Roger Kimball: The End of Art (Profound Essay)

Nearly everyone cares—or says he cares—about art. After all, art ennobles the spirit, elevates the mind, and educates the emotions. Or does it? In fact, tremendous irony attends our culture’s continuing investment—emotional, financial, and social—in art. We behave as if art were something special, something important, something spiritually refreshing; but, when we canvas the roster of distinguished artists today, what we generally find is far from spiritual, and certainly far from refreshing.

It is a curious situation. Traditionally, the goal of fine art was to make beautiful objects. The idea of beauty came with a lot of Platonic and Christian metaphysical baggage, some of it indifferent or even hostile to art. But art without beauty was, if not exactly a contradiction in terms, at least a description of failed art.

Nevertheless, if large precincts of the art world have jettisoned the traditional link between art and beauty, they have done nothing to disown the social prerogatives of art. Indeed, we suffer today from a peculiar form of moral anesthesia—as if being art automatically rendered all moral considerations gratuitous. The list of atrocities is long, familiar, and laughable. In the end, though, the effect has been anything but amusing; it has been a cultural disaster.

Your questions are ridiculous! And you say you actually own books on geology?? I don't believe it.

Yeah. That's the way to deal with my questions. Dismiss them as unworthy of answer. What is the pressure at the center of the earth? Did the folding in the strata occur before or after the hardening of the strata? How did those fossil images on top (and inside for that matter too) of the Grand Canyon survive all that erosion you say occurred? Where did the side canyons come from? How come archaeologists have to dig? Such ridiculous questions.

As for books, right at hand I have Harris and Tuttle - Geology of the National Parks, Press and Siever - Understanding Earth, and Stanley - Earth System History. I'm sure I have others around here too.

ML/NJ

What is the pressure at the center of the earth?

I don't know what it is at the precise center of the Earth, but pressure which causes uplift and folding are tectonic in nature (involves the shifting around of earth's tectonic plates). Pressure 'deep beneath the surface' is also caused simply by the enormous weight of the overlying rock.

Did the folding in the strata occur before or after the hardening of the strata?

There isn't any tectonic folding in the Catskills. The beds are simply tilted slightly upward toward the east, the ancient source of the deposits, the Acadian mountain range. However, there is plenty of tectonic folding along the northeast margin of the Catskills, particularly around the Towns of Catskill and Leeds

How did those fossil images on top (and inside for that matter too) of the Grand Canyon survive all that erosion you say occurred?

They will eventually be eroded away, and more and more fossil-bearing layers beneath will be revealed.

Where did the side canyons come from?

Erosion from tributaries I would imagine.

How come archaeologists have to dig?

Is that a serious question?

Did the folding in the strata occur before or after the hardening of the strata?

Although there wasn't any tectonic folding at the location depicted in the photo, folding occurs *after* the rock has already hardened. Hardened rock can and does behave in an almost ductile manner when it is under enormous pressure. It has been demonstrated experimentally that rock will 'flow' under such extreme conditions.

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How a particular rock deforms depends on:

* its temperature and depth;
* the amount, rate, and direction of the stress;
* the rock’s inherent strength;
* and the quantity of water in the rock.

[Photo: Close-up of phyllite showing angular folds.]
This phyllite deformed while it was cool and less ductile, making its folds angular.

http://www.mnh.si.edu/earth/text/3_2_3_1.html

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Also see:

http://earthsci.org/education/teacher/basicgeol/deform/deform.html

I don't know what it is at the precise center of the Earth

I didn't ask whether you knew what was there. (It had better be iron, or we have another one of those contradictions.) I asked what the pressure is. You know: high, low, medium. What? And since we're talking about the center of the earth and all that iron there: where did it come from. I mean I thought the earth was formed from a swirling cloud of hydrogen gas which somehow coalesced. Where did the iron come from and how did it make its way neatly to the center if it wasn't there at the beginning?

You talk about the tectonic plates, but when I was in college we had a guy who believed in that stuff who came to lecture (I wish I could remember his name but I don't.) and as I recall he was considered a quack. (I was a math student, but I like to hear guys with far out theories speak so I attended.)

As for the folding, isn't it neat that you think the rock somehow flows in to fill the gaps that would be created. Flows in from where? Put any of these rock in a vice of sufficient strength and you will crush the rock. It won't flow or bend, at least at normal temperatures.

Tributaries formed the side canyons you say. There are no tributaries. The land is sort of flat and featureless as you approach the Grand Canyon (from the south, at least - I haven't been to the North Rim.) and then, boom, there it is: a huge hole in the earth with a little river running along at the bottom a mile below. You can see it at Google.

Yeah, the question about the archaeologists was serious. To me it looks as if the earth is still accreting, but you have the land washing away. And, oh BTW, how come almost all of the land is in the northern hemisphere? Yasuo Shinozuka had an interesting idea about this, but I stopped hearing from him. I don't know what became of him.

ML/NJ

As for the folding, isn't it neat that you think the rock somehow flows in to fill the gaps that would be created. Flows in from where?

Who said anything about rock flowing in from somewhere else filling gaps?, although that can and does of course happen with volcanic and magmatic intrusions. Look up the geology of the Palisades Sill in your own state of New Jersey. The rock, rather, 'squooses' like taffy under such extreme conditions.

See:
http://www.geo.wvu.edu/~jtoro/structure/ppt/16Ductile%20processes.pdf

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Put any of these rocks in a vice of sufficient strength and you will crush the rock. It won't flow or bend, at least at normal temperatures.

I didn't say anything about this occurring at normal temperatures. These things occur at great depth where it is much warmer than at the surface. Also, the great pressures involved generate heat.

See:
"In Earth science the brittle-ductile transition zone is a zone, at an approximate depth of 15 km (9.3 mi) in continental crust, at which rock becomes less likely to fracture and more likely to deform ductilely. In glacial ice this zone is at approximately 30 m (98 ft) depth. It is not impossible for material above a brittle-ductile transition zone to deform ductilely, nor for material below to deform brittly. The zone exists because as depth increases confining pressure increases, and brittle strength increases with confining pressure whilst ductile strength decreases with increasing temperature. The transition zone occurs at the point where brittle strength exceeds ductile strength."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ductility#Geology

These comments come from Waugh's first novel, Decline and Fall, published in 1928. The rich and glamorous socialite Margot Beste-Chetwynde has decided to demolish her centuries-old house, "King's Thursday," and commission a young Modernist to replace it with "Something clean and square."

Professor Silenus - for that was the title by which this extraordinary young man chose to be called - was a 'find' of Mrs Beste-Chetwynde's. He was not yet very famous anywhere, though all who met him carried away deep and diverse impressions of his genius. He had first attracted Mrs Beste-Chetwynde's attention with the rejected design for a chewing-gum factory which had been produced in a progressive Hungarian quarterly. His only other completed work was the décor for a cinema-film of great length and complexity of plot - a complexity rendered the more inextricable by the producer's austere elimination of all human character, a fact which had proved fatal to its commercial success.

He was starving resignedly in a bed-sitting-room in Bloomsbury, despite the untiring efforts of his parents to find him - they were very rich in Hamburg - when he was offered the commission of rebuilding King's Thursday. 'Something clean and square' - he pondered for three hungry days upon the aesthetic implications of these instructions and then began his designs.

'The problem of architecture as I see it,' he told a journalist who had come to report on the progress of his surprising creation of ferro-concrete and aluminium, 'is the problem of all art - the elimination of the human element from the consideration of form. The only perfect building must be the factory, because that is built to house machines, not men. I do not think it is possible for domestic architecture to be beautiful, but I am doing my best. All ill comes from man,' he said gloomily; 'please tell your readers that. Man is never beautiful, he is never happy except when he becomes the channel for the distribution of mechanical forces.'

The journalist looked doubtful. 'Now, Professor,' he said, 'tell me this. Is it a fact that you have refused to take any fee for the work you are doing, if you don't mind my asking?'

'It is not,' said Professor Silenus.

'Peer's Sister-in-Law Mansion Builder on Future of Architecture,' thought the journalist happily. 'Will machines live in houses ? Amazing forecast of Professor-Architect.'

Professor Silenus watched the reporter disappear down the drive and then, taking a biscuit from his pocket began to munch.

'I suppose there ought to be a staircase,' he said gloomily. 'Why can't the creatures stay in one place ? Up and down, in and out, round and round ! Why can't they sit still and work ? Do dynamos require staircases? Do monkeys require houses? What an immature, self-destructive, antiquated mischief is man! How obscure and gross his prancing and chattering on his little stage of evolution ! How loathsome and beyond words boring all the thoughts and self-approval of his biological byproduct! this half-formed, ill-conditioned body! This erratic, maladjusted mechanism of his soul: on one side the harmonious instincts and balanced responses of the animal, on the other the inflexible purpose of the engine, and between them man, equally alien from the being of Nature and the doing of the machine, the vile becoming!

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