Poor Sells - still stuck in the reductionist Victorian mortal meat-body "vision" of Reality (as is Roger Scruton). A "vision" which reduces every thing and every one to the mortal meat-body scale only.

"Art is always coincident with culture, and culture is invariably bound to tradition - to all the limitations and (otherwise) all the virtues of humankind altogether. A global transformation of is now required in human culture - after the devastation, or collapse, of ego-civilization in the twentieth century. Something entirely new is required - something comprehensively right."

Old time "narrative" art, including most,if not ALL, of what was called religious art, was very much part and parcel of the ego glorifying civilization referred to in the above paragraph.

It is also as though the revolutionary cultural implications of E=MC2 and quantum physics have hardly even begun to be understood.

This reference describes how the art of the last 100 years or so came to terms with E=MC2: http://www.artandphysics.com

As does this essay: The Bright Reality Beyond Point of View.

http://www.aboutadidam.org/readings/transcending_the_camera/index.html

Plus The World As Light

http://global.adidam.org/books/world-as-light.html

Reality, Truth & The Beautiful

http://global.adidam.org/books/transcendental-realism.html

The Rebirth of Sacred Art

http://adidaupclose.org/Art_and_Photography/rebirth_of_sacred_art.html

Literature and Theater

http://adidaupclose.org/Literature_Theater/skalsky.html

Ho Hum
This is yet another attempt to draw attention to your particular kind of rubbish on the back of my articles. Get this. No one is interested, go and find something useful to do that does not make such a fool of yourself

Rubbish!

Two more quotes from the same source:

"True art heals.
True art restores equanimity.
Art Must regenerate the sense of well-being.
That is its true purpose.
When art is really useful, it serves this ultimate
process of healing, well-being, higher sympathy,
and Spiritual Awakening."

"My images, well met, should bring tears to the eyes, restore laughter to the life, and, altogether, both show and give a perfect equanimity to the world.

In his book "Harmony", Prince Charles writes that for art to "resonate" within us, there should be recognition of something of the inter-connected patterns of nature - timeless parallels with our innate knowledge of the way "things are" and our own submergence in the pond of life.
He writes that art in the many ages of antiquity was imbued with the "patterns of life".
He points out that "tradition" in the modern sense means "old-fashioned", whereas its original definition would have been a "living presence".
This presence is immutable. It is found in the ratios and proportions of all great artworks from east to west throughout history. In the Western sense, great art is not only a narrative but is also alive with the symbolism embodied in the proportions expressed. These are the same proportions that we as humans perceive as emanating from within the world and the cosmos of which we are part.

"For most of its history Western civilization has been defined by a single story, the story of the gospel."

When the very first sentence of an article with a lie, it's no surprise to find that the rest of it is nonsense. All you are doing is displaying your own abysmal ignorance of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Protagoras, Thales, Anaximander, Marcus Aurelius, Democritus, Heraclitus, etc, etc... most of whom have had far more impact on rational thought and the development of science -- the one truly characteristic Western mode of thought -- than the four contradictory fantasies cobbled together many years after the death of your hypothetical Christ.

And by the way, Peter, didn't you tell us a year or so ago that you 'know nothing about art'? But now you have the overweening arrogance to lecture us about it for four pages! I guess the chance of making a little pocket money from it is a great incentive to learn.

But take heart, Peter, your name has been linked with that of Prince Charles - one of the great loonies of our time!

Jon J.

Despite your less than flattering labelling of Prince Charles, you might be interested to know that he cites in his book most of the great thinkers you mentioned in your post - and is himself closely aligned with the classical mindset of antiquity.
His major beef is with the arrogance, distortion and imbalance bequeathed to us by modernism.