In a world that tells us that truth is relative and subjective and self-expression is king, aesthetics teaches us to draw meaningful distinctions, to make value judgments, to admire form and reject formlessness. Aesthetics helps us understand what is unique, beautiful, and pleasing in the things that surround us. Aesthetics is generally understood to be [...]
A few weeks ago, I imagined which ten volumes I would select for my personal library were I to find myself locked up in a prison cell or perhaps washed up on a desert island. More recently, I offered a handful of poems for Halloween. Now, I have selected six paintings for the walls of [...]
No one wants these disproportional, ugly windmills. People don’t want their views obstructed. Even in a godless society, the modern cult of ugliness is so unnatural that human nature rebels against it. So why can’t they make beautiful windmills? Why must the industry insist upon these cold, depressing behemoths? A green new world is coming [...]
A. Wade Razzi, Chief Academic Officer at American College of the Building Arts, is interviewed by W. Winston Elliott III, Editor-in-Chief of The Imaginative Conservative. W. Winston Elliott III: Describe ACBA and its mission. The American College of the Building Arts was founded in the wake of Hurricane Hugo, which did massive damage to the [...]
Great Christian poetry teaches us many priceless lessons about life. Engagement with the enraptured vision of wonder-filled poets enables students to learn that virtue is the necessary prerequisite for the perception of the fullness of the beauty of reality. I recently taught a short six-class course for Homeschool Connections on “Poems Every Catholic Should Know.” [...]
All lovers of beauty and tradition will rejoice at the emergence of the American College of the Building Arts and will hope that it is the first of many such schools to be established in the future. It is radical in the best sense of the word, insofar as it is rooted in the heritage of [...]
If we are to withstand the coming totalitarian regime, we will need resources that are not just political but beautiful. We must become reattuned to our past and look to a standard outside ourselves. Reclaiming beauty means acknowledging that there are good things that have come before us. When the stock market becomes volatile, people [...]
The architecture of the church—the spire, the stained-glass windows, the cold, the acoustics, the hardness of pews—fills us with a sense of the sublime. Its greatness creates in us a feeling not of inferiority but of human scale, a scale that must be remembered in the face of God. For those of us of faith, [...]
The Mellon Foundation’s "Monuments Project" is totalitarian in its proposed scope and radical vision, something utterly in conflict with American pluralism and preference for localism, a brazen effort to wrest control away from communities as to the state of their own public spaces. Not to be outdone by The New York Times' 1619 Project, the Mellon Foundation [...]
Pierre Cardin destroyed fashion by introducing chaotic, irrational, bizarre, and immodest themes to his clothing lines. He is a product of postmodern thought, which denies all universal narratives and meaning, reducing life to the limitless freedom to create one’s own reality. This is a life without God or restraint that ends up enslaving people to [...]
As the old year ends and the new year arrives, The Imaginative Conservative looks back at some of its finest essays of 2020. —Editors In the late 1950s, as Russell Kirk considered what needed to be conserved in the Western tradition as well as what needed to be discarded, he lamented that much of what [...]
She has disturbed the complacency of the canvas. Pulsing paintstrokes and palping pigments Have birthed her from the beating, Bleating conscience of the artist. The heart enchants his hand, thus altérant la réalité. Behold. […]
In music, there has arisen in recent times the illusion that knowledge is not necessary, that the old forms of discipline are merely obstacles to the true creative process, and that real originality means doing your own thing, free from traditional constraint. I recently acquired a CD of music for piano duo by Jeremy Menuhin, [...]
In our zeal to articulate how Christianity has shaped civilization, we are apt to neglect the specific role of prayer. The good, the true, and the beautiful fostered by our civilization have been initiated and sustained by prayer. If one does not pray, what measure of human cultivation is one missing? Art and Prayer: The [...]