Beauteous Truth: On Literature, Culture, & Faith (Jared Zimmerer interviews Joseph Pearce, 5/07/24, Imaginative Conservative) Jared Zimmerer: Throughout your collection of essays, Beauteous Truth (St. Augustine’s Press), there is a continuous message that culture and having a steeped understanding of authentic cultural approbations are of utmost importance and that Catholicism has helped shape a culture that can last. What advice would you give for others to be able to recognize those parts of culture that are worthwhile? Joseph Pearce: True culture is a reflection of the transcendental tr ..read more

The decline of beauty: Why has the concept been rejected by the art world? (Pierre d’Alancaisez, 12/18/23, The Critic) Ask the contestants of Family Fortunes about the purpose of art, and the concept of beauty is sure to top the list. A kindergartner, likewise, would display an instinctive understanding of the word. In exhibition writing and art criticism today, however, it is as though beauty never existed. Tate wouldn’t dare describe a painting as beautiful, and any artist trying to market their work in such terms would be cast out as an amateur. To speak about beauty today is to be reactio ..read more

We Built Ugly Churches and Still Do Not Attract Young People: How Is This Possible? (ITXU DÍAZ, February 16, 2024, American Spectator) [B]eyond grace, if anything moves the affections of man, if anything can lead our feelings toward God, it is the aesthetics. There is an official liturgy, to avoid abuses and doctrinal errors, to guarantee respect for the Holy Sacrament, but also so that we learn to approach God, not only with the soul, but also with the senses. Beauty is paramount. St. John Paul II wrote about it in his 1999 Letter to Artists: In perceiving that all he had created was good, G ..read more

Seeing Thomas Hart Benton’s Panorama of American Life from Another Angle: The series of murals collectively known as “America Today” depict vignettes of a growing, changing nation in vibrant color. (J. McMahon • 01/15/24, NY Observer) I asked my old friend and teacher from the Art Students League, Costa Vavagiakis, master of painting technique himself, to comment on Breton, whom he greatly admires. “Thomas Hart Benton was an intensely erudite progressive who saw the beauty in the need and function of all things… He comes from the lineage of Michelangelo, Cambiaso, Tintoretto and El Greco.” E ..read more

Why Caspar David Friedrich’s Painting Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818) a Romantic Masterpiece, Evoking the Power of the Sublime (Open Culture, January 8th, 2024) When Caspar David Friedrich completed Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, or Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, in 1818, it “was not well received.” So says gallerist-Youtuber James Payne in his new Great Art Explained video above, which focuses on Friedrich’s most famous painting. In the artist’s lifetime, the Wanderer in fact “marked the gradual decline of Friedrich’s fortunes.” He withdrew from society, and in 1835, “he suffered a st ..read more