In his fascinating book Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism, Sebastian Smee describes how the brutality of the Franco-Prussian War and the ensuing civil war in Paris led to the art form beloved by so many people around the world. The painters of that era, today’s ever-popular Impressionists, were intent on capturing the ephemeral in response to a society that seemed contested and fleeting. “Their paintings conveyed beauty and happiness but also, whether consciously or otherwise, an underlying sense of existential frailty” (page 279). With norms and rules and buildings and lives obliterated around them, they asked the eternal question: What is true?
Flight from Beauty
I’ve explored this question myself through the means of art, nature, and reason with philosopher Roger Scruton and his book Beauty guiding the way. But before I discuss the insight I’ve had, I want to conclude with a look into his concept of decay from the chapter titled “The Flight from Beauty.” In this chapter, Scruton sets up two arguments about beauty in roughly the late 19th century to early 20th century. First, the Impressionist artists at the birth of Modernism expressed beauty in a historically different way, but they did so because “if we can grasp the emptiness of modern life, this is because art points to another way of being” (page 168). However, “Since that time art has taken another turn, refusing to bless human life with anything like a vision of redemption.” My post today delves into the underpinnings of these two statements.
Two Competing Worldviews
Scruton’s argument delineates two approaches to art, and for our purposes, reveals two competing worldviews. One approach—largely taken by the early Impressionists—believed the past could be recovered and used in order to examine and explain the human condition in the modern world. While they used a novel form of art to communicate this, they still preserved a sense of meaning and transcendence. However, as Modernism progressed, it sought to destroy the past altogether with its antiquated language and traditional forms, exposing the void of modern life and its ugliness.
As it relates to beauty, Scruton rejects what he calls the “cult of ugliness” and sides with renewal. He argues that the true masters of music and painting and literature “sought to renew the tradition, not destroy it, but to renew it as a vehicle in which beauty, rather than banality, would once more be the norm” (page 171). In contrast, the flight from beauty so often seen now—extending to the arts in various forms—is an effort to “pre-empt” the call of beauty on our souls which asks us “to renounce our narcissism and look with reverence on the world” (page 174). He uses language of the sacred versus profane to condemn what stands now for “art.”
Art vs. Beauty
This characterization I find so important to my investigation of beauty. In some of my earliest memories, my mother, an artist, brought me to museums full of various types of paintings and sculptures. I have often found refuge, peace, enlightenment and wonder within a museum visit during various points in my life. When I was 24 years old, my mother and I visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. which at the time was featuring an exhibit of Mark Rothko paintings. At the beginning of the exhibit, the introduction explained that Rothko didn’t want to be visually interpreted. But, if you know Rothko, his work is mostly formless representations of color, so I was entirely perplexed by this idea. We walked around the exhibit and I gazed at canvases full of variegated colors and brush strokes. It made no sense to me, and finally, I had enough. “How can you not interpret it visually?” I asked my mother. She paused. “Well,” she replied, “Rothko was very depressed for much of his life.”
Just as she said those words, we crossed into the final gallery, and I saw three large, black canvases looming on the far wall, and I felt a tremendous shock through my nervous system. At that moment, I understood exactly what Rothko meant. I could see into his soul, and perhaps he could even see into mine, and I knew what his expression of sadness meant. He wanted the viewer to feel, and not see, the painting.
It was certainly artistic, but was it beautiful? To me, the experience of sharing that feeling of grief and sadness, for understanding how Rothko transmitted an emotion through the canvas, was profound. However, if I apply Scruton’s suggestion that beauty is to be studied and judged rationally, I cannot affirm the paintings were in fact “beautiful.” I had merely reacted to a stimulus with an emotive response. I can make judgments about matters of taste and my own poignant reaction, and I value the memory as much as the experience of witnessing Rothko’s work alongside my mother. However, while I maintain that I was in the presence of art, I don’t think I was in the presence of beauty.
Final Thoughts
I began this series wanting to understand beauty and quickly discovered it not as impulsive as I once believed. In a profound way, it is instead both intrinsic and spiritual—human beings are wired to seek what is true, transcendental, and good. For centuries, these things and pursuits were called beautiful. According to Scruton, only recently have we turned our back on them.
Contributor George Weigel’s thoughts below are particularly relevant here as we consider the epoch of time we are in. With atheism, nihilism, depravity, and ennui at the center of much of what we believe and create today, the Church is uniquely positioned to bring meaning back into people’s lives. In fact, it’s already doing it.
When I began this series, I intended to find definitions and parameters, but concluded that any that we might come up with are just guidelines of preference steering us towards what we find beautiful. I also discovered a new sense of creation itself. Because of a divine Creator, when we enter any act of creativity, we are transmitting the Spirit, the freshness that constitutes life. To get at the heart of it, we must employ reason, but we must also understand beauty is not random; it ultimately comes from God, points towards truth, and is a pathway home. What could make the study and cultivation of beauty a more worthwhile task?
Thank you, Scruton, for helping me on this journey. For those of you interested in more of his thoughts, below are some resource recommendations:
Book: Beauty by Roger Scruton
Documentary: Why Beauty Matters
Interview: Contributor Roger Scruton with Praxis Circle
