Full Stop, Engineer

Art

'Art' and 'culture' are all but synonymous. It is Homer's Iliad or the outlines of the Greek temples that first come to mind when we think of Ancient Greece. It is our splendid Gothic cathedrals or Rhine castles that our mind automatically links with the image of old Europe. It is in its art that any given culture finds the fullest expression of its soul. Art is, in other words, indispensable for a culture.

Not so for a civilisation, though. Ancient Romans—a civilisational phase of the Greco-Roman cultural entity—could boast of sophisticated laws, an efficient army, perfect roads, or a system of public water supply any ancient civilisation would be proud of. Their purely aesthetic achievements, when compared with those of Ancient Greeks, are, on the other hand, more than modest. Roman soldiers reached as far as Britain—Roman artists never reached up to the Winged Victory of Samothrace.

I am stating facts that any of my readers, acquainted with the Decline of the West, must perceive as banalities. Those readers know perfectly well that each civilisation can be deprived of what passes for its art in its entirety—without this fact having any effect on this civilisation whatsoever. And, since civilisation can do without art, the latter is left to vegetate—but it would be wiser for me to let Spengler speak for himself.

It is all irretrievably over with the art of form in the West. (...) What is practised as art today (...) is impotence and falsehood. We go through all the exhibitions, the concerts, the theatres, and find only industrious cobblers and noisy fools who delight to produce something for the market, something that will 'catch on' for the public for whom art and music and drama have long ceased to be spiritual necessities. (...) On the shareholders' meeting of any limited company, or in the technical staff of any first rate engineering works there is more intelligence, taste, character, and capacity than in the whole music and painting of Present Day Europe. (...) [T]oday every single art school could be shut down without art being affected in the slightest.

These straightforward lines were written in the decade in which 'exhibitions, concerts, and theatres' were a rather popular pastime. Truth be told, we still have all three—as a sort of an ivory tower, a cultural phenomenon only intellectuals and academics are interested in. What we have instead of them in popular culture are

— comic books,

— animation films,

— feature films,

— popular music,

— video games,

— stand-up comedy shows,

— Internet memes.

A few words about some of them will be said later in this chapter.

One should compare the actual state of affairs with the historical summits of Western art in order to see how much we have lost. It was in 1859—only 165 years ago—when Richard Wagner finished composing his Tristan und Isolde, an opera whose very first tact, the blissfully tearful D—B—A—G sharp of cellos, sends shivers down my spine—now as much as when I was in my early twenties. 165 years later, on June 21, 2024, 'Please, please, please' by Sabrina Carpenter is recognised as the top single on the UK charts—in other words, as the highest achievement of popular music in Britain at the moment when this book is being written. I probably shall quote from the latter work, just to give you a taste.

Please, please, please,

Don't prove I am right!

And please, please, please,

Don't bring me to tears when I just did my makeup so nice!

Heartbreak is one thing, my ego's another,