The Russians still teach Academic Drawing and Painting as was learnt and taught by the masters. I suggest you look into it, and if you can, get your hands on some old books from Russia on the subject. Some were printed with both Russian and English.
@@regal677 My mother was trained in Russia in academic drawing and painting, and kept self-educating when she got to America. Here are titles she recommends: 1941 Composition of Outdoor Painting by Edgar Payne 1939 The Human Machine by George B. Bridgman 1953 Anatomy for the Artist by Jeno Barcsay (Professor at Budapest Academy of Fine Arts) She owns a textbook which covers the full curriculum she once studied, and I don't recall if it's all in Russian or both Russian and English, but it was published in 2017, titled Academic Training in Fine Art (Академическое Обучение Изобразительному Искусству), written by Vladimir S. Sharov (Владимир Стефанович Шаров)
I wish the Church would find and fund more Christian artists and their works. We need a modern day Renaissance. The Catholic Churches art patronage used to be amazing.
Not the church. It should be lay Christians that fund Christian art. Really protestants are doing that well. Still Protestantism changes almost as fast as modernism so they are not going to produce art that endures. We need Catholics to spend more on Catholic art and architecture.
@@RandyTheGrit I kind of disagree. The Church has a bigger megaphone and of course funds than most lay Christians. If we had multi millionaire or billionaire Catholics who would fund art and the Church advertise it, I think that'd be great.
@@physiocrat7143 That's because Putin actually cares about their church and Christian society. Since his resign, on average, there's about 3 churches that are built a day. He funds them properly and want them to do and be good. We don't have someone here in the West like him doing what he does.
You really drove the point home in the end. It seems like the Victorian Era was really the end of beauty with respect to architecture. I lament to imagine what our cities could look like if modernism had not taken over.
Interestingly, 19th century writers often complain about the ugliness of their cities. The churches and public buildings we see today were often mere islands of beauty in a sea of dreary tenement housing and smoke-belching factories (Blake's "satanic mills").
@@physiocrat7143 Beginning in the late 19th century, there was also the "Gartenstadt" ("garden city") movement in Germany, which sought to counteract the negative impact of industrialization. Several model communities were created, but what we eventually got instead were the car-focused suburbs of the past 60-70 years (barring a few "eco communities" here and there).
I Love the way you think. I completely agree with you. Modernism and Post-modernism rejects Classic Beauty which imo, the the Standard of Beauty. I'm an Artist and that is what I believe as well. In everything I do this what I aim to give --- All that is True, Good and Beautiful for the Glory of God.
The modernist churches are built poorly. I remember when i was in Ireland, a priest showed me an old parish and a modern parish. The modern parish was already having structural problems while the old building was very sturdy. The old parish had very few issues. The modern parish had to fix the roof
I finished my architectural studies in 2013 - at the age if 33. I wanted to be an architect be ause I wanted to create something that has an effect on people. My teachers kept refusing my design -because it was too much classic. We were requested to envision sth "modern". I had a cyzellated conversation with my design tutor and I realized that someone has a strong interest in dumbing us down.
There is a building boom.going on in Seattle right now. I'm not kidding when I say that each and every one of the new buildings is a featureless, lifeless, ugly glass and concrete box.
Thank you for voicing what we know deep down. My father studied Architecture in the late 1920's and early 30's and was trained by probably one of the last Beaux Arts teachers who still dressed the part in smock and beret.
I'm glad I found your channel, Brian. I share many of your opinions and your eloquence in voicing them inspires me to become a better communicator myself. Your work here is much appreciated, thank you.
My friend , it’s all in the PATIENCE . When art was ART , artist took their time to study and create, modern artist can drop paint and call it a masterpiece. Most artist don’t take the time to understand what is actually visually pleasing .
One of my boyfriends called me a Classic Beauty once ... I was so young I didn’t see it ... lol ... but as an amateur artist myself at times... I have always admired Classical artists and buildings with incredible detail and God given talent. I don’t like anything Modern ...Thank you I’m glad I found your channel.
Ah, this is like a breath of fresh air. I love your channel and your content, beginning with the beautiful hymn at the start. Personally I still think 90s cars are beautiful, I was born in 1990 and they give me a warm fuzzy feeling. They're cute and kinda retro too. To me this absolute soullessness started with the new millennium, 2000. Everything went to absolute shit rapidly, in arts, culture, music, lifestyle, everything. I'm just glad that there's more people like me now who are vocal about absolutely being fed up with this disgrace of a life that we've built around ourselves. This means communities, architecture, food, manners, religion, ideology, family, education and many more. I loved this video, it spoke so well of what I feel myself. I'm clicking on the little bell now.
Beauty and functionality can work together, but we have become insensitive and cold. Not good. I’m fascinated with classic, that’s why I love Europe, especially the awesome Chuches for its beauty inside and out and it’s enchanting spirituality. Feel like in Heaven 😇
I always feel like such a caveman when I hear your videos. On the other hand, you always open my eyes and help me see things in a COMPLETELY different light. I’m a classicist through and through I guess 😍
The industrial age was the beginning of the end for timeless architecture. Form follows function took hold and then it gradually became a profiteer's monopoly. When i was a kid I used to think about how all the great artists (or at least most of them) died before their art started really making money. Now that's been inverted by greedy individuals who promoted relativism and modernism in art. In order for them to get rich now, they first had to change the game.
Please create a detailed movie which will discuss the infamous "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" statement and show some contrarguments to it. This is crucial. Maybe you should discuss evolutionary explanation of the origin of the concept of beauty in the human mind and show why it is flawed.
I recently went to vegas and that place legitamitly has some of the best looking bulidings built in the last 50 years (although admitidly some are much better on the inside then outside).
While I agree with this, it does remind me of my mother recounting how embarrassed she was in the '50s of her Papa's old car that "didn't even have fins!" Today, it'd be a classic hot rod. In 1956, it was an eyesore. Not that Papa's early 90s Caprice (which my brother now drives to work everyday because he shares Papa's fashion/function sensibility) is going to be winning any car shows in 20 years.
Hey Brian, I agree with your views about beauty, I would like to recommend you this song: Vide Cor Meum - Patrick Cassidy, since I noticed you enjoy arias. Thanks for your videos, we need more people to reconcile with beauty and truth.
I remember one of the middle schools I went to. It was completed in 2008 and my first year there was the year it was completed. It was modern and trendy, and guess what. People in my year complained that it felt like a prison. It was colorless and lifeless and square, and followed function rather than form. It's not the sort of place that inspires you to want to learn. It inspires you to want to get out of there as quickly as possible. Who the hell wants to spend eight hours a day crammed in a lifeless prison-like box with thirty other kids being forced to memorize and regurgitate useless facts? That's all school is these days, and the design philosophy behind the school buildings follows that God awful ideal 100%.
Excellent video, but allow me to register a caveat or two. The classicist aesthetics of the "Ideal Form" you espouse is a little too Platonist or Renaissance-inspired and insufficiently Aristotelian-Thomist or Christian in my opinion. Why? Because in Christian philosophy the only unsurpassable Form is the Divine Essence itself. All other forms (natural or man-made) are finite and therefore can be improved upon and inhabit an unlimited range of creative possibility. It is thus perfectly reasonable for artists to resist any ideological imposition of a purported "ideal form" for a particular work that might artificially limit their creativity. If such a neo-classicism became hegemonic it could cause unnecessary stagnation. As for the objectivity of beauty, yes, that should be affirmed. However, there is a place for art that does not aim primarily to maximise beauty but to prioritise other purposes, e.g., to reveal in a striking and allusive way an uncomfortable truth, to foster laughter, etc. While truth, joy and beauty are inter-convertible transcendentals in their united supereminent sense in the Divine Essence, they are distinct in Creation and the human intellect. Art might be largely a celebration of beauty, but it is more than that, and sometimes beauty should take a backseat. Some concrete examples of this might be ecclesial art depicting final judgement, gargoyles and the brilliant designs Weta Workshops made for the orcish inhabitants of Middle-Earth the the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
I wonder why the author hasn't taken the time to reply to your post. Of all of the posts I've read here, yours is definitely the only one that manages to expand the discussion and remove it from a black and white perspective. Wasn't Kant the one to finally divorce the aesthetic dimension from morality and truth (please correct me if I don't remember it well)? Art should not be identified with beauty as art is an act and as such is definitely bound by its social dimension. Anyone who says art should be allowed to experiment with any type of deviant practices just for the sake of art has lost their mind. But beauty is not the same as art, but I cannot define it. In a way it escapes definition. At least I cannot offer a definition. Greetings from Croatia :)
@@mihaelavucic9620 Michaela, I don't know why he has not replied, however, three things should be kept in mind. One, he is probably a busy man who does not have time to reply to all comments. Two, he may not have even seen the comment. Three, he is not actually obliged to reply anyway. In any case, I thank you for your words in support. I'm afraid I am no expert on Kant, and what I did know I've largely forgotten. :-) I don't believe art's telos can be divorced from beauty, but neither do I believe it is wholly focussed upon it. And I find the concept of "ideal forms" for each artefact dubious for the reasons I outlined. As for the definition of art, I too would struggle to craft one. Perhaps something like this: Art is the making of objects (including texts and electronic or other ephemeral imagery) that use allusiveness, emotional stimulation, beauty and other means to signify and communicate an external reaity/truth and/or internal perception/experience. Hmmm, that seems overly broad and pretentious, unfortunately. Oh well, it was worth a try.
There is a lot of objective beauty with wrist watches, or luxury "things" in general for some reason. But a lot of the people who can afford these items live in modern white concrete box houses
modern art seems to have been invented in the west where the "middleclass" became the top one percent in the world. wealth produced modern art. they had to sell more artists, more "kinds" of art to cover the demand. and then, the "new" art became fashionable because now, everyone you know owns "art" so now people go for the new instead of the timeless.
Beautiful design is expensive. In order to make owning cars and going to school etc. affordable for the most amount of people, beauty gets sacrificed for affordability. I think this is a good thing. Cars and education are no longer just for the elite of society. I'd rather have us all go to school in concrete blocks, than have only a few expensive private schools designed by classisists. And cars are valued for their functionality, and not as status symbols. (Except for the rich that can afford to buy pretty cars.)
The school pictured in the video was/is a public school. This is a common misconception. Simple can be beautiful too. Our ancestorshad far less resources than we do but that never stopped them from making beautiful cities.
Beauty is primarily objective. We all primarily like the same things but subjectively we might prefer one thing more than another. As such true beauty is objective and as such it endures. Most of the art today is purely subjective, few try to even achieve something that is objectively beautiful. I know have no interest in any modern art as I usually end up disappointed. Even my boys agree and they are still children. They hate modern music finding real beauty in classical music but preferring 60s to 80s. I know I influenced them slightly but given that their friends all enjoy 50s to 80s far more means that, like house and acid of the 90s, 95% of modern music will be consigned to the dustbin. This will hold true for a lot of other art too.
I worked for Electrolux. Their products were known for their longevity. There products today are so cheap and break within a few years. Corporations want to be cheap and rip people off with warranties
I know someone who studied art as a Protestant college. He says too much artwork and white paintings of Jesus is wrong. He yells at churches for being that way lol. He's a social justice Catholic now
Could you please specify how was Hitler in favor of “form following function”? He actually hated modernism in architecture and any kind of unrealism in art. Nazi buildings were very classicist in a precise sense, even exaggeratedly.
They weren't classicist, they were pluralist which was a kind of reactionary modernism. It borrowed from anything they thought conveyed power and glory and ancient Rome fit into that but they had no appreciation of Platonic or Aristotelian metaphysics which are essential to classical thought.
I wouldn’t agree, that appreciation of classical philosophy is necessary to be classicist in a strict architectural definition (not the definition presented in your video). Classicist architecture of enlightenment was rather form of fascination to the ancient heritage, but not a manifestation of belief in platonic or Aristotelian philosophy. By the way, Plato was very critical of Parthenon. But yeah, it seams, that Hitler actually agreed on form and function statement, but with a very different effect, than modernists and functionalists wanted to achieve. This effect was precisely excessive, modern-classicist architecture, which had nothing to do with modernism.
@@BrianHoldsworth Yes, i think that we can go through life having presuppositions based off of stereotyping and associating everything with a certain theme, as in the case of gothic and gargoyles. Toccata and fugue in d minor has been the theme behind every portrayal of scary castles or haunted houses in movies and cartoons, but it doesn't mean its meant to be scary
You seem to have it all..the best art, the best music, the best liturgy, the best clothes to wear. Maybe you should email the pope and demand he changes everything to your liking
I will answer as an Eastern Orthodox Christian. The Bible which the Protestants transformed into an idol, is a fundamental part of the revelation in Jesus Christ. The Church is His Mystical body and is above the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit has guided His church to understand the exalted role Mary has in the everyday life of the Church and the individual christian. Therefore that cliché question, "where in the Bible...." sounds ridiculous, igmorant to us, since the Holy Spirit has through Tradition informed us the truth about the Theotokos .
@@teachedteach Isaiah 8:20 says "To the Law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them" If the Bible is the word of God then why not get your beliefs from it? 2 Timothy 3:16
@@mrsir8094 The Word is Christ, the Word is a Living Person fully revealed in the Church.His Body that reads the Scriptures under the leading and inspir ation of th Holy Spirit. The Church informs the world the mystery revealed for the salvation of those who see it. The Scripture reveals Christ, but the Bible is not Christ. Protestants are idolaters because they have put the Bible in place of Christ and His Living Body whereas Christ can only be seen and experienced fully in the Church that compiled the Scriptures as the Lord intended to. For Protestants the Bible is a kind of UFO that suddenly landed on Earth, magically. So they are also guilty of practicing magic. The New Testament is a child of the Church, and the Church is the only one capable of revealing the meaning, the truth in the written words. Sola Scriptura is magic and idolatry.
@@teachedteach If the Bible isn't the word of God and 100% true then throw away the Gospels. Throw away the creation story. Scripture is clear that we should rely on scripture alone. Read 2 Timothy 3:16.
'"Woman, behold your Son." Then he said to the disciple, "Behold your mother."' John 19:26-27 We are her children. She is the mother of God. We have recourse to her. She has the closest relationship to the living God.
When I went to Italy I was blown away by the artistry. I would be lying if I didnt say that it is one of the reasons I'm drawn to the Catholic Church. Seeing the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican, the Basilica, the heartbreakingly beautiful Pieta.... it was so inspiring.
yes, i totally agree, religious beauty is the most striking of all art ..... it seems to give a glimpse of the divine that makes our hearts leap like a gazelle
modern art seems to have been invented in the west where the "middleclass" became the top one percent in the world. wealth produced modern art. they had to sell more artists, more "kinds" of art to cover the demand. and then, the "new" art became fashionable because now, everyone you know owns "art" so now people go for the new instead of the timeless.
Man your videos are great. A lot of what you say has me questioning sola Scriptura and I’ve already contacted a Catholic Church hoping to visit and inquire soon.
Beauty is both subjective and objective. How do you recognize beauty unless it's in you and in extension inside everybody? What you see when you behold beauty seems to be the innate beauty of your imminent soul that is the perfection of the Lord, as he made you. However it is not *your* beauty, it is everyone's beauty. It would seem that you just see a different facet of the same diamond from your unique standpoint. The effulgent ineffable quality of beauty is immeasurable because it is in an higher order of harmony that your perception, whose higher order is only really glimpsed when you recognize it within yourself, as you exist both in this lower reality and in the higher order simultaneously. Great video and an astute observation. Beauty might very well be the fragrance of the Lord.
Beauty itself is not subjective. It exists outside and apart from us just as truth does. But we encounter it, experience it, and interpret it based on our own faculties. That's the subjective part, but the subjective only says something about us, not that which *_is_* in spite of our opinions of it.
It makes me feel so sick and angry that today's architectural designers are being so damned wasteful that they are encouraging us to treat ARCHITECTURE, something that should classically last 100's of years, like mere fashion trends, like the very clothes we wear on our backs; enjoyed for a minute and thrown away the next! It's so grossly unsustainable it's beyond scarey!!! Modernism (and capitalism, the 2 go hand in hand to me) encourages, and I swear was born of, absolute selfishness, greed, a fascination with manipulating and swindling and blindness to anything but profit, profit, effin profit!!!!
I have been thinking about this without knowing how to name it ... it´s sooo true lately we as society haven´t been investing wisely in the enduring beauty just in fashion and that apply in so many fields .... this content is amaizing thank you, greetings from Colombia
Well said. I have been around long enough to have witnessed the destruction of beautiful buildings in my home town to be replaced with brutalist concrete and steel structures that have sucked the life out of the city.
modern art seems to have been invented in the west where the "middleclass" became the top one percent in the world. wealth produced modern art. they had to sell more artists, more "kinds" of art to cover the demand. and then, the "new" art became fashionable because now, everyone you know owns "art" so now people go for the new instead of the timeless.
Thankfully, not everyone who influences Apple's industrial design didn't/doesn't have the same opinions as Steve Jobs, at least to a point. "Chamfered edges" and all that.
Theres a lot wrong with this video like ya a lot of modern art is kinda bad, but Ive seen a lot of medieval art that was total trash. It wasnt until the renaissance when old greek and roman ways of doing art were rediscovered. Many Muslims, Jews, even protestants see a lot of catholic paintings and statues as pure idolatry and would not consider them art, but blasphemous. Also alot of nice paintings were done of totally pagan religious imagery which if youre catholic shouldnt that be insulting and not beautiful at all. The car argument was pretty bad I much prefer sleek cars from the 2000s onwards over old model Ts or whatever, but again thats my subjective bias. Different cultures have always had different standards of beauty and different art forms like the only thing you can really is that there is always been a concept of beauty or what looks good but it does indeed change. You will find much more beauty in a small humble church where people actually do good and care about what they believe over many large extravagant catholic churches where people dont even know the other parishioners names
Brian, this is a most enjoyable post. I'm a practicing architect and appreciate your well thought commentary on this subject. I hope we get to hear you address this topic in future videos.
Ooo, That 75 year old school is so beautiful. I'll be so happy to send my child there to learn in a non air conditioned sweatbox and breath lead paint dust and asbestos.
@@BrianHoldsworth Thank you. However, I did have a typo in my original comment.I meant to write 'couldn't'. I had already visited the composer's page last week actually, but couldn't find the title with this particular rendition. Also, I did love the video, me being a classicalist as well. Modernism architecture is actually depressing lol. If I was a radical conspiracy theorist, I would have claimed it was part of an effort to subvert and undermine human psyche, appreciation, and desire for beauty which is contributing to the mental epidermic of the western and eastern word alike.
@@emmanueloluga9770 conspiracy theories aren't out of the question 😉 Go to his SoundCloud and click on introit: Love of God. m.soundcloud.com/user-879235558
Is there a degree of subjectivity for beauty that is permissible within a classical world view when it comes to things that are affirmed as objectively beautiful? for example, if you toured countless great works of classic architecture that inspire beauty in a way that is timeless and authentic, and then person A found building X the most beautiful and person B found building Y the most beautiful. Or the same situation when viewing The Grand Canyon or Niagra Falls. At some point are we really all meant to see things the same way, or at some point is there some legitimacy in the idea that God made each of our tastes as uniquely as he made us, and that while he made us to enjoy genuine beauty, he gives us preferences for different forms based upon a variety of factors.
I think another good example of what I am trying to get at is color. Can one really say which color is the most objectively beautiful? They are each so beautiful in there own regard, and while people have their preferences, can you truly objectively rank them?
Good points! People in the past tended to think of the effort that they put into things, and design so that they got the longest, most pleasant, and greatest use of the materials. Modern buildings are investments, earn depreciation for tax purposes, and are designed to win design awards from committees of the designer's peers.
