Despite it all, everything must be beautiful.

It has been generally accepted that ugliness is a symbol of a modern and critically thinking civilisation. A civilisation that disregards superfluities, that does not waste time or expenses on useless things. An ugly civilisation is an enlightened one, I fear that is the consensus. Art can exist in an ugly world, in fact surrounding ugliness aids in the creation of art. It always has. But the art of today is ugly also. It is the general belief of today’s art that to critique ugliness is to reflect it back unto itself. Art has become optimised to vehicle meaning. If art is what one would consider to be conventionally beautiful, it must have an ugly meaning. Beauty cannot be permitted to exist on its own.

I have always found this behaviour puzzling, as it is a behaviour never before seen in Art History to date. The Middle Ages, both in the West and the East, were a millennium dominated by unbridled ugliness in the form of war, famine, pestilence and religious fear. In spite of the horror of the period, both ordinary and aristocratic men and women would dedicate centuries to the beautiful. The most famous among these dedications is Gothic Architecture, a manifestation of care so pure it has driven many of my peers to tears. The Middle Ages was a period of coexistence between the ugliness of violence and the Beauty of creation, not entirely replicated on that scale since.

The Arts and Crafts movement promoted this philosophy at the height of the Industrial Revolution. The parallels between then and now are staggering, and much of what I wish to argue is modelled on Arts and Crafts essayist, critics and artists.