Tea at Trianon: Why Modern Art Isn’t Right

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, May 20, 2024

Why Modern Art Isn’t Right

From Daniel McCarthy at Modern Age Journal:

Alexis de Tocqueville might offer a different explanation, however. Our elites are out of touch with popular feelings, but they are not immune to the pressures of egalitarianism. How can one justify being rich or otherwise of high status in a society that prizes equality?

The wealthy don’t want to lose their wealth, but few would want to defend their unequal place by adopting a consciously aristocratic or selfish philosophy. That would be not only socially unacceptable but psychologically dissonant. Most people, rich or poor, want to be judged good by the standards of the society in which they live, not least in the court of their own conscience.

But to be an enemy of inequality can suffice as an alternative to actually being equal. This accounts for the perversity of much of the American political left, which is often wealthy or well-educated yet insists on pretending to champion the lowly and marginal. Hating traditional, even mythical, sources of inequality substitutes for loving one’s neighbor. In the world of art on either side of the Atlantic, egalitarian virtue takes the form of rejecting the past and its values. Monarchy and traditional portraiture were features of a West less egalitarian than today, and by opposing and parodying such things the artist places himself on the right side of history. (Read more.)