Art and Architecture

Written on iPad, so possible typos.

The right-wing focus on art, and the apparent lack of good art in our modern world, is a big movement online. To some it becomes the MacGuffin. If only… If only we could live in a society which never abandoned Neoclassical or Gothic architecture, it would all be okay… If only, we all lived in the trad walkable mega city! Well, it’s not just Architecture, it’s also art as well. The attack on abstract art, I feel, is understandable but slightly misguided. There is also a seeming lack of attack on art forms which much more meaningfully influence our society today, such as music.

First of all, there is this idea that modern architecture is bad because modern architecture is minimalistic. And aesthetics are intrinsically linked to detail and pattern. But, I think intuitively we all recognize that too much patterns and something becomes gaudy or overstimulating. Well, maybe I’m just an autist, but I think not, I don’t think simple, minimalistic spaces are inherently bad. They’re bad I think, for domestic architecture, but there is a great thing about some minimalism wherein it achieves this great sort of monumental attitude if done right. The apparent simplicity and geometric design only serves to emphasize how massive and monolithic it is. Yes, this is something we lost in the Bronze Age. Look at the Ziggurats of Mesopotamia, or the Egyptian Pyramids. They’re simple. Their angular and unrelieved exterior contrasts with nature, it is a break from the natural. This space, this object, is something out of this world. It also is something which looks extremely sturdy. The Nazis believed in the idea of “Ruin Architecture”, this idea that Architecture should be built in a way such that its ruins will look aesthetically pleasing and will continue on. Because, nothing lasts forever.

I think this is something you also see strongly in Fascist architecture, mainly Stripped Classicism and Italian Rationalism. The architecture of Speer was meant to portray the building as a sort of platonic, perfectly simple thing. We didn’t get to see it at its full extent. It was meant for things which would far surpass the Pyramids, like the Volkshalle, which was supposed to be even larger than Minas Tirith. You saw some of this under Stalin as well. See the planned Palace of the Soviets. However, Soviet architecture was bogged down by the mass housing projects which rejected digressive stylization. Which is something related to why modern architecture is not my fancy.

Modern architecture isn’t really bad because it is minimized. I think relatively minimal architecture can still look unique especially to a trained eye. Modern architecture really originated in the Bauhaus, where there existed a vision to force form into following function. That which looks good must be that which is efficient. Cost-efficient and able to be mass produced, yes, but also something lightweight, using light but strong and easily materials. Usually this demands the ever-present “glass facade” propagated by a steel, concrete, and titanium framework. It’s fine when it’s just a few buildings. I think this is the case for basically all architecture. But, it really just doesn’t look appeasing.

When I walk into a building, especially a skyscraper of all things, I don’t want it to be glass all the way up. I want something which feels strong. Not a strong skeleton with weak delicate skin. It’s an aesthetic contradiction. And yeah, this sort of design allows for much less regional variation. Stylization and ornamentation is limited. You can’t stylize glass panels. I think this looks the most garbage for “modern houses” which to me just look totally ridiculous.

If you’re going to do “light architecture” do it right. Gothic does it right in my opinion. Gothic is not like the preceding Romanesque. Gothic, is like modern architecture. It is light. The invention of the flying buttress and the ribbed vault meant that Gothic architecture could distribute its weight much more. Spengler puts a great deal of emphasis into how this Gothic expansion mirrored the Faustian idea of grasping towards the infinite. The walls feel weightless because they aren’t even bearing the bulk of the load, the buttresses are.

This lack of apparent “weight” also means that Gothic cathedrals are unlike the prior churches but specially they are unlike the Bronze and Iron Age temples. They’re not monumental. The Gothic cathedral is a sacred grove, it is this grand petrification of the forests of Northern Europe. It is actually extremely immanent. The whole cathedral exists but it is almost impossible to actually take it in as a whole. You are captivated by every tiny little brilliant detail. This is the exact opposite of what we see in modern architecture, something that is neither immanent like Gothic, nor monumental like the Pyramids. It is actually like it doesn’t even exist at all. Which is exactly how it feels to me intuitively, like there is no actual building there. Like, I’m in the building, but do you ever stop to think of the building?

Buuut, I think this is quite different from the issue of modern art. Like minimalist architecture, I don’t think abstract art is necessarily bad. Everyone likes abstract art in the correct context. Architectural motifs are largely abstract. Tiling, for example, is abstract. Unless the tiles are made into some sort of icon, I suppose. I think art which we can recognize is better than art we can’t recognize, but abstract art is not bad when it exists to serve an aesthetic purpose with its abstractions. For example, the Futurist desire to portray movement, or the Cubist desire to portray several angles in one. The impressionist desire to portray the world as it really feels, this is also somewhat of an abstraction. It represents a little bit of an insanity though. I mean, in some cases, the abstractions were literally meant to convey a sense of anxiety and the uncanny, and they are meant to essentially be a sort of mindfuck. This is partly because the artists themselves were mindfucked. But more generally, It’s a symptom, not a cause, of artistic decadence — part of the cause being, the boredom of artists. Artists are getting bored as technology progresses.

First it began with a desire to reduce their art to artistic principles as actually creating detailed and realistic scenes became a chore which could not compete with either the finest realist paintings or the photography of the day, and it devolved into the shitshow of abstract expressionists like Pollock and Newman, literally creating nothing of semiotic worth to anyone but themselves. And now fine art exists as a literal parody of itself. It exists as a mockery of the idea of “fine art”, because how could someone take something so stupid so seriously? At least some degenerate like Picasso thrusting his neurosis into his works believes deeply in what he is doing. People like Banksy and Andy Warhol, are clowns.

This phenomenon has happened with music as well. Not really because of rising technology, but because of the decline of composers and the rise of players. I heard a very interesting take about Jazz Music, not mine, that Jazz arose out of musicians essentially getting bored. They start making good not because it is good composition, but because it’s more interesting to the player. Their perspective is all messed up, like some guy in solitary confinement thinking that breaking apart crackers and counting and sorting all the crumbs is a “good time”. Jazz Music also arises out of Music becoming a mass produced good. The level of improvisation in Jazz, again something related to this sort of “boredom”, along with the need to produce one record for sale, results in the rise of “singers” and “bands” rather than composers. People hate to admit it but all modern music is descended from — or molested by — Jazz and Blues. Yes, two genres which the Old Right criticized relentlessly, now registered as “classy” as a result of being the grandfather of commercial music.

I’m not some sort of Musicologist. In fact, I don’t like music all that much. I find our culture’s contemporary obsession with it to be puzzling. But just listening to Jazz, this idea made sense to me. Either way, the things that American and German right-wingers were saying about Jazz, it was obviously correct. Jazz music was the earliest in a long line of African necromancy rituals. It’s all about dancing, boogieing, putting people in these speakeasy trances. “Having fun”. As someone who listens to music almost exclusively as a complimentary activity (ex: when going to the gym, studying, skateboard, car) it was confusing to me how normies became so autistic about music. Now I realize, it’s a drug to them. You saw it with rock stars like the Beatles and Elvis, making women orgasm spontaneously and piss themselves in excitement, screaming like harpies, trying to grab at the singers legs, going utterly insane and becoming LSD hippy psychotics. Now you see it with Rap music. Rap is the ultimate end of the Western musical tradition. All melody is artificial and placed in by Greenblatt Records, it is dominated by rhythm. The rhythm is a hypnosis, like the rhythm of the pendulum. It saps all vitality and encourages the being of “lowkey” and nonchalant. The energy gained from it is purely conditioned by the invaders from planet ZOG and their Singing Monsters, like a mouse beeping a button to get more cheese. I would say I like maybe 1% of all rap I listen to. 99% is just raping my ears and without any character. By listening to rap music you are basically letting the morbidly obese Shaniqua longhouse earth mother sit on your face. And if you’re into that, well… Get the fuck outta here!