Roger Scruton 'Beauty'

[KatyaKarthik]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65YpzZrwKI4

I would encourage everyone to take time to watch this film.. it's fully available on youtube in six parts, about an hour long in all.
It's a thought-provoking attempt to understand where art is going, and what is missing in 'modern art', namely, the idea of beauty that art was once supposed to be all about...

[B125]

Beauty hasn't been the driving force in art and architecture for a while now.

Beauty comes way down the list of priorities.If at all

It's a thought-provoking attempt to understand where art is going, and what is missing in 'modern art'


It's not just modern art.It's been going on for centuries.


namely, the idea of beauty that art was once supposed to be all about...

It certainly was in the ancient world.
They imbued their figures with proportions that were the most beautiful but not necessarily the most realistic.

Realism has a strangle hold on the arts unfortunately

[KatyaKarthik]

I didn't mean to say that beauty does not exist in realism. By 'beauty' i don't mean the ideal proportions or strictly academic subjects... beauty can be shown in the pose, face expression, light, nature.... It's what makes a painting moving...

[stlukesguild]

Check out these discussions in response to Scruton's film:

http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=665301

http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=665281

[Keith Russell]

Originally Posted by KatyaKarthik

It's a thought-provoking attempt to understand where art is going, and what is missing in 'modern art', namely, the idea of beauty that art was once supposed to be all about...

This "beauty is missing in today's art" notion keeps cropping up, but it's quite the straw man. Beauty isn't MIA. (And Modern art has a capital "M", and ended about 45 years ago.) It's rather easy to define "beauty" according to rather narrow (and often arbitrary or irrelevant) standards, in which case anything that doesn't conform, is simply--logically--not "beautiful".

(That said, I believe there are standards for beauty...)

Beauty has never really left art, but it can often look quite a bit different than it did in the past. Also, it comes "packaged" with other concerns which may not have been associated with "beauty" in the past.