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A Broken Beauty

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Suffering poses one of the central dilemmas of the modern age -- an era that, arguably, with its world wars and mass genocides has inflicted more of it and on a vaster scale than any other in recorded history. What meaning can human suffering have in a world paradoxically devoted to notions to salvation through technology, on the one hand, and, on the other, to an aesthetics of despair that, in the name of authenticity, refuses all invitations to hope?

"A Broken Beauty" boldly enters into this nexus with a presentation of contemporary figurative painting and sculpture that both engages with contemporary themes and, with equal if not greater daring, shows with what power and versatility classical artistic forms and iconography still speak to the human condition today.

There's nothing facile about the work or the attitude on display in these pages. The art of this landmark exhibition does not assume that Christianity, or that artists of faith have easy answers to either the dilemmas of modernity or to the ongoing crises of postmodernist aesthetics. What "A Broken Beauty" does assume is that classical Christian and artistic perspectives direct an important challenge to an art world that appears to have lost faith in itself, and, indeed, perhaps in the value of the artistic enterprise. In "A Broken Beauty," there is the fragmentation, the "brokenness," that is part and parcel of modern consciousness, but there is also beauty, the perception, however "darkly" glimpsed, of original wholeness, of the transcendent value of the body, and of human life itself.

While there is much to praise, the catalogue's essays, particularly the defining ones by editor Theodore Prescott and the exhibition's curator Gordon Fuglie, are worth the price of admission. They rarely settle arguments, but none of the five essays plays it safe, either; none casts anxious glances in the direction of the latest academic theories (that alone is refreshing!). Each essay is full-blooded, passionate and informative as it tries to situate this landmark effort in the context of its historical antecedents, and, even more importantly, in the context of today's profound aesthetic crisis. If we ever manage to free ourselves from the debilitations of a half century or more of the aesthetics of despair, it will be due to efforts such as this, to the kind of bravery and vision exhibited in "A Broken Beauty."

This is an exemplary text.

I have used it as required reading in a MFA course I teach on The Body in Art to inform our dialog on beauty and abjection. The dialog is always lively, and the response to the text from the students is very positive. It is informative on the history of beauty, idealization, comedy, contemporary mistrust of beauty in The Art World and a possible reframing of beauty through the works of contemporary artists.

Gordon Fuglie's essay, "Beauty Lost, Beauty Found..." contains a great presentation on a couple of possible definitions of beauty based on the works of Meyer Schapiro and a Neo-Thomist model. That segment alone has provided some of the most teachable moments in my classes. Not just in terms of beauty, but how artwork is interpreted, used & critiqued.

I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in art, the body, beauty, and what they mean.