Why Beauty Matters
8.22
Ratings: 8.22/10 from 330
users.
Philosopher Roger Scruton presents a provocative essay on the importance of beauty in the arts and in our lives.
In the 20th century, Scruton argues, art, architecture and music turned their backs on beauty, making a cult of ugliness and leading us into a spiritual desert.
Using the thoughts of philosophers from Plato to Kant, and by talking to artists Michael Craig-Martin and Alexander Stoddart, Scruton analyses where art went wrong and presents his own impassioned case for restoring beauty to its traditional position at the center of our civilization.
Satanists believe their religion is spiritual ... I agree with the premise of this documentary. Ugliness, IMHO, is not healthy to mind, body or spirit.
Outstanding! Beauty is truth, truth is beauty, that is all you need to know.
Beauty in the forms of art and music and architecture have been a gateway to the higher realm of our lives- preserving the knowledge and inspiring our lives to find a deeper sense of meaning and albeit- love. Thats my take on this. Of course, I can easily be a critic and say something like 'Whatever you look for, you're bound to find,' hence, Sir Roger Scruton uses the most degredacious examples of modern art- most of which is bland, although even sickly, (p.s. don't watch this over a meal like I did lol) jk, however, there is certainly plenty of artists still making amazing works of art. I think the core of this movie is true tho- in our disconnected present reality, we're not making the space to find beauty or even appreciate the remnant of what's left. Very touching documentary, I enjoyed it, thought provoking, humbling, reflective...
Imtroduced to Sir Roger Scruton by a British friend living in Bath, UK. What a treat this is! #Travel #SeeWesternArt #BeautyintheSacred
the documentary is gone in Youtube. I'm glad it was saved in Vimeo and other medias. This was a treasure worth saving
Magnificent documentary! Don't let it die... Roger Scruton must be eternal. His speech on beauty will be missed! Today people don't think like that, unfortunately.
Wonderful. But I wish Sir Roger had expressed that necessary and all-important connection between our apprehension of beauty and its real effect: gratitude; for it is gratitude that truly redeems us. In the moment when we experience beauty we are thankful to be alive. We do not feel gratitude when we see a piece by Warhol or listen to Snoop Dogg; we feel discouraged, disappointed, and desperate. Are we glad to be alive or angry that we are? That might be the question beauty helps us answer.
The dangers of a classical education, is to think that nothing good came in culture after Queen Victoria died. Though Mr. Srunton is being quite progressive to include the impressionists. Symbolic art, non representational art, political art- these all have existed for as long as there has been civilization. Such a myopic and culturally limited view, and to present oneself as an authority on what is good is as dangerous to our culture as sahing art begins and ends with taping a banana on the wall.
There is so much that is true here. He is speaking of a trend that has only continued and deepened in the following years, expressed in literature, music and art. Children are surrounded by much that is banal and ugly. We expect them to deal with adult issues at very young ages, often unconsciously through the arts. We wonder why our young people find the world confusing and brutal. Children and adults alike cannot thrive when the ideals of truth, love and beauty are denigrated. Scruton is not denying suffering and trouble, but champions art's privilege of transcending it, redeeming it and making meaning of all of life's tribulations and joys.
Beauty and comfortability does not represent the totality of human experience. I can appreciate his viewpoint, but to discount the ugliness in our existence is to deny a freedom to express and exorcise it in a healthy way through art. The only alternative is suppression, and that only makes things worse.
I agree with Roger Scruton. We are surrounded by ugliness and simplicity is a nice word for it, but art and especially architecture usually quite plain and unattractive in modern times. I agree whole heartedly with everything he says and so glad I found this doc which best describes how I see the world. I feel much more inspired in less commercialized places like Florence Or Toulouse then I do say in Cleveland or St Louis. I love this doc and recommend it!
I heartily disagree with Roger Scruton. His definition of beauty is so focused on Western civilization that he is dismissing cultural experiences from all. He sets up a straw man argument in post modern art, ignoring the leagues of artists that focus on classical techniques. I find modern architecture beautiful. We have a beauty in nature, we do not need to simply recreate it. I find that the art that Roger Scruton hates so much to teach a new type of beauty. There is a beauty in simplicity, and Roger Scruton seems to dismiss it completely. Scruton desires art that screams it’s purpose, celebrating the human body by portraying it, rather than through a veil of art. I think beauty is anything that makes you feel. Those feelings can be positive or negative. Sylvia Plath wrote beautiful poetry that fills one with a sense of dread, and a concreteness that roots one in the reality of living. But it is still beautiful! Ugliness is completely subjective, and I think that assuming all negative emotions are ugly is a way to dismiss the beautiful duality of life. The beauty that Scruton holds in such high esteem is surface level and can only be viewed at a distance. It is a way of dismissing that we can be in touch with beauty, that we can communicate with God. The beauty of science is dismissed, and I think that that is my main disagreement with Roger Scruton. Just because he does not understand science does not mean that he should dismiss it as ugly. We held love in such a high esteem that the needs and rights of those beneath were ignored for so long. Sometimes the pain of the human condition must be acknowledged, and it must be ugly, but there is beauty in the ugliness. Scruton suffers from C.S. Lewis’ “Chronological Snobbery” in his belief that the old is inherently better than the new.
Sorry Folks, you have to face this:
The divine (you may call it god or the universe or whatever) is useless for us humans, because we cannot force the divine to do something that is useful to us, many have turned their back on the divine (aka god). After that they went away from the truth and now from beauty.
Of course we are still part of the divine and thus can consider us as useless if we dont understand that art is a means for communication.
I believe art is something only the artist could have made and it will require no explanation. I think it's great that Scruton is spelling out a similar idea here so simply that anyone can hear it. We've had frauds at the helm ever since Duchamp's joke was taken seriously. Now, in the years since this video was made, things are changing and even art critics are starting to realise that some people need real art for their well being. About time too. It's got nothing to do with class or privilege, even less accents, although you'd be forgiven for thinking that as what great art remains for the masses is never marketed to them thanks to short sighted oxbridge/public school promoters and management.
Leda Farrow, Thomas Tallis wrote a beautiful 40 part motet which Janet Cardiff stole and did not alter, develop or change in any way. In her fraudulent spiel she claimed her work was "based on" Spem in Alium. You just cast a vote for Roger despite your disdain.
I agree totally with Roger. Today's art and architecture is ugly and meaningless. Look around any city - it's so depressing but go to a "traditional" town anywhere and you can't help but be uplifted and happy. The skill of the art of old was immense!! They were talented.
The Author is right. Beauty is objective. Factually, light-skinned Western Europeans are the most beautiful humans. This causes problems for the Ugly. Salvation for the Ugly lies in appreciating absolute beauty in nature and relationships, don't whine. As Muddy Waters put it: "you can't spend what you haven't got, you can't lose what you never had".
he needs to replace each and every WE with I
60 min talking about why.
it would be cooler if he asked WHAT is beauty first then the hole film would change.
"Beauty has been central to our civilization for over 2000 years...." Right off the get go, Scruton's statement is entirely wrong...Yes, if you are so lucky to be born into a specific class of people who have the privilege and access to wealth and 'beauty' and all its attendant splendour. But for the vast majority of people who have passed through the travail of this earth in the last 2000 years, only fleeting glimpses of beauty could have ever been experienced by those common people while they suffered through the daily drudgery of feudalism, slavery, wage slavery, wars, conquests, disease and the like. After all, even the alleged 'Greeks, Byzantines (Romans) and others all had slave societies which necessarily completely cancels out in its entirety the whole concept of 'Beauty.' Consider: how could a 12 year old slave who was at the beckon call of his/her master for daily toiling and sexual exploitation ever give a good god damn about a 'beautiful' painting, sculpture or ceramic Urn while he/she is succumbing to there daily whipping and rape? The whole scene, 'beautiful painting' on a wall, while the rape of the innocent is carried out, would have to be analyzed by a philosopher such as Scruton in its entirety for him to come to any 'sensible' and 'rational' conclusion about whether even such a thing or category as 'beauty' could even possibly exist in the last 2000 years among the so-called 'advanced' and 'learned' societies that we apparently hold so dear to our hearts. Yes, the painting, sculpture or Urn could, in its absolute isolation, and thus only focusing on a human appreciation of the object separated from every other thing or phenomena connected to its creation, i.e., the master who owns and rapes the slaves, and who benefits from and gets free labour to make fabulous profits in order to be a patron to an artisan who creates said master's painting for the walls in his villa and his personal enjoyment, for example, such a painting could be considered 'beautiful,' but no one in their right mind would ever even think for one moment, upon entering the scene of the master exploiting his slave, painting in the backdrop, ever consider such a scene a 'beautiful' thing. And that is the problem here...ALL ART is created only ever at the expense of some one else's suffering. With very rare examples, like hunter gatherer societies that come to mind, and who have managed to create profound, sublime and beautiful objects, some having managed to do so without having to dominate and exploit other peoples around them. But again that example is an anomaly, for even hunter gatherer societies, there leaders did also commit great terrors upon their neighbours for 'ritualistic' reasons or 'religious' celebrations. Take for example the West Coast BC Haida who are, historically, a good example of incredible inhumanity in beauty.
The Haida, in their history, committed many raids upon their weaker neighbours for slaves and property. They also had the strange habit of putting a live and bound slave into a totem pole hole and erecting the multi-ton totem upon the poor slave thus crushing them alive. Yes, again, in my example, the totems are a testament to the high art and 'beauty' of the Haida peoples, but underneath that beauty, literally and figuratively, is an unbearable terror of some innocent person who was the sacrifice for that particular culture's'high' art and privilege of being able to leisurely appreciate there great 'totem' carvings . Scruton, as a highly paid and privileged tenured philosopher and scholar in the art of 'how to ask questions,' should at least be able to ask that basic question: 'for who suffered, and at what cost was paid for this 'beauty' before me to have come into existence?
I couldn't agree more; there is a dearth of beauty in modern society. Beauty is an international language recognized by everyone, not just black-clad pseudo-intellectuals drifting about.
People are awakening to this tyranny of the ugly. We're on to the elitists who interpret esoteric meaning in meaningless works by untalented, fatuous hacks hunting for grant money, or who foist clunky, Soviet-style architecture onto graceful historic towns to squat there belligerently amidst the beauty like dung in the Sistine Chapel.
Beauty, as with Art, will stand the test of time. When the noise of ugliness and talent-less, pretentious, self-serving shit subside, those great works of beauty will still be there to remind us that there is something more to art than causing materials to represent an idea. However interesting and innovative it may be.
Li'l Abner cartoonist Al Capp: "Abstract art is made by those who have no talent, sold by those who have no scruples, to those who have no taste."
Art gallery owner in New York about buyers tending toward realism: This is terrible!! Many of these artists can't draw!
Approximately 108 Billion people have live before us. It is logical to believe there were some "truths" learned. Biggest difference between the foolish and the wise is one is aware of the ego and the other is in love with it. Post Modernism is anti human in that for them, reality sucks and they hate anything that shines light on their intellectual and spiritually decomposed valueless lives. They eat, sleep with their own shit and no one dare tell them they stink, or their ugly little tyrant egos must grab their shit and say "see this is real art, don't tell me it aint". They are the anti matter to Dignity, Hope, Creativity, Love, Nobility, Majesty, and Redemption. The last statement "Through the Sacred and Beauty's Portal we find Home" is a valiant description of what we can ascribe to.
"Nothing is more useful than the useless.
Ornaments liberate us from the tyranny of the useful and satisfy our need for harmony - in a strange way it makes us feel like home. They remind us that we have more than practical needs - we are not just governed by animal appetites like eating and sleeping, we have special needs and if those needs go unsatisfied so do we."
Amazing words! ^^