Art and Beauty

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 5
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

From Keats ‘Ode on a Grecian urn’ what makes these lines beautiful and poignant ? In this blog I’m going to touch upon the ideas of art and beauty and why they are so important to us and to our psychological well-being. From the time of the ancient Greeks until the early twentieth century it was taken for granted that art, literature and music could enrich human lives. Great art was believed to have the power to elevate the emotions and sensibility and to transcend the mundane everyday world. In the early twentieth century there was a change in human consciousness in the west. For many art, music and literature became a dead end and only new and experimental ideas were considered to be capable of explaining the world after the horror of the First World war.. This war with the carnage on the western front had undermined an easy belief in truth and beauty.
Modernism in music, in literature and in art – threw the rule book away and attempted to interpret the world through the horror of contemporary experience. James Joyce, one of the great modernist authors wrote ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ this is a short extract:

“Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen- 4
core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy 5

isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor 6

had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse 7

to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper 8

all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to 9

tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a 10

kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in 11

vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. “

Maybe only a new language could try to express new thoughts?

Or, modernist artists like the German expressionists:

sought to challenge accepted views of art as representation.
Even more recently post-modernism sees value as being in the eye of the beholder, not a quality in the work itself. To adopt this approach is to see a Batman comic as holding the same value as the works of Shakespeare.We are in danger of replacing the high and noble ideals which art and education were always concerned with, with stuff which means nothing. Our capacity for happiness and mental health depends upon our capacity to experience all that is best in human thought and culture.

My own belief is that we have a need for what we hope will increase our sensitivity to and understanding of the world. It may be something which will give us a new perspective, a sense of beauty or an insight into the sublime. So, I do not think that a song by ‘One Direction’ is in any sense the equal of Schubert lieder ,Andy Warhol the equal of Michelangelo or a Batman comic the equal of ‘War and Peace’. There is great art which elevates and raises our consciousness and trivia which does not.
I would be interested in your views please write to me by school email. The Google reply does not seem to work in school for some reason. I will do a posting of your replies and comments after the blog has been published.
Dr.Brown