The Cult of Ugliness in America

American TFP ^ | 2007 | Rev. Anthony J. Brankin

[Pyro7480]

The forbidding blind-eyed structure in the background cohabits the space with the cheerful greenhouse on top of a romanesque revival arch. Angled elevated walkways criss-cross in the air suggesting that whoever put this strange ensemble together did not hapen to think of elevators. Is the pedestrian area under the arch actually sloped? Pushing a stroller under that arch got to be a lot of fun.

What I was criticizing is the "blind-eyed structure" you refered to. The "cheerful greenhouse" is actually a pedestrian bridge that goes from the "structure" to a newer building that was built in the "Georgian" style of the rest of the campus.

[SoCal Pubbie]

“It’s because most modern architecture is objectively ugly.”

I wonder if you can express why you feel that way. And why aren’t the same styles of form and color ugly in a CD player?

How do you feel about the Eiffel Tower? The Brooklyn Bridge? Falling Water? The Chrysler Building? The Elrod house? The Sydney Opera House?

[SoCal Pubbie]

It doesn't look to me like the foreground and background structures are part of the same project. I'm guessing they were built at different times.

[annalex]

Which is the testimony to the modern architect’s complete insensitivity to the preexisting structures.

I can picture a machine gun in every window.

A few of these around Stalingrad in 1942 would have made the war much shorter.

[RobbyS]

But Father is right about the lack of objectivity. So much of it is deconstruction of form, even of color. How can truth shine through when one does not show things as they are, much less how they ought to be? I find a lot of truth in Turner, just as find truth in some of the realist literature, because they are really protests against degredation, not celebrations of it.

[RobbyS]

I’m with him. I have seen so any ugly strips, just jarring to the eye, with no effort to blend it all into a whole. More often than not one cannot even drive from one place to another without getting back on the street. No effort at landscaping because it is all done on the cheap. I guess it is the cheapness of the look that offends me. When I go to Walmart, I can hardly wait to go inside, becaus the big box looks like a bi box covered with ugly paint. That’s why many communities demand that Walmart dress them up a bit before they allow them in their communities.

[dsc]

“Modern art, — or, rather, the first half of the 20 century art — tended to be ugly but not all of it was bad. We had an ugly century and we had art showing so. Some 20c art did it with ugly pithiness, but inasmuch a there was truth in it it was art.”

Disagree absolutely.

http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/Philosophy/philosophy1.asp#name

[RobbyS]

My view of the Eiffel Tower was forever changed back in the ‘70s when I was in Paris in the wnter. I was walking down the street and caught sight of the Eiffel Tower through the treeet branches and discovered how delicate it looked, almost filligree. For in terms of its size, the tower actually has little weight. Build a model of it and you will see. Not at all like the clunky souveniers you pick up.

[Between the Lines]

I really can’t believe that you posted that first picture as an example of a beautiful building. That building is the definition of ugly.

Whoever designed that building knew how to make it symmetrical and that is all. The doors are out of proportion - much too tall, the stairs should not span the width of the portico, but should only be in front of the doors. It would be ok to have the stairs as they are if there were doors, windows or a decorative niche between the columns on either side. But as it is, the stairs draw ones eyes forward and upward into a blank wall. The sidewalk would look better if it were the same width as the stairs too. The pediment also has absolutely no adornment. Even a simple vent would have been an improvement there.

Sorry, but that does not come anywhere near to being a beautiful building.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***Guernica
Pablo Picasso
1937 ***

Goya said it better through his paintings and drawings of the Napolionic invasion of Spain.

[Convert from ECUSA]

Thanks for the ping; good article!

[x_plus_one]

I mean to say that in coming to and going from this hall you are surrounded by miles and miles of unyielding ugliness: McDonalds and Burger Kings sandwiched between Amocos and tenements.

The author sound like Prince Charles - another effete human being who lives several doors away from necessity and risk. Why are religious so useless save as social workers?

The church is missing a bet by turning the priesthood into a clan of social workers without a clue on real life survival strategies and techniques. Face it, these guys dont need to balance check books, make payroll on Fridays or do much more than show up and smile in order to keep a job....

[Pyro7480]

He’s effete because he has a sense of aesthetic? (rolls eyes). Your whole post is based solely on stereotyping.

[x_plus_one]

Effete because discussing the type of problem he addresses indicates that his head isn't invovled with anything more serious for consideration. He obviously doesn't have to fill out corporate tax forms and pray for no audits. He obviously doesn't share the quototidien concerns of the masses of humanity that make the world turn.

The disconnect between the necessities of daily living and the angst produced by observing the same are what you are reading in his words.

There are now a majority of Americans who are paid well enough by pensions, welfare or easy physical work (like office bureaucrats, religious) that their regard for real life is more a belittlement and a complaint. They are unable to 'get real' or see the forest for the trees. N'est ce pas?

[ArrogantBustard]

I am a designer and for the life of me I cannot understand why everyone wants to wear the latest fashions, drive the newest looking cars, show off the most high tech electronics, but still wants to live in structures straight out of the 1700's.

Your post assumes facts not in evidence.

Does everyone want to wear the latest fashion? I dress more or less the same as I always have. I'm not unusual.

Does everyone drive the newest looking cars? I buy what's on the lot, and drive it for 200k miles. Function and cost are far more important than "style". Looking around the parking lot at my office ... I can safely say that I'm not unusual.

Does everyone "show off" the most high tech electronics? Hardly ... and this is one area, at least, where "newer" really does strongly suggest objectively, measurablty better performance.

Now ... living in a house that looks like it might have been built in 1750 isn't so wierd. Maybe, just possibly, folks got something fundamentally right then ... and folks don't want to throw away something good, just because some designer who wants a paycheck says it's "dated".

[Iscool]

We are cowed into a moral and cultural silence before the modern proclamation that a squat, misshapen, mis-proportioned figure is somehow beautiful — and even perhaps more artistic than the figure that God first created. How could it be said that that which seemed so ugly to us was still somehow beautiful to them? Well, they say it still, but now we know that this attitude is simply a modern intellectual conceit, by which their higher appreciation of art makes them superior to those not in on the game.

You must be one of the 'beautiful people'...

So beautiful is good, even Godly...And ugly is evil...Thankfully God disagrees with you...

1Sa 16:7 But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.

2Co 10:7 Do ye look on things after the outward appearance? If any man trust to himself that he is Christ's, let him of himself think this again, that, as he is Christ's, even so are we Christ's.

Anything else, including this article, is vanity...

[Tax-chick]

Some good points made, but Zot, it’s hard to get past the nose-in-the-air tone. Like, I’m so sorry that everyone else doesn’t meet his aesthetic standards ... there are even fat people wearing bathing suits!

[Pyro7480]

Why am I not surprised by your post? And by the way, your Scripture is about people, not architecture. God apparently cared enough about art to direct the specification of the Ark.

[Pyro7480]

Effete because discussing the type of problem he addresses indicates that his head isn't invovled with anything more serious for consideration.

Oh give me a break! Your basing this on one essay? I'm not surprised you have this view, given your tagline quoting Cromwell, who was one of the bigger iconoclasts in history.

[Pyro7480]

We’ll just have to agree to disagree. :-P