Lost Art
How lost aesthetics and forgotten heritage led us astray.
Atlanta, GA
January 9, 2024
Ninety years ago last week, the Golden Gate Bridge began to go up. Sixty years later, my job was to help ensure it stayed standing.
Soon after the Loma Prieta earthquake struck San Francisco, I worked as a civil engineer on that iconic crossing.
The bridge held up in 1989, but would suffer significant damage if another 1906 quake happened to hit. Our primary responsibility was to retrofit the span to withstand such a shock. And that’s what we did.
So far so good. But the strengthened structure hasn’t been tested by a severe shaking. It’s only a matter of time till it is.
Sadly, the City it serves succumbed to self-inflicted convulsions the last several years. But San Francisco’s iconic emblem retains its grandeur.
Working at the Golden Gate, I was always grateful for this beautiful bridge. Had it not been built when it was, it’s highly unlikely it would be there now.
Not that something wouldn’t span the strait. The technology obviously exists to construct a bridge that’s both functional and appealing. It was done once, so it could’ve happened later.
But it’s improbable a structure so elegant would’ve gone up. Like most architectural “art” since the Second World War, a dreary eyesore would doubtless scar the scene, mercifully obscured by a daily blanket of San Francisco fog.
Around the Western world, architectural atrocities offer ample evidence for this counterfactual hypothesis. Hard angles, bare materials, raw concrete, and monochrome color besmirch landscapes from Los Angeles to London.
San Francisco wasn’t immune. The Embarcadero Freeway severed the City from its beautiful bay. It wasn’t removed till the quake that brought me west pulled it down. But modern architecture remains a scourge.
Brutalist buildings were bad enough in communist countries where we’d expect no more. After all, these were places where regimes persistently pounded their people into obedient dust. Individuals were inconsequential nonentities, to be dwarfed by oppressive structures of inhuman scale.
But why did the “developed” West emulate these errors?
While we ponder the question, we realize it could also be asked about the collectivist imposition of Keynesian “economics”, bureaucratic “science”, administrative “education”…or any other discipline that’s been completely corrupted by the technocratic State.
The particulars may vary. But, in a broad sense, the answer is the same: since the middle of last century, the West’s aesthetic sense is almost entirely gone.
Where did it go? Who took it? And why?
Aristotle said the aim of art is not to represent outward appearance, but inward significance. Beauty is the visible expression of invisible nature. Like any art, architecture should reflect the indelible essence of what’s being depicted.
It’s fine for a warehouse to merely restrain the weather. Such a building has a pedestrian (if important) purpose that few tend to see. And most don’t care how the crates are stored.
But such a mundane function is insufficient for, say, a Catholic church. Sacred spaces should lift us up as they keep the elements out. Yet these days, many of them keep almost everything out…except the passing fads that make political points.
Half a century ago, few could walk into (or past) a Catholic church without knowing exactly what it was. Even non-believers would be moved by the heavenly messages sacred architecture sent.
But most “houses of worship” built since the 1970s are indistinguishable from Moose lodges, lecture halls, or community theaters. And many are used in similar fashion. They are more meeting house than holy space.
Churches aren’t unique in their swift descent to abhorrent banality. Even many public schools were once somewhat graceful and inviting, with sculpted walls, high ceilings, and tall windows welcoming natural light.
It was an ambience that invited thought (even if it didn’t always engender it). But the last fifty years, academic architecture appeared intent on stifling study and impeding speculation.
Newer schools devolved into depressing edifices. They became squat bunkers intended to imprison the inmates, keep them in line, and move them along.
Similarly, even in minor cities, main libraries were usually magisterial and serene, worthy repositories of a noble heritage. Many now look as durable and desirable as cardboard boxes deposited beside strip mall dumpsters.
And why not? If they aren’t preserving anything worth saving, what’s the point of erecting them as timeless vaults?
Which brings us to banks. These used to be stately and sturdy…sound structures conveying safety and strength. That made sense when the money they stored was backed by gold (or when they still wanted us to think it was).
But, as with much else the last half century, the money was degraded and all pretenses dropped. Indeed, the dilution of money is the main cause of decline in everything else.
And banks no longer “store” money anyway. By making loans, they conjure currency from thin air. If that’s all you’re doing, why not be in a flimsy building a steady breeze could blow away?
Because security and confidence hardly matter, marble and gold have vanished from banks…most of which occupy slight structures resembling a Dunkin’ Donuts (which many may become after they inevitably go bust).
Architecture should give artistic voice to the condition of a culture. For better or bitter, it still does. And what it says is cause for concern.
Ugliness is everywhere. Municipal “art” is a horror.
Across San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge sits the Villancourt fountain, a vile pile that architectural critic Allan Temko described as a dropping from the square intestines of a concrete dog.
Even most art museums are awful. The new ones are almost universally abominable. And many older ones are being indiscriminately defaced, as if to eradicate uplifting remnants of a more refined age.
The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto is a case in point. The original building is just over a hundred years old. It’s dignified Italianate façade graces one of the more prominent corners in Canada’s largest city.
But about fifteen years ago, architectural vandals grabbed their weapons and went to work. Like a tumor on a healthy organ, they appended a “crystalline” carbuncle that couldn’t be more atrocious.
If it could blush, even the Louvre’s appalling pyramid would be embarrassed by this hideous monstrosity. IM Pei’s blemish on the Cour Napoléon is more out of place than unappealing (tho’ it’s that too).
But at the Royal Ontario, the host edifice looks like it’s being devoured…which inadvertently makes a revealing point. By their awful addition, the architectural assailants provided an apt analogy to the rabid Revolution that consumes our culture.
Before the 20th century, important structures featured architectural elements that appeared to be alive, and were consciously organized into a cohesive whole. Now, like kudzu or cancer, they’re malignant growths…enveloping cities they seem determined to destroy.
How did this happen?
Starting in the Enlightenment, and certainly by the end of the 19th century, the notion that we should have faith in things that couldn’t be measured had substantially subsided.
“Reason” reigned, and “Science” was supreme. Pragmatism preached that form should follow function. The Platonic ideal dissipated. Classical ornament was superfluous. Machine motifs and industrial imagery were the main sources of modernist symbolism.
Architraves, columns, and pediments featuring love, leaves, and life-affirming forms gave way to hammers, wheels, chisels, bars, and beams. Buildings became monuments to industrial might and Economic Man. They reflected the age, but were revolting to the eye.
Architecture, like any art, should organically evolve with changing times. But its modern variant seems more revolutionary than evolutionary; more imposed than developed.
Like politicians or public school teachers who send their children to private institutions while inflicting government “education” on everyone else, modern architecture looks like something its exponents do to other people.
But how could the victims allow this to happen? It’s almost as if the perpetrators made this part of the plan. Come to think of it…they probably did. Over time…from the turn of the twentieth century and accelerating after the dawn of this one…liberal education became state indoctrination.
Students used to learn Greek and Latin in high school. Now they’re taught remedial English in college. And most don’t read or recognize the classical legacy their own heritage bequeathed. Why would they? The teachers don’t know it either.
If art is an outward expression of an inherent nature, how can that essence be preserved if we’ve forgotten what it is? Much of it is intentionally (and aggressively) shunned, because it reflects the oppressive rantings of dead white men.
But when cultural literacy is lacking, social comprehension goes mute. A civilization loses its moorings when it forgets where it’s been.
We wouldn’t expect someone who knew nothing about China to design buildings for Beijing. Anyone who hadn’t learned English couldn’t write the sonnets of Shakespeare.
But we have generations of Westerners who’ve been stripped of their heritage. It’s no wonder the society bequeathed to them no longer reflects their honorable legacy.
Most of the thieves are the sort who take pleasure in lording moral superiority over bourgeois simpletons wedded to anachronistic notions. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder…but when everyone is blind, there’s nothing to see.
The Golden Gate Bridge is a miracle. Not only of engineering, but of art. It spanned distance, depths, currents, and terrain once thought unconquerable. And it did so while somehow improving a scene that was irreproachably sublime.
In fairness, the original design wouldn’t have done so. It would’ve traversed without elating. A bulky cantilever-suspension was initially planned to bridge the strait. Fortunately, it was ultimately rejected for the Art Deco ornament we enjoy today.
While (perhaps) the most prominent example, the Golden Gate Bridge wasn’t the only architectural treasure of that era. The Chrysler and Empire State Buildings enhanced Manhattan a couple years earlier. Rockefeller Center also rose during this period.
It was a time of federal funding and make-work jobs. During the decade, beauty began to recede. Because the modern architect could no longer provide reasons for ornamental beauty, whatever he retained was made abstract…left to the viewer to figure out for himself. After the war, abstraction was ascendent.
The quality of art reflects the condition of a culture. It should exalt and enhance rather than degrade and demoralize.
In our debased society, rap fills radios while Mozart languishes at lowest frequency. In our impatient era of fiat money, that makes sense.
Classical music takes time to appreciate. But in our instant-gratification world, we can’t take a few moments to appreciate abiding genius. Bach is a novel; Taylor Swift is a text. Which is the one most people will read?
In a disposable society, few want to read anyway. Journalism, posts, and tweets are the most perishable “literature”. And the most popular. But like any fad, they are passing. When the cycle shifts, we’ll welcome resuscitation of common sense, instinctive symmetry, and healthy skepticism.
Till then, we’ll strive to retrieve these treasures, and use them to build bridges to places we need to be.
JD
A most excellent and insightful commentary, Mr. Breen. I've been meditating on this very subject, walking the streets of Buenos Aires. Your thoughtful piece has given me plenty to think about. Thanks!