Cannes 2018 and The Right Ideas in Aesthetic Work

May 15, 2018

Seeing the brahouha at Cannes, may I remark in this way: when self-proclaimed “artists” fling their own brand of tortured misery, resentment and profanity into the world, only a hack will claim it to be “Art.”

Such has been the result of the teachings of the post-modernists this past century, in the universities, especially the Ivy League, where I learned this nonsense from them. We see the results of their nihilism all around us and its worthlessness is patent.

These are people who are unable to see. The vision of Truth and Beauty has always been the province of the Artist. (And there are precious few of them.) That is why their discoveries, like diamonds in an otherwise inaccessible coal seam, have been so valuable.

In this direction — backwards to the Grand tradition — is where we need to go as aesthetic craftsmen, to relearn and propagate the right ideas.