[MD] Why the quality of the modern world is no good.

[MarshaV]

Ron,

I'm curious...  Do you think it is the role of the artist to make 
culture uncomfortable?  Maybe to emphasis  suffering and to promote change?


Marsha





At 10:17 AM 6/25/2009, you wrote:
>Platt,
>Interesting, I think what modern artists have done, since cubism, is
>challenge the ideal of what beauty is. True, we all value beauty but
>what is beautiful is being brought into question, challenging static
>patterns of value.
>I think what we see is not a degenerate form of beauty, but the results
>of the intellectual disconnect of value in an objectivly dominated society.
>The back lash of victorian attitudes of absolutism in objective forms.
>(Is'nt it nice how MoQ explains this?)
>
>As an Artist myself, the value of "shock Art" has become passe in my own
>and several of my peers opinions.
>
>-Ron
>
>
>
>
>
>________________________________
>From: "plattholden at gmail.com" <plattholden at gmail.com>
>To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 8:46:20 AM
>Subject: [MD] Why the quality of the modern world is no good.
>
>All:
>
>In Chapter 22 of Lila, Pirsig laments the lack of quality in modern life:
>
>"In the time that Phaedrus grew up, intellect was dominant over
>society, but the results of the new social looseness weren't turning out as
>predicted. Something was wrong. The world was no doubt in better
>shape intellectually and technologically but despite that, somehow, the
>"quality" of it was not good. There was no way you could say why this
>quality was no good. You just felt it."
>
>An essay by Roger Scruton entitled "Beauty and Desecration"
>explains as well as anything I've read "why this quality was no good."
>The following excerpt suggests where to look for the answer:
>
>"But why is beauty a value? It is an ancient view that truth, goodness
>and beauty cannot, in the end, conflict. Maybe the degeneration of
>beauty into kitsch comes precisely from the postmodern loss of
>truthfulness, and with it the loss of moral direction. That is the message
>of such early modernists as Eliot, Barber and Stevens, and it is a
>message we need to listen to."
>
>Scruton traces the change in art from a goal of attaining beauty "as a
>way in which lasting moral and spiritual values acquire sensuous form"
>to art that aimed to "disturb, subvert, or transgress moral certainties."
>
>Scruton concludes, "We should take a lesson from this kind of
>(artistic) desecration: in attempting to show our human ideals are
>worthless, it shows itself to be worthless. And when something shows
>itself to be worthless, it is time to throw it way."
>
>Seems to me that is also a message from the MOQ.
>
>For Scruton's essay, please go to:
>
>http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_2_beauty.html
>
>Regards,
>Platt
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
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"He who neglects the present moment throws away all he has."
   (Friedrich von Schiller)