Ars Pro Vita
It doesn't have to be like this
When was the last time you sat and appreciated Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus? How about playing Bach’s Cello Suites BWV 1007-1012 at full volume on that expensive sound system of yours? When was the last time you visited an art museum, or took in the symphony? I’m not a big fan of ballet, but I try to take one in at least every decade.
One of the (many) great crimes of our era has been the destruction of art. A recent discussion with our Founding Member Timmy on the subject of the glorious movie palaces of yore has served to remind me of the far reaching, systemcatic and ongoing destruction of beauty. Our culture has been on a century-long campaign to beat the world with an ugly stick, and it’s crushing our souls.
One of the most horrific victims of this drive to deformity is art and music programs in public elementary schools. In order to afford more useless “administrators,” schools cut “expendable” programs that taught theory and appreciation for aesthetics and harmony. Our current world is the result — declining civility, lack of manners, crass language, ubiquitous ugliness.
Art, a term that includes visual and performing disciplines, is a language with its own grammar and vocabulary. Both light and sound manipulation are composed of Elements and Principles. Concepts such as balance, rhythm, harmony, and motion apply universally to creations that are aesthetically pleasing across all media and cultural boundaries.
There seem to be two inflection points over the past two centuries. The first was the invention of photography, and the second was the Great Depression. There are distrinctive boundaries in aesthetics at those two moments in history.
From the Renaissance to the dawn of photography, painters strove for realism, relentlessly working to capture form, transluscence and texture by manipulating color, contrast and refraction. With the birth of photography and the ability to record light itself, painters and sculptors were freed to explore abstraction and perception, as with Monet’s impressionism or Seurat’s pointilism. Eventually, art devolved into juxtaposition and shock value, seeking to express and provoke, rather than uplift and enlighten.
The Great Depression introduced sparcity, angularity, functionality, and austerity into the arts. One of the best demostrations of this are the Esperson buildings in downtown Houston.
The Niels Esperson building, completed in 1927, features organic columns, arches, stonework, and exterior ornamentation. Adjascent to it is the Mellie Esperson building completed in 1941, a modified Art Deco design of angles and lines, almost entirely bereft of adornments, embellishments, or organic elements, a monument to form-follows-function.
Another fine example of the deterioration of art is the skyline of Prague, in Czechia. The old city is a glorious outdoor museum of Gothic, Romanesque and Baroque architecture, with ornate edifaces and statuary, and the mind-blowing Astronomical Clock. Surrounding the ancient inner city, like an invading army frozen in time, are the grotesque cement blocks of the Soviet era — grey, somber, and ugly in every sense of the word. Form follows function in all its hideousness.
Like the great cathedrals of Europe, art is supposed to draw our eyes, minds and spirits upward, with aspirations of perfection, beauty and harmony. It should transform its viewer and its media to defy themselves — paint glows though it has no intrinsic radiation, stone turns soft, supple and flowing like a liquid. Art is meant to metamorphose us, through alchemical processes, from base creatures into transcendent beings.
Instead, we are assaulted with “art” from urine, vomit and feces. Architecture crushes us, rather than defying gravity. Music pounds us into submission, rather than sychronizes us with the Pythagorian Spheres. Art should reflect our ideals, not our fears and our filth.
There can be no restoration of civilization, without taking back the arts from those who would destroy the human spirit. Art is both an outward expression of our internal lives, and a cue to turn attention to our inner beauty, harmony and rhythm. If the world we behold is beautiful, then the world we project is beautiful.
Our modern art is a symbol of the corruption that has invaded every aspect of life, and the ugliness that surrounds us promotes further corruption. Rot promotes further rot; decay infects everything it touches.
We humans are hardwired to seek beauty. We instinctively aspire to things greater than we are, but that instinct has been perverted to seek the mundane and be satisfied with the course and vile. We may never achieve perfection, but we will never advance without lofty goals.
Why not hang a print of Monet’s The Water Lillies at the foot of the bed, to be the first and last image of the day? Why not program the alarm with Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125? Why not fill the home with wood and stone and natural colors, with plants and natural light? Why not burn a little incense to sweeten the air? It may not all be feasible, but the idea is to make beauty and harmony a part of daily life, so that the outer world is reflected in the inner world.
Most importantly, expose children to beauty. Take regular trips to the art museum, play the great music of civilization in the home, encourage a musical instrument, make an art room and foster creativity. Not only will this create beautiful people, it will re-awaken our own inner muse, and slowly but surely it will change the world.
It took us 150 years to devolve to our current base state, but we can recover much faster, because it is our nature to seek beauty.
We just need to stop accepting ugliness as our default.
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The cultural enrichment of the day is another one of my Top 10s, Amadeus (1984). Not only am I a great fan of both Peter Schaffer and Milos Foreman, but the performances of nearly every actor are remarkable, and much of the exteriors were shot on location in Prague. And the score! One hears such sounds and what can one say but…Mozart.
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True Beauty within any artistic field brings one into the realm of the Angelic.
I so agree with your connecting this with children's educational deficits. The young mind is so open to beauty and creativity when it is encouraged by adults. There needs needs to be shape, order and function lifting them up to achieve greater things.
Music appreciation in school and lessons can be a challenge but sticking with it brings reward. Just like children's ability to learn other languages needs to be fostered and great value will follow all the days of their lives.
As grandparents, with 4 young grands, we see the laziness that now predominates raising of children. Young families are not able to say "no" to their own self-centered "felt needs" or to the exploring disobedient child. Resulting in simmering chaos, living spaces and lives filled with disorder and mess.
It takes effort to lift up, challenge self and our progeny to live lives of order and beauty. But what a benefit over time. Truly an enduring legacy.
So the best we can do, as grandparents, is generate order and appreciation for such a life when they are in or home. As well as pointing them to the positive pursuits. Which does not include TV, cellphones and or the internet.
Thanks for the uplifting article. You and Tucker Carlson must be in harmonic convergence as he has pointed to this observation along the lines of need for beauty. You have taken it to the next level. I hope he comes across this writing!