Modern art and the fear of beauty

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.”

Today I . . .

made myself a pancake for breakfast (yes, just one)

played some online games of Carcassonne, and a few spider solitaire games

cleaned the bathroom (this is difficult – our tub requires ridiculous amounts of scrubbing that barely seem make a dent – it’s very demotivating)

did the laundry

kind of cleaned the kitchen (should have done way more here)

got to talk to my mom for an hour (YAY!)

read a few chapters of my book (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter – not sure how I feel about it, it’s definitely weird)

and then suddenly realized that today was the day that the Edmonds Vision Center was having a “frames show” of some cool new designer glasses from Denmark and was offering discounts on them. I frantically threw on some decent clothes so that I could get down there before 2:30 when it ended. I think I managed to pick out new glasses! They have to be ordered in so I won’t be able to show John for a couple of weeks – they are a dark purple plastic which looks almost black and they have cool metal filigree type stuff on the sides. I was pretty nervous trying to decide on glasses without my dad since my super-cool-but-sadly-very-broken current ones were his choice and I have loved them and received millions of compliments on them.

I love downtown Edmonds. I wandered into Cole Gallery and really liked a set of paintings by Joshua Flint – you can see some images here. This one by Michael Orwick also caught my attention. So then I went to the Red Twig Bakery and cafe, ordered a scone and real iced tea since it was actually sunny and warm and wrote a short scene about that painting. I don’t think my story is really the story in the painting but that’s what I thought was so fascinating. You could probably pull 10 different stories out of it. For me, the paintings with a moment in a story are the best. No matter how technically brilliant a still life can be, I definitely gravitate to the ones that make you want to know more about the people in them.

The 10 minute drive down into Edmonds is also one of my favourite things. I turned on “Hallelujah” by David Crowder (John used it in his slideshow of Hilary and Phil’s wedding if you want to listen to it), because the radio always goes fuzzy on the way down into the Bowl. This song brings back vivid images of the green hills around San Fransisco along the highway. We listened to that song every morning in our mini-van on the way to the Habitat for Humanity work site and it always inspires me. The moment that the Sound becomes visible and suddenly mountains and ocean appear is breathtaking and I’m grateful for the 30 mph speed limit so that I can take in the view all the way down the hill without annoying the cars behind me.

Today I did what I should be doing every Saturday – cleaning first, going outside, enjoying a “treat” and actually writing. It made me really happy.

Journals, Literature and Merton

I’ve been going through my old journals today, indulging in a bout of nostalgia. One notebook is full of starts of stories – I can tell which books or movies I must have been reading when I started writing these. My handwriting is still from elementary school – maybe early junior high. It makes me laugh to see how formal I was – how the heavy British influence started so young with Enid Blyton, Frances Hodgson Burnett etc. In some ways, I feel like my love of British literature makes it harder for me to be a writer today – what I want to write and how I want to write is in no way modern or North American.

A cut out of one of Thomas Merton’s poems – I’m forgetting which right now. Forgive the formatting, I’m copying this out of a journal I had copied it into.

I will try like them

To be my own silence.

And this is difficult. The whole

World is secretly on fire. The stones

Burn even the stones

They burn me. How can a man be still or

listen to all things burning? How can he dare

to sit with them when

all their silence

is on fire?

I’d like these on my walls

Mariana by Sir John Everett Millais. Inspired by the Tennyson poem of the same name.

Cape Cod Morning by Edward Hopper