Why is it that all around us we see the rejection of the beautiful and the celebration of the ugly? The art and architecture of the past, especially our public buildings, featured aesthetics which cause a sense of awe and wonder. They show that in their construction there was artistry, craftsmanship, passion and a yearning for even greater heights. You realise that those who built them, and were raised amongst them, had a sense of belonging and looked towards a better future.

When we look at much of today’s architecture, we find brutalism and featureless ugliness. (Note, for example, the current furore over the faceless sculpture of Prince Phillip in Cambridge, which, thankfully, is to be taken down, due to its ‘harmful material impact’ on the area.) So soulless are such edifices that they are rarely maintained well and often become shelters for drunks and drug addicts before they are pulled down. The most interesting and colourful aspects of them are the graffiti on their surfaces.

 The most interesting and colourful aspects of them are the graffiti on their surfaces.

Truth

To the progressive, like all that is influenced by Marx, everything is political, which explains why totalitarian regimes such as the USSR, communist China and the Nazis have done their best to regulate which art people were allowed to see. It also explains why progressives attempt to denigrate, deny and deflect the beautiful. They fear the power of beauty to destroy the illusory truth they manufacture.

In order to remake society, it is necessary for progressives to replace the meaning of truth. In the strange new world of progressivism, truth is no longer based on objective fact, rather, on subjective feelings: we have entered the realm of ‘my truth’. This enables progressives to state, in complete defiance of common sense and science, that a man who ‘feels’ like a woman can proclaim that he is a woman, and everyone is expected to accept ‘his truth’. An important part of the rejection of truth is the progressives’ rejection of beauty.

Beauty elevates the human spirit. For the progressive, everything must be equal and interchangeable; multiculturalism teaches that all cultures are equal, and progressivism teaches that women and men are interchangeable.

 For the progressive, everything must be equal and interchangeable; multiculturalism teaches that all cultures are equal, and progressivism teaches that women and men are interchangeable.

Beauty punctures this deceit. It’s a reality that some buildings, paintings and people are more beautiful than others: beauty opens our eyes to the fact that hierarchies are real. Beauty reminds us that there is a right way to do things and to be, and it draws us towards acting in that way and being that person, however imperfectly we achieve our goal.

Danger of beauty

Following a five year refurbishment, the Fitzwilliam Museum, owned by the University of Cambridge, has reopened its five main painting galleries to the public in a rehang, placing historical paintings alongside modern works of art. This is in order to emphasise the ‘evolution of its collection’.

In a shocking development, the Fitzwilliam has issued a warning to patrons that images of the British countryside in paintings can evoke what it labelled ‘dark . . . nationalist feelings’! One of the signs in the Nature Gallery, exhibiting Constable’s paintings of the English countryside, note that the artwork can stir feelings of ‘pride towards a homeland’. As we know, to the progressive, pride towards one’s homeland is only a hop, skip and jump away from outright fascism. Luke Syson, the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, nevertheless claimed the rehang is ‘not woke’.

In the place of beauty, they celebrate the boringly ‘edgy’ and ‘confrontational’.

Great figures in the history of art can’t be celebrated simply for their incredible talents anymore. They now have to be examined carefully in order to find and highlight ‘problematic’ aspects of their work and political opinions. We, the scorned public, must be re-educated via trigger warnings alerting us to the insidious dangers of admiring a work of art produced by someone who has a tangential relationship to slavery or some other cause du jour.

Mediocrity

Progressives destroy or replace the beautiful in order to reject that which reminds them that they produce dreary sameness. In the place of beauty, they celebrate the boringly ‘edgy’ and ‘confrontational’. The Fourth Plinth, an empty plinth in Trafalgar Square, London, is used to exhibit those monuments to mediocrity which pass for modern works of public art. Typical is ‘The End’ created by Heather Phillipson.

The Londonist website helpfully explained: ‘On first glance, the sculpture seems fairly whimsical: a shiny cherry teetering precariously atop a generous dollop of whipped cream. But note the fly and the drone, and the sculpture becomes somewhat more unnerving, inviting ideas of decay, surveillance and impending collapse.’

Brutalist architecture, formulaic films, discordant music, incomprehensible literature; piece by piece, the harmonious and beautiful are being replaced by the dissonant and banal.

Tearing down statues and defacing works of art are more than rent-a-mob protests: underneath lies a desire to sever the past and the present. If there is no connection with the past, especially the beauty of the past, people forget what makes their culture great. As a result we are left with ‘ideas of decay, surveillance and impending collapse’. Brutalist architecture, formulaic films, discordant music, incomprehensible literature; piece by piece, the harmonious and beautiful are being replaced by the dissonant and banal.

All must be equal. Those connections which define us and which depend on difference – marriage, nation, culture – are eroded in order to make us interchangeable. Individuals are severed from the connections which give identity so that they can be remade by the state if all are to be truly equal. This plunge towards the lowest common denominator demands that the beauty of the past be rejected and replaced by a drab mediocrity.

God values beauty

Why should this concern Christians? Surely we can worship God around our kitchen table as well as before the altar in a magnificent Gothic cathedral? It matters because beauty is an aspect of God and His people (Ps 24:7, 50:2, 96:6). We should value beauty because Jesus values beauty and the creators of beauty who do ‘something beautiful for me’ (Matt 26:10). Celebrating beauty in itself is worship of the Creator.

 Celebrating beauty in itself is worship of the Creator.

Both the Word and the world assume the existence of a God who actively reveals Himself, including His beauty. They hold out beauty as a gift from God for our delight, prompting us to praise. From the sky of Psalm 19:1-4, to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field in Matthew 6:25-33, God’s glory is reflected in the complex beauty of His creation.

Made in the image of God, we were fashioned not only to love beauty but to create it. We should rebel against the drab and banal and reach upwards towards beauty. Unless we do so our own lives will become drab and banal.

Beauty calls out to us: ‘Look and see and live. The one true God is good.'

The Rev. Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack is a retired Church of Scotland minister; now a member of the Free Church of Scotland. Check out his many incisive articles on his blog, A Grain of Sand.