You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January 2009.
I just read a fabulous article in the New English review by Theodore Dalrymple, about how trivial modern art has become. It was particularly relevant after having been in the Bonnefanten Museum last week where the second floor contained a collection of Dutch masters and the third floor contained modern art collections, many of which looked like kindergarten pieces with titles at which you could only raise your eyebrows.
The difference is laughable at that same time that’s it’s sad. Here are the technically precise incredible renderings of daily life in Holland, and there are the neon colored noses and ears pasted on to photographs.
This article talked about the loss of beauty in modern art in the search for originality which has come to down to simply being shocking. The author explains that to talk about the progress of art, like we do about the progress of science, is erroneous and that we lose beauty and the transcendence of art when we throw art history and tradition out the window.
But the part I really liked best about this article was the point he made about Beauty:
Beauty is a fragile and vulnerable quality, and moreover one that is difficult to achieve; ugliness, by contrast, is unbreakable and invulnerable, and very easy to achieve. (How easy it is to look bad, how difficult to look good!) By espousing the ugly, we make ourselves invulnerable too; for when we espouse the ugly, we are telling others that ‘You can’t shock, depress, intimidate, blackmail, or browbeat me.’
We use the ugly as a kind of armour-plating, to establish our complete autonomy in the world; for he who says that ‘I find this beautiful,’ or ‘This moves me deeply,’ reveals something very important about himself that makes him vulnerable to others. Do we ever feel more contempt than for someone who finds something beautiful, or is deeply moved by, what we find banal, trivial or in bad taste? Best, then, to keep silent about beauty: then no one can mock or deride us for our weakness, and our ego remains unbruised. And in the modern world, ego is all.
If you’re interested in reading the whole article, here is the link: “Beauty and the Best.”
There are just certain things about home that I will never stop missing:
- the taste of fresh bread or brotchen with Gouda or Edam
- the necessity/ability to walk everywhere you need to go
- the cobblestones under your extremely comfortable echt leder German shoes
- the church bells ringing every quarter hour
- Turkish Doner Kebaps
- the smell of woodsmoke and wet pavement
- Freschona Cornichons (crunchy pickles)
- the tile roofs
- seeing history all around you – the restored houses, the dates and plaques, the monuments
There’s just something about living in a place where evidence of past generations is all around you. It makes me step out of my own self-centred little world. It makes me aware of the past, aware of my small place in history.
A walk at home is so rich in detail, you feel so much closer to nature with the creeks running through the town, hiking paths leading you into the woods and pastures. The town is contained by hills, you have your bearings, it’s safe, quiet, peaceful.
Recent Comments