Art once made a cult of beauty. Now we have a cult of ugliness instead. This has made art into an elaborate joke, one which by now has ceased to be funny.
There’s a real question as to what beauty is and why it’s important to us. Many pseudo-philosophers try to answer these questions and tell us they’re not really answerable. I draw on art and literature, and music in particular, because music is a wonderful example of something that’s in this world but not of this world. Great works of music speak to us from another realm even though they speak to us in ordinary physical sounds.
The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world.
Modern art was born from a desire to destroy kitsch.
When art becomes merely shock value, our sense of humanity is slowly degraded.
The art establishment has turned away from the old curriculum which puts beauty and craft at the top of the agenda.
Something of the child's pure delight in creation survives in every true work of art.
Art and music shine a light of meaning on ordinary life, and through them we are able to confront the things that trouble us and to find consolation and peace in their presence.
In the absence of organized religion, the only vehicle for redemption is art - not just the fragmentary arts of painting or music or poetry, but the kind of art that creates a whole world in itself and in that world we see ourselves reflected and see our religious life perfected.
Like adverts, today's works of art aim to create a brand, even if they have no product to sell except themselves.
Beauty is assailed from two directions - by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life.
Art has the ability to redeem life by finding beauty even in the worst aspect of things.
The two most potent post-war orthodoxies--socialist politics and modernist art--have at least one feature in common: they are bothforms of snobbery, the anti-bourgeois snobbery of people convinced of their right to dictate to the common man in the name of the common man.
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