Welfare Advocate Sarah Jessica Parker: The Hollywood Limousine LiberalArticle Submission and Rejection

Below is an article I submitted to the on-line journal The Imaginative Conservative. It was rejected with the following email from Alyssa Barnes*, managing editor at the journal:

Dear Ms. Asrat:

Thank you for your interest in The Imaginative Conservative; I hope you are well.

Thank you also for your proposal. I regret to inform you that your essay does not meet our current editorial needs.

Sincerely,
Alyssa

First: What is this "conservative" trend (for decades now) with formal letters being signed off with a first name? Odd and deceptively familiar. Deceptively familiar because it looks like I am a "friend" of sorts, whereas I am interacting with Ms. Barnes on a purely professional level.

Second: What does "does not meet our current editorial needs" mean? Do they have too many submissions to consider? Do they not like the topic? Do they not like the religious references?

Conservatives have always been accused of being too stuffy and out of touch with reality. Then suddenly Trump pops up and they are shocked.

A professional interaction does not inhibit (or forbid) one to be out with the common man. And being out with the common man doesn't mean one doesn't treat him with some level of formality.

Does she think that I am being blasphemous in associating Mary Magdalene's love of Christ with Sarah Jessica Parker's profane use of perfume?

Still, stuffiness aside, conservatives, and those who call themselves religious conservatives, keep missing the boat with their grandiose elitism and consequently their inability to read the common man.

They're as bad in their intellectual ivory tower as is SJP in her Hollywood ivory tower.

I should have known better, as I wrote a critique of a post at the IC just a few weeks ago: Mo and Mao: How the East Might Revive the West’s Tradition. Of course, my argument is that it is the other way around.

Probably this post would have made Ms. Barnes' cut. Lainey Gossip is the website of a second-rate Canadian media woman Elaine Lui who makes her income on gossip. She has a degree in French (it must be all those naughty "frrrench" who corrupted her). I doubt it. She seems to link her "harsh" take on life to her Chinese background, Tiger Mom style.

“My grandmother ran a Mahjong den in Hong Kong. My mother played, that’s what they do - they play Mahjong and they talk sh-t, all day and all night. They smoke cigarettes and send out for food and talk sh-t some more. That was how they communicated. Gossip is communication. That's how I was indoctrinated.”

My voice is snarky, bitchy but also deeply, deeply gossipy."

She got her husband to quit his job at a media company to join in with her "bitching" as "the business side" of her enterprise.

She gossips, but so what? How bland and boring.

There's no bigger story, no message, no moral. Just mean-spirited humorless empty gossip.

These days Lainey's dishes have has gone "lo-cal." Perhaps it is all those celebrity endorsements that have told her to cool it down a little. She also smiles a lot on her tv show The Social , but then she can't help herself with her periodic "b..." outbursts.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the short bio at The Imaginative Conservative on Ms. Barnes:

Alyssa Barnes is the Managing Editor of The Imaginative Conservative. She is a graduate student in Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy and Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution. Miss Barnes holds a B.A. in Philosophy, Political Science, and Classical Languages from the University of St. Thomas' Honors Program in Houston, TX. She has also been an Intercollegiate Studies Institute Honors Fellow.

Barnes' Linkedin page shows that she has worked directly in churches and religious institutions, and has attended Catholic schools and universities.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article submitted to The Imaginative Conservative:

Welfare Advocate Sarah Jessica Parer: The Hollywood Limousine Liberal

John 12:3-8

Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.
Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him,
Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?
This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.

Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this.
For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.

Luke 6:20-21

Then he looked up at his disciples and said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Left: Sarah Jessica Parker promoting her perfume Lovely in 2005
Right: Existential drama at the 2017 Golden Globes, soon after the election of Donald Trump

Mary Magdalene anointed Jesus' feet with expensive perfume to worship him and adore him. Sarah Jessica Parker brands her perfumes as part of her name and uses this fame to promote government dependency by America's poor.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sarah Jessica Parker used to look pretty, and even lovey at times. Above left is a photo of her in 2005 with her perfume "Lovely," and then in the photo on the right at the 2017 Global Globe awards. By 2017, she is looking up as though searching for some vampire-god's guidance with her blackened nails and elongated claws for eyelashes. Why the spiritual drama?

Well the immediate answer is that she is "shocked" by the election of Donald Trump. Here is her emotional rollercoaster of a reaction over Trump's election:

"I am shocked by what has happened. I’m devastated by…I’m sad..."

That partly explains her appearance: sad/shocked/devastated and trying to put on a happy face.



Parker is wearing a wedding gown for the Global Globe 's, with no hint or irony. Except that this is a mangled and ripped gown touted as the latest design by divorced wedding gown designer Vera Wang.


Vera Wang: Fall 2017 - Dracula's Bride

She is wearing her SJP Shoe Collection heels, having moved up the ranks to a shoe designer. They are a rather tame "spaghetti strap" heels, carefully hidden by the trailing cut-out gown, since they don't fit the vampire theme of the dress. Parker has always been about pretty, which is why she cannot display her black nails and grey eyeshadow with a genuinely happy face.




SJP Shoe Collection: Westminster Metallic Sandals



A rich Hollywoodian, Parker hypocritically "supports" the poor as she lives a lavish, luxurious and indulgent life. Which is part of the "long answer" to her existential malaise. She is rich, wealthy actually, but she wants to (pretend to) be one with the poor. Since she has no religion, or rather since she has abandoned God, even the God of her Jewish ancestors, she has no idea of the meaning of Jesus' words (and even if she did know them, she wouldn't know how to relate to them):

"For you have the poor always with you; but me you have not always. [Matthew 26:11].

Her constant scurrying around, her beaten-down look, her idols, including President Obama, all attest to her deep desire to be this "good person." She has made her charitable missions her religion. But like true hypocrites, such charity, especially when in the presence of the President, come with designer shoes and gourmet-catered dinners, all carefully orchestrated to be hidden away to avoid ostentatious exhibition. After all who questions a little glitter on slippers and a plate of

"Chicken with a mustard sauce, diced tomatoes and a lot of relishes on the side..." dishes Aretha Franklin, one of the honorary guests, to gossip media waiting outside the townhouse "Very tasty," she added.

She has some idea of how goodness from others (strangers and friends) can make life better. She talks about her life in poverty as a young child with her family being on welfare for much of her childhood, and having to get "welfare tickets" for free lunches while in the third grade in a Cincinnati school. More information on her family background shows that her mother divorced Parker's father when she was only a year old and remarried a year later to a Paul Forste. Parker's mother seemed attracted to men with unstable financial prospects. Stephen Parker was an "aspiring writer." Paul Forste was a "theater student" who also worked as a truck driver when he came to live with Parker's mother, bringing with him his five children making the household child count to eight. The family lived off the "theatre student" Forste's truck driver salary and what Barbara brought in on her teacher's wages.

It is never pleasant to criticize someone's poverty. But how much of her mother's bad choices led to Parker's difficult childhood? Still, her enterprising mother managed to find some way out of this poverty by enrolling her children in various entertainment productions. By 1977, at age eleven, Parker had a role in the Broadway musical Annie. By 1979, she had nabbed the lead role. And the rest is history (including briefly dating John F. Kennedy)

Parker is now an advocate for welfare, albeit indirectly, through her vigorous support of Obama and all his failed government policies. She is the epitome of a limousine liberal but one who should know better thus making her a hypocrite. It wasn't the free lunches that catapulted her into the ranks of Hollywood's elite, but her mother's savviness and a little of her own talent.

She now keeps making her films, and concocts more perfumes (she's got about four by now although none as good as the first one). I used to be a fan of hers in her Sex and the City days, which, to its credit, was uncomfortably inhibited with its "sex" part. Kim Cattrall, the sexpot in the series, always performed her scenes as though she were in a rush for them to be over. The prudence was possibly due to Parker (she is a prude).

Her latest media promotion for which she attended the Golden Globes is for a television series called Divorce. Her painful experience with her parents' split when she was a young child seems to have made her wiser, making sure her marriage stays intact. She has been married to Matthew Broderick for twenty-five years now.

“What I do on screen doesn't cross the placenta, do you know what I mean?”
[Parker in an interview with People Magazine in New York at the HBO premier series for Divorce]

But Parker does not really believe in marriage. At least the formal traditional kind.

That is the hypocrisy of the contemporary liberal elite. They make sure their own heterosexual marriages stay intact, and a surprising number are intact albeit many are in long-standing second marriages, or married after several years of "cohabitation." Look at for example Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, Meryl Streep and her non-movie star husband (she's the smartest of them all), Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson. But everyone else's marriage is up for grabs of freedom: freedom to leave a husband in pursuit of a career; freedom to choose the gender (or non-gender) of one's "partner;" freedom to have children; freedom to adopt a Chinese orphan. Parker sees herself as the spokeswomyn for the common womyn who reconfigures life to suit her agenda and ideology. Parker hasn't gained an iota of wisdom, or empathy, from the difficult, and sad, life of her own parents' failed marriages.

Parker never adopted a Chinese infant, as is the trend amongst these multimillionaire actresses. She has one son with her husband, whom she bore late in life (at 35). And she couldn't leave it at that. Instead, her youngest two children are through a surrogate. Imagine telling your children they have another "mother" out there somewhere.

The "Lovely" woman has become the epitome of the narcissistic Hollywood actress.


40K/plate fundraiser for Obama and his wife in 2012

Parker held a fundraiser for Obama in 2012 in her multi-million Greenwich Village brownstone home and introduced him and his wife thus:

"It is a great, a rare, a very special and I’m assuming a singular treat to welcome you into our home – our radiant, our extraordinary first lady...[and the] beloved current and future president of the United States.”

She is now mum about her retiring president, whom she helped to re-elect for a second term. And the state of affairs in which he left America after his presidency does not make a good pitch for a sitcom.


Mary Magdalene Anointing Jesus' Feet
Stained glass window
Meyer's Studios, Munich 1899
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Alyssa Barnes


Video screen shot of interview of Alyssa Barnes on her transfer to
the University of Saint Thomas. Notice the tight jean pants,
the tight short-sleeved t-shirt, the string bracelet,
the heavy make up on her eyes.
I wouldn't blame her rather than the authorities who allow such school "uniform."

Barnes wrote an article titled: Top Ten Ways to be a Man, with the preface to the article:

In an age in which tweed jackets have been replaced by sweatshirts, pants have holes and shoes lack laces, and the “un-done” look is considered attractive, maybe we need to reconsider our codes of conduct, especially when it comes to the art of being a man. Thus, the question is begged: What makes a man?

Video: Why I transferred to the University of Saint Thomas

Here is the Linkedin profile photo of Barnes which implies that it is a much more recent one.



Although Barnes looks much prettier in her the profile, she is wearing a glaring red lipstick and has clearly had her hair tinted. She looks like a natural red-head, and yet added these unnatural and unaesthetic highlights to her otherwise pretty hair. And her eye makeup is as heavy as her lipstick.

Timothy 2:9

In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She Was So American

I took these photographs below of posters outside at the Bay's department store's "women's clothing" floor. I'm not sure why they have it there, and the sales women were unable to tell me. But I was struck by the femininity and beauty of the dresses, which were worn by:

That woman [who is] always seen lunching at smart restaurants - charmingly aware of the interests she excites. She's the woman who has traveled, whose leisure allows her wide cultural activities. She throws her time and energy into drives for her favorite charities, she encourages the opera, the ballet, the symphony, art exhibits. She's the influence behind the fashions that have carried our designers' names around the world. She's so American.[Text from the bottom of one of the posters]

I looked around the floor, which was the "fashion" section of the store. But there is nothing comparable to these clothes! There are a couple of nice red winter coats, but the dresses that may compare are glittery and shiny, and only good for a holiday outfit, and now for New Years (if anyone will wear them, and I doubt there will be many who will).

What a long way we've regressed with femininity and beauty!









Text at the bottom of the poster:

That woman always seen lunching at smart restaurants - charmingly aware of the interests she excites. She's the woman who has traveled, whose leisure allows her wide cultural activities. She throws her time and energy into drives for her favorite charities, she encourages the opera, the ballet, the symphony, art exhibits. She's the influence behind the fashions that have carried our designers' names around the world. She's so American.

[Photos By: KPA]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Return to the Classics

William A. Nathans
Photograph with Self Portrait
[Source: Academy of Realist Art]

I posted a portrait of Dietrich von Hildebrand by artist William A. Nathans in my last post.

Here is more on Nathans (from these sites here and here):

Education:
- Academy of Realist Art, Toronto, Ontario
- BFA Illustration School of Visual Arts, New York, New York

Experience:
- Academy of Realist Art, Toronto, Ontario
- Freelance Illustration Commissions
- Freelance Landscape Commissions
- Currently working on two commissioned portraits of
His Eminence Cardinal Justin Rigali Archbishop of Philadelphia

Exhibitions:
- Finalist for the Art Renewal Center’s 2006 Annual Juried Saloon Competition
- Connecticut Plein Air Painters Society at the Fine Art and Framing Gallery in Hartford, CT
- Mamaroneck Artists’ Guild Annual Small Works Show in Larchmont, NY
- Represented by the Mary Anderson Fine Art Gallery located on St. Simon’s Island, Georgia
- Finalist for the 2011 Portrait Society of American Competition

And from his Linked In page:

Fine Artist: oil painter
Fine Artist and Portraitist
April 2008 – Present (6 years 8 months)
Fine Artist trained in traditional oil painting technique working within the genres of portraiture, landscape, still-life and religious figurative works.

Spent 7 months of 2010 painting in Europe and completing 6 commissioned portraits and teaching two workshops in Temple Bar, Dublin, Ireland

Currently commissioned to paint portrait of His Eminence Cardinal J. Rigali of Philadelphia

Currently working on new portrait commission of His Eminence Cardinal Edwin F. O'Brien, Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Knights in Jerusalem.

Recently returned from traveling for three months throughout Ireland painting plen air landscapes as well as teaching 5 workshops in Portrait and Figure Painting in Dublin, Ireland.

Recently completed commissioned portrait of His Eminence Cardinal Edwin F. O'Brien, Current Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, now hanging in Vatican City.

And his CV:

William A. Nathans, Painter
b. 1981
Education:
- School of Visual Arts, BFA, 1999- 2003
- Academy of Realist Art Atelier, 2003-2006

Travelled throughout Europe, Great Britain and Ireland copying and studying Old Master works in museums

Commissions of Note: 2007-Present
- Invited to work in Zurich, Switzerland producing 11 portraits and several landscape paintings for private collections
- Commissioned to paint three Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church, one of which hangs in Vatican City
- Currently Commissioned to paint His Eminence Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, Archbishop of Vienna, Austria and President of the Austrian Bishops' Conference
- Continue to work on private commissions globally

Teaching: 2008-Present
- Instructor at the Silvermine Guild of Art teaching Life Painting and Life Drawing
- Instructor of several workshops in Dublin, Ireland from 2010 to present teaching Life Painting and Drawing

Awards and Honors
- Finalist in the 2011 Portrait Society of America's International Portrait Competition held in Atlanta, GA

Additional Awards (Linked In page)
- Finalist with portrait "Sean" in the 2011 Portrait Society of America Competition.
- 2nd Place in Commissioned Portrait cat, for the Portrait Society of America Members Competition 2011
- 2nd place, CT Society of Portrait Artists "Faces of Spring" 08 "the Mackem and Tackem"
- Finalist, ARC 06 International Salon Show
Commissioned by His Eminence John Cardinal Foley to paint portrait hanging in Vatican City

And more on his training at the Acadamy of Realist Art, to study i the Classical Realist tradition. From the ARA website:

Will Nathans is a professional artist and instructor in the Classical Realist tradition who came to ARA after attaining a degree in Fine Arts. His vision was to refine his technical abilities and explore his passion for portraits and religious painting. After completing his studies at ARA, Will was selected over a number of international competitors to execute a commissioned portrait of His Eminence John Cardinal Foley in Rome.

Portrait of Dietrich von Hildebrand
Carbon Pencil on paper
By: William A. Nathans
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hildebrand: "a crisp, feisty writer...as he fought against the emerging Hitler regime"

Portrait of Dietrich von Hildebrand
Carbon Pencil on paper
By: William A. Nathans

Below is a quote from the review of My Battle Against Hitler by George Weigel, from the online journal First Things (which I received on the Hildebrang Project Facebook page):

"Here was a Hildebrand I’d never met before: a crisp, feisty writer, who wore his emotions on his literary sleeve as he fought against the emerging Hitler regime and the Catholic intellectuals who were seduced by it." 

                                                     -------------------------------------------------------------------

I keep saying (or thinking) that my trip to Steubenville, with all the obstacles I faced (here is an account of my trip to an email list), keeps unfolding in interesting, useful and encouraging ways as time goes by.

First, of course, is the invitation requesting my participation in the conference.

Then, I paid $30 for the book My Battle Against Hitler (it's an investment, I kept saying), which allowed me to participate in the online conference (which I've commented on here), and which allowed me to be a member of the Hildebrand Project, and also to make contact with a variety of people involved with the book, including book publishing.

Then, at some point in my presentation, or at least during the question and answer period, I made the connection between the nefarious world of the Nazis, intent on destroying the Judeo-Christian West, and our current Western-civilization-hating post-modern world. Here is my full presentation. Below, I've highlighted the parts where I say that we have been through this before.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

And it was while I was doing the Trillium piece that many things came together.

Art needs to be local. We need to “see” what we’re representing. That art needs to have an aesthetic dimension - it has to be beautiful. And that there is a spiritual dimension to art, not always, not aggressively, but still subtly and present.

I realized that modern artists were discarding these elements, and creating works that people couldn’t identify with. That their purpose was not to create works with beauty, rooted in reality and with a transcendent element, but to recreate their own godless transcendence, their own reality, and they discarded beauty as something frivolous which distracted from their own serious messages (usually of doom and gloom). The less talented of them went on with post-modernism, which was a distorted assemblage of objects to produce their “ironic” commentary on the world around them.

And multicultural artists were throwing away the reality that surrounds us, in Canada, and were bringing their own reality for their far-away lands, imbued with a strange and alien aesthetics.

When I put these two together, multiculturalism and modernism/post-modernism, I realized what was at stake here was the art I know, which I have studied and participated in from a very young age ever since my fateful journey to that most beautiful city. It was Western art that was at stake, made vulnerable by these aggressive elements which were not at all shy about demanding what they wanted: “Hey, hey, Ho ho, Western Culture’s Gotta go.”

I didn’t clearly articulate this then, but soon after, I started a blog called Camera Lucida working on the words “Chamber of Light” where I (rather immodestly!) could shed some light on the world around me. And a few years later, after many postings, altercations with readers, and a maturity of my thoughts, I started my blog (about a year and a half ago) my blog Reclaiming Beauty.

I started the blog on January 1, 2013 (a new blog for a new year), and on February 5, 2013 I wrote at Camera Lucida:

I have started a new project. It is bigger than a website.

I hope to reclaim beauty from the avant-garde, nihilistic environment that surrounds us. Rather than fight it, I thought I would start a site that would ba study of beauty, a critique our our current beautiless, or anti-beauty, environment, as well as a place to give and receive practical guides and accounts on how to acquire and reclaim the beautiful. I hope to have a list of regular contributors to the site, who will eventually become a part of a bigger movement.

And on September 29, 2013, I posted at my Reclaiming Beauty blog my proposal for a book, but with a bigger vision of starting a Beauty Movement:

My book Reclaiming Beauty aims to document the contribution that beauty has made toward our Western civilization, from the earliest records of God’s love of beauty, to a young child who sees beauty almost as soon as he is born. Our civilization thrived, prospered and matured because of beauty. Our great artists, architects, writers, philosophers and scientists have always referred to beauty with awe and wonder. It is in the modern era that beauty began to be undermined and eventually neglected by artists and other intellectual leaders.

Reclaiming Beauty will show that the abandonment of beauty leads to the death of culture, and eventually society. Modern man’s neglect of beauty has initiated the cult of ugliness, leaving us with bleakness and nihilism.

But, people want beauty. And they will surround themselves with some kind of aesthetic quality. Still, beauty is the business of the knowledgeable. The man on the street may be able to recognize beauty, but he would not be able to explain why it is beautiful. That is the task of the experts.

With Reclaiming Beauty, I aim to present my ideas, observations and analyses on beauty, and to provide a guide for recommendations on how to remove oneself from the nefarious influences of our beauty-rejecting world. This way, we can build a parallel world which will eventually form a growing movement of beauty-reclaiming individuals, who can start to shape a world where beauty is not minimized and rejected.

As I presented my ideas at the conference, I also said:

Our civilization thrived, prospered and matured because of beauty. Our great artists, architects, writers, philosophers and scientists have always referred to beauty with awe and wonder. It is in the modern era that beauty began to be undermined and eventually neglected by artists and other intellectual leaders. 

Reclaiming Beauty will show that the abandonment of beauty leads to the death of culture, and eventually society. Modern man’s neglect of beauty has initiated the cult of ugliness, leaving us with bleakness and nihilism.

                                               -------------------------------------------------------------------

I should add that this world of bleakness and nihilism is ultimately the Gottedammerung that the Nazis were so ready to leave us with.

We need to continue with the battle that Hildebrand thought he had completed. We need more Hildebrands. Each one of us needs to draw out that heroism, bravery, and innocence for such a cause.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Power of Beauty

Rosary Circle
Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio

I have been invited to present a paper at the conference The Power of Beauty in Steubenville, Ohio, at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Here is my proposed paper.

Reclaiming Beauty: Winning Back Our Western Civilization
Proposal for the conference The Power of Beauty
Kidist Paulos Asrat

The paper Reclaiming Beauty aims to document the contribution that beauty has made toward our Western civilization, from the earliest records of God’s love of beauty, to a young child who sees beauty almost as soon as he is born. Our civilization thrived, prospered and matured through beauty. Our great artists, architects, writers, philosophers and scientists have always referred to beauty with awe and wonder. It is in the modern era that beauty began to be undermined and eventually neglected by intellectual leaders.

Reclaiming Beauty will show that the abandoning beauty leads to the death of culture, and eventually that of society. Modern man’s neglect of beauty has initiated the cult of ugliness, leaving us with bleakness and nihilism.

Yet, people want beauty. And they will surround themselves with some kind of aesthetic quality. The man on the street may be able to recognize beauty, but he would not be able to explain why it is beautiful. He may desire beauty, but does not know how to attain it. And he is easily distracted by destroyers of beauty. It is the the task of experts to guide him in the right direction.

With Reclaiming Beauty, I will make a historical, cultural and societal review of beauty. I will trace the steps when beauty was eventually abandoned as a paradigm for civilization.
Rather than attributing beauty to a Godly goodness, philosophers, writers and artists began to view beauty as their as their nemesis. They saw God as a judge who would not let them do as they wished. In order to pursue the image of beauty they desired, they began to look elsewhere. They began to abandon God, and by abandoning God, they began to change their world, filling it with horror and ugliness.

Part of the ideas for my paper will be revisions of what I've been developing over a number of years online at my websites Camera Lucida, Our Changing Landscape and Reclaiming Beauty, and in my articles from Kidist P. Asrat Articles.

The website Reclaiming Beauty is interactive. Members can post their original articles, short commentaries, and articles and excerpts from other authors. I encourage feedback and comments from members. I plan for this online group to develop into more formal groups which can meet in physical locations regularly, where they can building beauty societies whose purpose would be to develop ideas and strategies for bringing beauty back into our culture, and to eventually reclaim beauty.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

New York Public Library Grant Application for 2013

Objective

Modern man is a literary man, possibly more so than a visual one. Through the written word, with timely examples and with an exhorter’s clarity, I will be able to relay the urgent message that beauty is disappearing.

The book Reclaiming Beauty aims to document the contribution that beauty has made toward our Western civilization, from the earliest records of God’s love of beauty, to a young child who sees beauty almost as soon as he is born. Our civilization thrived, prospered and matured because of beauty. Our great artists, architects, writers, philosophers and scientists have always referred to beauty with awe and wonder. It is in the modern era that beauty began to be undermined and eventually neglected by artists and other intellectual leaders.

Reclaiming Beauty will show that the abandonment of beauty leads to the death of culture, and eventually society. Modern man’s neglect of beauty has initiated the cult of ugliness, leaving us with bleakness and nihilism.

But, people want beauty. And they will surround themselves with some kind of aesthetic quality. Still, beauty is the business of the knowledgeable. The man on the street may be able to recognize beauty, but he would not be able to explain why it is beautiful. That is the task of the experts.

With Reclaiming Beauty, I aim to present my ideas, observations and analyses on beauty, and to provide a guide for recommendations on how to remove oneself from the nefarious influences of our beauty-rejecting world. This way, we can build a parallel world which will eventually form a growing movement of beauty-reclaiming individuals, who can start to shape a world where beauty is not minimized and rejected.

Significance

Reclaiming Beauty will be the first book on beauty to make a comprehensive, historical, cultural and societal review of beauty. It will describe the moment (or moments) when beauty was not only undermined, but eventually abandoned, as a paradigm of civilized life. Rather than attributing beauty to a Godly goodness, philosophers, writers and artists began to view beauty as their enemy, and as their nemesis. They saw God as a judge who would not let them do as they wished. In order to pursue the image of beauty they desired, they began to look elsewhere. They began to abandon God, and by abandoning God, they began to change their world, filling it with horror and ugliness.

I maintain that this was not their objective, which was merely to look for a different perspective on aesthetics. The realization of the horror they have created may have come too late, and too weakly, from cultural leaders, but ordinary people, who are most affected by these changes in worldview, are already incurring changes. But they cannot make useful inferences, and hence necessary changes. They still need an elite to help them materialize their desires and observations.

A new elite that is pro-beauty needs to take the cultural reins, to guide and return our world back to its awe and wonder of beauty. To this end, Reclaiming Beauty will add an element which no other book on beauty has attempted: guidelines on how to renounce this world of anti-beauty, and how to progressively bring beauty back into our culture.

The book will be a manifesto for concrete references to these basic ideas. Along with the book, a website will be developed that will be an interactive continuation of the book. On the website, members can post their original articles, shorter commentaries, articles and excerpts from other authors, and encourage feedback and comments from other members. At some point, this group can develop into a more formal society, which can meet in a physical locations a few times a year, building beauty societies, whose purpose would be to develop ideas and strategies for bringing beauty back into our culture.

Part of the book will be revised versions of what I've been developing over a number of years in my blogs Camera Lucida, Reclaiming Beauty and Our Changing Landscape, and from my full-length articles from Kidist P. Asrat Articles.

All images that head the chapters will be from my own collection of photographs and designs. Some of these images can be found at Kidist P. Photographs and Well-Patterned. Others I will choose from my collection of photographs, mostly in negatives and prints. Others I will take as the project progresses.

The image on the book cover is a photograph I took of the the inner courtyard at the Cloisters Museum in New York. There is a section in the book dedicated to the Cloisters titled: The Sturdy Periwinkle: Linking the New World with the Old, which discusses the Western, European influences in North American culture. The chapter will be a revision of a post at the blog Reclaiming Beauty.

What I plan to accomplish at the New York Public Library

The library’s vast, world class research facilities will assist me in finding the scholarly, historic and artistic information necessary to develop the ideas for my book.

How I plan to use the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

I will primarily be using the Arts and Architecture Collections. The material I am interested in is the Western collections (fine art, decorative arts, architecture and design history, as described in the NYPL website). Here are the specific ways I will peruse the library’s facilities:
- Catalogues Raisonnes
This will provide me with specific works of art by specific artists, who played important if not seminal influence on Western art and culture
- Thirty Minute Consultations
Since my time is limited at the library, periodic, short consultations, especially at the beginning of my research schedule, will save me time and help me find relevant and pertinent information.
- Vertical Files
Although vertical files are no longer being catalogued, my research is also concerned with a historical perspective on art and culture, and the perception of beauty. The material that is catalogued between 1910-1950 will be useful to analyze how the detrimental effects of two world wars (1914-1945) affected the culture.
- Photographic Collection
Examining photographic records of recent history will provide me with a documentary of the society's aesthetics when image production started to be more democratic, and more available. Photographs don’t, and don’t need to, eulogize their subjects, as did painters.
- Print Collection
The collection which dates from the 15th century, and which encompasses almost five hundred years of image reproductions, will provide me with a historical survey of how beauty, and beautiful images, were viewed over these centuries.
- Spencer Collection
I will have access to the Spencer Collection through the Photograph and Print Collections, providing me with further material to enhance these two collections, including medieval and renaissance manuscripts.
- The Manuscript and Archives Division
This houses documents ranging from medieval and renaissance illuminated manuscripts, which is also connected to the various other prints divisions in the library, and will enhance my research.
- Map Division
Besides the practicality of maps, there is an aesthetics to maps as well. The Map Division will provide me with this aesthetic survey of maps over the centuries.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What Are Li Ka-Shing's Intentions For His Multi-Million Dollars to St. Michael's Hospital?

Left: Statue of goddess Gaun Yin in Macau, China, which Wikipedia describes as:
"...a blend between the traditional images of the bodhisattva Guanyin and Holy Mary."

Center: Statue of Guan Yin at the Ka-Shing Tsz Shan Monastery (under construction)

This statue is to be completed in 2014, and will be "The world's tallest bronze Guan Yin Statue."

Ka-Shing, I think, used the Macau statue as his model, and it suits his "cosmopoliatan" opportunism, where Mary might figure in his design, but his thoughts and beliefs are quite certainly Buddhist and Asian.

More on the goddess Guan Yin:

Guanyin (...previous transliterations Quan Yin, Kwan Yin, or Kuanyin) is the bodhisattva associated with compassion as venerated by East Asian Buddhists, usually as a female. The name Guanyin is short for Guanshiyin, which means "Observing the Sounds (or Cries) of the World". She is also sometimes referred to as Guanyin Pusa (...literally: "Bodhisattva Guanyin"). Some Buddhists believe that when one of their adherents departs from this world, they are placed by Guanyin in the heart of a lotus, and then sent to the western pure land of Sukhāvatī.

[Collage by KPA]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wrote recently that the disappearance of Saint Michael, the patron saint of St. Michael's hospital and its legacy, is due to Christianity and Western culture being subtly but persistently swept aside in Toronto. I alluded to the $25 million donation from Hong Kong businessman Li Ka-Shing to establish the Li Ka-Shing Knowledge Institute as being influential in this process. This was a premonition (or an educated deduction), based on other posts I had written over an eight-year period.

My post was too long for me to search more on the religious practices of Li Ka-Shing, this Hong Kong billionaire.

I tried to find Ka-Shing's religion. Is he Catholic? Is he Buddhist? Is he an atheist? What is he?

The information wasn't forthcoming, but Ka-Shing is no Catholic, let alone some kind of a Christian, and instead has close affiliations with Buddhism.

From Wikipedia:

Tsz Shan Monastery is a large Buddhist temple currently under construction in Tung Tsz, Tai Po District, Hong Kong. Much of the monastery building funds were funded entirely by local business magnate Li Ka-shing.

[This] includes the construction of Tsz Shan Monastery, a large monastery and a height of 76 meters and is the second highest in the world outdoor bronze Guanyin statue. Tsz Temple is expected to be completed in 2014, led by the Venerable Kok Kwong HHCKLA open, the public will then be able to make an appointment and visit Tsz Shan Monastery.

Perhaps this lack of information is because of the yet-to-be-completed Buddhist monastery, but surely there are other instances where Ka-Shing reveals his religious sentiments?

China Times provided more information about the monastery-in-contruction in an August 2013 article Li Ka-shing builds bulletproof private compound in monastery:

Property tycoon Li Ka-shing has allegedly had a private safe house and meditation room built at the Tsz Shan Monastery, a Buddhist temple in Hong Kong that is under construction. Li's Cheung Kong Holdings has also been sued by the building contractors for HK$335 million (US$43 million) in outstanding payments, according to Duowei News, a media outlet operated by overseas Chinese.

Li donated over HK$1 billion (US$128 million) for the construction of the monastery, which includes the world's second tallest Buddhist statue. Li and his eldest son Victor established a private company to oversee the work.

My conclusion for this lack of ready information on Ka-Shing's religious affiliations is that if Ka-Shing publicizes his beliefs, he then has to be held in some way accountable to the many Christian organizations in which he participates. Another reason could be that Buddhists don't view their belief as a religion, as Christians do, but classify it more as a guide for living well. Either way, his affiliation with a historically Catholic hospital is odd. But perhaps it's not so odd.

In search of money, organizations, and even whole countries, are going to the biggest bidder. Ka-Shing is delivering. But, he has his loyalties, and he will make sure that they are met.

And by funding a world-renonwed Western hospital like St. Michael's, he is providing a facility which can cater to his own people, both family and countrymen.

The author at Wikipedia on the Tzs Shan monastery provides this title with a link at the bottom of the article:
Hong Kong billionaire denies report 249-foot goddess statue will be his tomb. I think this is just another instance of Ka-Shing's obfuscation and secrecy.

Everyone has to think about his death at some time. People's loyalties can be ascertained by how they approach their death. Ka-Shing has given us plenty of information with his choice of burial place.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

St. Michael's: A Disappearing Legacy

I have been posting about my visits to St. Michael's Hospital, in Toronto, where I have been a regular patient for the past year or so. I now won't have to make another visit for another two months. My doctor diagnosed my treatment as successful at my visit last week, and that I just need to return for a follow-up. That is good news. I have said that it is St. Michael who is protecting me, and I carry with me a key chain of the hospital's sculpture.

I briefly mention this in Reclaiming The Beauty of St. Michael's Hospital, where I also write about the hospital.

I didn't know then, in February 26, 2014, four months ago, how appropriate that heading was.

On my last visit, I went again into the gift shop to buy something else - a poster, a replica of the sculpture, a mug even - as a conclusion and my small gift (although I have made a donation already, which can be made here) to my visits to the hospital.

The saleswoman had told me at my list visit that the hospital was changing its logo, and would be bringing in new items in a couple of months.

So I asked her what was new.

She showed me a couple of t-shirts with just the words "St. Michael's, Inspired Care, Inspiring Science" in bold, plain white print against a navy blue background.

"How about the sculpture?" I asked.

"Well, this is the new logo," she replied.

"That doesn't make sense. How is it St. Michael's without that famous sculpture as its logo? The older signs all had it."

"I don't know. We have no say,' she answered, clearly not very happy.

I got a little emotional, and said that if he wasn't going to be around to watch out for us, then who was?

Well, it is the trend now, in our contemporary world, where anything to do with God and Christianity, and more specifically Western Christianity and culture, are subtly being eradicated. The hospital hasn't change its name yet, although I don't doubt that can happen very soon. There are too many forces in multicultural Toronto which want Christianity, the Christian God, and Western culture out of the way.

I wrote here in my February 2014 post (linking to a 2012 post I did on my criticism of the hospital's funding source and new building):

I have criticized the hospital's latest wing, completed in 2011, and its funding source here. But, the St. Michael's Hospital legacy is long and sustained. There is Saint Michael's Cathedral, and St. Michael's Choir School for boys, both in the vicinity of the hospital (more here), giving it moral support.

I wrote in February 2012:

Art is a testament of God. The new hospital addition discards God through the bland, expressionless, spiritless flat glass panes. Since God is not important, then man takes on a different dimension, whose importance is gauged not by his spirituality and his goodness, but by his acquisitions and his power. And money is rootless, so it can come from the highest bidder, from any corner of the world. Shing won this time around, but it could have been anyone. Anyone, that is, who could come up with extra zeros on the donation check.

Even before that physical removal of the presence of God, or God's archangel, I had a premonition that the whole idea was to remove God altogether.

I figured this out two years before St. Michael was officially removed as the hospital's logo.

One of the hospital's new wing that is part of the hospital's "state-of-the-art" medical facility was funded by a Hong Kong businessman, Li Ka-Shing. His inroads into Canada include:

...the single largest shareholder of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), the fifth largest bank in Canada until the sale of his share in 2005 (with all proceedings donated, see below). He is also the majority shareholder of a major energy company, Husky Energy, based in Alberta, Canada.

In January 2005, Li announced plans to sell his $1.2 billion CAD stake in the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, with all proceeds going to private charitable foundations established by Li including the Li Ka Shing Foundation in Hong Kong and the Li Ka Shing (Canada) Foundation based in Toronto.

Li has some real estate interest in Vancouver, specifically in connection with Concord Pacific Developments that developed the old Expo '86 lands in Yaletown[citation needed], as well as Concord Park Place and CityPlace, Toronto in Toronto.

His two sons, who work with him, are Canadian citizens:

His two sons, Victor Li and Richard Li, are also prominent figures in the Hong Kong business scene. Victor Li works directly with his father as managing director and vice-chairman of Cheung Kong (Holdings) Limited, while Richard Li is the head of PCCW, the largest telecom company in Hong Kong. They are both Canadian citizens.
[Source: Wikipedia]

There is already some dramatic background regarding his son Victor Li who was kidnapped by "crime king "Big Spender" Cheung Tze-keung 17 years ago [in 1996]." Ka-Shing paid a ransom to have his son released, who is now a Canadian citizen (and from what I can find out, Ka-Shing, father, has dual Canadian and Chinese citizenship).

And here is a Canadian intelligence investigation on Li Ka-Shing:

Victor Li, the Chinese-Canadian businessman who wants to take control of much of Air Canada, has a family name that is well known to investigators in the Canadian Security and Information Service (CSIS) and the RCMP, who were very interested in his father, Li Ka-shing, in the late 1990s.

Li Ka-shing was the focus of a special joint CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Services) and RCMP (The Royal Canadian Mounted Police) probe, called Project Sidewinder. The report, called "Chinese Intelligence Services and Triads Financial Links in Canada," which was not widely distributed here, shows that Li Ka-shing is closely associated with the Chinese government.

"The companies belonging to Mr. Li (one of the 10 richest men in the world) are not simply businesses that performed better than our own companies in a particular sector," explained one of the main authors of the report, Michel Juneau-Katsuya, during an interview yesterday.

For years, Mr. Juneau-Katsuya headed the strategic investigation office for CSIS in the Asia-Pacific area. He retired in 2000 and now directs an international intelligence organization, the Northgate Group, in Ottawa. "No American company has links with the political centres in Washington that are as close as the ones the Li family has with Beijing," he said. "At the time of the investigations, Mr. Li was increasing his holdings in Canada. This raised a national security issue: to what extent can foreign companies be allowed to own important economic entities in Canada?"

[...]

Seven years ago, according to information that has never been confirmed, Li Ka-shing apparently handed over $125 million to men who kidnapped his son, Victor Li, in Hong Kong. According to reports, Mr. Ka-shing asked then Chinese President Jiang Zemin for assistance directly (when Hong Kong was still separate from China). [Source: Prime Time Crime: November 11, 2003]

This is the name that a hospital wishes to associate itself with. So, it is no surprise that St. Michael's has to go.

And even sadder, and more uncanny, is something which I just found out while trying to link to the hospital's benefactor, Patrick Keenan:

Patrick J. Keenan, 1932-2014
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of one of St. Michael’s best friends and most generous benefactors, Patrick (Pat) J. Keenan. His affiliation with the hospital spans nearly 30 years, including important roles as hospital board chair, dedicated volunteer and advocate, philanthropist and friend.

Here is more from the St. Michael's website, with an announcement written on Friday May 2, 2014:

St. Michael’s Hospital was today mourning the loss of Patrick (Pat) J. Keenan, a longtime supporter, board member, benefactor and friend. Keenan, 82, died Thursday night.

I was in the hospital, being given a clean bill of health on that very day, Thursday May 1, that Mr. Keenan died.

It is no surprose that I am getting all kinds of premonitions. We, those who get these because of our attention to our cultural changes, need to keep a vigilant eye, and are responsible for conveying our knowledge. I will continue to do so.


Pat and Barbara Keenan stand outside
the former Annex buildings, now the
site of the Keenan Research Centre, in 2005
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Cult of Ugliness

Cathedral of Brasilia
(Image posted above the article)

The Cult of Ugliness in America

By: Fr. Anthony J. Brankin

[This talk on "The Cult of Ugliness in America" was given by Father Anthony J. Brankin on March 14, 2001 in the Washington Bureau of The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) in McLean, Virginia.]

The topic on which I have been asked to speak today is “The Cult of Ugliness in America.” I do not intend to speak of every possible example of ugliness in our society. That would be exhausting if not thoroughly discouraging. We already live cheek-by-jowl in an incredibly ugly culture; we cannot escape it. So if there is any purpose to this talk, it is to keep you aware of the very real danger that you might miss the ugliness entirely and never catch on to the real destruction that this ugliness is working in your very souls.

Now, what could I possibly mean by the word “ugly”? Is it too glib to say that if beauty can be defined as that which when seen pleases, then the ugly is that which when seen displeases? Why does it displease? Is there some definable element that tells us that an ugly piece is ugly? Is there an obvious line or shape or combination of lines and shapes that screams, “ugly!”

What can we make of the modern phenomenon whereby what is considered ugly nonetheless pleases — or what would be considered beautiful in another era or society is deemed by ours to be ugly?

For example, when I say that you live cheek-by-jowl with this ugliness, I mean to say that in coming to and going from this hall you are surrounded by miles and miles of unyielding ugliness: McDonalds and Burger Kings sandwiched between Amocos and tenements. You do not mistake that for beauty, but it is so ubiquitous that you may no longer recognize it as specifically ugly.

You may never even make a mental note of the ugliness of all the malls with their false fronts and even falser interiors, or of the condominiums that are just as empty and sterile on the inside as they are on the outside. That’s just how everything looks now.

And, of course, that’s just for starters, for there is likewise in our world a spiritual ugliness no less all-pervasive than and somehow related to the visual ugliness all about us.

You will turn on your car radio only to hear of some new school shooting, and you won’t even be sure if this is the eighth or ninth such massacre in as many months. You will, however, be able to form a mental image of the alleged perpetrators, for you have seen the look and the fashions on your own block and maybe even within your own families: the chopped, colored hair, the mutilations, the tattoos, the rings in the nostrils and eyebrows, the baggy clothes, the backward baseball caps, the surly looks and the sullen grunts. You’ve even heard their music — God have mercy on us; we’ve all heard their music.

Then, of course, when you finally reach home, you will turn on the television news to hear of our scientific culture’s progress in the harvesting and sale of babies’ body parts. You will see news bytes of the political candidates trying to outdo each other in their dedication to killing babies.

Perhaps then, after supper, you will turn the channel to a show where you are treated to hour after hour of actors and actresses spewing vile lines in ever more tawdry productions. Could television programming be any less accurately described than by saying it consists of ugly, mean people doing ugly, mean things to each other? Indeed, the ugliness is so universal, so part and parcel of our lives, that it hardly registers in our minds anymore. And having drunk fully of this awful cup, you go to bed.

Now, you might think that at least on Sunday you could be rescued from all of this visual and spiritual ugliness by going to church; but ugliness is there, too, for chances are that your church has already been despoiled by modern Catholic barbarians who haven’t even the artistic sense of the Unitarians who sit on your towns’ historic preservation boards.

The modernists will already have removed the tabernacle to a closet and the crucifix to the rectory basement. They will have torn up the sanctuary and torn down the shrines; and they will have done their expensive best to ruin whatever vision of spiritual loveliness the first parishioners and the first architect possessed. But, again, you are so used to it by now that what they have done to your church in the name of reform barely registers anymore in your minds — at least not until you have to confront what they have also done to the Mass — ever-perky, ever-childish, ever-changing, ever-boring, ever-therapeutic, until you are no longer sure who should be more embarrassed, you for still being there or the liturgists who invented it all.

No, the cult of ugliness is so pervasive, so all around us, in every nook and cranny of our lives, that we stand the risk at every moment of missing it, of no longer being able to see it or even be repelled by it.

What is Beauty?

Our talk will be divided into three parts: We shall first try to understand what has always been traditionally understood by the use of the word “beautiful” by most people in most eras, and in fact, how traditional Catholic philosophy was able to sort out that traditional understanding of beauty into an actual set of principles, the violation of which would yield ugliness.

Secondly, we shall try to situate these understandings of beauty and ugliness in the context of culture — or cult or faith — to see how beauty and ugliness flow naturally into the world from the content or emptiness of the soul.

Thirdly, we will make some personal resolutions, which we hope would take us a long way towards the destruction of this Cult of the Ugly.

Nature, the Matrix for Beauty

Ask any child who is drawing something what he is trying to do and he will tell you that he is trying to recreate something that he saw in nature, be it an apple, or the sun, or a tree, or a house. And, invariably, the measure of the success of the drawing for that child is how closely the drawing resembles nature.

Accuracy according to nature was always the standard of reference for artists and societies, for all high civilizations from the Egyptians and Greeks to the Romans and Europeans. Each culture’s succeeding generations of artists tried to improve upon, or at least remember, the techniques, lessons, and discoveries of the previous generations, always seeking a greater beauty of lines, more solid figures, and truer perspectives.

It was generally accepted that there was infinitely more to a face than just that face — something else between the proportions of nose, eyes, cheekbones, jawbones, lips, and mouth — and this, of course, would be “beauty.”

If, therefore, we are to understand anything about the “Cult of Ugliness,” we must first understand what beauty is. Its definition is basic enough. According to the great saint-philosopher of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, beauty is that which when seen pleases.* No more, no less. If colors and forms and shapes and compositions would please beggars and kings all at the same time, then that would be considered “beautiful.”

But why does it please? What would make the heart delight in that which the eye saw? Well, Saint Thomas said that if something gives us pleasure then there is always somehow present in the thing which gives pleasure something that is “good,” and the good always attracts us, always pleases us.

Now the good, which a person sees and senses in some beautiful thing, is its “form.” That is, it’s wholeness, its proportions. If such a thing is complete, right, and balanced, it is “good,” and what happens is that we are attracted to that “form” because we sense that there is in the object the same kind of form within us. We see and sense in the form of the beautiful object a “good.” And the good in it echoes the good in us — or at least the good that should be in us. We are fascinated and attracted by that sameness. It delights us and we want to remain in its presence.

Did you ever watch babies and see how they are totally taken in by other babies, how they react to those other little creatures that are so like them? How they stare at other babies, recognize the similarities, and even reach out to touch their faces?

The form of a beautiful object is considered beautiful because it is whole and proportionate, as we would sense ourselves to be whole and proportionate. We delight in the beauty of our own being. There is a resemblance between that which is in us and that which is in the beautiful object. And we are pleased.

But that is not all there is to the story. There is one more element present without which we cannot achieve all this pleasant recognition. Just as the eyes of the body need actual light to see anything, so too the eyes of the soul need a similar light which Saint Thomas calls claritas — clarity — a spark of light, so to speak, that glances off the beautiful object and actually comes from the beautiful object. It is the very same spark of being which comes from the Being of God. The very Being of God is present in the being of the object, and God’s beautiful Being is therefore revealed in the form and proportions and clarity of the object. Precisely because a beautiful thing is a reflection of the Beauty of God, we are naturally drawn and attracted to it as we would be drawn and attracted to God in our desire for union with Him.

The beauty of God is somehow mysteriously reflected in the beauty of being — first in nature, then in trees, sunsets, in faces and forms and figures; and then it is reflected in art — in drawings and paintings and sculptures and even in architecture (and, somehow, even more mysteriously, in music.)

The closer those artistic forms conform to nature, the closer they conform to the supernatural, and the more accurately do they reflect the truth, the beauty, and the goodness of God.

Beauty is Objective

We have been made to believe for generations now that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that it is all a matter of taste and culture, opinion and upbringing, that there is no true objective beauty out there that can be used as a universal standard. It all comes from one’s mind and what one likes. So, if you think a horribly skewed, out-of-shape series of smears and stains is beautiful, then, for you, it is beautiful.

Well, I stand here today to say, along with thirty thousand years of human instinct and two thousand years of Catholic tradition, that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. Beauty resides in the beautiful thing itself. It will either have proportion, wholeness, integrity, and clarity in itself and be from God, or it will not have those qualities and will be displeasing to the discerning soul and will therefore be ugly.

You see, just as theological modernism denies the objective reality of the supernatural, saying that all dogma, all revelation, is just your experience and, therefore, the truth is what you think is the truth, so too, artistic modernism tries to convince us that whatever anyone thinks is beautiful is beautiful for that person.

Indeed, today no one is allowed to say that anything is ugly, for to call something ugly hints at the possibility of an actual real standard of reference by which some things can be beautiful and some things not beautiful. This hints at the possibility of a claim to objective truth, which is certainly not allowed in today’s society because that would hint at a God.

We are cowed into a moral and cultural silence before the modern proclamation that a squat, misshapen, mis-proportioned figure is somehow beautiful — and even perhaps more artistic than the figure that God first created. How could it be said that that which seemed so ugly to us was still somehow beautiful to them? Well, they say it still, but now we know that this attitude is simply a modern intellectual conceit, by which their higher appreciation of art makes them superior to those not in on the game.

For the same reason, no one today is allowed to say that anything is wrong, to say that something is evil, or to say that something is immoral. If there is nothing that is in and of itself “true,” then neither is there something that is in and of itself good or bad — neither beautiful nor ugly.

Indeed, when you walk into some modern monstrosity of a church and your instinctive reaction is, “My God, this is ugly,” you are right. It probably is ugly. And you have no less an authority than Thomas Aquinas to back you up.

You incur no moral or aesthetic fault if weird angles and blank concrete walls in a church make you feel uneasy and uncomfortable. There is no sin in seeing some hideous deformation of Christ on the cross or some monstrous representation of Mary and saying that it is hideous, that it is monstrous. Nor is there virtue in trying to think that, somehow, it is all really beautiful and that there must be something wrong with you. You need no longer feel forced into a corner bleating, “Well I guess I don’t know much about art.” It may simply mean that your good human and Catholic instincts are still intact and that they have, somehow, survived this ugly, ugly society.

Now you might be thinking: “My goodness, the world is falling apart and he’s talking about drawings. More than a million babies a year are being sucked out of the wombs of their mothers and he wants to discuss pretty pictures. Seventy per-cent of Catholics don’t even go to church anymore and he’s giving us lessons on the philosophy of art. If we wanted Sister Wendy we could have turned on PBS.”

This goes much deeper than aesthetic philosophy. It refers to the way we think about and deal with life itself — all of life, all of nature, all of being. All human activity is meant by means of beauty to provide us with an access to God, Who is All-Beautiful.

To Produce Beauty One Must Possess Beauty

It takes virtue to do virtuous things. Indeed, it takes virtue to even recognize virtue or to recognize its opposite. And if you possess this virtue, this grace — this natural penchant for the supernatural, this healthy sense of beauty, you will see, know, feel, and do things of which the rest are simply incapable.

The same goes for the sense of beauty. Unless beauty first resides within, it will never be exemplified without in any part of our society. Nor will it even be recognized.

That remnant sense of beauty — in our minds and hearts — by which we can still recognize the ugliness out there, either in ugly buildings or ugly philosophy or ugly lives, must be cherished and guarded as our last weapon in the struggle with No-God.

But how is it that the rest of our world has become so relentlessly ugly at every level? We seem to wallow in it. Well, perhaps it is clear by now that our society, no longer possessing virtue — theological or practical — no longer possessing grace or faith or even the dimmest notions of God, has embraced emptiness. Having forsaken the true God, having blinded ourselves to His “claritas,” His spark, His light, we dwell in ugliness, darkness, and confusion.

We do not see or accomplish virtuous or beautiful things without, because there is no longer virtue or beauty within. A society that does not believe in God or super nature or even truth — let alone beauty — will do only ugly things.

Tragically enough, our world does not even know that it is ugly. We have already said that beauty is that which when seen pleases, and therefore we would know that the ugly would be that which when seen displeases. But look at our society, where it has become the macabre, the strange, the twisted, and the deformed that please. Where the most popular piece of cinema in years — number one for weeks — is a movie about a cannibal. It is the evil and ugly that now delights.

Well, welcome to the “Brave New World,” where that which in another era would have been called bad is now called good, and that which was once considered ugly is now considered beautiful.

The Cult of Ugliness Targets God Himself and Our Perception of Him

This discussion is hardly about pretty pictures. It is about the ever-ancient assault on His beauty — the original affront to His very existence and to the nature and the life that He created. The cult of ugliness in our land is no less than Satan’s rage against God. It is no less than the gleaming spear-point of the culture of death.

Moreover, the cult of ugliness is so utterly pervasive and thorough in its celebration of the fruitless, the sterile, the weird, and the ugly that it pushes to the margins all other faiths — above all the True Faith.

The subliminal message in every confused and misshapen piece of modern architecture, art, music, or drama is that there is no God. The subliminal message in every deliberate mutilation of natural forms, in every tribute to physical and personal perversion, is that there is no God. The subliminal message in every celebration of the weird and deathly is that there is no God. This subliminal message is as surely the “Illuminated Gospel of Death” as any culture could have ever proclaimed, and by virtue of its omni-presence in every aspect of modern life, we are constantly encouraged to accept this gospel.

Sadly, even much of the clerical caste, whose task would certainly be understood to include fostering the cult of the beautiful as part of its proclamation of the Gospel of Life — and whom we certainly imagine would defend us from the ugly allurements of the No-God, is often too dense to see what is going on, and itself has surrendered in so many ways to the Cult of Ugliness.

This is demonstrated every time we walk into a church to see some splayfooted, goggle-eyed Christ on a cross or some rude, crude cement Madonna. The poor priest thought he was simply purchasing a nice piece of contemporary art for his flock. In all innocence and ignorance he assumed he was simply obtaining some fresh interpretation of traditional religious themes and was never conscious that what he was looking at and what he was filling the eyes of his flock with was actually the human form exploded, exploited, and degraded — reduced to its individual and impotent parts and slapped together again in a unsettling imbalance — all for the purpose of revealing and teaching the modern loathing of living forms, the modern loathing of a Creator.

No, the poor priest never thought he was doing that. I don’t think he thought it through at all. I don’t think he ever questioned the spiritual source of such strange shapes, or ever wondered from what terrible fonts such new forms sprang.

Perhaps he never suspected the existence of a Cult of the Ugly. Perhaps he just assumed that it was all a matter of taste, and that his taste, like that of his flock, was simply old-fashioned and ready for a little jarring now and then. Well, we have all been jarred.

Look at some of our newest churches and cathedrals. Many of them are stunning and awesome — no, not for their homage to tradition and the Catholic sense of beauty. They are stunning and awesome in their utter inhumanity, their complete lack of scale, their thorough and total sterility, and their horrifying proportions. There is not an angle that could please nor an arch that could comfort. Not a piece of molding that could hold us in its shadow. Not even a little statue before which we could light a slender taper. Like the gaping mouth of the pagan, child-sacrificing furnaces of Moloch, some of our new churches will consume their people in holocausts of visual horror. I venture to say that one or two of these ecclesial “worship spaces” are some of the most terrifying pieces of architecture to have ever been accomplished by and for modern Catholics. I shudder at what harm this ugliness may accomplish in the souls of those who try to pray there. They are the clearest possible examples of the nihilism, the emptiness and nothingness, of which modernity constantly speaks — the relentless message that there is nothing out there — neither nature, nor beauty, nor God. And will we surprise ourselves to discover one day, by means of such architecture, that there is nothing left in our souls either?

Oh, what a series of ironic tragedies. We Catholics, thinking that we were opening the windows to dialogue with modernity, never had a clue that we were being used. Having spoken for so long in the language and in the forms of the modern world, we thought that we could put a Christian interpretation to the philosophy of the atheistic Enlightenment. We thought that now they would love us and come to our side. But we have found ourselves saying and meaning things we did not want to say or mean. And we do not even know how to unsay those things anymore. There it is for all the world to see — our newly acquired evangelical impotence and spiritual paralysis so clearly shown in the confusion of our renovated churches, the foolishness of our experimental liturgies, and the emptiness of our new cathedrals. Why indeed would anyone be attracted to the beauty of God, if this is what it looks like? And we will find one day that we ourselves are growing distant from God because His fascinating beauty is no longer to be found even within our own buildings.

What to Do?

So what do we do? What is the answer? Should we spend our remaining energies and spin our wheels trying to convince, to change, to convert our culture? And we really do sometimes think that, don’t we? We think that if everyone would see that one beautiful statue, or that one beautiful church, or would hear that one perfect argument or one beautiful Mass chant, then they would all be converted.

But how many converts came streaming into the Church after hearing the Gregorian chant recording from Spain? Sure it sold millions, but most, I’m sure, regarded it as little more than mood music to accompany them on the treadmill. The moderns had no idea about what these monks were singing — and Latin was not the problem.

How many of us thought, twenty-five years ago, that if we could just show everyone photos of the developing fetus, the pro-life cause would triumph conclusively? No one cared; and now we find ourselves fighting the battle against infanticide.

Well, is it all over? Do we throw our hands up in total discouragement? Do we resign ourselves to the physical ugliness and spiritual vacuum of our age? Do we surrender to the No-God of our era, place ourselves on the dung-heap of modernity and, like Job, wait for a merciful death?

No, I don’t think we have to. First among all our tasks is that we remain converted and committed to the God of our Fathers, the God of all beauty and all being. And then, naturally and unself-consciously, we will share among ourselves the beauty that we have interiorly experienced.

True Catholic culture has been left to us to create anew and afresh — with precious little reference either to our modern society or even to the clerics panting so faithfully after modernity. We ignore it and them and, taking a tip from the purveyors of the cult of ugliness, we proceed to fill our minds, our hearts, our families, our children, and our world with as much beauty as possible that by dint of the quantity and quality of our efforts there will be no room for that which is inhuman, ungodly, or ugly.

If this sounds like a clarion call back to the catacombs — that we withdraw from our modern culture — then so be it. Yes, that too is heresy in our contemporary Church culture where we are constantly encouraged to engage and embrace the modern world. But in doing so — as we have seen over these last tragic decades, we stand to gain nothing and lose all in such a poisonous encounter.

But where are those catacombs? Where are those refuges from the human and spiritual horrors of our “Brave New World”? They are in your very homes, your front rooms and bedrooms, your home schools and private academies. That is where the true culture of the New Millennium will take shape, for, undistracted by the pomps and pleasures, the flashy arrogances and fleshy superficialities of the ugly world around us, mothers and fathers can form and mold and guide their children with unadulterated faith and inculcate into their souls every form and example of beauty.

And in isolating and insulating your children from the moral squalor about them, you are only strengthening them in their eventual confrontation with it. Fill the walls of your homes with beautiful art, fill the ears of your family with beautiful music, fill the souls of your children with beautiful stories, and there will be no room left for the insipid, the warped, the ugly, and the faithless. If you can make of your family a little Church, you will not have to be engaging constantly in rear-guard action to counteract the toxins of the media and schools or that of your children’s strange new friends down the block. They will not be forced to unlearn at home the lessons they have just learned outside.

Your families will come to know and appreciate that there is only one thing about which to be busy, around which to revolve, only one thing to cultivate, and that is their souls, the beautiful gift from God. This realization will then help them do beautiful things, create beautiful things, and appreciate all the beautiful things that issue forth from beautiful grace-filled souls.

And if we do this, then, little by little, as modernity continues to die — as surely it must, for is not death its very theme? — it will be replaced by life, in fact a new Culture of Life whose healthy hallmark will be the celebration of the beauty of God in the beauty of the life around us.

Oh, indeed there is a Cult of Ugliness in our society, but it is not our cult and we will have nothing to do with it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Museum of Beauty

Pope Benedict XVI said when addressing a group of artists assembled in the Sistine Chapel

Beauty, whether that of the natural universe or that expressed in art, precisely because it opens up and broadens the horizons of human awareness, pointing us beyond ourselves, bringing us face to face with the abyss of Infinity, can become a path towards the transcendent, towards the ultimate Mystery, towards God. [Meeting with Artists. Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI. Sistine Chapel. November 29, 2009].

In my last post, I briefly mentioned the idea of a Museum of Beauty. Beauty is best appreciated when it is seen. I think our perception and appreciation of visual beauty surpasses all our other sensory perceptions of beauty. Ideally, there is a plethora of beauty to be seen, from the buildings we pass by, to the gardens we walk through, and the dresses we see on people. I say ideally, because these days, we are living in a cult of ugliness, and finding beauty is like a thirsty wanderer in a desert finding water.

At one time, people created their surroundings with beauty in mind. They knew that what they saw affected them deeply, from the temporary pleasure at the initial viewing of a beautiful object, to the deeper connection beauty (the beautiful object) instills over time.

If one's surroundings are ugly, why bother to preserve them, or live in them?

I think this is the impasse we have reached now.

I cannot redesign our modern world around beauty, but I can try to create small islands of respite where beauty can be viewed and appreciated.

I hope my blog provides such a place. But the ephemeral world of the internet is not enough. We need concrete places where our thirsty eyes can be filled with the wonders of beauty

My idea is to create a Museum of Beauty.

This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. There are the following kinds of museums:
- The Museum of Natural History in New York, which looks at Nature
- The Museum of War, in Ottawa Canada
- The Museum of Science and Technology, in Washington D.C.

There is even a Museum of Bad Art (which I term as a Museum of Ugliness). So why not a museum of beauty?

There are many questions to answer. One of which is: Aren't there enough museums which show beautiful things already?

Yes, there is the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan in New York, and many other smaller museums and galleries around the Western world which show art and other objects which are beautiful. But there is none that I can find which exclusively looks at beauty.

And modern curators are not interested in beauty. And the collections which they preside over which show beautiful objects are from past eras and centuries. Modern museums and curators do not want beauty in their museums. This often results with horrific and horrible things displayed in these museums, and museum visitors are hijacked to view them without complaint.

Creating a museum around a concept isn't a far-fetched idea.

Here are the working titles of my book project Reclaiming Beauty, around which the various sections of the museum can be created:

An Introduction to Beauty
- Seek and Ye Shall Find
- Beauty, Truth and Goodness
- Synthesis of Beauty
- Beauty in the Worship of God
- Beauty and the Transcendent
- Beauty and Humanity
- Beauty and Femininity
- Beauty and Masculinity
- How to be a Beautiful Movie Star
- Beauty: I will be your mirror
- Rejecting Beauty
- Elimination of Beauty

Beauty in Art
- Architecture
- Painting
- Drawing and Illustrations
- Film
- Photography
- Dance
- Design and Fashion
- Art Criticism

Beauty in Language
- Literature
- Poetry
- Writing
- Books
- Blogging
- Humor

Beauty in Culture and Society
- Religion
- Christianity
- Islam
- Myths and Legends
- History
- Traditions
- Conservatism
- Politics
- Immigration
- Multiculturalism

Beauty in Nature

Beauty in Science

Desecration of Beauty

Reclaiming Beauty

Even the last two chapters, Desecration of Beauty and Reclaiming Beauty are important. It is necessary for people to see how our modern world is destroying beauty,and how this is historically unprecedented: No other civilization aimed to destroy beauty. And I feel it is important to give guidance on how we can reclaim this beauty lost, since ordinary people have been subliminally hijacked into accepting ugliness as the norm.

I equate this "seeing" with Christianity. From the very beginning, God shows us his presence, perhaps the earliest being when he appeared as a burning bush to Moses, and later gave him tablets to read, with scripted words, rather than words to memorize and recount to the Israelites. These became the visual, written words: The Ten Commandments.

The ultimate revelation, at least in our era, is that of Jesus, who came to show us that God wasn't an entity in the heavens, but a real being, who disclosed himself to us as a human being through Jesus.

And the first words in Genesis, the very beginning of the Bible, are:

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.[see below for verses 1-31]

The light to see things, to view his beautiful creations.

But, light also enables us to differentiate and discern the beautiful from the ugly, and by extended logic to discard the ugly, or to reshape it to become beautiful.

In those first verses of Genesis, we do not read about the wonderful sound of the seas:

And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good

.
We are presented with "the seas" as a visual differentiation between land and water. We may love the sound of the bubbling brook, but it is foremost its vision, with the grass and rocks around it, that captures our imagination.

Pope Benedict XVI said when addressing a group of artists assembled in the Sistine Chapel

Beauty, whether that of the natural universe or that expressed in art, precisely because it opens up and broadens the horizons of human awareness, pointing us beyond ourselves, bringing us face to face with the abyss of Infinity, can become a path towards the transcendent, towards the ultimate Mystery, towards God. [Meeting with Artists. Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI. Sistine Chapel. November 29, 2009].

My post "An Introduction to Beauty: Seek and Ye Shall Find" expands on this.

So, a beauty museum, or a Museum of Beauty, can continue with this movement of "Reclaiming Beauty."

-----------------------------------------------------
Genesis 1

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------