Tea at Trianon: Why Christians Shouldn't Fear Abstraction

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

Sunday, May 31, 2026

Why Christians Shouldn't Fear Abstraction

From Hilary White at The Sacred Images Project:

You’ve seen these a thousand times, in a thousand iterations of nonsense. And you’ve spent your life, if you’ve bothered to pay attention, being gaslighted by our Elites and Betters into believing that if you see nonsense, it’s your fault. You’ve been told, explicitly or implicitly, that these and others in this vein represent the highest achievements of modern artistic culture. And that if you don’t respond to them, if you don’t feel something profound in front of them, the problem is you.
And I’m here to tell you that you’re right; it’s bollocks. I completely affirm you in this: the Emperor is, in fact, stark nekkid.
A great deal of what is called abstract art in the modern art world is nothing more than transgressive and subversive deconstruction. It isn’t trying to help you see any true thing clearly, or help you know something true. In fact it is an attempt to break reality, to reduce truths to meaningless components, taking things like colour, form, line etc. and treating them as ends of their own, without the connecting thread of meaning or purpose. (Read more.)