Product Description
Once people were instinctively tuned to the beautiful. In those distant days before the advent of the motor car and the washing machine, the electric toothbrush and the wheel, craftsmen and musicians, masons and poets, painters and dancers simply did not know how to make an ugly thing; they could not close their hearts to the light of heaven. For them, beauty was as necessary as the air they breathed. It gave dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives, and inspired great (and often brutal) civilizations in which people lived creative and useful lives. John Lane believes that beauty is the nourishment of the soul. It is something that gives us dignity as a species. In this book, he calls us to awaken to the possibilities of a culture that recognizes the importance of beauty, and to realize that we are only fully human in contact with the beautiful.
From the Publisher
Once people were instinctively attuned to the beautiful. In those distant days, before the advent of the motor car and the washing machine, the electric toothbrush and the wheel, painters and dancers simply did not know how to make an ugly thing. They could not close their hearts to the beauty around them. In those days, beauty gave dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives, and inspired great (but often brutal) civilizations in which people lived creative and useful lives.
Beauty is the nourishment of the soul. It is something that gives is dignity as a species. John Lane calls us to awaken to the possibilities of a culture that recognizes the importance of beauty, and to acknowledge that we are only fully human in contact with the beautiful.
"The primary reason I wanted to write this book
was my desire to reinstate beauty as a vital aspect of everyday life. Beauty is critical to our future well-being and a fundamental component of any civilized life. We neglect it at our peril."
John Lane is a painter, author, and educator. He was Chairman of the Dartington Hall Trust, founding director of the Beaford Arts Center, and instrumental in the creation of Schumacher College. His previous books include The Living Tree: Art and the Sacred, A Snakes Tail Full of Ants: Art, Ecology and Consciousness and Timeless Simplicity: Creative Living in a Consumer Society.
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