BEAUTY by Scott Burdick | "If you don't feel anything when looking at a painting it is a failure as a work of art."

Thanks for that.

Posted by chuck at July 25, 2014 12:19 PM

Ordinary people have known this all along.

Posted by indyjonesouthere at July 25, 2014 12:32 PM

I hope everyone will take the time to watch this. It's beautiful and sad, and hopeful, too.

Posted by Deborah HH at July 25, 2014 2:54 PM

I wonder how much the camera can be blamed for the rise of abstract?

Posted by David McKinnis at July 25, 2014 4:39 PM

I was watching it to find a rational thread to refute, but then I fell asleep.

Posted by Casey Klahn at July 25, 2014 4:46 PM

Art is the first of a continuum that includes religion, science, history, philosophy. These enterprises are stages in human development; one leads to the next. As such art is the putting of the question to the world, "who am I?" It doesn't expect an answer. That comes with its successors. It doesn't posit truth in an absolute other like religion. It is the mind first awake, bewildered, wondering, unknowing. It discovers nothing. It is a deaf, dumb, blind grasping at the real. Furthermore, no art is beauty itself, but merely participates in beauty, positively or negatively. The "art" the author disparages obviously is a starting over of the process. It asks clumsily, "who am I"? We have forgotten who we were, if we ever knew. Our so called art belies the fact that we are, intellectually, worse off than the first cave man artists.

Examine the Speculum Mentis (map of knowledge)*. Art is pure imagination, in a sense, it is a form of play, a beginning, and a child will play with the stuff in his diaper, which is what is obviously going on in the art "world".

*R.G. Collingwood

Posted by John Hinds at July 25, 2014 4:56 PM

This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. While some are able to see through the psychobabble that accompanies so much of what is called 'modern art' or abstract 'art' others seem content to sleep through the subject and simply accept the nonsense that is fed to them.

Posted by D S Craft at July 25, 2014 5:52 PM

This same iconoclasm of ugliness has had its long march through the Church as well, and only now do people dare hope that the cult has run its course. The old guard is dying, and there is a rebellion going on against it in the rank and file.
The ugliness of worship music and architecture is grinding down and beauty is the standard being raised against that Hideous Strength. Behold what the enemy of truth hath wrought:
http://www.realclearreligion.org/lists/the_ugliest_churches_in_the_world/solid_rock_church.html?state=stop

Posted by Jewel at July 25, 2014 9:40 PM

This was wonderful.

Posted by Brett_McS at July 26, 2014 12:59 AM

I appreciated this. I have watched young artist's attempts to be edgy, and they end up being grotesque or just weird. Yet, the ones I've met and known come from pretty benign backgrounds. If you don't create what you know, where you are coming from, it ends up a false portrayal. Most artists are not weirdos with mental issues, and dressing and acting strange doesn't make you an artist or deep. The suthor talks about beauty and truth.

Thanks for putting this up.

Posted by Becky at July 26, 2014 7:37 AM

Have a care, my friend. With beauty comes truth, and there are powerful forces aligned against both, and those - you, by this post - who would promote them as worthy.

Posted by Ed McCabe at July 26, 2014 9:40 AM

Thank you! That was educational...and beautiful.

Posted by RigelDog at July 26, 2014 11:09 AM

If the "meaning" of a painting or other genre of visual art has to be "explained" by someone with an esoteric degree, then it's garbage. The public instinctively understands this. That's why I've stood in long lines to see the Mona Lisa, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and the Monet house, while those lines were noticeably lacking at almost any modern art exhibit I've heard of. People know they're being lied to, but most can't bring themselves to admit it. For now.

Posted by waltj at July 26, 2014 11:13 AM

Music also.

Posted by Larry Geiger at July 26, 2014 11:44 AM

I really like how this presentation used classically beautiful music to back up the case for visually beautiful art. After viewing this it stuns me that modern art has carried the day for so long. This is like Helen Thomas winning a beauty contest over Audrey Hepburn (do I give away my age?).

Posted by D S Craft at July 26, 2014 2:36 PM

If it requires an explanation it's not art.

Posted by ghostsniper at July 26, 2014 8:02 PM

there is only one way to describe this; painterly. My professors used the word, other painters did too. It carries it's own vocabulary.

Posted by Vermont Woodchuck at July 27, 2014 8:42 AM

Viewing these beautiful labors of love fills me with tremendous admiration and gratitude for the artists. Their radiance is stunning and inspiring -- inspiring a sense of greater kindness.

Added to all the above is the sense of awe felt when looking at a living infant, toddler, ... you know, that magnetic radiance that makes you want to laugh and cry and dance, and sigh, and hug.

Posted by Stug Guts at July 27, 2014 11:04 AM

See here:
http://www.floridahighwaymenpaintings.com/

Posted by Larry Geiger at July 28, 2014 7:57 AM