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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.”
I really enjoyed this article from the Atlantic Monthly. It compares the British and America methods of traffic regulation. The basic premise is that America’s traffic regulation system with its many signs, is actually distracting to the driver which is very dangerous, and doesn’t teach drivers to make good decisions on their own.
After reading this article, I have new respect for the idea of roundabouts and other British methods, such as putting the “stop” sign right on the ground in front of you where you should be looking. I have also noticed many many redundant or confusing signs around me when I drive. For example, by the library there is a little roundabout which I always slow down for in case traffic is approaching from the right, only to find out the other day when I came down the crossroad (from the right) that it has a stop sign and another sign that says “through traffic does not stop” – what was the point of the roundabout then, if it’s really just a two-way stop?
I totally related to the frustration of four-way stops on quiet neighbourhood streets, the unnecessarily low speed limits on certain roads etc, and I really liked his proposition that we need to teach drivers to take more responsibility for figuring out what is safe rather than depending on so many signs to tell us.
This was definitely one of those articles that made me stop and really consider a subject I had never thought about – always fun!
I love listening to NPR and a little while back they did a really interesting series on different health care systems in Europe. This series has been especially relevant in the last few months as I’ve learned more about how the American health care and insurance system works (not fun!). Although to be fair, I am very grateful to have pretty comprehensive health coverage through my employer because so many people don’t.
I really liked how the program portrayed both the positives and the negatives because obviously no system is perfect. The journalists also help you understand how the culture and society changes the way you view health care. In the Netherlands you are expected to have your baby at home because it’s a natural process rather than a disease, and in England, new drugs aren’t available to patients unless they’re proven to be of sufficient benefit over cost. That’s just a little snippet of the wealth of information they provided about Germany, Holland, England, France and Switzerland.
Here’s the link if you’re interested:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91972152
I read an interesting article by Eric Wilson this morning, adapted from his book called Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy.
I’ve included a portion here that really caught my attention. Although he doesn’t discuss it here, it made me think of the lack of authenticity in believers who think that negative emotions don’t belong in their lives and so become superficial, exhibiting facades of happy perfection to their churches and friends, thereby losing their ability to engage in true community.
I for one am afraid that American culture’s overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I further am concerned that to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful of our society’s efforts to expunge melancholia. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?
My fears grow out of my suspicion that the predominant form of American happiness breeds blandness. This kind of happiness appears to disregard the value of sadness. This brand of supposed joy, moreover, seems to foster an ignorance of life’s enduring and vital polarity between agony and ecstasy, dejection and ebullience. Trying to forget sadness and its integral place in the great rhythm of the cosmos, this sort of happiness insinuates that the blues are an aberrant state that should be cursed as weakness of will or removed with the help of a little pink pill.
Here’s another section. I think he’s right in his distinction between melancholia and depression, and that our culture too easily confuses one with the other.
I do, however, wonder why so many people experiencing melancholia are now taking pills simply to ease the pain. Of course there is a fine line between what I’m calling melancholia and what society calls depression. In my mind, what separates the two is degree of activity. Both forms are more or less chronic sadness that leads to continuing unease with how things are — persistent feelings that the world is not quite right, that it is a place of suffering, stupidity, and evil. Depression (as I see it, at least) causes apathy in the face of this unease, lethargy approaching total paralysis, an inability to feel much of anything one way or another. In contrast, melancholia generates a deep feeling in regard to this same anxiety, a turbulence of heart that results in an active questioning of the status quo, a perpetual longing to create new ways of being and seeing.
Our culture seems to confuse these two and thus treats melancholia as an aberrant state, a vile threat to our pervasive notions of happiness — happiness as immediate gratification, happiness as superficial comfort, happiness as static contentment.
This last quote speaks to the artist in me. I remember questioning in high school, why so many of the great artists had lives full of hardships and tragedies which they endured, transcending their realities to give us great works of art.
Melancholia, far from a mere disease or weakness of will, is an almost miraculous invitation to transcend the banal status quo and imagine the untapped possibilities for existence.
That’s just a small part of the article, you can read the full article here: http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=tk1twsk466pmt0m7fj6py116kyc71fhv
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