Why Liberals Love Ugly Art 

The worst part of modern art is the gaslight. Nobody can call it ugly because beauty is subjective so someone must find it beautiful, so subjective apparently that everything is beautiful. Its a kind if gaslight to be honest

As an artist, I’ve always hated modern art. It’s so incredibly ugly. There’s an art museum on my college campus and it’s incredible to see the difference between the student art which is usually just a bunch of paint splatters and angsty words on a canvas vs on the other side of the gallery, stunning study sketches of parts of the Sistine Chapel’s painted ceilings.

I'm an atheist and I used to consider myself a leftist, but I agree with you wholeheartedly. I despise modern "art" and love the aesthetics of old churches. Classical art took immense skill, talent, time and dedication to create, whereas most modern art feels like it could have been made in 5 minutes by a toddler. I feel that these modern artists deliberately create ugly pieces since they lack the talent to evoke feelings with their art otherwise. Any time I talk with someone who defends modern art I feel like they're trying to gaslight me.

"Evil despises beauty and flourishes amidst ugliness"

Satan hates beauty.

"Anyone who thinks beauty is only in the eye of the beholder has never been to a strip mall in the suburbs" - Caravaggio

„Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin good forces have invented or made.“ JRR Tolkien

Art is an expression of the soul. Anyone who produces this sort of ugliness is not telling a story about society but are telling a story about themselves.

They make it easy to “judge them by their works”

I’m non-denominational Christian, but also a professional visual artist, and one thing I really appreciate about Catholicism is its emphasis on beauty as an aspect of the divine. I have felt from a very early age that most modern art is complete garbage.

I submitted a 3D sculpture depicting the roman soldiers at the foot of the cross tossing dice for Jesus's clothing as Jesus suffered on the cross just above them. It was super realistic and anatomical correct, with particularly attention paid to historical accuracy in clothing and roman armor. I spent 2 years completing it. It was titled "Winners and Losers." The university that gave the "Art show" set my piece away in a corner and gave the award and prize to a work that consisted of a plastic toy elephant with two toy space shuttle boosters sloppily hot glued to the elephants sides and all that hot glued to a broken piece of plywood and it all was sloppily stripped with yellow paint. When the artist accepted the award, he was visibly distressed and would not look me in the eye when I offered him congratulations( I was expecting this kind of outcome and only wished to display the work for its message). Many of the visitors were upset about who received the award and were vocal about it, causing the university staff to leave the floor and they did not return.

In 1963, an excerpt from the book , “The Naked Communist”, was made part of the congressional record, outlining 45 “communist goals”. If you decide to look this up and read them, it will be a wake up call for you. The following are two of them: 2. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms." 23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

I'm passionate about bringing better art into my local parishes. I need prayer in this endeavor.

Brutalism feels as if the concrete buildings are threatening to crush me rather than make me feel part of anything. It says "you are tiny, you are insignificant"

I feel like this is a good time to protest Trent's depressingly blank background wall 😂 But great video as always.

My kids attend a Catholic grade school and I love their art teacher. She said she doesn't pay any attention to any art made after the impressionists.

As an artist, this new modern art makes it extremely difficult for actual artists. We're constantly being judged not for the beauty and meaning of our pieces, but for this odd, countercultural, abstractness factor. So a hyperrealistic piece of gorgeous art will sell for 10x less than ketchup on a canvas. That and the fact that now no one takes art seriously anymore. Art used to take the hidden, underlying beauty in God's creation and highlight it. It was an illustration of potential, essentially showing God in God's work. Now the art that is praised has lost all meaning and has become as repulsive as an indulgent concupiscence.

Once you realize that shitty art has become a way to signal cultural, intellectual and moral superiority, everything starts to make sense

Don't forget skill and lack of skill. Modern art lacks skill and is disgustingly plain.

I'm not catholic and I'm barely christian, but you're speaking to ancient truths and virtues that are barely here anymore and I thank you for that.

Modern art is honestly the elevation of the mediocre. Why? Because it's easy to do. It's easy to build something blocky and ugly. It's hard to build something beautiful, integrated, and intricate. And perhaps the root sin of modern art is simply Sloth.

That clip of the man professing the virtues of brutalist architecture sounded like an advertisement for the Borg.

It's about demoralizing us by elevating the ugly to make people cynical and lose hope. We need beauty in order to find richness in living, and hope is what we need to find beauty, and beauty in turn gives us hope.

They also say: " He that doesn't hear the music will see the dancing as madness"

There's something in the human spirit that recognizes truth, goodness and beauty. To glorify the objectively ugly demonstrates a poverty of spirit.

I spent my 20s entrenched in the world of the arts and hung around all the best artists of my area. I understand from experience around this world that the goal of modern art is an extension of critical theory. The aim is to visually tear down anything that is accepted as traditional. The goal is to also shock others, and the only way to shock other people is to keep crossing the line of what is currently accepted as normal. Eventually you get so far out on the periphery of what was considered normal, that you venture into extremely weird sex stuff, pedophilia, or even just publicly destroying something beautiful to post online as a sort of performance art (we are here). Modern art is also fueled by pride and individualism. Why create something beautiful? That has all been done before. The goal is to do something shocking enough that will gain you notoriety and fame. The more "triggered" the "conservatives" are, the more attention you receive, and the more you will be congratulated by your peers for causing a stir with the backwards people. By accomplishing this, you can feel a sense of superiority over most of the population, and a sense of pride that you belong to a clique of special people who "get it". I feel like there's so much to say about this topic. Living in modern times and looking back on 2,000 years of Christian and secular art and being able to track its devolution is a fascinating thing...

All of this cannot be said without holding accountable the conservatives who deride the arts and have helped to pave the way for the introduction and implementation of ugly art and design.

This is a conversation I been having in my head for years, but very specifically in the past few months. Thanks for the video.

As an artist , I personally feel that when people call these "art pieces" they create art , it's just an excuse for their lack of true talent . So it basically called expressionism , in other words "anything" can be called art BUT it does not make it so . In my opinion. For a reason , the Masters are called Masters, not just artists.

As an aspiring artist, this inadvertently taught me fundamental truths about art that I’ve learned from nowhere else. Thank you Trent!

(6:44) "Beautiful art takes us out of ourselves, lifts us up and beyond to something universal" > Glory

In eastern culture, art is a path of strive for achieving perfection. It's about dedicating all your efforts on constant improvement of any field you choose. It can be music, dance, pottery, trade, even war. What they call "modern art" is nothing but excuse for being lazy. Eastern culture appreciates the amount of work an artist put in his piece. I agree that beauty is subjective, but an artist's dedication on his field shall reflect on his piece. For example, eastern art like in Bali, Java etc depicts hideous/scary figures that may be considered "ugly". However, the amount of attention to details, traditional rules and standards etc is paramount. Javanese/Balinese artist spends decades of his life in apprenticeship, training under guidance of a master since early age. Japanese classic art, on the other hand, values simplicity. However, even in its simplicity, one can see the amount of hardwork and years of dedication to pursuit perfection.

There's going to be some people who say this kind of stuff is more "practical" so I thought I'd address that. I work in a factory that deals with used cooking oil. It's disgusting, it's purely for production, but it is not ugly. The machines are aluminium brushed and textured like you'd get in a nice car. The break spaces are light and look like a school canteen in a lot of ways. The lids and barrels are bright appealing colours and our uniform is tasteful and could be worn as normal clothes. It is no architectural marvel and obviously beauty was not top of their priorities when they built it, but it's not ugly. Things that should be painted are painted things that should shine shine and things that should be made a certain shape, not because it's more efficient but just because that's a better shape to look at, are made that shape. Useful does not have to be ugly.

The only time I see brutalism as fitting is if you're building a prison. It visually resembles the feeling of a prison.

I'm not Catholic but I do largely agree with your points. Postmodern, brutalist, Picasso-style civilization is utterly soul-killing.

I genuinely like The Resurrection (0:28). It's really efficient in making me think about our mortality and the afterlife. I can't recall any other sculpture that make me feel that strongly like that.

As an advertising art student, I 100% agree with Mr. Trent on this one. I'm so tired of seeing bland and uninspiring works especially being promoted within the Catholic space and in the art world in general. The art we produce is essentially the reflection of how we value ourselves and the current times we live in. And as much as a lot of people like to say that art is 'subjective,' beauty still needs objective traits to be defined by the human experience.

I feel that Pablo Picasso was one of the first of these artists that paved the way for modern art and art lost all meaning. It went from replicating real life the best we could, to throwing expired milk on a canvas.(and yes also Duchamp by no small margin)

I think you really hit the nail on the head at 8:30 -- that older architecture and art is _generous._ I love describing truly beautiful art and architecture that way! Older, beautiful buildings and art clearly display that the time, money, and painstaking master craftsmanship it took to make the building _beautiful_ was _worth it,_ because the people inside the building are worth it. The way almost all buildings and art nowadays emphasize sparseness and extreme minimalism just says to me "neither you or any of the people in here are worth the time, money, or craftsmanship it would require to make this space that beautiful." Also, buildings that are truly beautiful inside and out -- even in small ways -- make you want to stop and take in the beauty! Modern warehouse stores, boxy plain office buildings, and even modern churches (especially protestant ones) ALL are so simple and boxy that I don't even register them as I walk through them. Those buildings are just a box I'm moving through to do whatever it is I need to do. Why NOT make every building so beautiful that people feel uplifted just by being there??

The last modern art museum I visited was in Chicago. One prominent display was a glass cabinet with an old vacuum cleaner, a bottle of sand and a jar of buttons. That's not art, that's an insult.

When your movement is about tearing down walls, then you’ll inevitably be left with nothing but ruins. Simple as that

Creepy Fisher Price toys, so true😂

Art is a reflection of your heart.

Very much enjoyed your presentation. It reflected what I have been feeling for a very long time.

The art critic Robert Hughes used two terms when describing twentieth century art. "The Mechanical Paradise" and " Heroic Materialism" So many artists liked to portray people as machines. Many artists and architects created work that emphasized the blocky, heavy and hard edged objects. This all expressed the artists' belief that humans and the universe were just material and mechanical objects. Many of the artists and architects were also communists, so of course they were materials and atheists.

Thank you for this! As someone who’s been working in the art world for over 20 years, the avant-garde walked off the cliff - their art is just non-sensical self-indulgent memes. I admire the clarity with which you articulated the argument.

The urinal (Fountain by Duchamp, signed "R Mutt) was most likely a critique of modern art, as he submitted it under a pseudonym, and the committee overseeing the art exhibit had no choice but to accept it since he paid his art fees.

12:57 "A lot of modern art is bad because it focuses primarily on the artist." The exact opposite of worship.

Trent -please make a follow-up talking about beauty of traditional music versus the modern music today, not just in society but also the cheapening of liturgical music in the likes of 'peter paul and Mary'. I think the subjective language in Musicam Sacram led to too much liberties in introducing ugly music into masses among others

Kubrick used brutalist architecture in A Clockwork Orange very thoughtfully to represent a liberal dystopia. Brutalist apartments send a shiver of revulsion down my spine when I encounter them in the city.

Dude!! Love this video! I'm a high school art teacher and my favorite music to play while the students draw/paint is "80s Synth Wave"! I have found that it puts them in a positive zone--there's no singing to distract, and the variations of synth music is infinite. So it's hard to get tired of it. Wow! Funny you mentioned 80s Synth Wave!

There's a difference between "ugly art" and "grotesque art".

The Newman Center makes me think of nothing so much as an underground parking garage.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." - John Keats (Ode on a Grecian Urn)

Agree. Art should be original, attractive, mystical and intuitively challenging...😊

The “resurrection” sculpture looks like one of them creepy forms of some JRPG boss fight. 😂

the designer of the nativity scene talking of how it was made to look mass produced is wild to me, I would never think when making art that I want it to look like a dull unoriginal practical object. also I think some Brutalist architecture can be good in it's right place such as the Kyoto International Conference Center, but nobody should live or worship in a brutalist concrete slab.

As an artist, thank you for this.

This was much deeper and more hard hitting than I was expecting by far! Well done, Trent.

Yay! At 6:52 it's St. Stephen's Basilica of Budapest, Hungary. So glad to see a piece of our precious architecural heritage used as an example for beauty here. Thank you, Trent!

Well said. Art is both objective and subjective. Subjective in the sense that beauty can take many forms. Objective because there does exist beauty and ugliness. Art is also a craft that takes effort and skill as well as application of meaning.

E Michael Jones has a book on this very subject called "The Dangers of Beauty"

This is indeed a relevant and important topic. Thank you for such a great exposition.

What a fantastic video!!! I found it very thoughtful. Thank you

Like you said bad/ugly art can be appreciated in the right context, this is also true in music. Music theory teaches which notes/chords sound good together, but sometimes a "bad" note can sound great/interesting when contrasted against a pattern of "good notes". However, our ears can always pick out the note that sounds wrong, even untrained musicians can do this. The picture of the dead tree in the middle of the field looked hauntingly beautiful actually. The problem I have with the art shown at the beginning of the video is that it looks low effort to me.

That Marco Rupnik bit reminds me of the scene in That Hideous Strength when the the NICE puts Mark in a room full of subtlety distorted religious art. Mark comes to the opposite conclusion they intended by realized that if the evil NICE hates Christianity, then Christianity is probably good.

They like it because they don’t like things better than they can make themselves, same holds true for their ideology and politics.

Thank you!!! Please do a part 2 on beauty regarding music.

I love your descriptions of art. 😄 I want a “Trent Horn Reviews Art” series so bad 😁

18:10 "an enemy...might be more effective attacking the Church's Beauty instead of its Truth" this is right on the money. I recently heard Fr. Wetta on PWA say something very similar, "Bad art is worse than bad theology". I'm realizing the truth of this more and more, that you can't win with just arguments and logic when Art often speaks to people on a deeper level, especially the mass of people. This was one of my favourite videos from you Trent (and I'm a long time listener who almost never comments.

I remember a comment that Peter Kreeft made about the appreciation of beauty, in which he compared it to the appreciation of food: The subjective part: Taste. You can't argue about what someone thinks tastes good. The objective part: Nourishment. You can certainly argue about what food is healthy or nourishing for the human body. Still thinking about this distinction, but it seems to be helpful for understanding how people relate to beauty!

Just found your channel. Love it, subbed

Well, it came from despair and a sense of emptiness, from the beginning of XXth C., but especially taking form in the wake of the two WWs. The so called "transcendal homelessness" (a term coined by Lukács). And it stayed, through the countercultural 60s, and further breakage from a sense of beauty and harmony. Art is but an expression of the spiritual state. If you can't see beauty by your internal eyes, you will be creating what you do see instead: a sense of chaos, insecurity, emptiness, despair.

There is something deeply ugly about the people so invested in perpetuating the lie that beauty is subjective. It's as if they know beauty can not be colonized for their usages, so the next best thing is to render it impotent by effectively denying its existence outside of feefees.

Beauty is making a comeback! In all humility, two triptychs I recently completed for my church (Holy Name of Jesus in Kansas City, KS) have received a lot of positive attention from self proclaimed atheists, pagans, agnostics, and fallen away Catholics. It’s exciting to see! Thank you for this breakdown, it really helps me to see the battle I’m up against and how important it is for me to continue to work on my craft.

As someone who grew up in communist Hungary, these buildings and “art” bring back nightmares. Even as a child I instinctively hated them, though I couldn’t put it into words why, beauty was always important to me. These examples you showed are like the communist-art and architecture we had…there’s nothing new here, these are being rehashed.

The Basilica of Aparecida in Brazil, the second largest in the world (only surpassed by St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican), is currently being entirely covered with mosaics by Father Marko Rupnik on its exterior. I visited it recently and found everything to be strange and unattractive; nothing seemed to evoke the heavens as it should. When Trent showed this art, I immediately recognized it as the same work I had seen at the Basilica. It's not surprising to me that the priest is involved in sexual scandals.

I like the serious face that Mr. Horn has for his thumbnails now.

Thank you for this, Trent.

People criticize the brutal apartment blocks in Russia but when the same buildings are built in America or Europe they think they are beautiful and innovative. What is the difference?

There's also a lot of artists who have made a living without the skill and ability for realism, and it's considered impolite to say so.

My family is mad at you, for when I watched your video in headphones I kept jumping up shouting, "Yes! Amen to that!" In my opinion, Art Deco was the last really great art movement. After that we descended into Jackson Pollock garbage. I have been in many modern Catholic churches where I feel that I'm waiting to get my teeth drilled, not exactly an uplifting feeling!

"And when everyone's super... No one will be." - Trent Horn, March, 2024 (probably) Never heard it put quite this way, but I appreciate the perspective. I miss beautiful buildings.

Oh my gosh, didn’t expect the 80s synth mention! It’s so fun. Thanks for this video, I appreciate the nuance that it’s not modern art that is bad. But there is definitely a lot of ugly art out there that people elevate. Thankfully I don’t have to see it that often. :)

It’s terrible how most churches built from the 1970s to now are very modern. Lots of in the round churches, abstract stain glass, no alter rails no reredos. Any church built before this tend to be much more beautiful and reverent. Hopefully the modern style churches will be renovated to recapture the beauty of our tradition

This will probably be an unpopular opinion, but to add to the "Everything is Beautiful" portion of the video, I think objective beauty can even be found in video games, and I have two examples that I think demonstrate it. First and foremost: Shadow of the Colossus in it's entirety. It is a game about triumph and devastation. And much like "Nighthawks," it has a way of transporting the player into it's beautiful, but barren landscape. I will not spoil the story but in many ways, it mimics the Fall in the Garden of Eden, and redemption that comes of being born again. I think those who have completed the game will understand what I'm talking about. Example 2: The Megalith/Angus Dei soundtrack of Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies. The Latin lyrics are about Christ Himself. Unfortunately, the soundtrack has become part of a meme that divorces it from it's original context and cheapens it somewhat, but the soundtrack is gorgeous AND elevates the mind to higher things. The soundtrack plays in the final level of the game, which uses explicitly christian symbolism.

Could not agree more, now 71 years old, about five years ago on retiring I took up painting Oils and Watercolours, having once been a Maths/IT teacher and trainer I set about teaching my self by finding courses of worth to learning how to do so, I even went to my local Art College to enrol on a three-year Degree course, which is what I wanted to do when young, but my parents could not afford to do so. On doing so, I was shown by the senior art lecturer examples of the best students work and paintings. I was not expecting standard classic style paintings, sculptures etc but certainly not 'rubbish' (that one actually was) which was just like infant children's class work that I saw in primary schools when teaching infant teachers to use IT. It was a real challenge for me to keep my mouth close and not look shocked to the person showing me around, who expressed an interest in seeing my portfolio of drawings, pastel, oil and WC I had brought with me. It was she, who as she turned over my work had an open mouth and eyes staring, and said to me "This is what you're done in one year and you never had any professional training", to which I nodded. Suffice to say, I made a swift exit and no way was I going to part with about £5500 to do the course. I have no wish to appear 'big-headed' or ignorant of new forms of art, but my experience totally agrees with this RU-vid that art is now UGLY and does not require long term practise. Generally I found most commercial on-line courses, art colleges and schools, a total lacking and disregard for centuries old skills that requires many years of practise, i.e. the incredible hand skill to lay several levels of wet paint on top of each other without trying it into mud. Sadly I do not have the years ahead of me to acquire such skills, but I get so much pleasure in being able to create just 10% skill level of true artists and more so people who see my work, state how good it is and why don't they see such art in museums any more.

Trent Horn listening to synthwave is the exact image I needed in my head today

Great point about modern art keeping us focused downward on the artist's message or humanity's problems. Helps me understand why I've never liked the "Campbell's Soup" paintings and been much more drawn to the expansive, colorful, breathtaking work! Thanks for another great episode Trent and team!

Is it done on purpose because life imitates art?

Important and relevant topic. Very good production value. I think you should wear a tie.

I'm a craftsman, not an artist. But classic art makes me want to come back and see it again. Modern art is more like early 1900s circus freaks. They hit you hard to get your attention one time, but after that you think "Eh...you've seen one man with three legs you've seen them all.

Trent Horn saying “This is just a urinal” during one of his videos was not in my 2024 card.

Thank you, Trent! This is the best presentation of the objectivity and divine significance of beauty since Sir Roger Scruton's "Why Beauty Matters", and certainly the most succinct!

Art reflects culture. If the culture is chaotic, ugly, disconcerting, etc, then the art will reflect it.

This is very true. During my four years studying art in college, I was subjected to tons of bad modern/postmodern art. We were taught to be a special cliche that "understood" this art, unlike the unwashed masses. It took some time, but I shook off the brainwashing eventually.

I almost spitted my coffee when Trent said the picture in the US looks like vomited oil =)))

Make truth, beauty and goodness great again ! ❤

Superb presentation, thanks.

I actually liked the resurrection artwork, it is more akin to the ancient artworks