Beauty’s Banishment

It’s been a while since I wandered through an art gallery. I think the last time was in Tel Aviv in 2012. Each time I find myself lingering over the classical paintings, the well-crafted human faces and bodies, the breath-taking landscapes.

I never spend much time with the modern abstracts. What’s to see? Most often it’s the wordy description of the artist’s intent that takes the most time. Words? In an art gallery. What’s that about?

What it’s about is the absence of beauty in the modern stuff. Stuff, indeed, most of it pretentious, no-talent junk of mere academic interest. Not just the absence of beauty, the downright banishment of beauty.

Of course I’m not the first to notice this curious retreat from beauty. Or to discover that there is a counter-revolution underway, a subversive assault on the abstract academic blather, meaning and, yes, beauty, well beyond the wordy excuses of fine art’s modern gate-keepers.

Via Instapundit.