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.

Hi Poirot,

Prince Charles also supports coffee enemas for cancer, homeopathic treatments and rolling back the Industrial Revolution so we can feed seven billion people off rotten organic tomatoes. Hopefully the Brits will have him safely under confinement soon after Liz pushes off.

Hi Jon J.

Well, there ya go...that's why I'm drawn to his ideas on art...I'm in favour of winding back the Industrial Revolution as well - or at least adapting our human ingenuity towards the development of less polluting mechanisms... (not too sure about the coffee enemas though).

Poor Sells, Stuck in the middle ages.

P.S. The earth circles the sun.

Jon J

You mistake me. I am not saying that the Greeks have not been important. Augustine was a neoPlatonist, Aquinas was an Aristotelian. Greek philosophy was the handmaid of Christian theology almost up to the present time. The New Testament was written in Greek, surprising since the Old was in Hebrew. This dramatic change came about because of the spread of Greek thought and language. There has been the suspicion that Greek philosophy has obscured the world of the bible, but theologians could not have developed sophisticated theologies without it.

If you read the history of the West, you have to understand the church. Christianity was basic to European history, that cannot be under dispute. You may hate Christianity but you certainly must give credence to the major role it has played in the development of the West.

Peter Sellick

Pot calls kettle black

Each blind to his own "rubbish"

Art is as art does

Absolutely Sells, the development of Western culture and progress is littered with the graves of discarded ideas.

Some ideas outlive their usefulness and relevance to reality, that is the future. We need not hold on to them as 'living' or current ideas, but merely preserve them in museums and histories, so as to remember what has come before.

Suggest you all look up Bacon's "modern paradox" and Also Swifts "the battle of the Books".

There is no 'progress' in art, there is only change, the ancient can be ,at times, better than the latest thing.

There is plenty going on outside the boring confines of the contemporary academy and its strictures on what is valid .
You all should get out, more often.