Read on Twitter
One of the best articles I've read of late: https://www.alicevonhildebrand.org/wrong-approaches-to-art#
"Plato intimates this fact when he writes in Phaedrus: "At the sight of beauty, wings grow on the human soul.""
"Puritanism is the enemy of beauty, and so is mediocrity. Ernest Hello writes that what characterizes the mediocre man is his hatred of beauty."
"We must eliminate the obstacles preventing us from perceiving beauty, from being fecundated by its spiritual message. For beauty comes from God and is meant to bring us closer to Him who is the source of beauty."
"How right Plato was when, in his Republic, he stressed the importance of exposing a small child to beauty. It gives him a standard which will lead him—later in life— to reject instinctively whatever is ugly, coarse, or vulgar"
"Our judgment depends upon the subjective conditions of our body. There is, for taste, no objective standard that has universal validity."
"But taste can also refer to a proper appreciation of culture, refinement, or artistic sensitivity."
"Habit is not only dangerous because it can make us endorse things which are ugly or wrong, but also because it can also blunt our appreciation of great and noble things because—being used to them, we tend to take them for granted."
"Unlike technology, art is not always progressing. It has moments of greatness, followed by artistic decadence. This is due to the quality of the spiritual soil of an epoch; a world like ours characterized by relativism, dominated by technology is certainly not favorable"
"The artistically sensitive person will never call an artistic piece of trash beautiful because it is associated with a moving experience, but will nevertheless experience pleasure upon hearing it because it will bring back to our mind one of great experiences of human life."
"He who is truly artistically sensitive and loves beauty because it deserves to be loved will necessarily be freed from praising a work exclusively because of the fame of the artist. He will learn to distinguish between "masterpieces", good works, and weaker works."
"the religious importance of beauty for man's spiritual development"
