There's no fucking way he's read the whole of The Faerie Queene either.
(It's also pretty funny to use Philip Glass as an example of music having "less direct appeal" - whatever you think of Glass, he has a larger audience then most contemporary composers, and minimalism was pretty clearly intended to be more accessible than other forms of modern classical. At least go for like, Boulez or something.)
I will cop to having never read *The Faerie Queene* in its entirety, but that doesn’t leave me at sea defending *Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird* or *The Red Wheelbarrow*
Or indeed the plum poem, which in spite of the memes, is in of itself a gorgeously constructed work of concision
well, he got his conclusion [from moldbug](https://twitter.com/chromalisque/status/1444371822418534415/photo/3), so even odds he read the wheelbarrow one, which is moldbug's touchstone. (he really bides his time! it was 2014 when he wrote that moldbug's "theory of why poetry is so atrocious" was one of the things reactionaries were correct about that he wanted to clean up and package respectably)
Lol this is straight up reactionary bullshit. ‘We lost the ability to
do great things’.
(E: erugh because I hate myself I read the whole thing and here is a
sort of running commentary).
I have not read that far btw (E: I have now), but a reason in the
past there was a lot of focus on pompous art is because it was a way for
the new regime to get legitimacy (E: there is an important difference
between signaling for wealth and signaling for legitimacy (imagine
thinking that the interior of a gaudy palace build for a king is somehow
trying to impress the serfs who will never even set foot inside it. It
is going ‘join my team, and you fellow important person, can get a share
of my wealth, power, influence, etc’), that is why in a certain period
in Italy when the whole place was a total mess, there was also a lot of
art produced. Nice for the generations living past you, but for most
people a bad period to live in. It is more effective for the current
ruling family to buy legitimacy by building a few fancy buildings than
to actually improve the lives of the people around them. (E: in a way,
the rise of capitalism is to blame [soviet music plays in the
background] ;) )
https://www.exurbe.com/black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-telling-the-myth-of-a-renaissance-golden-age-and-bad-middle-ages/
here is a blog post which touches on the subject.
All that gaudy art is also a horrible thing to keep clean/in perfect
shape etc, so it is sort of understanding we don’t use a lot of public
money to build more of that stuff.
People don’t really complain when some billionaire buys a
Rembrandt
I have, and im sure others have as well, esp as they use this trick
to avoid paying taxes. (And hey, as supply is limited, and demand for
tax evasion is infinite, guess why there is more modern art around?)
Did he blame the nazis for the ‘decline in modern art’? Jesus…
Being able to buy a Rembrandt still signals wealth fine: Rembrandts
are in limited supply and everyone knows they’re expensive
Another reason this is bad. This drives up the risks and prices for
museums, aka the places which can show and contextualize the art for
everybody (and also prob maintain the art better).
There is an other unlisted reason for the ‘decline in art’, a lot of
traditional styles are now reasonably explored. If you would make a copy
of the Notre-Dame it would just look weird, it is missing its historical
context, and it is just a copy. You would turn out like a cheap las
vegas (or how I assume parts of las vegas look, as I have never been
there).
One more possible reason ‘art is in decline’, it actually isn’t but
it just feels that way 80% of everything is shit (Look at a nice example
of Renaissance art, nostrils you
can hide a battleship in), by just looking back at the stuff we
considered important enough to keep around you get a weird slanted view
of history. Looking at the exceptions and going ‘why aren’t we being
more like the exceptions’ is a bit weird. (Just listing a few reasons
which he seems to have missed, weird as I could think these up in 10
minutes, wonder why he has missed some of these reasons (And my reasons
are objectively better, because compared to Scott, I used one (1) expert
source at least))
And now we are back to blaming the humanities. Wtf does Sokal have to
do with this. Wait… should I be in a bar while reading this? I feel like
I have heard this while drunk in a bar once.
Wow got through all that without mentioning that Van Gogh perished
poor and never got any praise for his work in his own time. Seems sort
of relevant somewhere.
Another edit: what is amazing as well is that he is starting with his
fave theory about a lost civ build all the buildings he likes, but
totally ignores all the examples of brutalist statues in eastern europe,
which give off this vibe a lot more. (Just imagesearch for brutalist
statue to see what I mean), which look like their were build by
aliens.
> And now we are back to blaming the humanities. Wtf does Sokal have to do with this.
this is my favourite part, he just brings it up totally unprompted as if the connection between modern poetry not rhyming any more and the postmodern neomarxist infiltration of academia is completely obvious
"The Measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and Virgil in Latin; Rhime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter..."
--John Milton, in a preamble to Paradise Lost.
Or is that not a Classical enough repudiation of "poetry is good when it rhymes"?
It was likely intended in part as a polemic against lesser talents of his day. I doubt that Milton would have faulted Chaucer or Shakespeare et al for writing poetry that rhymes, but Shakespeare also demonstrated that it is possible to write great blank verse, which is what Milton was essentially saying he was setting out to do in Paradise Lost.
Saying that poetry that doesn't rhyme lacks artistic merit in comparison with poetry that does rhyme is a much worse take.
Milton was a political prisoner objecting to the traditionalist religious nationalism of what he here calls “a barbarous age”
Moreover, this isn’t a “take”, this is John Milton - who for a very long time was considered the greatest poet in the English language - explaining that rhyme *in his period* took on the character of laziness, such that rhythm and metre can be ignored as long as one makes a clever rhyme
I would recommend reading Paradise Lost - as well as the full preamble - before calling it “a pretty terrible take”
For some reason this stuck with me. The man's lifetime was bookended with Shakespeare on one hand, Alexander Pope on the other. "Rhime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse" is, yes, a terrible take. Not the necessary part, but is it a true ornament? Yes, of course it is. What, do you hate Langston Hughes?
Langston Hughes wrote a lot of blank verse
Besides which, Milton’s objection is not to any rhyme (Paradise Lost is littered with especially internal rhymes), but to the conception of poesy as the art of rhyming
Alexander Pope is, moreover, widely regarded as a relatively minor English poet (though still, obviously, a major poet) in the shadow of Shakespeare and Milton, partly because his mannered style often obscures how good the poetry taken as a whole can be
But the ultimate point is that Milton is being hyperbolic *if* and *only if* you take him out of context and *don’t do as I advised* and read the full preamble
> Langston Hughes wrote a lot of blank verse
Did he?
> Alexander Pope is, moreover, widely regarded as a relatively minor English poet
This is a literal lol. So were Byron and Tennyson, I bet.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset. ...
- Langston Hughes
Look, I've read Langston Hughes. And his rhyme is true ornament to his style. And his rhyming style is more common than his unrhyming style. We both know this.
I really don’t give a shit that you’re being disingenuous and haven’t read either what I said or what Milton said in the full preamble quoted above: but I do urge you to actually read it
a) You clearly give a shit
b) You forgot to ever argue your point. I made my point and you neglected to say anything against it.
Seriously though, Alexander Pope is relatively minor? Try to be serious.
As I said, Pope is *obviously* a major poet, but in the history of poetry in Modern English both Milton and Shakespeare are undoubtedly more significant
OK! Fine! We're getting more reasonable.
Look, I read my classics chronologically. Right now I'm midway through Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is extremely long, so Paradise Lost is probably a year away for me.
A genius made a bad take, it doesn't insult you or the genius. Rhyme is true ornament to poetry, and I will die upon this hill.
But yes, read Romance. It's like the Iliad crossed with Game of Thrones.
So you’ve now admitted that you haven’t covered anything in Milton, decided that a single short quote out of context describes what and why he said it - in your interpretation which is both false and out of context - and now you’re dying on the hill that rhyme is part of poetry.
If I didn’t back down at this point I’d be incredibly embarrassed.
> This is a literal lol.
Not only is it true, it’s a common consensus that since the late 18th century Pope’s star fell and his work has been repeatedly critiqued as excessively mannered and lacks the depth of a Milton or a Shakespeare
You can disagree, you can even selectively misquote me - the full quote is:
> Alexander Pope is, moreover, widely regarded as a relatively minor English poet **(though still, obviously, a major poet)** in the **shadow of Shakespeare and Milton**, partly because his mannered style often obscures how good the poetry taken as a whole can be
But you cannot tell me that Pope is held on the level of Milton and Shakespeare when the debate about who is the greatest pre-Romantic poet in Modern English circles almost exclusively around whether it’s Shakespeare or Milton. Maybe you really like Pope (I like Pope!), but as a matter of what people in general think, that’s where you end up.
I’m honestly surprised you’re offering such a strident opinion when you’re clearly unaware of the fact that Milton towers over the history of English poetry, and don’t appear to be at all familiar with him.
I am not arguing against his genius, I am arguing against his take. And it is a take. What, is Milton infallible? Byron and Tennyson and Hughes all rhymed, with joy. Why is it objectionable to say that this is true ornament to their art?
Also, you may not like Pope, but claiming "consensus" is sneer-worthy. The guy literally invented common English sayings, like Shakespeare.
I’ve already explained that the historic circumstances of Milton’s “take” explain and contextualise what he’s saying, which you chose to ignore without checking anything at all, and accuse me of calling Milton infallible
Milton was not infallible, far from it, but not knowing that he had a particular intention distinct form your reading of a single short quote is a venial sin compared with the greater sin of ignoring that such a context exists after being told why and what it is
What you’re doing is taking a single short quote without context and extrapolating out that you understand the whole of Milton’s aesthetics even after having it how explained to you - however briefly - that your extrapolation *is literally inaccurate*
Alright, thanks for not banning me at least. I do appreciate your clear love of poetry. I do think it's a take, and a terrible take, but we can say that I'm wrong and move on.
Old English verse was alliterative and seldom rhymed. In fact, instances of the latter are so rare that one surviving poem is literally known as [the one that rhymes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rhyming_Poem).
They also indulged in kennings that became highly conventionalized and went multiple layers deep. E.g., "beer of the dead" is *blood,* and so "swan of the beer of the dead" is *raven.* (Very goffik.) If you want to talk about art becoming incomprehensible to the wider public....
I don't think I can pick a favorite part, it is all such a combination of meh badness all around. I like that several sneerclubbers found different things to sneer at.
When some people say modern art is dead, show them Scotts new masterpiece, it is nuanced and has many layers. All shit.
Yeah honestly after I posted that comment I was like, wait no my real favourite part is the bit where he compares Marvel movies to the Odyssey.
No actually what about the part where his link disproves his point in big red letters.
Or what about where he says traditional art is more brightly coloured and his examples include a piece of brightly coloured modern art.
there's just . . . so much
if sneering can be considered an artform, then it's a collaborative one. if not for people like Scott who are so talented at posting utter dogshit nonsense we would never have reached the heights we have in the modern day
Yeah I saw you (only just noticed it was you who made the other longer comment) already commented on the 'I'm mostly relying on your common sense here.' thing. Which really made me go 'you are a fucking rationalist, you know there is no such thing as common sense, and it is just an appeal to biasses, which not falling into thought patterns like that was the whole idea behind Rationalism.
Hey acausalrobotgod, please don't make the planet a living hell for humans to live in and make us immortal. How? Well just use common sense.
The brightly coloured art example almost makes me think it is some sort of trick. He used that shit before in untitled when his examples of 'anti nerdy men' collage included a few anti semetic ones as a sort of 'are you paying attention' trick. This, and the whole bar rant tone just threw me off so much I had to actually check if this wasn't some sort of trick article, where he wrote a bad article on purpose and then went 'I'm going to post this bad article on sneerclub on purpose to prove they don't actually read my blog, which will expose the hypocrisy of them calling me out on not reading'.
> I had to actually check if this wasn't some sort of trick article, where he wrote a bad article on purpose and then went 'I'm going to post this bad article on sneerclub on purpose to prove they don't actually read my blog, which will expose the hypocrisy of them calling me out on not reading'.
now I want to see what Scott attempting to parody himself would look like. cause if he was any good at it, it would look something like this post, which is just his normal writing style but like, more noticeably bad. I don't think he's self-aware enough for that though
Yeah, I was musing about it and don't think it can be done well. What would he do, become more beige? It might also risk him making some of his writing tricks more explicit, exposing the scam.
I skipped to the comments. someone called it the most reactionary
post in a while. an intrepid observer rode to the defense:
the clearest example in a while where reactionaries happen to share
the correct opinion? I mean it’s unlikely that reactionaries are wrong
about everything. They must get some things right.
You can say what you want about the tenets of being a reactionary but
at least it’s an ethos
Literally Hitler, but more boring.
I'm coining a new word for boring long-winded fashy rants that bury the thesis in the middle:
Böring
This makes Scooter a sort of "Herman Böring" if you like.
If I had aesthetics this bad I wouldn’t tell people about them. Ever
since art stopped existing to say “this person is very rich”, it’s
gotten so much better.
My favourite artist, Kurt Schwitters, died in penury making gorgeous reliefs out of bits and pieces of found wood
I make no apology for finding that more beautiful than an elaborate cathedral
I guess at this point I should stop being surprised but I’m still
continually amazed at how often he can write so many words that just
boil down to “I don’t know anything about these topics and I refuse to
learn”.
He lumps together Medici Florence, the Taj Mahal and the Chrysler Building into *you know, old stuff, back when art was good.* The lack of curiosity is active, deliberate and weaponized.
I’d love to see one of these guys take on something that isn’t so
directly based on changing cultural norms. “Hey guys, did you ever
notice airplanes used to look like this
but now they look like this?
I don’t know why, but probably it’s a plot by elites, here’s 10000 words
of Just-So Stories I’m coming up with as I go.”
I’d hope that seeing something like that might help them have a
moment of self-reflection about their own reductionist tendencies and
refusal to learn new facts, but I suppose that’s probably too
optimistic.
Spinning the Wheel of Moralizing, I land on...we no longer take risks! We're too safe and focus too much on security in our aereoplanes, something of great concern to me as a guy interested in the safety and security of future generations and humanity at large.
Conservatives complaining how "everything is too safe" as a blatant grovel to business tyrants are the worst.
The shift from Tartarian to modern aesthetics is consistent across
art forms:
how do people keep letting him get away with this! he’s barely got
into the main body of the article and already he’s made up a vaguely
defined term that he then proceeds to cram a bunch of totally unrelated
stuff into!
do you really think Americans prefer ‘high status Chinese dress,
1700s’ to a modern suit and tie by 70% to 30%, Scott?
the fuck do you mean ‘I have tried to be as fair as possible here’,
you’re comparing architecture to fashion and saying they’re both the
same because they’re brightly coloured
Obviously these are broad generalizations vulnerable to
cherry-picking; I’m mostly relying on your common sense here.
oh, okay then.
(i feel like to pull off this kind of move you have to actually have
some data-based posts that don’t rely on the audience’s common sense,
instead of doing this pretty much every time)
I’ve added this in because people keep bringing it up in the
comments, but I don’t think it works. Sure, it might explain
architecture. But I don’t think it explains trends in modern clothing,
art, poetry, or sculpture, all of which have also shifted towards
decreased ornamentation, symbolism, and realism.
maybe because these are all different things? maybe trends in
architecture, clothing, art, poetry and sculpture are affected by
different factors? why open the post with the question about
architecture and then brush off the people who want to talk specifically
about architecture? Oh, right, because that doesn’t fit into your grand
narrative about the downfall of all modern art
I predict you could buy clothing that looks like this for less than
the cost of a nice suit, but nobody does.
Well, your link gives an example of the type of person who does
actually wear these clothes. Right at the top of the page, in big red
letters!
Modern poems don’t sound very much like the Odyssey. But modern
superhero movies are a little bit like the Odyssey.
The best thing here is that the picture of a modern San Francisco
sculpture in primary colors is immediately followed by the words “Older
art tends to have bright colors…”
The second best thing is that he seems to have forgotten about, say,
the Met Gala when discussing fashion.
The third best thing is that he has no idea why suits are
expensive.
Don't forget glass windows in every room (some of them far larger than anyone in the 1500s would have ever seen), incredibly detailed pictures on the wall, indoor lighting that can be controlled remotely and doesn't produce smoke...
I left this comment there, only partly sneery, I’m trying to
engage:
Why is this written like it’s trying to understand some alien
civilization or obscure natural phenomenon? Modern artists and
architects are nothing if not verbose about their thought processes, and
their writings are easy to find. For instance, the essay “Ornament and
Crime” by modernist architect Adolf Loos is famous enough to have
its own Wikipedia page. Robert Hughes’ The Shock of the New is
a very accessible overview of modern art and the forces that drove it.
You can observe directly how modern artists thought, not try to infer
some underlying cause (although I guess there is room for both
approaches).
This might clear up some mystery. Eg you say: “Partly because art is
nice and we should want more beautiful things or at least try to
understand where our beautiful things come from.”
Modern artists by and large did not view their job as producing
beautiful or nice things. They viewed their work as trying to represent
and respond to a world that was industrializing and otherwise changing.
The world was becoming less beautiful, less organic, and more
mechanical, alienating, and horrific, and the art had to change to
match.
Maybe this was a bad way to think (it was very much linked to leftist
politics) and the world would be better off if the artists had focused
on beauty and niceness, but that’s not what happened.
**[Ornament and Crime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornament_and_Crime)**
>"Ornament and Crime" is an essay and lecture by modernist architect Adolf Loos that criticizes ornament in useful objects.
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“This sounds a little conspiratorial for an explanation we originally
came up with to counter a conspiracy theory,”
Except people didn’t invent any of this in order to respond
to the conspiracy theory, you rhetorically slimy piece of insincere
chicanery.
If you start with a batshit conspiracy theory that no one else took
seriously, you are just poisoning the well when you then use that as the
barometer to start testing your other explanations against.
It gets even better, [1 link deep](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-04-27/inside-architecture-s-wildest-conspiracy-theory) in the link he linked (and didn't explain properly what Tartaria was), his point actually gets disproven:
> Similarly, their [the tartarians] grasp of historic labor and material costs is shaky. Before the Industrial Revolution, labor was cheap, so paying artisans to sculpt elaborate masonry — even for relatively humble structures — wasn’t the great expense it seems today, when labor prices are higher and factory-made steel, concrete and glass is cheap; that’s why we see so much of these materials in buildings today, and so much less filigreed terra cotta.
E: the article takes an utterly predictable but dark turn later on:
> This ahistoricism can make the Tartarian architecture community occasionally receptive to reactionaries, racists and anti-Semites. A survey of videos and discussions will turn up all manner of other conspiratorial threads. Along with flat-Earth advocacy, anti-vaccination sentiments and 5G scaremongering, there’s talk of anti-Semitic banking cartel conspiracies and Holocaust denial.
E2: even worse, seems themotte is now also on board with the tartarian conspiracy theory, and is also [repeating bullshit about this](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/puf3q5/whither_tartaria/he49j5e/), without reading the second article. Why don't they just read... there is some evidence for mysterious star forts being build all over the world because colonizers build those, and they make sense as a defense strategy when cannon tech is at a certain level. (and this post gets more upvotes than the [link to badhistory...](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/ieg2k0/tartaria_the_supposed_megaempire_of_inner_eurasia/) (actual bad history link included, not themotte comment)
This post, the one scene from dead poet’s society where they tear up
the poetry book with sentence diagrams, the simpsons “beauty truth,
truth Beauty” scene, and the person who got fired from the poetry
journal for posting that poetry is only appealing to academics form a
political compass.
Scooter is, in fact, right that contemporary architecture sucks balls
and gets built despite people hating it… which, given that it is an
eyesore inflicted on anyone walking around in the area, is a problem
that ugly paintings are not.
His essay is overly reductive, because of course it is, but the
movement against ornamentation and towards large concrete blocks
is relatively recent.
Yes, I’m aware this is an Nrx talking point; I don’t give a shit,
“Boston City Hall is butt-ugly” is the one thing they get to be right
about this decade. Brutalism is unpleasant, Deconstructivism is not that
much better, Classical architecture is not that great but I’d rather
have it than the other two (though this is to damn by faint praise).
Ironic that Brutalism has been coded as liberal in the USA, given
that one of its most important forerunners was a Nazi sympathizer.
> contemporary architecture sucks balls
> "Boston City Hall is butt-ugly"
How in the world are you defining contemporary architecture here? Boston City Hall was designed almost 60 years ago, and the vast majority of buildings being built now look nothing like it.
I remember when [111 Huntington](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111_Huntington_Avenue#/media/File:111HuntingtonBoston.jpg) went up, which will serve as today's reminder of how long ago I was an undergrad. And about a year after that, we got [that financial building on State Street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Lincoln_Street#/media/File:One_Lincoln_Street.jpg) which was going for an Art Deco revival look. Then we got the [new Institute for Contemporary Art](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Contemporary_Art,_Boston#/media/File:Institute_of_Contemporary_Art,_Boston.jpg) (topical!), the new [Cambridge Public Library](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Public_Library#/media/File:Cambridge_Public_Library_-_Cambridge,_MA_-_DSC00110.jpg)...
There are cycles to these things. MIT went kind of goofy with Simmons Hall, then got downright Gehry with Building 20, which ... well, the outside looks like something those kids would have built in *[Drugs Are Like That](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQMpiRrII_k)*. The inside is IMO better, having a "children's science museum" vibe going on. After that excess, they built the Picower neuroscience building across the street and corrected back to a much more vernacular stone-metal-glass look.
In this context, "architecture characterized by extremely heavy use of industrially produced materials like steel, glass, and concrete; minimalistic design; asymmetry; an emphasis on geometric rather than organic forms; and lack of ornamentation."
You will, no doubt, note that this does not cover all architecture built in recent times, that it applies to more than one current in architecture, and that it applies to some architecture that was (relative to human lifespans) not built all that recently. However, architecture with those traits is, to the best of my knowledge, relatively new--and not just because the technological ability to manufacture large amounts of glass and steel and concrete is relatively recent, but because things like the move against ornamentation and a focus on geometric forms is relatively recent, stemming from architectural developments that happened in the 20th century.
I will also note that more or less the same distinction I'm making [has been used by architects themselves](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275119311655).
It's also symmetrical, pretty heavy on the ornament, and not particularly minimalistic, as you can see here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Pantheon11111.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome#/media/File:20190406-DSC5193_Panteon.jpg
(Some of the interior design is relatively recent, but some of the exterior design got stolen over the centuries.)
(But see below.)
This being the case, I would consider classical architecture to be closer to contemporary styles than, say, Gothic. But you can still tell that the Pantheon is not part of the contemporary architecture styles I'm describing; there is a noticeable difference.
I’ve been there, and I wouldn’t describe it as “heavy on the ornament”, especially not compared with a number of buildings in Rome
The colours are heavily filtered in that first photo, which gives a misleading impression
In reality it’s much greyer and unadorned then this impression suggests
There is so much to correct here that I honestly can’t be bothered, but I’ll just say that using your personal impressions of Boston City Hall as your single source for a blanket denunciation of Brutalism is flat-out dumb
I mean, yeah, it's the single example I gave there, but it's not like I've never run into other brutalist buildings; there were plenty where I went to college. They sucked (the concrete, as far as I can tell, wasn't standing up that well to the climate) and people hated them, but they got praised by the architecture faculty anyway. There have also been a fair number in the cities I've lived in.
But Boston City Hall is widely hated by the public, and has been [widely praised by architects](https://web.archive.org/web/20131217071702/http://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek07/0413/0413n_polls.cfm). If you want to give an example of "buildings disliked by the public but liked by architects," it is probably one of the better examples.
I've got other reasons to hate Brutalism, but I'm not exactly writing a persuasive essay here. I *could*, but I don't particularly feel like it.
Regarding the "Nazi sympathizer" bit, [this would](https://brill.com/view/journals/fasc/6/2/article-p196_196.xml) [seem pretty damning](https://web.archive.org/web/20160310224640/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11543431/Le-Corbusier-was-militant-fascist-two-new-books-on-French-architect-claim.html). You could quibble, I'll admit, over whether anti-Semite pro-eugenicist who collaborates with fascists is *necessarily* a Nazi sympathizer--but even if I grant he was not a Nazi sympathizer, he was certainly a hair away from being one. He co-founded a fascist journal with some fascists, worked for Vichy France, dedicated a book to Xavier Vallat, and, per his own words, has a "hallowed anti-Semitism." Sounds like a Nazi sympathizer to me.
I really don’t give a shit if one single development was widely praised by architects: I am not and have never been an architect. But there is a great deal of Brutalist architecture of which I am very fond. Waking up in my friend’s guestroom with a hangover and seeing Trellick Tower on the horizon was an extremely cool thing ten years ago.
Le Corbusier was weird, sure, but imagining that Brutalism is associated with fascism rather than liberalism just on that basis is absurd: in the United Kingdom (where I am from and where Brutalism found both its name and many of its expressions), Brutalism was the building practices of a forthright social-democratic vision opposed not only to fascism but to right-liberalism and conservatism. These are facts.
Maybe you don’t like it - sure - but you sound like you’re speaking on behalf of a “common sense” that is often cited but doesn’t exist, that “ordinary people” as opposed to architects are unanimously against the architectural movement we call “Brutalism”
I'm not speaking on behalf of a "common sense." I am speaking on behalf of a common (though not universal) opinion, though. It's not shared by everyone, obviously, and obviously you can point to buildings that are exceptions, but the available evidence (for instance, [this](http://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1128137&dswid=6531) and [this](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494418305280#bib56) study) indicates that people generally do not like Brutalism (and, indeed, much of contemporary architecture; it's not just the buildings themselves but the elements of those styles).
Since architecture designs buildings, not easily ignored paintings, this is something of a problem. Architects may feel that a given Brutalist building makes bold statements and is a work of art, but it's the local residents that have to see it on a daily basis and visit it to file taxes.
I believe that architecture--at least architecture in public areas--should be oriented towards the average person. It doesn't matter how much architects may deplore their taste, it doesn't matter if architects feel they can make an important artistic statement by making something the average person hates. If the average person does not like contemporary styles, architects should not be using those styles to make office buildings the average person works in on a daily basis.
> Le Corbusier was weird, sure, but imagining that Brutalism is associated with fascism rather than liberalism just on that basis is absurd
Of course it would be, but I didn't do that, nor was it my intent to imply that. I'd heard of people making genetic arguments about opposition to modern architecture, and figured pointing out Le Corbusier's ties would be an effective way to preempt anyone who tried that line.
> but it's the local residents that have to see it on a daily basis and visit it to file taxes.
Yes, which is why people have been up in *arms* about the replacement of significant Brutalist estates with awful new cost-benefit analysis developments for fucking years: I really don’t give a shit that you managed to find two marginal sources that very vaguely back your opinion, because that really misses the point
> If the average person
There’s your problem. The demolition of the Heygate Estate, for example, was widely deplored by the local working class population.
Don’t bullshit.
> There’s your problem. The demolition of the Heygate Estate, for example, was widely deplored by the local working class population.
Well yes, of course it was, *many lived there*.
That doesn't mean that if you gave the average working class person a choice between living in either a Brutalist housing estate or an Arts and Crafts housing estate, with all other elements of the housing estates being the same, they'd generally prefer the Brutalist housing estate.
I also reject the notion that the aesthetic tastes of the average person are necessarily opposed to the aesthetic tastes of the working class population.
> Yes, which is why people have been up in arms about the replacement of significant Brutalist estates with awful new cost-benefit analysis developments for fucking years
That's not germane to this conversation, and you raising this proves you're missing *my* point: You can't defend a school of aesthetics by showing that the people who are currently tearing down the buildings that use those aesthetics have ill intentions, that they're being replaced with buildings that suck, or that low-income housing happened to be built in that style.
Is tearing down a historical site to build some capitalist abomination bad? Yes. Is tearing down low-cost housing over the objections of the residents bad? Yes.
This doesn't mean that Brutalism is actually a good architectural style, though. It has to stand on its own merits, because "what architectural style do we build this project in" is a separate question from "what is the purpose of this building?" You can build low-income housing using the Brutalist style, but you can also build [an office building for jack-booted thugs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover_Building#/media/File:Fbi_headquarters.jpg).
I'm not saying that every Brutalist building should be ripped down--especially without regard for the facts on the ground. I'm saying that the aesthetics of them are, in my opinion, not any good--and that the majority of people share this opinion.
> I really don’t give a shit that you managed to find two marginal sources that very vaguely back your opinion
I wouldn't call the second one marginal (it seems to be a perfectly reputable journal), and when I looked for any evidence showing that people generally like Brutalist architecture, I couldn't find any.
Well I happen to think that if you’re working class your interests are more important, because you have fewer options
And what I said was that they only marginally support your general position, not that they are marginal in the academic sphere
Regardless, you have no solid reasons for being against Brutalism here, and your counter-argument is confused on its own grounds, so who the fuck cares
> Well I happen to think that if you’re working class your interests are more important, because you have fewer options
Do you have any evidence that the working class prefers Brutalism more than the populace as a whole?
> And what I said was that they only marginally support your general position, not that they are marginal in the academic sphere
It's true that no one's done any (that I could find, anyway) direct polling as to whether or not people like Brutalism. All the available evidence I could find on architectural preference of the average person, though, indicates--if indirectly--that people aren't fond of Brutalism. Even many architectural magazines openly acknowledged this (including some articles that were actually supportive of Brutalism).
None of this, of course, supports anything you actually said prior to this comment
To wit: you found two studies where people expressed a notional opposition to “Brutalism”, gave no aesthetic credit to your personal opinions, and retreated to the “average person” (who is the average person?) as justification on the basis of that
Mate, I guarantee I know a lot more about the history of architecture than you do, and I’m probably older than you are in any case: learn when to accept that you have an opinion but not a general view of architectural trends in the 20th century across multiple countries
> None of this, of course, supports anything you actually said prior to this comment
It's not *great* evidence, but it's what we've got, and "people do not like design features associated with Brutalist architecture" *does* support "people do not like Brutalist architecture"--just less decisively than if they'd actually polled people. Moreover, public polling generally seems to suggest that people aren't big fans of Brutalism (because even highly praised Brutalist buildings are often rated as some of the ugliest buildings in public polls).
> gave no aesthetic credit to your personal opinions
Do you give a shit about the aesthetic basis of my personal opinion? I could say that Brutalist architecture's rejection of ornamentation makes it visually uninteresting relative to other styles such as Art Nouveau. I could say that its use of unpainted, uncovered concrete renders it visually monotonous and that the color of concrete is not particularly appealing to boot. I could say that its emphasis on geometric forms rather than organic ones separates it from the natural world and the landscape rather than smoothly integrating it into it, and its lack of use of local materials do likewise.
But ultimately, all of those things are my personal opinion (granted, I have problems with that aren't personal opinions, like, "Reinforced concrete isn't as great a building material as people thought it was in New England," but that isn't the deciding factor in why I don't like the style). You may disagree with me on some of them, or you simply may not care if Brutalism's focus on geometric forms separates it from the landscape (indeed, you may like that it does).
And indeed, I would be one of the first ones to say that my personal opinion doesn't matter very much. If everyone else liked Brutalism and I didn't, well, that would just be too bad for me. Architecture is not intended for me personally, it is intended for the people who use it and see it on a daily basis.
This is why I bring up the opinion of other people--while me disliking the architecture of local public buildings isn't a major issue, most of the people using those public buildings disliking the design is.
> (who is the average person?)
The average person wherever the proposed building is being placed, who is likely to use or see the building on a regular basis.
> I’m probably older than you are in any case
And Scott Alexander is probably older than the both of us. Steven Pinker definitely is. What's your point?
> learn when to accept that you have an opinion but not a general view of architectural trends in the 20th century across multiple countries
I don't need a full understanding of 20th century architectural trends to identify what unites the architectural styles I don't like, and to have a general idea of what separates them from what came before.
It’s so fucking lazy when people retreat to “just my personal opinion” when they clearly regard that opinion as something objective
I don’t think you’re a good fit for this sub
> It’s so fucking lazy when people retreat to “just my personal opinion” when they clearly regard that opinion as something objective
Then you misinterpreted me; I am unaware of any possible way you can make an objective judgment about aesthetics. Perhaps this simply betrays my lack of knowledge of the philosophy of aesthetics, but every discussion of aesthetics that I've ever had ultimately rests upon certain qualities of something being assumed to be good or bad; the idea that I could actually say, "Brutalism is objectively bad" seems... intuitively nonsensical. But so does the idea that someone could say, "Brutalism is objectively good."
I don't, typically, bother to spell this out; it's always been my (perhaps mistaken) assumption that most people would agree with the above if pressed; quite honestly I had never before considered that someone would think I thought my aesthetic preferences were objective fact if I didn't explicitly state I thought they weren't.
What *is* an objective fact is whether or not the average person likes Brutalism; that is just a popularity contest. And the unpopularity of Brutalism was a point I was arguing from the very first post I made in this thread.
> I don’t think you’re a good fit for this sub
I've been here for over a year without any incident; I feel that this is an unfair judgment to make based on a single argument about a subject that doesn't commonly come up on the subreddit.
Brutalism is very popular amongst many people, including those who grew up in Brutalist and Brutalist-adjacent buildings
Indeed many of those were/are in the UK advocating that it is unpopular never lived in any such building
If you had never before considered an alternative to your opinion you should have checked before opining
> If you had never before considered an alternative to your opinion you should have checked before opining
I'd considered alternatives to my opinion *on Brutalism*, to be clear. I may have underestimated the number of people who like the style, but I was aware some people did. I took architecture classes; the people who taught them liked Brutalism well enough.
The opinion I hadn't really considered an alternative to was "objective judgements about aesthetics aren't possible," but the above post was the first time I'd really laid out my position on the subject and I did actually check to see if there were any arguments for being able to make objective aesthetic judgments.
Which it turns out they are, but from my (admittedly brief) examination of the Stanford Encyclopedia on them, *I personally* don't appear to be capable of making those judgments, and the case for objective judgements about aesthetics still doesn't seem convincing enough that I'd want to try to make them even if I thought I met the criteria that was laid out.
**[J. Edgar Hoover Building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover_Building#/media/File:Fbi_headquarters.jpg)**
>The J. Edgar Hoover Building is a low-rise office building located at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It is the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Planning for the building began in 1962, and a site was formally selected in January 1963. Design work, focusing on avoiding the blocky, monolithic structure typical of most federal architecture at the time, began in 1963 and was largely complete by 1964 (although final approval did not occur until 1967).
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Lol this is straight up reactionary bullshit. ‘We lost the ability to do great things’.
(E: erugh because I hate myself I read the whole thing and here is a sort of running commentary).
I have not read that far btw (E: I have now), but a reason in the past there was a lot of focus on pompous art is because it was a way for the new regime to get legitimacy (E: there is an important difference between signaling for wealth and signaling for legitimacy (imagine thinking that the interior of a gaudy palace build for a king is somehow trying to impress the serfs who will never even set foot inside it. It is going ‘join my team, and you fellow important person, can get a share of my wealth, power, influence, etc’), that is why in a certain period in Italy when the whole place was a total mess, there was also a lot of art produced. Nice for the generations living past you, but for most people a bad period to live in. It is more effective for the current ruling family to buy legitimacy by building a few fancy buildings than to actually improve the lives of the people around them. (E: in a way, the rise of capitalism is to blame [soviet music plays in the background] ;) )
https://www.exurbe.com/black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-telling-the-myth-of-a-renaissance-golden-age-and-bad-middle-ages/ here is a blog post which touches on the subject.
All that gaudy art is also a horrible thing to keep clean/in perfect shape etc, so it is sort of understanding we don’t use a lot of public money to build more of that stuff.
I have, and im sure others have as well, esp as they use this trick to avoid paying taxes. (And hey, as supply is limited, and demand for tax evasion is infinite, guess why there is more modern art around?)
Did he blame the nazis for the ‘decline in modern art’? Jesus…
Another reason this is bad. This drives up the risks and prices for museums, aka the places which can show and contextualize the art for everybody (and also prob maintain the art better).
There is an other unlisted reason for the ‘decline in art’, a lot of traditional styles are now reasonably explored. If you would make a copy of the Notre-Dame it would just look weird, it is missing its historical context, and it is just a copy. You would turn out like a cheap las vegas (or how I assume parts of las vegas look, as I have never been there).
One more possible reason ‘art is in decline’, it actually isn’t but it just feels that way 80% of everything is shit (Look at a nice example of Renaissance art, nostrils you can hide a battleship in), by just looking back at the stuff we considered important enough to keep around you get a weird slanted view of history. Looking at the exceptions and going ‘why aren’t we being more like the exceptions’ is a bit weird. (Just listing a few reasons which he seems to have missed, weird as I could think these up in 10 minutes, wonder why he has missed some of these reasons (And my reasons are objectively better, because compared to Scott, I used one (1) expert source at least))
And now we are back to blaming the humanities. Wtf does Sokal have to do with this. Wait… should I be in a bar while reading this? I feel like I have heard this while drunk in a bar once.
Wow got through all that without mentioning that Van Gogh perished poor and never got any praise for his work in his own time. Seems sort of relevant somewhere.
Another edit: what is amazing as well is that he is starting with his fave theory about a lost civ build all the buildings he likes, but totally ignores all the examples of brutalist statues in eastern europe, which give off this vibe a lot more. (Just imagesearch for brutalist statue to see what I mean), which look like their were build by aliens.
I skipped to the comments. someone called it the most reactionary post in a while. an intrepid observer rode to the defense:
You can say what you want about the tenets of being a reactionary but at least it’s an ethos
All I can say is thank the stars that Sandifer took the time to write her “beigeness” article, which lays clear scooter’s banal rhetorical tricks.
In case you haven’t seen it: https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill-people-with-bad-writing-the-scott-alexander-method
This is just another example of that.
If I had aesthetics this bad I wouldn’t tell people about them. Ever since art stopped existing to say “this person is very rich”, it’s gotten so much better.
I guess at this point I should stop being surprised but I’m still continually amazed at how often he can write so many words that just boil down to “I don’t know anything about these topics and I refuse to learn”.
I’d love to see one of these guys take on something that isn’t so directly based on changing cultural norms. “Hey guys, did you ever notice airplanes used to look like this but now they look like this? I don’t know why, but probably it’s a plot by elites, here’s 10000 words of Just-So Stories I’m coming up with as I go.”
I’d hope that seeing something like that might help them have a moment of self-reflection about their own reductionist tendencies and refusal to learn new facts, but I suppose that’s probably too optimistic.
how do people keep letting him get away with this! he’s barely got into the main body of the article and already he’s made up a vaguely defined term that he then proceeds to cram a bunch of totally unrelated stuff into!
do you really think Americans prefer ‘high status Chinese dress, 1700s’ to a modern suit and tie by 70% to 30%, Scott?
the fuck do you mean ‘I have tried to be as fair as possible here’, you’re comparing architecture to fashion and saying they’re both the same because they’re brightly coloured
oh, okay then.
(i feel like to pull off this kind of move you have to actually have some data-based posts that don’t rely on the audience’s common sense, instead of doing this pretty much every time)
maybe because these are all different things? maybe trends in architecture, clothing, art, poetry and sculpture are affected by different factors? why open the post with the question about architecture and then brush off the people who want to talk specifically about architecture? Oh, right, because that doesn’t fit into your grand narrative about the downfall of all modern art
Well, your link gives an example of the type of person who does actually wear these clothes. Right at the top of the page, in big red letters!
I’m done, I’m done, I’m fucking done. Kill me.
The best thing here is that the picture of a modern San Francisco sculpture in primary colors is immediately followed by the words “Older art tends to have bright colors…”
The second best thing is that he seems to have forgotten about, say, the Met Gala when discussing fashion.
The third best thing is that he has no idea why suits are expensive.
Pretty sure they’d be shitting themselves over climate control and the variety of food at the cafeteria. Oh, and electricity.
This was on his SUPER SECRET DO NOT DISTRIBUTE email list of like “things I think NRx are right about and hope to mainstream” right?
I left this comment there, only partly sneery, I’m trying to engage:
“This sounds a little conspiratorial for an explanation we originally came up with to counter a conspiracy theory,”
Except people didn’t invent any of this in order to respond to the conspiracy theory, you rhetorically slimy piece of insincere chicanery.
If you start with a batshit conspiracy theory that no one else took seriously, you are just poisoning the well when you then use that as the barometer to start testing your other explanations against.
I can recommend plenty of modern highly ornate, technically skilled and directly appealing music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leD8E4qyl7A
Wtf… everyone’s leaving the room? I thought you all were connoisseurs of fine, complex compositions.
oi scott do no trees on flat earth next, I love that one
I think I’ve found it, the one post that I will never make myself read.
This post, the one scene from dead poet’s society where they tear up the poetry book with sentence diagrams, the simpsons “beauty truth, truth Beauty” scene, and the person who got fired from the poetry journal for posting that poetry is only appealing to academics form a political compass.
Best quote:
He also steadfastly refused to consider practical concerns like cost, maintenance, or ability to handle disasters…but kept *almost* mentioning them.
I had to stop reading when he tried to come for Keith Haring. The fucking gall.
Scooter is, in fact, right that contemporary architecture sucks balls and gets built despite people hating it… which, given that it is an eyesore inflicted on anyone walking around in the area, is a problem that ugly paintings are not.
His essay is overly reductive, because of course it is, but the movement against ornamentation and towards large concrete blocks is relatively recent.
Yes, I’m aware this is an Nrx talking point; I don’t give a shit, “Boston City Hall is butt-ugly” is the one thing they get to be right about this decade. Brutalism is unpleasant, Deconstructivism is not that much better, Classical architecture is not that great but I’d rather have it than the other two (though this is to damn by faint praise).
Ironic that Brutalism has been coded as liberal in the USA, given that one of its most important forerunners was a Nazi sympathizer.