Platt, Interesting, I think what modern artists have done, since cubism, is challenge the ideal of what beauty is. True, we all value beauty but what is beautiful is being brought into question, challenging static patterns of value. I think what we see is not a degenerate form of beauty, but the results of the intellectual disconnect of value in an objectivly dominated society. The back lash of victorian attitudes of absolutism in objective forms. (Is'nt it nice how MoQ explains this?)
As an Artist myself, the value of "shock Art" has become passe in my own and several of my peers opinions. -Ron ________________________________ From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 8:46:20 AM Subject: [MD] Why the quality of the modern world is no good. All: In Chapter 22 of Lila, Pirsig laments the lack of quality in modern life: "In the time that Phaedrus grew up, intellect was dominant over society, but the results of the new social looseness weren't turning out as predicted. Something was wrong. The world was no doubt in better shape intellectually and technologically but despite that, somehow, the "quality" of it was not good. There was no way you could say why this quality was no good. You just felt it." An essay by Roger Scruton entitled "Beauty and Desecration" explains as well as anything I've read "why this quality was no good." The following excerpt suggests where to look for the answer: "But why is beauty a value? It is an ancient view that truth, goodness and beauty cannot, in the end, conflict. Maybe the degeneration of beauty into kitsch comes precisely from the postmodern loss of truthfulness, and with it the loss of moral direction. That is the message of such early modernists as Eliot, Barber and Stevens, and it is a message we need to listen to." Scruton traces the change in art from a goal of attaining beauty "as a way in which lasting moral and spiritual values acquire sensuous form" to art that aimed to "disturb, subvert, or transgress moral certainties." Scruton concludes, "We should take a lesson from this kind of (artistic) desecration: in attempting to show our human ideals are worthless, it shows itself to be worthless. And when something shows itself to be worthless, it is time to throw it way." Seems to me that is also a message from the MOQ. For Scruton's essay, please go to: http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_2_beauty.html Regards, Platt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
