One of the questions that has most bothered me in my reflections on culture is the question of kitsch. Just what is it? When did it begin? And why?
Roger ScrutonRead
For many artists and critics, beauty is a discredited idea. It denotes the saccharine sylvan scenes and cheesy melodies that appealed to Granny.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses skepticism about the conventional notions of beauty in art, suggesting that they are deemed outdated or overly sentimental.
Roger Scruton critiques the current perspective among some artists and critics who regard beauty as an obsolete concept in art. He argues that traditional forms of beauty, once celebrated, are now dismissed as unrefined or overly simplistic, leading to a broader discourse about what constitutes true artistic value and the role of aesthetic experiences in culture.
Themes
BeautyArtCriticismAestheticsSentimentality
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on modern art, you could use this quote to illustrate how perspectives on beauty have shifted.
More from Roger Scruton
All quotes βThere are big questions science doesn't answer, such as why is there something rather than nothing? There can't be a scientific answer to that because it's the answer that precedes science.
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18th century opera is packed with emotion, but contains not a trace of kitsch. Only with the 'thees' and 'thous' of Victorian poetry does the disease begin to grow in our poetic tradition.
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The robust English view used to be that the correct response to offensive words is to ignore them, or to answer them with a rebuke. If you invoke the law at all, it should be to protect the one who gives the offence, and not the one who takes it. Now, it seems, it is all the other way round.
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For two centuries the English countryside has been an icon of national identity and the loved reminder of our island home. Yet the government is bent on littering the hills with wind turbines and the valleys with high speed railways.
Roger ScrutonRead
You cannot own a symphony or a novel in the way you can own a Damien Hirst. As a result there are far fewer fake symphonies or fake novels than there are fake works of visual art.
Roger ScrutonRead
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