The Decline and Fall of Western Art

by Brendan Heard

  This attitude is at some level indicative of our irrational and mistaken modern attitudes to both art and life. In truth, art exists in and of itself, as an example of clever craft or the simple desire to depict something masterfully and for the purpose of creating beauty – inexplicable beauty. Not sentimental beauty per se but natural and emotional beauty, the tingling inspiration one discerns when one feels the immensities of work that have gone into the creation of an object, an effort to rival nature herself. But at its root, and always, there is craft. Making shoes or baking a cake are lower levels of the very same vocation, with various practical purposes beyond beauty, which also limits their creative potential slightly more. But they are cut of the same cloth as master painting.

  Consider the drama of a deluge scene or a Hieronymous Bosch depiction of Hades. Beyond that point of mastery of visual technique, any message becomes irrelevant. These paintings are the cupcakes of a master baker, or the shoes of a master cobbler. It can be an expression of pure imagination and self-fulfilling for beauty reasons, striving for the plane of perfect reason. One is too awestruck to do anything but feel bliss and passionate value attributed to the art. There is no need for a musing as to its purpose or discovering some message of social commentary (though Modernists will try).

  Are functional artistic objects such as an Antonio Gaudi chair exempt as art because they are purely functional and purposefully designed for visual beauty, rather than direct symbolism? What is so intellectually stimulating about a painting with a political message that could not better be conveyed by simply writing the message in a news column? Why the strange attempt to say it visually with an abstract guessing game? That is, if the message is supposedly the ultimate purpose and not the painting?

  Should not a quality painting exist in its own right, as an exemplar of unpretentious, organic values? That is not to say it cannot have symbolism and even make a kind of point, politically or otherwise, though that again is always a bit perishable. As our ancestors would have known, representing the form of beauty in nature is its own virtue, above the expressing of opinion.

  The works of Raphael and Durer are perfectly breathtaking in their own right, without knowledge of any message or narrative, simply a feast for your eyes and nourishment for your soul. The same is true of a score by Telemann or Vivaldi – no backstory is required for their enjoyment, nothing need be said at all. And we are not talking of an enjoyment like a mindless sensual pleasure but an uplifting and self-improving pleasure in excellence.

  The condition of life is not so abstract and abstraction in its truest sense does not exist apart from, or certainly not above, the rules of the universe, which follow an orderly, sublime mandate — inflexibly, not altruistically. What we require at this juncture is certainly not a return to Enlightenment values but a return to something more like the Renaissance. We need a morality reborn in the tempest of natural law.

  A simple truth has been all but lost and that is the greatest tragedy of all.

  “Art that disregards the laws and limits ... is no longer art ... whoever departs from the laws of beauty, and from the feeling for æsthetic harmony that each man senses within his breast ... is sinning against the original wellsprings of art.”

  – Kaiser Wilhelm II

  “The invention of beauty by the Greeks ... their postulate of beauty as an ideal, has been the bugbear of European art and European æsthetic philosophies.”

  – Barnett Newman

  Kaiser Wilhelm II.

  Those are the words of two completely different infamous twentieth century characters, from opposite ends of the spectrum. But which of those quotes sounds vigorous and true? And which the disinterested deceit of the snake-oil salesman?

  Beauty as an ideal, a bugbear indeed. Mr. Newman was born in America and not of a Christian-European background, despite claiming in this quote to know what is best for Europeans æsthetically and philosophically. He dismisses out of hand the entirety of Western tradition. He thereby does not share the ethnic-historical affinity for the art tradition he criticises, making his false presumptions all the bolder. In this sense the German Emperor, despite his other faults, is at least of the same culture he is speaking for, and an inheritor of this birthright tradition.The Kaiser is defending beauty itself, where Newman’s hypocrisy is compounded because he is peddling the idea that beauty values were a bad idea from the start. Without an ounce of humility, Newman suggests that he knows better than superhuman cultural titans such as Plato and Phidias. He suggests that the entirety of art history before Kandinsky or Picasso was an awful, irredeemable mistake. He stands opposed to traditional art and beauty. The Kaiser, like many of us, felt spiritually and genetically connected to and responsible for the apex art of classical tradition. Newman does not share that loyalty, but merely promotes his exploitative market of goofy, monochrome ‘painting’. His statement is galling for being a lie, and ultimately an attack on goodness.

  Here is Mr. Newman’s artwork, not at all surprising considering his contrived Artspeak opinions. Yes, that is a painting. Monochrome (red with light grey stripe in colour). Does it matter that it is reproduced here as grey instead of the original flat red - is red a de facto magic-colour representing genius that grey does not convey? Does that same rule apply to the other classic works published herein that make the jump to greyscale and still retain their suggestion of genius? It’s not even worth the time to bother showing the work, it’s all so laughable. Obviously Newman knows what is artistically best for all of us.

  There are many who stand opposed to cultural decline today who would still be staunch defenders of Modernist art. In effect, they have been immersed in art as narrative since day one, and do not understand the purity of art as craft. Partly they are worried we puritans would exclude early Modernism such as Futurism, or Impressionism, or one of those movements that was around during the transition that had some strong traditional character. These people are not ready for the purity of drawing that deciding line, of standing up and rejecting, or they have not sufficiently studied the older master work, to understand fully the environment of strict standards required for great art to flourish. The moment you let yourself step into sentimentalist ‘Oh I just like everything’ thinking you are lost. Greatness requires discipline.

  Everyone must come to understand we have abandoned form completely for function. We have learned the hard way that without form, artistry and its objects lose function too. This is the failure of the materialist worldview, which in our current sense is an extension of consumerist economy-worship, the hyper-destructive and artless rule of money-power.

  Return to the guild system

  ”Only as an æsthetic product can the world be justified to all eternity.”

  - Friedrich Nietzsche

  For Friedrich Nietzsche, human art was not just a complement to nature but the highest conduct and spiritual duty of man. The realm of æsthetics held for him a supremacy over ethics and knowledge. This was a popular idea for most of history, though of course it sounds outrageous to us, the over-civilized. Art, philosophy and science were all indistinguishable facets of human activity. Or maybe we should not shy away from boldly specifying now, as we lose ground and status in the world, they were indistinguishable facets of European activity.

  But for Nietzsche, art was supreme.

  “Through art, Man transcends the confines of his own ego and secures oneness with the universe. Clearly, it is established: the role of art as means of self-transcendence.”

  Another interesting and scandalous philosophical figure was the early twentieth century occultist, magician and poet Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). Crowley’s eccentric ideas recall the missing ingredient in our art revival, our deep-rooted longing for an absence that is now like a dream, which is our abandoned system of craft guilds.

  A guild is essentially an association of artisans who control the practice of their craft. The earliest types were fraternities of tradesmen, joined by mutual interest. Not solely in the
pursuit of personal material gain, as would be our modern and materialist assumption but by a duty of preserving and excelling in their craft, made sacred by an esoteric initiation ritual combining spirituality and ancestral craft knowledge. They were inheriting a mantle, not working on a product. Guilds were organically occurring organizations and a long-standing phenomenon (ending with the merchant-class expansion in the nineteenth century). Members met in guildhalls and retained ownership of tools and supply of materials. Senior members maintained the standards within each guild. The most difficult but important aspect for us to grasp today is that artists and tradesmen were more or less synonymous at this time. In that sense, thinking of them as essentially the same vocation was a benefit to both. Dividing them as we do now into creatives and labourers (as opposed to apprentices and masters) only benefits the profiteering of the sinister merchant class. Art is craft, after all, not abstract social commentary.

  “Nature’s way is to weed out the weak. This is the most merciful way, too.”

  – Aleister Crowley

  Politically, Crowley was a monarchist who regarded the then rising merchant money-power to total predominance as dangerous and degenerative, much like Barbarossa did 800 years earlier, proving the struggle to which we have succumbed is perennial.

  Crowley felt that the duties of government should be conducted by a non-elected senate, chosen by a political monastery electoral college appointed by the king. Members would commit themselves to a vow of poverty and be selected from volunteers who had exhibited excellence as scholars, artists or even athletes. Crowley understood that the overthrow of traditional aristocracies by a business class would destroy high art and high culture — which is precisely what it has done. Nietzsche and Junger would be in agreement.

  To quote Crowley further:

  “At present all the strong are being damaged, and their progress being hindered by the dead weight of the weak limbs... And when the trouble begins, we aristocrats of freedom, from the castle to the cottage, the tower or the tenement, shall have the slave mob against us. We are not for the poor and sad: the lords of the earth are our kinsfolk. Beauty and strength, leaping laughter, and delicious languor, force and fire are of us …”

  Crowley outlined a proposed guild system in these terms, which is what brought my thinking around to guilds:

  “Before the face of the Areopagus stands an independent Parliament of the Guilds. Within the Order, irrespective of Grade, the members of each craft, trade, science, or profession form themselves into a Guild, making their own laws, and prosecute their own good, in all matters pertaining to their labor and means of livelihood. Each Guild chooses the man most eminent in it to represent it before the Areopagus of the Eighth Degree; and all disputes between the various Guild are argued before that Body, which will decide according to the grand principles of the Order. Its decisions pass for ratification to the Sanctuary of the Gnosis, and thence to the Throne.”

  Magickal esotericism aside, the value in partitioned, autonomous, professional groups dedicated to standards of their particular craft strikes me as healthy cultural conduct. It is anti-mercantilism and promotes the true ‘diversity’ of localized style — the parochial quaintness of artisanry that is all but lost in our global Modernist plastic sameness. This parochial individualism of regional guilds was, and would be, healthy for culture and environment. Such concerns are anathema to the business class, for whom art, culture, or ecology are all secondary concerns to money, let alone divine right or nobility of the blood. Material profit is their only pursuit and they have no allegiance to people, nations or family. Their desire is to keep people as fat, docile consumers and bland out every original or surpassing impulse they might have. They are quite far along that route as we speak.

  In contemplating the history of craft guilds, it might be safe to assume, despite little recorded evidence, that there was some form of them in ancient Mesopotamia or Egypt. Among the ancient craftsmen of the Greeks, Homer names builders, carpenters, workers in leather and metal, and potters. Guilds, as we understand them, were first mentioned by Plutarch, who says ancient Rome divided the craftsmen into nine guilds (collegia opificum). They were: flute players, goldsmiths, coppersmiths, carpenters, fullers, dyers, potters, shoemakers and a general remaining trades guild.

  You can see at once there is little to distinguish, classically, between a shoemaker and a flute player. To us, one is a largely artless, purely functional trade and the other a free-spirited, unconventional pastime that would be difficult to make a living at. But in antiquity, the flute player was considered an objective trade with an accepted standard of excellence and rules, and conversely a dyer or shoemaker was considered an artist requiring learned creative talent, virtuosity and finesse. This classical way is more respectful, garnering artistic respect and professional protections for each and every craft and industry. The guild of oil painters was as straightforward in objective standards of professionalism as carpentry, and carpentry was equal in artistry and creative flair to painting. This is why everything before Modernism and mass-production was so beautiful and so stylish regionally.

  From the reign of the Emperor Diocletian18 onward, the imperial government tried to restrict guild membership to a hereditary caste of skilled artisans, but the increasing financial demands made upon the guilds in the waning days of the Roman Empire considerably reduced most of them by the fourth century. As far as we can definitely know, with the fall of the Western Roman Empire guilds disappeared from European society for more than six centuries. The collegia did survive in the Byzantine Empire, however, and particularly in the city of Byzantium (Constantinople).

  In the early Middle Ages, most of the Roman craft organizations vanished, with the apparent exceptions of stonecutters and possibly glassmakers. Trade guilds arose to renewed prominence by the mid-thirteenth century as craftsmen united in common interest. Associations formed in medieval cities, most commonly masons, carpenters, painters, clothmakers, tanners, bakers, cobblers, apothecaries, candlemakers, textile workers, bookmakers and glassworkers – each controlling the standards and inheritance of traditional craft secrets going back, with generational evolution, into foggy antiquity. Most often, guild founders were independent master craftsmen who hired apprentices in studios, as is often ascribed to Renaissance master ateliers like those of da Vinci or Raphael. Different distinct fraternities existed within each guild. For instance, within a guild of metalworkers you might find the farriers, knifemakers, locksmiths, chain-forgers, nailmakers, etc. Armourers were divided into makers of helmets, escutcheons, harnesses, etc.

  It is important to keep in mind the historic religious and initiation element to the guilds. Though this seems kooky and outdated today, the relevance of a transcendent or anti-materialist element in a fraternity of professionals should never be overlooked or belittled. Their somewhat non-linear time preference saw man’s place in the world not as a point A to B flow but a limitless pool of possibilities bound by fate, an interconnected web of religious significance, relating ancestors and descendents.

  Before a new employee could rise to the level of mastery, he had to go through a training period as an apprentice. After this, he could rise to the level of journeyman. Apprentice, journeyman, and master are words and concepts that exist to this day for our remaining utilitarian trades. Apprentices would only be taught the most basic techniques until deemed trustworthy enough to keep the guild’s secrets. Remember that this is just the same for the flute player and painter as for the carpenter and dyer.

  When apprentices reached the level of journeymen (after several years and a qualifying piece of work) they were able to travel to other cities and countries to work for other masters. These journeys could span large parts of Europe and were a clever way to gain knowledge of new techniques developing in other guilds. Often, journeymen from small cities would visit the capital. The next and final stage, after several more years, would be graduation to master craftsman status. This would require the approval of
all masters of a guild and, once again, the production of a masterpiece work, which the guild would often keep. Art lovers venerate examples of such work as quasi-divine to this day. In that sense, the proof is in the pudding and we can see how this rational professional process delivers the truly transcendent art that abstract Modernism promises but fails to.

  The unique excellence of certain guilds in different towns of their signature craft, such as wine from Bordeaux, earthenwares from Holland, lace from Chantilly, led to what we know as trademarks.

  While the earlier Middle Ages, broadly speaking, divided society into three categories (those who fight, those who pray and those who work), the resurgence of Roman-era craft guilds during the later Middle Ages was a crucial stage in the ascension of European art. The power of the artists during this period was not based on their individual capacities so much as their willingness to join together and act as a loyal collective, a sacred fraternity.

  The importance of the craft guild system historically remains with us in the ghosts of place names. Since the later twelfth century, there had been an active book industry in Paris, beginning originally in the streets adjacent to Notre Dame Cathedral. The manuscript industry grew around the church of Saint Severin, where parchment was sold, resulting in the street name (Rue de la Parcheminerie). In older times, this street was also called the Rue aus Escrivains, which translates to the street of the scribes. The street intersecting the Rue de la Parcheminerie was called the Rue des Enlumineurs, or the street of the illuminators. Workshops were often family-owned and frequently part of the home.