The Decline and Fall of Western Art

by Brendan Heard

  These materialists share a rootless philosophy of French Postmodernism and have built an artificial world on their fears. Now, at a stage of near-total lunacy, we find ourselves at war with reason and reality itself, in an arms race of emotional thinking and hysterics. This insanity has been in no small part reached thanks to the discarding of our art, which has left us uprooted, devalued and prone. The idiot-language of Modernism (Artspeak) used to smite our art traditions is a synthesis of Marxist power-word language and antihero relativist philosophy. Modernist adherents do not see their art views as a construct, a favourite term of theirs, although it is very much an inorganic, late civilization post-commentary. They hold to its precepts religiously as an article of their faith. Despite an espoused hatred for religion, they are indeed religious fanatics.

  There is a sexual polarization element to art today, in that women have been told they are the creative sex, that their every happenstance expression of creativity is unquestionable innovative gold. Sadly this newfound innate creativity often seems steered towards nude public screeching or painting with menstrual blood in liberal agitprop. Traditionally male art roles and interests are discouraged and the culture of today believes any consideration of æsthetics to be a purely effeminate disposition. A man so much as wearing a tie or showing sartorial interest above ‘jeans’ lends accusations of effeminacy, where not long ago every man in the street wore a three piece suit. What is worse, traditional art is associated with patriarchy and oppression, despite its objective excellence (and frequent feminine-celebrating subject matter). Generally, women abstract painters who believe they are natural born artists (due to their sex), along with many men who have no real talent, have supreme confidence in the belief that art does not require skill. Such a philosophy is obviously the champion of mediocrity and decline. These are merely a few facets of a larger cultural virus which is bent on destroying in the name of love and unencumbered by any realistic understanding of the world. Fans of Modernism seemingly delight at every intellectually insulting sideshow, or profess love for graceless bumbling and cheap contrivance in painting, performance or sculpture. They do this because they do not understand art and at the same time have been taught that non-abstract art is now unforgivably associated with an evil colonial past – even in Western nations without a colonial past.

  A fact that sounds not-nice must now be made not-true. Learning becomes impossible as Europeans cannot bear to hear anything affirming and celebratory about their own culture. There is a complete circle of tautology in their minds, which confines and redefines every attempt to expand past this thinking. The Baby Boomers are safeguarded by their television viewership, a medium that exists today largely for them to spend their remaining years in an unchanging bubble of illusion. Meanwhile, our college-educated youth emerge as safe-space lunatics until life experience hopefully dismantles their brainwashing. These two groups are the ground troops for our materialist elite, who manufacture their reality through education and media control. All of it is poisonous and for the true artist there is no outlet at all to speak of, let alone flourish within. Luckily, this illusory state, like all deceptions, is unsustainable. But for as long as this illusion is sustained, decline will roll on – and not just in the arts (which already hit rock-bottom decades ago). As I hope to illustrate, the struggle for reclaiming true art may involve politics, but it is also upstream of politics and even culture. Its revival entails a renewed respect for nature and natural law, and in that sense an environmentalism with aversion to the most materialist and wasteful aspects of pure capitalism. But beyond even that, it is tribal reclamation of philosophy and spirituality, overstepping much of modern history to a more primal worldview (which might be associated with what some have called an archaic revival). It involves a view that is more romantic, visceral, competitive, ascetic, beautiful and truthful.

  PART 1: What is Western art?

  Hellenistic origins of Western art

  “Let no one untrained in geometry enter.”

  - Motto over the entrance to Plato’s Academy.

  While you can go back further in time searching for our creative origins, you can certainly not discuss Western art without a reverential acknowledgement of classical antiquity. The sophisticated art of our classical forebears is an eternal reminder of their pre-eminence, of a virile light that must not be extinguished yet has been dimmed.

  A people’s art represents their world-soul. Their works encapsulate ancestral motivations, worldview, spirituality and future desires. These qualities flourish within the creative guidelines they set out for themselves, mysteriously handed down through generations, shrouded in myth and refined over time. The beliefs are reflected in the culture’s folk art and academic styles in all major mediums (woodwork, metalwork, textiles, music, pottery, weaponry, architecture, poetry, etc) and this is true of all peoples and epochs. The uniqueness of the Greco-Roman world feeling can still be sensed when you see their surviving friezes, mosaics and temples. This hidden and inseparable artistic soul — representing a specific self-belief, or will to affect the world — lies even within the design of their common-usage objects (bowls and combs, for instance). This design discipline is rooted in their blood and their historic landscape, intangible yet unmistakable. There are not sufficient words in English to describe what can only be thought of as a spiritual connection between a people and their organic art. This idea of art being something inseparable from blood is extremely important to grasp. So too is the concept that art is the indication of a society’s state of health; like the outward signs of health in the body, the beauty value of art reflects a culture’s fitness – healthy society, healthy art. Our present-day art symptoms are, needless to say, reflective of a terminal malaise.

  The Chinese style and symbolism, in their artwork and architecture, resonate with Chinese people. This requires no explanation and comes as no surprise. It is rooted in tribal impulse and the Chinese style suits the Chinese racial soul. Europeans can appreciate the art of the Chinese but in some ways it is eternally alien and not rousing to us, unlike the art that is native to us. But this is only natural. The same might be said for Semitic art, African, Aztec, etc. Though outsiders might have an appreciation, there is deep historical and spiritual significance in the blood of those who expressed the art; it is theirs. Broadly speaking, Northern Europeans may not be Greek or Roman specifically, but as fellow Europeans, something in their art and literature never fails to excite and inspire. There is a powerful root ancestry at work that transcends European country, language and history differences, which we might brazenly call Indo-Aryan, even Atlantean (the land of Atlas, if we may boldly choose to use the romantic terms). A people, in a group sense, become an assertion of an idea – symbols. Origins and rationale may get lost in the fog of time but they never lose vitality. That is Tradition.

  Whatever ancient holy fire mobilized Hellenic civilization, they cannot be said to have been anything less than supremely creative. They originated or perfected so many fundamental ideas, so much that still invigorates us today, that Western people on the whole cannot express enough gratitude to their ingenuity and hard work. They demonstrated excellence in art, philosophy, natural science, athleticism, war, law, theatre, mathematics, music, astronomy and much more. Aristotle (384-322BC) codified the scientific method itself, using his inductive-deductive system to rationally advance humanity’s collective objective knowledge. There were thinkers of this epoch whose ideas were so profound they have tremendous influence and relevance today, despite only surviving in fragments, such as Heraclitus (535-475BC), whose idea of logos is an enduring root Western principle.

  The significance of these classical Greek achievements has filled many books already and nobody who has read the classics or beheld Greek and Roman art is capable of forgetting the experience. It is part of the quintessence of being European, the ways of the ancients – to whom we owe everything.

  The Greek heroic ideals were personified in art values suitable to their
ascending aims. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are an early mythical focal point that best establish Hellenic moral origins. Homer should always be considered the starting point for examination of the impetus behind Greek and, later, Roman civilization. Indeed, for all Western European epochs and thinkers, Homer is ever-present. First principles, even when anachronistic or unprovable, are the motivation behind all that comes after. The Iliad poem dates to the archaic period of Classical Antiquity, likely from the eighth century BC. Herodotus placed Homer at circa 850BC and Homer is older than the actual events of the Iliad by an additional 400 years, during which it was passed down as an oral tradition until recorded by his followers.

  ”On their side Odysseus, Diomedes and the two Aiantes, urged on the Greeks who, fearless of the violent Trojan onslaught, stood their ground, unmoving as the mist with which Zeus caps the mountain tops in calm weather, when angry Boreas and the other winds are sleeping, with all their fierce gusts that send the dark clouds fleeing. So did the Greeks stand firm against the Trojans and held their place. Agamemnon’s commanding voice echoed through the ranks: “Be men, my friends, take heart, fear nothing but dishonour in others eyes. When men shun shame, more survive than not, in flight there is no glory, no salvation.

  “So saying, he swiftly hurled his spear striking a comrade of brave Aeneas, Deicoön son of Pergasus, whom the Trojans honoured like a son of Priam, for his readiness to fight in the vanguard. The spear struck his shield, and meeting little resistance passed straight through, past his belt and into the lower belly. He fell with a thud, and a crash of armour.

  “Aeneas in reply killed two Danaan champions, Crethon and Orsilochus sons of Diocles, whose father lived in noble Pherae. A man of substance, his line began with the river-god Alpheus, whose broad stream flows through Pylian lands, and whose son was the great King Orsilochus. He begat Diocles in turn, whose sons these were, skilled in warfare. Reaching manhood, they followed the Argives to horse-breeding Troy in the black ships, to win compensation for the Atreidae. Now their voyage ended there in death. Like a pair of lions reared in a mountain-thicket that prey on the farmers’ fine sheep and cattle till they themselves fall to the bronze blade, so these two at the hands of Aeneas were toppled like tall firs.”

  - Homer, The Iliad

  This central Greek myth, which is based in historical fact, involves overcoming adversity and tragedy during an inexorable conflict and choosing eternal glory over natural life. The story illuminates the importance the ancients placed on courage, honour and heroic virtue, which hinted at the Apollonian rectitude of the Aryan warrior mannerbund, the solar spirit that invokes awe. The depth of fidelity in the Iliad’s often gory battles are sacrosanct lessons in bravery above all else: fighting against overwhelming odds for the sake of honour alone, despite the inevitability of death. The heroes are driven by the often unfulfilled and unquenchable desire for justice, though they fall to the dust on each side of the conflict to equal praise of their deeds. The heroes defeat cowardice and doubt within themselves on every page, championing a physical courage that is not blind or animalistic but romantic and intellectual, that their deeds may overcome the fear and torture of their situation to exalt honour for eternity – honour and courage being that part of them which is already eternal, borrowed from the infinite upon birth and never to be besmirched.

  Achilles knows he will die for avenging Patroclus but he takes the road of everlasting glory. That is the volcanic clash of superhuman personalities, when men’s choices attain the godlike through the passion of determination. All life stories end in tragedy, one way or another, and it is that bittersweet reality we seek in drama and fables. This is an emotional essence that is markedly absent from todays safe, Postmodernist storytelling. Greek myths expounded the eternal cycle of nature and we read Greek and Roman writers today to immerse ourselves in the clever emotional asseveration of being human.

  “Zeus stirred sombre noise, and sent bloody drops of dew down from the heights of heaven, as he prepared to send many a brave soul to Hades.”

  Following The Iliad, the The Odyssey, embarks on an adventure story revolving around determination and retribution. The Odyssey glorifies in testing the limits and wits of poor Odysseus, a man alone in the trials of life, struggling against gods and monsters, until reaching home to wreak bloody vengeance upon those trying to claim his wife and lands. It may be hard for us to grasp that this adventure story is religious myth, with self-overbecoming at the heart of the canon.

  “As he spoke he gave the signal, and Telemachus, the godlike hero’s steadfast son, slung on his sharp-edged sword, grasped his spear, and stood beside his father, armed with the glittering bronze.”

  - The Odyssey

  It is said the Greeks thought of history as before them and the future coming from behind to envelope them, which confuses our forward-linear view of time. I suppose it has to do with knowing and being able to see the past. Homer was thus before them and was the link between the Athenian golden age and the murky prehistory of those Mediterranean islands, where legends and history melded. The poetic oral tradition was a bridge of ancestor worship, from the time of Pericles back to the walls of Troy, to the ancient halls of Mycenae and beyond, to the romance myth of Hyperborean northern origins. By celebrating the honourable inner life in myth, it becomes the standard for mortal men to attain, a quest. And in their transcendent search for goodness, the Greeks developed theories of beauty values and related beauty to nobility and truth, and expressed it in art. Their moral tradition was thus ascending — and devotion to reason and rejection of the comforts of delusion honed their craft and their science, so that they were advanced enough to have machines not unlike early computers (as demonstrated by the Antikythera Mechanism4).

  The unique creative capabilities of their culture sprang from this magic combination of realism and idealism. It included ideas of the pre-eminence of virtue, philosophical curiosity, strict and warlike honour discipline, and a theology bounded by nature. Their achievements were so inspiring that all European high art (in painting, architecture, literature and philosophy) has obsessed over Hellenic themes through the ages.

  But what more specifically set the Greeks (and by extension the Romans) apart, particularly in regards to art?

  They gave us a formula for beauty.

  Platonic Forms & the Golden Ratio

  The formula for beauty that has been handed down to us is the Golden Ratio, also called the Golden Mean or Golden Section (in Latin, Sectio Aurea). It is the æsthetically perfect proportion and a root principle in all traditional European architecture, painting, sculpture and music. Two quantities are in the Golden Ratio if their ratio is the same as that of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. In an equation form, it looks like this: a/b = (a+b)/a = 1.6180339887498948420…

  The Golden Ratio appears in patterns everywhere in nature, in the spiral arrangements of leaves, pine cones, shells and even in the human body. It is the ratio to which each part relates to the sum of those parts.

  It was the Pythagoreans who arrived at our earliest recorded concept of the fundamental nature of numbers. The Hellenic philosophers saw number as the basis for all, both physical and metaphysical.

  “Geometry has two great treasures: one is the theorem of Pythagoras, the other the division of a line into mean and extreme ratios, that is, the Golden Mean. The first way may be compared to a measure of gold, the second to a precious jewel.”

  - Johannes Kepler, astronomer (1571-1630)

  Pythagorean philosophers such as Philolaus (470-385BC) and Archytas (428-347BC) explained the structure of the world in accord with numbers, the expression of which was found in studies of proportion. They discovered that the harmony and proportion in numbers was directly related to beauty in the world, or the result of it, and thus formulae could both explain and engineer beauty. This was true across all considerations of beauty, not just the visual arts. For example, Pythagoras considered music and astronomy to be related sciences. Geometry was n
umber in space, music was number in time, and astronomy was number in space and time. With a root understanding of numbers and a morality of beauty-expressions, art and science appear clearly as one mutually striving cultural expression. The word technology does not to our modern ears have a connotation of art or craft, though it derives from the Greek techne (τέχνη), meaning art, skill, cunning of hand or relating to craft. The Golden Ratio demonstrates the link between the tangible world and the imagined, the physical and the metaphysical. It is the rational summation of art as a system reducible to a number and proportion. Proportion is thus a key concept accounting for beauty. Symmetria, meaning good proportion, was the word commonly used for this vital classical concept. It is a straightforward and functional account for the sensed goodness attributed to visual beauty. The idea that philosophers and artisans once considered this a fundamentally objective rationale exposes the level of deceit we are burdened with under Modernist relativism. Symmetria was a fundamental design precept and remains so in all true art (including music). I am falling short in not including science and religion here as I should but we must continue from our modern perspective, where these disciplines are falsely bifurcated. The same beauty of proportion desired in art is found everywhere in nature, which is both hyper-rational and hyper-spiritual.