Matthew 7:7
What I am seeking is beauty itself. But my task is bigger than mere seeking. My task is to recover the beauty that our modern world has so meticulously and furtively discarded. This elimination of beauty has to be furtive because an attack on beauty is an attack on the way people live, or aspire to live, and any direct attack would ignite the wrath of citizens who are accustomed to having beauty around them. It is meticulous because a haphazard sweep would not be able to remove the overwhelming presence of beauty, and every corner has to be swept clean of this beauty that has become the fabric of society.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who survived years in a Soviet gulag, wrote [2]:
Dostoevsky once enigmatically let drop the phrase: "Beauty will save the world." What does this mean? For a long time I thought it merely a phrase. Was such a thing possible? When in our bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, elevated, yes; but whom has it saved?People are often hard-pressed to define what constitutes beauty, or the beautiful for them. But they recognize it once they see it, and they desperately miss it when its not there.
There is, however, something special in the essence of beauty, a special quality in art: the conviction carried by a genuine work of art is absolute and subdues even a resistant heart. A political speech, hasty newspaper comment, a social program, a philosophical system can, as far as appearances are concerned, be built smoothly and consistently on an error or a lie; and what is concealed and distorted will not be immediately clear. But then to counteract it comes a contradictory speech, commentary, program, or differently constructed philosophy - and again everything seems smooth and graceful, and again hangs together. That is why they inspire trust - and distrust.
There is no point asserting and reasserting what the heart cannot believe.
A work of art contains its verification in itself: artificial, strained concepts do not withstand the test of being turned into images; they fall to pieces, turn out to be sickly and pale, convince no one. Works which draw on truth and present it to us in live and concentrated form grip us, compellingly involve us, and no one ever, not even ages hence, will come forth to refute them.
Modern elites, working as the anti-beauty brigade, diligently work at putting ugliness on the same sliding scale as beauty [3]. They understand that there are different levels of beauty. Something pretty for example is a lower manifestation of beauty. But they know that ugliness is not on a lower hierarchical scale of beauty, and that it has its own separate criteria. They are succeeding in their quest because our civilization is the era of the atheist: a Godless age. They have introduced the cult of ugliness into our civilization, introducing a new language and new ideas to perpetuate their movement. They usurp beauty by reinventing language so that the ugly becomes labeled as beautiful, thus placing a shield across our eyes to prevent us from seeing the transformations.
Pope Benedict continuing with his speech in the Sistine Chapel said:
Too often, though, the beauty that is thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful, superficial and blinding, leaving the onlooker dazed; instead of bringing him out of himself and opening him up to horizons of true freedom as it draws him aloft, it imprisons him within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy.It is easier to convince Godless societies of the superiority of ugliness than societies where God has a presence. Modern elites separate God from the rest of society. Therefore even if ordinary citizens are believers and worshipers, their surroundings contradict and even negate those messages, and they lose the nimbleness necessary to finds words and arguments to counter the ugliness that surrounds them. Rather than march out in the world with sword and shield to confront ugliness, they give in, and withdraw in their homes to the comforts of their tchotchkes and embroidered cushions.
It is a seductive but hypocritical beauty that rekindles desire, the will to power, to possess, and to dominate others, it is a beauty which soon turns into its opposite, taking on the guise of indecency, transgression or gratuitous provocation.
But beauty is never far away, and raises its eyes towards us at unexpected moments. It is in the lovely smile of a young baby, however dour and dark his mother may be; the budding of a wild flower through concrete cracks at the end of winter; the small shop which manages to decorate its window with color; the lush dresses which movie stars still wear, albeit once a year at competitive awards shows; the chef who works with compromising ingredients, but who produces small delicacies on a daily basis at his local restaurant; the artist who teaches classical painting at a night school since no arts program will hire him. These momentary visions encourage us to seek, and find more.
To seek is to realize that something is missing, something we are familiar with that we have either discarded, ignored, or that which has been taken away from us. It is the result of an emptiness, undefined in our case. Our civilization has reached that point of emptiness.
Our task, together with seeking what has bee lost, is to recognize that it is us who have caused those elements of beauty to disappear, by ceding too easily to the temptations and barriers brought before us. Next comes the arduous task of redefining the beauty we've lost, then reclaiming and recapturing this beauty back into our lives and our society. This is where we take on our Godly shield and sword to fight our existential battle with the dark forces of ugliness, and to rebuild our society, since we cannot do it alone. We may not be successful, and even if we are, beauty may never acquire the same level of sophistication and proliferation it once enjoyed in our lifetime, since took thousands of years to build. But, it would be far worse if we did nothing.
Bill Cunningham, a contemporary fashion critic who is uniquely appreciative of beauty said: "He who seeks beauty will find it. [4]" He may be too optimistic, but, his words are a variation on Matthew's "Seek and ye shall find." We cannot afford to be pessimistic, otherwise we will be pulled into the centrifugal forces of ugliness. Beauty needs our strength and our commitment to bring it back from the abyss.
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References:
1. Meeting with Artists. Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI. Sistine Chapel. November 29, 2009.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2009/november/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20091121_artisti_en.html
2. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Nobel Lecture (1970)
Text published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1972
Digitized and Formatted in HTML by The Augustine Club at Columbia University, 1999
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/nobel-lit1970.htm
3. Camera Lucida. The Destruction of Art by Artists. April 25, 2009
http://cameraluc.blogspot.ca/2009/04/destruction-of-art-by-artists.html
4. Camera Lucida. He who seeks beauty will find it. August 3, 2011
http://cameraluc.blogspot.ca/2011/08/he-who-seeks-beauty-will-find-it.html