I was alerted to the fact that the Conservative philosopher Roger Scruton had somehow been given an hour long programme on BBC2 entitled “Why Beauty Matters” by a discussion on Radio 4‘s Saturday Review earlier in the evening. Christopher Frayling, Kathryn Hughes and Danny Robins were invited by host Tom Sutcliffe to sneer, titter and misrepresent Scruton’s ludicrously outmoded view that creating beauty - rather than the glorification of ugliness - is what Art should be about.
Chris Frayling started by saying that the the programme had made him “very angry” and that Scruton had simply ”bludgeoned the audience” with his circular argument that, because modern artists don’t subscribe to his definition of beauty, they don’t produce anything beautiful.
Actually, Chris, I’m not sure I much care about your anger: what I do care about - like my old Cambridge philosophy supervisor, Roger Scruton - is that for decades the public has been bludgeoned by the silly, disgusting, value-free effusions of talentless charlatans aided and abetted by the craven, self-serving boosterism of the wretches who make up the Arts Establishment. Visit the centre of just about any modern British town (Scruton chose the horror that is Reading) and ask who should be angry with whom: should the people who have helped drag art down to its present pitiful humanity-hating level be angry with those who point out that they may just have got it a teensy bit wrong - or should we, the public, forced to live amidst spirit-crushing buildings that look as if a giant had vomited concrete, be angry with the modish ninnies who abetted the barbarians responsible for this crime against humanity?
Tough call.
The panelists went on to discuss School of Saatchi, a BBC2 series in which young “artists” come up with meaningless conceptual tat in an attempt to impress the “art” collector Charles Saatchi (who can’t be arsed to appear - ooh, what mystique!). I caught a few minutes of the programme, just time enough to hear the Arts Establishment panel members heaping praise on some rubbishy idea or other, which, it was announced, had been savaged by the public. The lead panelist just loved it “100%”, describing it as “a British surrealism gag”.
Ah, right. We hate it, so they love it. That’s what passes for aesthetic judgment these days. And then, of course, it’s a “gag”. What could be better? It’ll annoy everyone and and it’s, like, y’know, fun. Get out that chequebook, Charlie - sounds like a winner!
Fight the good fight, Roger. One day we’ll all see these rich, successful, meaningless vandals for what they truly are - an extremely unfunny gag.
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