The Immorality of Ugliness
What Aesthetic Beauty says about God and the World
All across the world architectural monstrosities from the mid-twentieth century are being torn down and replaced with beautiful buildings that fit the architectural idiom of a given place. Michael Diamant, an advocate for traditional architecture, routinely posts “before and after” pictures to his X account, which highlight such remarkable transformations. Here are a few examples:
Gaillard Auditorium; Charleston, SC
Such new, but classically designed, buildings are popular with the majority of a given city’s residents. They are, unfortunately, however, scorned by modern architects, who design buildings for personal glory and aggrandizement rather than communal benefit and enjoyment. The fight for architectural beauty over ugliness was on display during President Trump’s first term when he issued an executive order that stated, among other things:
Applicable Federal public buildings should uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble the United States, and command respect from the general public. They should also be visually identifiable as civic buildings and, as appropriate, respect regional architectural heritage. Architecture — with particular regard for traditional and classical architecture — that meets the criteria set forth in this subsection is the preferred architecture for applicable Federal public buildings. In the District of Columbia, classical architecture shall be the preferred and default architecture for Federal public buildings absent exceptional factors necessitating another kind of architecture.
Although this order—and its recent renewal—was denounced by many of the leading voices in contemporary American architecture as an unjust governmental restriction on their artistic freedom, the order, while “[e]ncouraging classical and traditional architecture,” did “not exclude using most other styles of architecture, where appropriate.”
What the executive order did do was recognize that architectural beauty sends a powerful signal to those who encounter it, and that with government buildings in particular, that signal should be one that “inspire[s] the human spirit, ennoble[s] the United States, and command[s] respect from the general public.”
All artistic creations say something about the world. Buildings say something about the actions that take place within them. Clothing says something about how the wearer views the actions he engages in throughout the day. Paintings and music send signals about the nature of the world and our place in it.
Artistic creations, however, do more than simply say something about how their creators view the world. They also inevitably say something about God. In an address by the German philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand entitled “Beauty in the Light of the Redemption,” he wrote that artistic “triviality falsifies the world.” This brief phrase is striking and can be raised to a higher level: ugliness in art falsifies the world and is a denial of God.
Let’s begin with the second claim: ugliness in art is a denial of God. God is a being overwhelming in glory, which—as Herman Bavinck puts it in volume 2 of his Reformed Dogmatics—is “the sum total of all his perfections.” God’s glory is the overwhelming goodness of his being made manifest to his creatures. It shines forth in every encounter a creature has with God, but it also shines forth magnificently in the world that God has made: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Ps 19:1).
The created order is a reflection of the goodness and glory of God. We could even say that it is a manifestation of the beauty of God, a word theologians will sometimes use synonymously with glory. This, too is a biblical way of speaking, as is seen in Psalm 27:4:
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.
Art, then, will either speak truth about God or it will tell lies. God is beautiful in his majestic glory. The world he has made reflects that beauty, which brings us to the first claim made above: ugliness in art falsifies the world. It is the task of God’s image bearers to give testimony to God’s beauty and glory in all that they create. Through sights or sounds, artistic ugliness tells lies about why (or even whether) God made the world. It proclaims to the world that God is ugly, inglorious, and debased, but it also indicates that the world he made is purposeless, meaningless, and without order. Artistic ugliness indicates that there is nothing higher in the universe than matter, and by implication, that pleasure is the purpose of life. This is, therefore, not merely a matter of aesthetic unpleasantness. Ugliness is immoral.
How we dress; how we design and decorate our houses, offices, churches, and public spaces; our literature, music, and art; these things matter. None are mere matters of opinion. Beauty is objective. Our actions in each aesthetic realm reveal what we think about God, the world he made, and our place in that world. They should reflect the fact that this world is ordered, that it is headed toward an ultimate goal, and that it is good, because God is a God of order and goodness. Artistic beauty, in other words, tells the truth: that God’s works are great, “studied by all who delight in them. Full of splendor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever” (Psalm 11:2–3).
Image Credit: Unsplash