12:20 AMYes, Scruton was one of the best and most prolific conservative writers in Britain; then he got caught with his trousers off in bed with the Jap baccy barons, prostituting his art, and has had a period in the wilderness as a result.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/scruton-sacked-by-second-newspaper-for-tobacco-links-659541.html
Let's hope he is emerging from his hiatus. There is a dearth of non-leftist academics in the UK after two full generations of University Agit-prop and Scruton's philosophical perspectives are sorely needed. Shame when the murky mix of PR and propaganda deprives us of the work a distinctive thinker.
Posted by: Frank P at December 28, 2009 7:38 AMThat was one of the more worthwhile hours I've spent recently. Thanks, Gerard.
Mare is right, we don't need to be told that something is art, or that it's beautiful. We know. The Pieta is beautiful. "Piss Christ" isn't. And you don't have to be Catholic or even Christian to comprehend the difference.
The blowhard trying to justify the urinal as art and the airhead with the unmade bed are the types who dominate the "art scene" these days. But they're only fooling those who want to be fooled. The rest of us know they're full of it and always have been. Too bad we don't seem to have much of a voice these days.
Posted by: waltj at December 28, 2009 8:17 AMYes, mare! I know the sculpture gallery in the Louvre you mentioned. My visual memory is weak, but I remember that space and in particular a male figure in repose there. It brought me one of those transcendent moments both at the time of my visit and just now with the memory of it.
What is it about modern man - westerners in particular - that he rarely asks himself, "what good does it serve?" Perhaps because he knows the answer to "what god do I serve" is Ego, but is simultaneously too vain and self-loathing to admit it?
Posted by: Western Chauvinist at December 28, 2009 8:40 AMAnd those that think this shocking crap is "art," think that Obama is wonderful... another emperor with no clothes.... good grief will we ever be rid of these ingrates?
Posted by: BG at December 28, 2009 9:27 AMRoger Scruton has brains and soul.
He also has balls.
When he was a prof at Boston U, he was attacked continually by the left---which was most of the social sciences, and of course the dept of anguish (english)
http://www.educationation.org/anguish.htm
Prof Scruton treated these attacks with the respect they deserved.
He ignored them.
His replies to left-wing rants and proposals in "Liberal Arts" faculty meetings were models of bloodless knifing. When he was through, nothing remained but their clothes and a few greasy chunks.
Posted by: Lance e Boyle at December 28, 2009 10:01 AMIf there is one thing I note about Professor Scruton throughout the videos, and it probably is the chief characteristic which stands out, perhaps the watermark of his life, it is this:
profound sorrow. Sublimely beautiful deep sorrow.
great!
the answer/antidote to jeffers' misanthropy and its descendents.
bestest of new years to you all:
may your joys be amplified and may your sorrows be consoled.
Posted by: reliapundit at December 29, 2009 10:18 PMAlong with several of your essays, this is the best thing you've posted on this site. I watched the series three times.
Posted by: Quent at December 30, 2009 9:38 PMThere has been, I think, a resurgeance in beauty in architecture.
The Michigan Hall of Justice.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=michigan+hall+of+justice&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=qTk-S6WCLIGQlAfwlsGSBw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CB8QsAQwAw
The Van Buren Twp. (Mich.) Fire Department.
http://www.vanburen-mi.org/Department/Fire.html
Posted by: Mikey NTH at January 1, 2010 10:10 AM35th district court, Plymouth, Michigan.
http://www.cdpaarchitects.com/jud_plymouth.html
Posted by: Mikey NTH at January 1, 2010 10:13 AMNice pointers. Things are looking up in some parts of Michigan.
Posted by: vanderleun at January 1, 2010 10:24 AM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.
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