Weekend TV – Why Beauty Matters
Hallelujiah! Finally, someone told it like it is over modern art; it’s mostly ugly and pointless. It’s a point of view I’ve been a proponent of for some time, and as philosopher Roger Scruton took a verbal scythe to all things that purport to be modernistic art, I sat there nodding along and doing a pretty good impression of parcel-shelf Churchill dog.
He – like me – views many things about this modern world as ugly; from architecture to the mode of speech many use nowadays to, of course, art. He propounded that art should be pretty to look at, not just something as ludicrous as a whistle hanging off a rail as we saw in the School of Saatchi.
I didn’t hang around long enough with that particular show to find out much else about it; seeing a woman talk about the phallic and erotic nature of the whistle-rail combo was enough for me. Harry Hill did a very funny p-take of it in his TV Burp over the weekend, and he, though less lofty than the serious and very studious Scruton, hit the nail on its ridiculous head with his parody of finding the ‘piece’ erotic.
But as I said, Scruton didn’t only reserve his criticism for all things arty – such as Tracey Emin’s ‘My Bed’ which, if it’s art, my kids rooms are positively masterpieces – and his wider moans included the “cult of ugliness” that we’re all apparently falling victim to. And again, I have to agree. His remarks about manners – among other etiquette issues – and the slaughter of the Queen’s English again had me giving myself whiplash in my enthusiastic concord.
And if I may put my ha’porth in, the trend for written English to be reduced to ‘text-speak’ drives me nuts. I h8 it, I rlly do. Its da pits. Even the act of writing it myself to demonstrate a point irritates me beyond reason…
However, I digress; Scruton looked mournfully upon a wind turbine, had a fervent discourse to give on post-war buildings and had a lovely over-the-garden-fence-like bitch about the state of play, beautywise, with a sculptor whose work is of actual things and not just tin cans strung together or whistles hanging off handrails.
Ultimately, what the show amounted to was a televised spleen-vent, but it was one I enjoyed because I agreed entirely with every word Scruton had to say. What did you think of the show and do you agree or disagree that ‘modern’ is, far too often, a synonym for ugly?
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This programme annoyed me. It annoyed me as even though I actually AGREE with the premise Scruton managed to get me disagreeing with nearly all of his points!
He also didn’t seem to bother answering the central argument he set out at the start – that beauty was objective. The blandness of the village he visited and the toe-curling castrato in the piece of music at the end proved to me that ‘beauty’ is indeed in the eye (or ear) of the beholder.
His examples of modern art and architecture were also incredibly contrived. A disused warehouse? Come on – as if disused warehouses have ever been any prettier. One look at Sydney harbour will show you that modern architecture can indeed be beautiful. The problem isn’t that these buildings are modern, the problem is that they’re dirt cheap.
It seemed all the more crass and pessimistic on the heels of ‘Where is Modern Art Now?’, which was a far more enlightening and inspiring look at the current resurgence of beauty and craft in modern British art.
Scruton’s film was a heartfelt reminder that there is beauty to be found in our modern world, even if the modern art heavy-weights would rather have us wallowing in their cynicism.
I don’t agree that all modern art is without beauty, nor do I think that modern architecture is inherently ugly. The idea that I found most appealing was that all of us are conceptual artists, with an acute, personal sense and appreciation for beauty. I’ll keep that, thanks Roger!