On Beauty And Elegance

 

What is the relationship between beauty and elegance? Le Corbusier is the perfect example of an artist/architect driven by the idea of a “new order”. So much so that the French fascists appropriated his ideas. He was known to rail against Victorian decoration, which he felt was devoid of order, obfuscating beauty and elegance. I’ve always liked the six Pictures of Nothing lectures by the late art historian and MoMA curator Kirk Varnedoe, given shortly before his death from cancer in 2003. What was particularly moving was his dedication to (and defense of) modern and contemporary art, given the extenuating circumstances. In fact, any of the MoMA curators in its history would illuminate the zeitgeists in modern art since the 19-teens. Even the curmudgeonly art critic Robert Hughes had good perspectives on abstract art, and less so contemporary art. As we know he despised Warhol (and Schnabel). I can’t imagine he didn’t see something done by either of them that he liked. Hughes sort of answers the question, simply through his own extensive body of work as an art critic and his series of documentaries in the 1980s.