Roger Scruton: ‘Our World Has
Turned Its Back on Beauty . . .’

Posted on | January 3, 2010 | 31 Comments

“. . . and because of that, we find ourselves surrounded by ugliness and alienation.” On our inaugural Rule 5 Sunday of the New Year at the new site, please watch this video and then we’ll talk more about beauty:

That’s one of a six-part series of YouTube videos collected in one post by blogger Ray Sawhill (hat-tip: In Mala Fide). I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Roger Scruton, who is a contributor to The American Spectator. Scruton’s point about the ugliness of modernism reiterates points made by Fred Ross in a 2002 feature I wrote about the revival of traditional aesthetics in art:

Nothing exemplifies art’s turn toward tradition as much as the revived interest in William-Adolphe Bouguereau, the 19th-century master of the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris. . . .
Among Bouguereau’s most enthusiastic admirers is collector and critic Fred Ross.
Bouguereau is “the greatest painter in the history of the world,” says Mr. Ross, a New Jersey businessman who has founded the Art Renewal Center, dedicated to encouraging artists in what he calls the “humanist” tradition. . . .
“We have put our artistic culture into the hands of philistines and I’m just trying to find a jawbone of an ass,” says Mr. Ross, referring to the Israelite hero Samson’s feat against the original Philistines.
Though most people prefer traditional art, the opinions of critics prop up the reputation of modern art, he says.
“Real people will reject modernism every time, if they’re given a context that justifies the feelings they’ve always had,” Mr. Ross says, likening modern art’s critical hegemony to “the emperor’s new clothes.” . . .

You can read the whole thing, but if you want to see more Bouguereau beauty what better occasion than Rule 5 Sunday? By clicking on any of the details below, you can see a large-size image of the entire painting.

Speaking of beauty, I’m leaving early Tuesday morning for beautiful Pasadena, where I will report about the beautiful University of Alabama cheerleaders and fans who will be cheering the Crimson Tide to a beautiful victory in the beautiful Rose Bowl. My beautiful wife and six beautiful children are worried about the ugly financial realities, so it would be a beautiful thing if our beautiful readers would hit the beautiful tip jar.

Category: Art, Culture, Rule 5

Comments

31 Responses to “Roger Scruton: ‘Our World Has
Turned Its Back on Beauty . . .’”

vanderleun
January 3rd, 2010 @ 9:34 pm

Ahem…. not to put to fine a point on it, but the assemblage of the six parts on beauty into a single post suitable for copying the source from was done by yours truly on the 27th of December.

Not saying that Scruton did that. He could have done the same thing that I did three days later.

But it would have saved him a bit of work.

DECEMBER 27, 2009
Something Wonderful: Why Beauty is Important

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/grace_notes/why_beauty_is_important.php
vanderleun
January 3rd, 2010 @ 4:34 pm

Ahem…. not to put to fine a point on it, but the assemblage of the six parts on beauty into a single post suitable for copying the source from was done by yours truly on the 27th of December.

Not saying that Scruton did that. He could have done the same thing that I did three days later.

But it would have saved him a bit of work.

DECEMBER 27, 2009
Something Wonderful: Why Beauty is Important

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/grace_notes/why_beauty_is_important.php
young4eyes
January 3rd, 2010 @ 9:56 pm

Aw man, nothing tickles me more than cultural know-nothings talking about the arts. So go figure that Conservatives equate aesthetic superiority with art made over a hundred years ago. Goes hand in hand with other antiquated Conservative ideas…
“Bouguereau is “the greatest painter in the history of the world,” says Mr. Ross”
Well he would think that. Bouguereau painted sappy sentimental fantasies that appeals to the generic sensibiites of the un-imaginative.They are like 19th century versions of Disney princess fluff. Bouguereau painted for an elitist clientele consisting of boring business men, government beaurocrats and French aristocracy. Ironic much?
In proclaiming him he “best painter in history” Mr.Ross glosses over the marvels of Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo( for the Cons in the audience, I am not talking Mutant Ninja Turtles here….).
Guys, why bother living in the past? Your knee-jerk dismissals of anything modern are so jejune that it renders your whole world view, well, irrelevant…
young4eyes
January 3rd, 2010 @ 4:56 pm

Aw man, nothing tickles me more than cultural know-nothings talking about the arts. So go figure that Conservatives equate aesthetic superiority with art made over a hundred years ago. Goes hand in hand with other antiquated Conservative ideas…
“Bouguereau is “the greatest painter in the history of the world,” says Mr. Ross”
Well he would think that. Bouguereau painted sappy sentimental fantasies that appeals to the generic sensibiites of the un-imaginative.They are like 19th century versions of Disney princess fluff. Bouguereau painted for an elitist clientele consisting of boring business men, government beaurocrats and French aristocracy. Ironic much?
In proclaiming him he “best painter in history” Mr.Ross glosses over the marvels of Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo( for the Cons in the audience, I am not talking Mutant Ninja Turtles here….).
Guys, why bother living in the past? Your knee-jerk dismissals of anything modern are so jejune that it renders your whole world view, well, irrelevant…
Immanuel Goldstein
January 3rd, 2010 @ 10:09 pm

The contention that graffiti is art has been one of the worst effects on the livability of urban society over the last 50 years. It sends the message that private property can be degraded and destroyed, that nihilism is something to be promoted, that incomprehensible gang symbols and messages are to be tolerated, and that the public space can be held hostage to the lowest segments of society, the petty criminal and delinquent. It’s obscene, like peeing in full view of the public. We used to use the pillory and the stocks for people who did things like this. Maybe we should revive the custom.
Immanuel Goldstein
January 3rd, 2010 @ 5:09 pm

The contention that graffiti is art has been one of the worst effects on the livability of urban society over the last 50 years. It sends the message that private property can be degraded and destroyed, that nihilism is something to be promoted, that incomprehensible gang symbols and messages are to be tolerated, and that the public space can be held hostage to the lowest segments of society, the petty criminal and delinquent. It’s obscene, like peeing in full view of the public. We used to use the pillory and the stocks for people who did things like this. Maybe we should revive the custom.
smitty
January 3rd, 2010 @ 10:11 pm

Ah, Y4E: we thank you for condescending to follow us to the new digs.
smitty
January 3rd, 2010 @ 5:11 pm

Ah, Y4E: we thank you for condescending to follow us to the new digs.
My blog is better than your blog | In Mala Fide
January 3rd, 2010 @ 6:05 pm

[…] of which, here’s a post in which Stacy takes on the Roger Scruton videos that I linked earlier today. At In Mala Fide, the […]
dad29
January 4th, 2010 @ 1:58 am

Umnnnhhhh…..that Frenchman (urinal-master) said a mouthful when he said that ‘the end of beauty [is] connected with the end of religion.’

(Around 8:05FFD on the Utube you posted above.)

He’s right, of course.
dad29
January 3rd, 2010 @ 8:58 pm

Umnnnhhhh…..that Frenchman (urinal-master) said a mouthful when he said that ‘the end of beauty [is] connected with the end of religion.’

(Around 8:05FFD on the Utube you posted above.)

He’s right, of course.
Kevin J. Jones
January 4th, 2010 @ 8:10 am

“They are like 19th century versions of Disney princess fluff. Bouguereau painted for an elitist clientele consisting of boring business men, government beaurocrats and French aristocracy. Ironic much?”

If it was princess fluff, wouldn’t the elitists have looked down on it?

If only our elites had their taste!
Kevin J. Jones
January 4th, 2010 @ 3:10 am

“They are like 19th century versions of Disney princess fluff. Bouguereau painted for an elitist clientele consisting of boring business men, government beaurocrats and French aristocracy. Ironic much?”

If it was princess fluff, wouldn’t the elitists have looked down on it?

If only our elites had their taste!
Wombat-socho
January 4th, 2010 @ 1:53 pm

No better time to remind Stacy and others that while the modern art community has turned its back on beauty, commercial artists -especially in the fantasy & science fiction genres- never did. I refer particularly to the work of Frank Frazetta, Kelly Freas, and Boris Vallejo.
Wombat-socho
January 4th, 2010 @ 8:53 am

No better time to remind Stacy and others that while the modern art community has turned its back on beauty, commercial artists -especially in the fantasy & science fiction genres- never did. I refer particularly to the work of Frank Frazetta, Kelly Freas, and Boris Vallejo.
CGHill
January 4th, 2010 @ 5:36 pm

“If only our elites had their taste!”

If only our elites had any taste.
CGHill
January 4th, 2010 @ 12:36 pm

“If only our elites had their taste!”

If only our elites had any taste.
HalifaxCB
January 4th, 2010 @ 10:45 pm

What Bougeureauites always fail to notice is that their Academics were the progenitors of the disaster of modern art. The great art of the West has been about the discovery (or invention) of the human, and the expression of the same. The Academics retreated from the challenging ideas of the 19th century – particularly the rise of the individual and its handmaiden, science – and established a content free protected zone where style took absolute precedence over substance. But once you take meaning away from art – that is, once art no longer has anything of value to say about the world – who really cares about enforcing the other parts, like drawing? All that’s left is an incestuous heap of social climbing.

As for beauty – I’ll take Manet’s Olympia, a Klimt Kiss (or some of his drawings) or even Courbet’s Origin of the World (since this is a family friendly site, you’ll have to do your own googling…) anyday over the antiseptic tackiness of Gerome or Bougeureau fantasy (no matter how well drawn…)
HalifaxCB
January 4th, 2010 @ 5:45 pm

What Bougeureauites always fail to notice is that their Academics were the progenitors of the disaster of modern art. The great art of the West has been about the discovery (or invention) of the human, and the expression of the same. The Academics retreated from the challenging ideas of the 19th century – particularly the rise of the individual and its handmaiden, science – and established a content free protected zone where style took absolute precedence over substance. But once you take meaning away from art – that is, once art no longer has anything of value to say about the world – who really cares about enforcing the other parts, like drawing? All that’s left is an incestuous heap of social climbing.

As for beauty – I’ll take Manet’s Olympia, a Klimt Kiss (or some of his drawings) or even Courbet’s Origin of the World (since this is a family friendly site, you’ll have to do your own googling…) anyday over the antiseptic tackiness of Gerome or Bougeureau fantasy (no matter how well drawn…)
Philip Primeau
January 5th, 2010 @ 12:03 am

“The ugliness of modernism” — Well, that’s a terribly broad statement, Stacy, considering “modernism” includes everyone from the Expressionists to the Colorists to the Surrealists. It also dismisses a number of artists who have produced wonderful commentaries on and tributes to American land and life, like Thomas Hart Benton and Georgia O’Keefe.

Do you make statements like that simply to upset artsy-fartsy “elitists,” or do you really find no beauty, no redeeming qualities in the paintings of Cezanne, Manet, Dali, Sisley, Monet, and dozens of others artists whose work has charmed and thrilled generations across the world? Hell, I find it hard to believe that you aren’t occasionally smitten by more “transgressive” artists, like Kandinsky and Mondrian.

I agree there’s a lot of very boring and heartless and even grotesque modern — especially contemporary — art, but then again there’s a lot of frankly boring and saccharine “traditional” art. I mean, how many cherubic dairy lasses can you take before growing numb in the head?

Have fun with the beautiful family.

PHIL
Philip Primeau
January 4th, 2010 @ 7:03 pm

“The ugliness of modernism” — Well, that’s a terribly broad statement, Stacy, considering “modernism” includes everyone from the Expressionists to the Colorists to the Surrealists. It also dismisses a number of artists who have produced wonderful commentaries on and tributes to American land and life, like Thomas Hart Benton and Georgia O’Keefe.

Do you make statements like that simply to upset artsy-fartsy “elitists,” or do you really find no beauty, no redeeming qualities in the paintings of Cezanne, Manet, Dali, Sisley, Monet, and dozens of others artists whose work has charmed and thrilled generations across the world? Hell, I find it hard to believe that you aren’t occasionally smitten by more “transgressive” artists, like Kandinsky and Mondrian.

I agree there’s a lot of very boring and heartless and even grotesque modern — especially contemporary — art, but then again there’s a lot of frankly boring and saccharine “traditional” art. I mean, how many cherubic dairy lasses can you take before growing numb in the head?

Have fun with the beautiful family.

PHIL
Ira
January 5th, 2010 @ 1:18 am

beautiful & sexy, but closer to photography than art. I’ll fish around Google when the boss isn’t looking and take a more detailed look, but I think I’d rather stay with Ingres. (Or as an old pun puts it, I speak more in Seurat than Ingres…)
And the fall of art began when the formula changed from “I am an artist because my works have the merits of art” to “It’s art because I’m an artist and I say it’s art!” To a great extent, James Joyce and Arnold Schoenberg saved literature and music by setting high standards (Schoenberg was an exceptionally demanding teacher – you knew what you were doing or you didn’t – and Joyce’s “Ulysses” is an extraordinary work) but much of painting, poetry, etc has become the “I am an artist and…” standard rubbish. Or as John Simon once said (I read this years ago and might be misquoting him) “I don’t care what Jackson Pollack was thinking when he was throwing his stupid paints on his stupid canvas…”
Art as Rubbish, Rubbish as Art… nuh-uh…
Ira
January 4th, 2010 @ 8:18 pm

beautiful & sexy, but closer to photography than art. I’ll fish around Google when the boss isn’t looking and take a more detailed look, but I think I’d rather stay with Ingres. (Or as an old pun puts it, I speak more in Seurat than Ingres…)
And the fall of art began when the formula changed from “I am an artist because my works have the merits of art” to “It’s art because I’m an artist and I say it’s art!” To a great extent, James Joyce and Arnold Schoenberg saved literature and music by setting high standards (Schoenberg was an exceptionally demanding teacher – you knew what you were doing or you didn’t – and Joyce’s “Ulysses” is an extraordinary work) but much of painting, poetry, etc has become the “I am an artist and…” standard rubbish. Or as John Simon once said (I read this years ago and might be misquoting him) “I don’t care what Jackson Pollack was thinking when he was throwing his stupid paints on his stupid canvas…”
Art as Rubbish, Rubbish as Art… nuh-uh…
william downey
January 7th, 2010 @ 3:06 am

young4eyes, you write:
So go figure that Conservatives equate aesthetic superiority with art made over a hundred years ago. Goes hand in hand with other antiquated Conservative ideas…

So, instead of defending your implication that art made over 100 years ago is NOT superior to contemporary art (an idea i’m sure you can’t defend) you change the subject to how much better renaisaince art is than Bouguereau’s work, something very easy to defend. Well, Michaelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael’s art is much older than Bouguereau’s, so i’m afraid you have it a backwards. Just because one man thinks that Bouguereau is the “best” doesn’t say anything about “conservatives” does it? I’ve noticed how fashionable it is to call people “conservatives” or “liberals” whenever there is nothing more to the point to say.
william downey
January 6th, 2010 @ 10:06 pm

young4eyes, you write:
So go figure that Conservatives equate aesthetic superiority with art made over a hundred years ago. Goes hand in hand with other antiquated Conservative ideas…

So, instead of defending your implication that art made over 100 years ago is NOT superior to contemporary art (an idea i’m sure you can’t defend) you change the subject to how much better renaisaince art is than Bouguereau’s work, something very easy to defend. Well, Michaelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael’s art is much older than Bouguereau’s, so i’m afraid you have it a backwards. Just because one man thinks that Bouguereau is the “best” doesn’t say anything about “conservatives” does it? I’ve noticed how fashionable it is to call people “conservatives” or “liberals” whenever there is nothing more to the point to say.
eva kilgore
January 7th, 2010 @ 5:13 am

Halifax…a suggestion for the new year.
Find a good eye doctor, make an appointment…
go. Put on the glasses, then rethink. Wait!
Make an appointment with a shrink, too. Go
to it.
eva kilgore
January 7th, 2010 @ 12:13 am

Halifax…a suggestion for the new year.
Find a good eye doctor, make an appointment…
go. Put on the glasses, then rethink. Wait!
Make an appointment with a shrink, too. Go
to it.
Eugene
January 8th, 2010 @ 3:31 am

We should note here that Mr. Ross and the ARC do not in fact reject anything and everything that wasn’t done in the late 19th century French academies. If you visit the web museum at http://www.artrenewal.com you’ll see that they do in fact include artists like Van Gogh, Klimt, Monet, Dali etc. in their gallery of great artists.

I find myself to some extent in agreement with their philosophy. But I would agree that this virtual obsession with Bouguereau is not doing them much good. I find HalifaxCB’s contention that it was in fact the French academics that were the real progenitors of the meaninglessness of modernism quite interesting! Not really sure how one could prove or disprove that. It is true that their art to some extent lived in a cocoon of irrelevance to their own society, or at least to what was beginning to happen in it. On the other hand, I am not at all convinced that art necessarily has to be “relevant,” whatever exactly that means. Relevant to whom? The buyers? They have always been the rich, and therefore the slightly boringly bourgeois and conventional.

While I tend to agree with much of the ARC’s philosophy, I find their application of it overly restricted and grossly internally inconsistent. I have heard it said that the ARC’s only real policy of what constitutes good art is “whatever Fred (Ross) likes,” and I sometimes wonder whether there isn’t some truth in that caustic statement. How can they justify putting Van Gogh on their list of approved masters, but then leave out all the other post-impressionists, and declare Cezanne to be uniquely bad? If Goya was great, then why isn’t Lucian Freud or Otto Dix? If Van Gogh was acceptable, then what’s wrong with Modersohn-Becker? If Klimt is a great artist, why isn’t Munch or Schiele? If they are willing to list early works by Corinth but conveniently ignore his later, much more modernist work, why not extend the same courtesy to other artists who also started out in traditional manner and then went modern? They might have meaningful reasons, but I have yet to see any.

The history of great art is replete with images of ugliness or horror, but apparently such images are only good if they date back to before 1900! It is possible to produce great and indeed even very beautiful art from ugly subject matter, and a great many modern painters have done so, yet they are virtually entirely ignored by the ARC.

I find all of this inconsistency a pity, because as I said, I actually agree with much of what they say. I am also very uncomfortable with the fact that one has to pay them to be listed as living artist or living master; surely this is going to leave them wide open to accusations of corruption, whether or not those accusations are justified. It also inevitably means that many contemporary artists which they surely WOULD consider great now aren’t listed there simply because they haven’t paid for it!

I notice that they now have a link to Fox News on their site. Is there some hidden political agenda? It sure sometimes looks that way. (Could this perhaps be why they don’t want Diego Rivera in their hallowed gallery of great artists?) They should perhaps realize that the politics they are apparently supporting will become ever less relevant in the coming century. On this point I have to agree with what Young4Eyes wrote:
“Your knee-jerk dismissals of anything modern are so jejune that it renders your whole world view, well, irrelevant…”

It seems to me they are almost deliberately alienating many people who might otherwise have been fervent supporters, and this is going to cost them in the long run.
Eugene
January 7th, 2010 @ 10:31 pm

We should note here that Mr. Ross and the ARC do not in fact reject anything and everything that wasn’t done in the late 19th century French academies. If you visit the web museum at http://www.artrenewal.com you’ll see that they do in fact include artists like Van Gogh, Klimt, Monet, Dali etc. in their gallery of great artists.

I find myself to some extent in agreement with their philosophy. But I would agree that this virtual obsession with Bouguereau is not doing them much good. I find HalifaxCB’s contention that it was in fact the French academics that were the real progenitors of the meaninglessness of modernism quite interesting! Not really sure how one could prove or disprove that. It is true that their art to some extent lived in a cocoon of irrelevance to their own society, or at least to what was beginning to happen in it. On the other hand, I am not at all convinced that art necessarily has to be “relevant,” whatever exactly that means. Relevant to whom? The buyers? They have always been the rich, and therefore the slightly boringly bourgeois and conventional.

While I tend to agree with much of the ARC’s philosophy, I find their application of it overly restricted and grossly internally inconsistent. I have heard it said that the ARC’s only real policy of what constitutes good art is “whatever Fred (Ross) likes,” and I sometimes wonder whether there isn’t some truth in that caustic statement. How can they justify putting Van Gogh on their list of approved masters, but then leave out all the other post-impressionists, and declare Cezanne to be uniquely bad? If Goya was great, then why isn’t Lucian Freud or Otto Dix? If Van Gogh was acceptable, then what’s wrong with Modersohn-Becker? If Klimt is a great artist, why isn’t Munch or Schiele? If they are willing to list early works by Corinth but conveniently ignore his later, much more modernist work, why not extend the same courtesy to other artists who also started out in traditional manner and then went modern? They might have meaningful reasons, but I have yet to see any.

The history of great art is replete with images of ugliness or horror, but apparently such images are only good if they date back to before 1900! It is possible to produce great and indeed even very beautiful art from ugly subject matter, and a great many modern painters have done so, yet they are virtually entirely ignored by the ARC.

I find all of this inconsistency a pity, because as I said, I actually agree with much of what they say. I am also very uncomfortable with the fact that one has to pay them to be listed as living artist or living master; surely this is going to leave them wide open to accusations of corruption, whether or not those accusations are justified. It also inevitably means that many contemporary artists which they surely WOULD consider great now aren’t listed there simply because they haven’t paid for it!

I notice that they now have a link to Fox News on their site. Is there some hidden political agenda? It sure sometimes looks that way. (Could this perhaps be why they don’t want Diego Rivera in their hallowed gallery of great artists?) They should perhaps realize that the politics they are apparently supporting will become ever less relevant in the coming century. On this point I have to agree with what Young4Eyes wrote:
“Your knee-jerk dismissals of anything modern are so jejune that it renders your whole world view, well, irrelevant…”

It seems to me they are almost deliberately alienating many people who might otherwise have been fervent supporters, and this is going to cost them in the long run.
Fabulous McCain Journalism Refreshes Alabama : The Other McCain
January 9th, 2010 @ 10:06 am

[…] Music Fest! ubervu has the Twitter feed. Da Tech Guy chipped in. Gateway Pundit linked us, too.Roger Scruton: ‘Our World Has Turned Its Back on Beauty . . .’ In Mala Fide liked our linkage.Interviewed at JIP The Lonely Conservative: “On a lighter […]
uberVU - social comments
January 18th, 2010 @ 7:30 am

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by rsmccain: Roger Scruton: “Our World Has Turned Its Back on Beauty” http://bit.ly/5CL5Ij Philosophy, Art and Rule 5…