WEBVTT 00:00:00.504 --> 00:00:03.836 (soft orchestral music) 00:00:20.143 --> 00:00:23.143 - At any time between 1750 and 1930, 00:00:24.182 --> 00:00:25.904 if you had asked educated people 00:00:25.904 --> 00:00:30.064 to describe the aim of poetry, art, or music, 00:00:30.064 --> 00:00:32.363 they would've replied, beauty. 00:00:32.363 --> 00:00:35.696 (soft orchestral music) 00:00:38.522 --> 00:00:40.721 And if you had asked for the point of that, 00:00:40.721 --> 00:00:43.237 you would've learned that beauty is a value 00:00:43.237 --> 00:00:46.266 as important as truth and goodness. 00:00:46.266 --> 00:00:49.599 (soft orchestral music) 00:00:53.119 --> 00:00:57.286 Then in the 20th century, beauty stopped being important. 00:00:59.074 --> 00:01:01.573 Art increasingly aimed to disturb 00:01:01.573 --> 00:01:03.491 and to break moral taboos. 00:01:03.491 --> 00:01:06.037 It was not beauty, but originality, 00:01:06.037 --> 00:01:09.408 however achieved and at whatever moral cost 00:01:09.408 --> 00:01:11.059 that won the prizes. 00:01:11.059 --> 00:01:13.976 (soft opera music) 00:01:16.543 --> 00:01:19.107 Not only has art made a cult of ugliness, 00:01:19.107 --> 00:01:23.107 architecture too has become soulless and sterile 00:01:24.163 --> 00:01:26.261 and is not just our physical surroundings 00:01:26.261 --> 00:01:28.094 that have become ugly. 00:01:31.406 --> 00:01:33.784 Our language, our music, and our manners 00:01:33.784 --> 00:01:37.920 are increasingly raucous, self-centered, 00:01:37.920 --> 00:01:40.627 and offensive, as if beauty and good taste 00:01:40.627 --> 00:01:43.294 have no real place in our lives. 00:01:46.622 --> 00:01:49.620 One word is written large on all these ugly things, 00:01:49.620 --> 00:01:51.539 and that word is me. 00:01:51.539 --> 00:01:54.622 My profits, my desires, my pleasures, 00:01:55.955 --> 00:01:58.461 and art has nothing to say in response to this 00:01:58.461 --> 00:02:00.378 except yeah, go for it. 00:02:03.918 --> 00:02:06.259 I think we are losing beauty, 00:02:06.259 --> 00:02:08.717 and there is a danger that with it, 00:02:08.717 --> 00:02:11.337 we will lose the meaning of life. 00:02:11.337 --> 00:02:14.670 (soft orchestral music) 00:02:23.167 --> 00:02:26.667 (lively orchestral music) 00:02:28.208 --> 00:02:32.470 I'm Roger Scruton, philosopher and writer. 00:02:32.470 --> 00:02:34.887 My trade is to ask questions. 00:02:36.987 --> 00:02:38.528 During the last few years, 00:02:38.528 --> 00:02:42.028 I have been asking questions about beauty. 00:02:44.171 --> 00:02:46.587 Beauty has been central to our civilization 00:02:46.587 --> 00:02:48.254 for over 2000 years. 00:02:49.568 --> 00:02:51.530 From its beginnings in ancient Greece, 00:02:51.530 --> 00:02:54.011 philosophy has reflected on the place of beauty 00:02:54.011 --> 00:02:58.284 in art, poetry, music, architecture, and everyday life. 00:02:58.284 --> 00:03:01.784 (lively orchestral music) 00:03:04.946 --> 00:03:06.407 Philosophers have argued that through 00:03:06.407 --> 00:03:07.723 the pursuit of beauty, 00:03:07.723 --> 00:03:10.870 we shape the world as a home. 00:03:10.870 --> 00:03:12.971 We also come to understand our own nature 00:03:12.971 --> 00:03:14.638 as spiritual beings. 00:03:17.562 --> 00:03:20.731 But our world has turned its back on beauty, 00:03:20.731 --> 00:03:22.427 and because of that, we find ourselves 00:03:22.427 --> 00:03:25.594 surrounded by ugliness and alienation. 00:03:28.368 --> 00:03:31.291 I want to persuade you that beauty matters, 00:03:31.291 --> 00:03:33.611 that it is not just a subjective thing, 00:03:33.611 --> 00:03:36.694 but a universal need of human beings. 00:03:38.822 --> 00:03:40.272 If we ignore this need, 00:03:40.272 --> 00:03:43.627 we find ourselves in a spiritual desert. 00:03:43.627 --> 00:03:46.587 I want to show you the path out of that desert, 00:03:46.587 --> 00:03:49.451 and it is a path that leads to home. 00:03:49.451 --> 00:03:52.951 (lively orchestral music) 00:03:55.051 --> 00:03:58.134 (lively piano music) 00:04:08.406 --> 00:04:10.390 The great artists of the past 00:04:10.390 --> 00:04:14.557 were aware that human life is full of chaos and suffering, 00:04:16.243 --> 00:04:18.406 but they had a remedy of this, 00:04:18.406 --> 00:04:21.526 and the name of this remedy was beauty. 00:04:21.526 --> 00:04:24.609 (lively piano music) 00:04:28.806 --> 00:04:32.246 The beautiful work of art brings consolation in sorrow 00:04:32.246 --> 00:04:34.163 and affirmation in joy. 00:04:36.848 --> 00:04:40.086 It shows human life to be worthwhile. 00:04:40.086 --> 00:04:43.169 (lively piano music) 00:04:48.161 --> 00:04:50.161 Many modern artists have become weary 00:04:50.161 --> 00:04:51.828 of this sacred task. 00:04:53.383 --> 00:04:55.488 The randomness of modern life, they think, 00:04:55.488 --> 00:04:58.507 could not be redeemed by art. 00:04:58.507 --> 00:05:01.174 Instead, it should be displayed. 00:05:03.622 --> 00:05:05.859 The pattern was set nearly a century ago 00:05:05.859 --> 00:05:09.058 by the French artist Marcel Duchamp 00:05:09.058 --> 00:05:12.150 who signed a urinal with a fictitious signature, 00:05:12.150 --> 00:05:15.650 R. Mutt, and entered it for an exhibition. 00:05:18.086 --> 00:05:19.527 His gesture was satirical 00:05:19.527 --> 00:05:21.870 designed to mock the world of art 00:05:21.870 --> 00:05:24.787 and the snobberies that go with it. 00:05:26.663 --> 00:05:29.539 But it has been interpreted in another way, 00:05:29.539 --> 00:05:32.706 that showing that anything can be art. 00:05:34.066 --> 00:05:36.845 Like a light going on and off. 00:05:36.845 --> 00:05:39.345 (light music) 00:05:40.703 --> 00:05:42.286 A can of excrement, 00:05:43.687 --> 00:05:45.770 or even a pile of bricks. 00:05:48.572 --> 00:05:51.442 No longer does art have a sacred status. 00:05:51.442 --> 00:05:54.082 No longer does it raise us to a higher moral 00:05:54.082 --> 00:05:56.141 or spiritual plane. 00:05:56.141 --> 00:05:59.303 It is just one human gesture among others, 00:05:59.303 --> 00:06:02.886 no more meaningful than a laugh or a shout. 00:06:04.279 --> 00:06:06.409 - I think they're making fun of us. 00:06:06.409 --> 00:06:08.242 It's a pile of bricks. 00:06:13.872 --> 00:06:16.272 - Art once made a cult of beauty. 00:06:16.272 --> 00:06:19.522 Now we have a cult of ugliness instead. 00:06:20.990 --> 00:06:22.485 Since the world is disturbing, 00:06:22.485 --> 00:06:25.445 art should be disturbing too. 00:06:25.445 --> 00:06:27.022 Those who look for beauty in art 00:06:27.022 --> 00:06:30.689 are just out of touch with modern realities. 00:06:32.267 --> 00:06:35.406 Sometimes, the intention is to shock us, 00:06:35.406 --> 00:06:37.650 but what is shocking first time round 00:06:37.650 --> 00:06:40.650 is boring and vacuous when repeated. 00:06:43.441 --> 00:06:46.185 This makes art into an elaborate joke, 00:06:46.185 --> 00:06:49.307 though one that by now has ceased to be funny. 00:06:49.307 --> 00:06:51.547 Yet the critics go on endorsing it, 00:06:51.547 --> 00:06:55.380 afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes. 00:06:58.507 --> 00:07:01.408 Creative art is not achieved just like that, 00:07:01.408 --> 00:07:03.491 simply by having an idea. 00:07:04.884 --> 00:07:08.005 Of course, ideas can be interesting and amusing, 00:07:08.005 --> 00:07:10.464 but this doesn't justify the appropriation 00:07:10.464 --> 00:07:11.881 of the label art. 00:07:14.005 --> 00:07:17.223 If a work of art is nothing more than an idea, 00:07:17.223 --> 00:07:18.805 anybody can be an artist, 00:07:18.805 --> 00:07:21.728 and any object can be a work of art. 00:07:21.728 --> 00:07:23.488 There is no longer any need 00:07:23.488 --> 00:07:26.064 for skill, taste, or creativity. 00:07:26.064 --> 00:07:30.147 (mischievous instrumental music) 00:07:31.807 --> 00:07:33.925 - What you are also attempting to do, 00:07:33.925 --> 00:07:37.305 as I understand it, was devalue the art 00:07:37.305 --> 00:07:39.525 as an object simply by saying, 00:07:39.525 --> 00:07:41.445 if I say it's a work of art, 00:07:41.445 --> 00:07:43.547 that makes it a work of art. 00:07:43.547 --> 00:07:45.406 - Yeah, but even the word work of art, 00:07:45.406 --> 00:07:48.973 you see, is not so important for me. 00:07:48.973 --> 00:07:50.653 I don't care about the word art 00:07:50.653 --> 00:07:52.403 because it's been so, 00:07:54.269 --> 00:07:57.225 you know, discredited, in such a word. 00:07:57.225 --> 00:07:59.328 - [Joan] But you in fact contributed to the discrediting, 00:07:59.328 --> 00:08:00.756 didn't you, quite deliberately? 00:08:00.756 --> 00:08:02.554 - Deliberately yes. 00:08:02.554 --> 00:08:05.735 So I very want to get rid of it 00:08:05.735 --> 00:08:08.212 because in a way, many people today 00:08:08.212 --> 00:08:10.629 have done away with religion. 00:08:11.833 --> 00:08:16.234 - People accepted Duchamp at his own valuation. 00:08:16.234 --> 00:08:18.452 I think he did not get rid of art. 00:08:18.452 --> 00:08:20.952 He just got rid of creativity. 00:08:23.438 --> 00:08:25.417 However, Duchamp's works are still influencing 00:08:25.417 --> 00:08:27.417 the course of art today. 00:08:29.737 --> 00:08:31.220 Artist Michael Craig-Martin, 00:08:31.220 --> 00:08:34.138 who taught several of the young British artists 00:08:34.138 --> 00:08:37.034 whose work dominates the art world, 00:08:37.034 --> 00:08:40.457 followed Duchamp's example with his own seminal work 00:08:40.457 --> 00:08:42.515 called An Oak Tree. 00:08:42.515 --> 00:08:45.994 This consists of a glass of water on a shelf 00:08:45.994 --> 00:08:49.411 with a text explaining it is an oak tree. 00:08:52.815 --> 00:08:54.954 When I first entered St. Peter's 00:08:54.954 --> 00:08:57.937 and confronted Michelangelo's Pieta, 00:08:57.937 --> 00:09:00.436 for me, that was a transporting experience. 00:09:00.436 --> 00:09:02.196 My life was changed by this. 00:09:02.196 --> 00:09:05.187 Do you think that someone can have the same experience 00:09:05.187 --> 00:09:07.898 with Duchamp's urinal, or perhaps, 00:09:07.898 --> 00:09:11.855 with your oak tree, which is after all a similar thing? 00:09:11.855 --> 00:09:14.874 - I know that when I was a teenager, 00:09:14.874 --> 00:09:17.374 and I first came upon Duchamp, 00:09:18.218 --> 00:09:20.938 and I first came upon the ready mades, 00:09:20.938 --> 00:09:24.105 I was absolutely stunned in amazement. 00:09:25.736 --> 00:09:26.874 I don't think people are overwhelmed 00:09:26.874 --> 00:09:29.295 by a sense of beauty when they see the urinal. 00:09:29.295 --> 00:09:31.234 It's not meant to be beautiful, 00:09:31.234 --> 00:09:33.831 but that doesn't mean that there isn't something about it 00:09:33.831 --> 00:09:36.012 that doesn't captivate the imagination, 00:09:36.012 --> 00:09:38.495 and I think captivate the imagination 00:09:38.495 --> 00:09:41.495 is the key to what an artwork seeks to do. 00:09:41.495 --> 00:09:44.031 Duchamp felt that art had become 00:09:44.031 --> 00:09:46.650 too interested in techniques, 00:09:46.650 --> 00:09:48.650 too interested in optics. 00:09:48.650 --> 00:09:50.010 He felt that it had become 00:09:50.010 --> 00:09:52.634 intellectually and morally corrupt. 00:09:52.634 --> 00:09:54.810 Now his reason for making an artwork 00:09:54.810 --> 00:09:57.412 that didn't fit the system was not cynicism. 00:09:57.412 --> 00:10:01.652 It was in order to say I'm trying to make an art 00:10:01.652 --> 00:10:04.069 that denies all of the things 00:10:06.009 --> 00:10:08.394 that people say art should have 00:10:08.394 --> 00:10:11.514 because I'm trying to say the central question of art 00:10:11.514 --> 00:10:13.311 rests somewhere else. 00:10:13.311 --> 00:10:17.052 - I take that point that things had to change. 00:10:17.052 --> 00:10:19.172 Duchamp was trying to change them, 00:10:19.172 --> 00:10:22.351 but what was he trying to change them to? 00:10:22.351 --> 00:10:25.916 - Well, he could never, in his wildest dreams, 00:10:25.916 --> 00:10:27.892 have imagined what would happen would happen, 00:10:27.892 --> 00:10:30.730 or that he himself, I'm sure he had no idea, 00:10:30.730 --> 00:10:35.530 how central the thing was that he had stumbled upon, 00:10:35.530 --> 00:10:36.688 that he had come upon, 00:10:36.688 --> 00:10:38.991 essentially that a work of art 00:10:38.991 --> 00:10:42.692 is a work of art because we think of it as such. 00:10:42.692 --> 00:10:44.286 I also think it's important to say 00:10:44.286 --> 00:10:46.351 that the notion of beauty has been extended 00:10:46.351 --> 00:10:49.213 to include things that would not have been thought of. 00:10:49.213 --> 00:10:50.355 That's part of the artist's function, 00:10:50.355 --> 00:10:53.411 is to make beautify, make one see something as beautiful, 00:10:53.411 --> 00:10:54.973 something that nobody thought was beautiful 00:10:54.973 --> 00:10:56.152 up until now. 00:10:56.152 --> 00:10:57.715 - Right, like a can of shit. 00:10:57.715 --> 00:11:00.515 - Well, I'm not sure that it's beautiful, 00:11:00.515 --> 00:11:02.195 but if you take an example 00:11:02.195 --> 00:11:04.111 that's not trying to be beautiful, 00:11:04.111 --> 00:11:06.634 if you take say Jeff Koons, 00:11:06.634 --> 00:11:08.355 Jeff Koons has some things 00:11:08.355 --> 00:11:11.605 which are truly astoundingly beautiful. 00:11:12.860 --> 00:11:14.430 - [Roger] It's like so much kitsch to me, 00:11:14.430 --> 00:11:16.435 but kitsch with sugar on. 00:11:16.435 --> 00:11:18.333 - [Michael] This is the subject matter of his work, 00:11:18.333 --> 00:11:20.392 not the substance of his work. 00:11:20.392 --> 00:11:22.291 - What is the use of this art? 00:11:22.291 --> 00:11:24.355 What does it help people to do? 00:11:24.355 --> 00:11:28.115 - I think it hopefully allows people 00:11:28.115 --> 00:11:31.532 to see the world in which they are living 00:11:33.793 --> 00:11:37.293 in a way that gives it more meaning to them, 00:11:37.293 --> 00:11:40.194 and it's not the world of an ideal world 00:11:40.194 --> 00:11:41.971 of some other world, some better place, 00:11:41.971 --> 00:11:44.396 but of the here and now, 00:11:44.396 --> 00:11:45.933 of the world that they're in, 00:11:45.933 --> 00:11:48.850 and are trying to live more at ease 00:11:49.731 --> 00:11:52.632 within the world that they're given. 00:11:52.632 --> 00:11:56.632 (discordant instrumental music) 00:12:00.984 --> 00:12:04.686 - So the art of today shows us the world as it is. 00:12:04.686 --> 00:12:07.544 The here and now and all its imperfections. 00:12:07.544 --> 00:12:09.961 But is the result really art? 00:12:13.064 --> 00:12:14.862 Surely something is not a work of art 00:12:14.862 --> 00:12:17.806 because it offers a slice of reality, 00:12:17.806 --> 00:12:21.139 ugliness included, and calls itself art. 00:12:25.140 --> 00:12:29.307 ("Cello Suite Number One" by Bach) 00:12:35.278 --> 00:12:37.537 Art needs creativity, 00:12:37.537 --> 00:12:40.659 and creativity is about sharing. 00:12:40.659 --> 00:12:42.595 It is a call to others to see the world 00:12:42.595 --> 00:12:44.428 as the artist sees it. 00:12:47.544 --> 00:12:48.814 That is why we find beauty 00:12:48.814 --> 00:12:51.458 in the naive art of children. 00:12:51.458 --> 00:12:53.016 Children are not giving us ideas 00:12:53.016 --> 00:12:55.108 in the place of creative images, 00:12:55.108 --> 00:12:58.776 nor are they wallowing in ugliness. 00:12:58.776 --> 00:13:01.555 They are trying to affirm the world as they see it 00:13:01.555 --> 00:13:03.888 and to share what they feel. 00:13:06.814 --> 00:13:09.973 Something of the child's pure delight in creation 00:13:09.973 --> 00:13:12.890 survives in every true work of art. 00:13:14.310 --> 00:13:16.375 But creativity is not enough, 00:13:16.375 --> 00:13:17.930 and the skill of the true artist 00:13:17.930 --> 00:13:21.678 is to show the real in the light of the ideal, 00:13:21.678 --> 00:13:23.595 and so, transfigure it. 00:13:27.496 --> 00:13:29.059 This is what Michelangelo achieves 00:13:29.059 --> 00:13:31.726 in his great portrayal of David. 00:13:34.961 --> 00:13:38.398 But when we encounter a concrete cast of the David, 00:13:38.398 --> 00:13:41.096 perhaps it's part of some garden arrangement, 00:13:41.096 --> 00:13:43.160 it is not beautiful at all, 00:13:43.160 --> 00:13:47.176 for it lacks the essential ingredient of creativity. 00:13:47.176 --> 00:13:50.676 (upbeat electronic music) 00:13:56.408 --> 00:13:59.908 (soft instrumental music) 00:14:05.281 --> 00:14:08.942 Discussions of the kind I have been having are dangerous. 00:14:08.942 --> 00:14:10.540 In our democratic culture, 00:14:10.540 --> 00:14:12.401 people often think it is threatening 00:14:12.401 --> 00:14:15.068 to judge another person's taste. 00:14:17.297 --> 00:14:19.654 Some are even offended by the suggestion 00:14:19.654 --> 00:14:23.196 that there is a difference between good and bad taste, 00:14:23.196 --> 00:14:25.116 or that it matters what you look at 00:14:25.116 --> 00:14:26.866 or read or listen to. 00:14:28.716 --> 00:14:30.897 But this doesn't help anybody. 00:14:30.897 --> 00:14:32.118 There are standards of beauty 00:14:32.118 --> 00:14:35.111 which have a firm base in human nature, 00:14:35.111 --> 00:14:36.372 and we need to look for them 00:14:36.372 --> 00:14:38.872 and build them into our lives. 00:14:44.452 --> 00:14:46.976 Maybe people have lost their faith in beauty 00:14:46.976 --> 00:14:49.857 because they have lost their belief in ideals. 00:14:49.857 --> 00:14:51.756 All there is, they are tempted to think, 00:14:51.756 --> 00:14:54.134 is the world of appetite. 00:14:54.134 --> 00:14:58.534 There are no values other than utilitarian ones. 00:14:58.534 --> 00:15:01.570 Something has a value if it has a use, 00:15:01.570 --> 00:15:03.987 and what's the use of beauty? 00:15:07.014 --> 00:15:11.318 All art is absolutely useless wrote Oscar Wilde, 00:15:11.318 --> 00:15:14.211 who intended his remark as praise. 00:15:14.211 --> 00:15:18.378 For Wilde, beauty of a value higher than usefulness. 00:15:19.393 --> 00:15:21.161 People need useless things 00:15:21.161 --> 00:15:23.297 just as much as, even more than 00:15:23.297 --> 00:15:25.977 they need things with a use. 00:15:25.977 --> 00:15:27.094 Just think of it. 00:15:27.094 --> 00:15:31.254 What is the use of love, of friendship, of worship? 00:15:31.254 --> 00:15:32.587 None whatsoever. 00:15:33.574 --> 00:15:35.991 And the same goes for beauty. 00:15:39.046 --> 00:15:42.431 Our consumer society puts usefulness first, 00:15:42.431 --> 00:15:46.014 and beauty is no better than a side effect. 00:15:47.374 --> 00:15:50.739 Since art is useless, it doesn't matter what you read, 00:15:50.739 --> 00:15:54.174 what you look at, what you listen to. 00:15:54.174 --> 00:15:56.148 ♫ I see you baby 00:15:56.148 --> 00:15:58.017 ♫ Shaking that ass 00:15:58.017 --> 00:15:59.540 ♫ Shaking that ass 00:15:59.540 --> 00:16:00.543 ♫ Shaking that ass 00:16:00.543 --> 00:16:02.703 We are besieged by message on every side, 00:16:02.703 --> 00:16:05.044 titillated, tempted by appetite, 00:16:05.044 --> 00:16:08.463 never at rest, and that is one reason 00:16:08.463 --> 00:16:11.098 why beauty is disappearing from our world. 00:16:11.098 --> 00:16:12.521 ♫ Shaking that ass 00:16:12.521 --> 00:16:14.063 ♫ Shaking that ass 00:16:14.063 --> 00:16:16.724 Getting and spending, wrote Wordsworth, 00:16:16.724 --> 00:16:18.497 we lay waste our powers. 00:16:18.497 --> 00:16:19.961 ♫ Shaking that ass 00:16:19.961 --> 00:16:21.663 ♫ Shaking that ass 00:16:21.663 --> 00:16:23.001 In our culture today, 00:16:23.001 --> 00:16:26.260 the advert is more important than the work of art, 00:16:26.260 --> 00:16:28.772 and artworks often try to capture our attention 00:16:28.772 --> 00:16:33.071 as adverts do, by being brash or outrageous, 00:16:33.071 --> 00:16:37.238 like this bejeweled platinum skull by Damien Hirst. 00:16:38.268 --> 00:16:40.388 Lie adverts, today's works of art 00:16:40.388 --> 00:16:44.809 aim to create a brand, even if they have no product to sell, 00:16:44.809 --> 00:16:46.372 except themselves. 00:16:46.372 --> 00:16:49.289 (crowd chattering) 00:16:54.489 --> 00:16:57.989 (somber orchestral music) 00:17:08.335 --> 00:17:12.502 (building collapsing and shattering) 00:17:21.272 --> 00:17:23.714 Beauty is assailed from two directions, 00:17:23.714 --> 00:17:26.393 by the cult of ugliness in the arts 00:17:26.393 --> 00:17:29.993 and by the cult of utility in everyday life. 00:17:29.993 --> 00:17:32.057 These two cults come together 00:17:32.057 --> 00:17:35.396 in the world of modern architecture. 00:17:35.396 --> 00:17:38.676 (somber orchestral music) 00:17:38.676 --> 00:17:40.377 At the turn of the 20th century, 00:17:40.377 --> 00:17:45.038 architects, like artists, began to be impatient with beauty 00:17:45.038 --> 00:17:47.705 and to put utility in its place. 00:17:50.980 --> 00:17:53.152 The American architect, Louis Sullivan, 00:17:53.152 --> 00:17:55.940 expressed the credo of the modernists 00:17:55.940 --> 00:17:58.798 when he said that form follows function. 00:17:58.798 --> 00:18:01.198 In other words, stop thinking about 00:18:01.198 --> 00:18:02.756 the way a building looks 00:18:02.756 --> 00:18:05.839 and think instead about what it does. 00:18:08.836 --> 00:18:10.622 Sullivan's doctrine has been used 00:18:10.622 --> 00:18:13.540 to justify the greatest crime against beauty 00:18:13.540 --> 00:18:15.576 that the world has yet seen, 00:18:15.576 --> 00:18:18.596 and that is the crime of modern architecture. 00:18:18.596 --> 00:18:22.179 (tense instrumental music) 00:18:36.713 --> 00:18:38.473 I grew up near Reading, 00:18:38.473 --> 00:18:41.092 which was a charming Victorian town 00:18:41.092 --> 00:18:43.854 with terraced streets and Gothic churches 00:18:43.854 --> 00:18:46.608 crowned by elegant public buildings 00:18:46.608 --> 00:18:48.718 and smart hotels. 00:18:48.718 --> 00:18:51.991 But in the 1960s, things began to change. 00:18:51.991 --> 00:18:54.713 Here, in the center, the homely streets were demolished 00:18:54.713 --> 00:18:59.592 to make way for office blocks, a bus station, and car parks, 00:18:59.592 --> 00:19:03.257 all designed without consideration for beauty, 00:19:03.257 --> 00:19:05.652 and the result proves as clearly as can be 00:19:05.652 --> 00:19:08.190 that if you consider only utility, 00:19:08.190 --> 00:19:11.690 the things you build will soon be useless. 00:19:12.718 --> 00:19:13.849 This building is boarded up 00:19:13.849 --> 00:19:16.169 because nobody has a use for it. 00:19:16.169 --> 00:19:17.351 Nobody has a use for it 00:19:17.351 --> 00:19:19.278 because nobody wants to be in it. 00:19:19.278 --> 00:19:20.473 Nobody wants to be in it 00:19:20.473 --> 00:19:22.692 because the thing is so damned ugly. 00:19:22.692 --> 00:19:26.359 (somber instrumental music) 00:19:34.890 --> 00:19:39.057 Everywhere you turn, there is ugliness and mutilation. 00:19:39.969 --> 00:19:43.588 The offices and bus station have been abandoned. 00:19:43.588 --> 00:19:45.089 The only things at home here 00:19:45.089 --> 00:19:48.891 are the pigeons fouling the pavements. 00:19:48.891 --> 00:19:52.235 Everything has been vandalized. 00:19:52.235 --> 00:19:54.390 But we shouldn't blame the vandals. 00:19:54.390 --> 00:19:56.487 This place was built by vandals, 00:19:56.487 --> 00:19:58.171 and those who added the graffiti 00:19:58.171 --> 00:20:00.171 merely finished the job. 00:20:05.089 --> 00:20:08.651 Most of our towns and cities have areas like this 00:20:08.651 --> 00:20:11.649 in which buildings erected merely for their utility 00:20:11.649 --> 00:20:14.731 have rapidly become useless, 00:20:14.731 --> 00:20:18.564 not that architects learned from the disaster. 00:20:19.830 --> 00:20:22.251 (explosion) 00:20:22.251 --> 00:20:26.251 (glass crashing and shattering) 00:20:34.198 --> 00:20:35.579 When the public began to react 00:20:35.579 --> 00:20:39.141 against the brutal concrete style of the 1960s, 00:20:39.141 --> 00:20:40.699 architects simply replaced it 00:20:40.699 --> 00:20:44.272 with a new kind of junk, glass walls 00:20:44.272 --> 00:20:47.280 hung on steel frames with absurd details 00:20:47.280 --> 00:20:49.419 that don't match. 00:20:49.419 --> 00:20:52.342 Result is another kind of failure to fit. 00:20:52.342 --> 00:20:54.838 It is there simply to be demolished. 00:20:54.838 --> 00:20:57.338 (funky music) 00:21:02.796 --> 00:21:05.296 (light music) 00:21:11.079 --> 00:21:13.143 In the midst of all this desolation, 00:21:13.143 --> 00:21:17.981 we find a fragment of the streets that were destroyed. 00:21:17.981 --> 00:21:20.064 Once a forge, now a cafe. 00:21:20.940 --> 00:21:23.042 People come here from all around 00:21:23.042 --> 00:21:26.337 because it is the last bit of life remaining, 00:21:26.337 --> 00:21:29.294 and the life comes from the building. 00:21:29.294 --> 00:21:31.794 (light music) 00:21:41.135 --> 00:21:43.178 This returns me to Oscar Wilde's remark 00:21:43.178 --> 00:21:46.378 that all art is absolutely useless. 00:21:46.378 --> 00:21:49.545 Put usefulness first, and you lose it. 00:21:50.456 --> 00:21:52.911 Put beauty first, and what you do 00:21:52.911 --> 00:21:54.828 will be useful forever. 00:21:55.775 --> 00:21:58.255 It turns out that nothing is more useful 00:21:58.255 --> 00:21:59.716 than the useless. 00:21:59.716 --> 00:22:02.216 (light music) 00:22:05.236 --> 00:22:07.641 We see this in traditional architecture 00:22:07.641 --> 00:22:10.676 with its decorative details. 00:22:10.676 --> 00:22:13.956 Ornaments liberate us from the tyranny of the useful 00:22:13.956 --> 00:22:17.081 and satisfy our need for harmony. 00:22:17.081 --> 00:22:20.516 In a strange way, they make us feel at home. 00:22:20.516 --> 00:22:24.255 They remind us that we have more than practical needs. 00:22:24.255 --> 00:22:26.858 We are not just governed by animal appetites 00:22:26.858 --> 00:22:28.942 like eating and sleeping. 00:22:28.942 --> 00:22:31.935 We have spiritual and moral needs too, 00:22:31.935 --> 00:22:35.396 and if those needs go unsatisfied, so do we. 00:22:35.396 --> 00:22:38.729 (soft orchestral music) 00:22:57.027 --> 00:22:58.109 We all know what it is like 00:22:58.109 --> 00:22:59.806 even in the everyday world 00:22:59.806 --> 00:23:03.267 suddenly to be transported by the things we see 00:23:03.267 --> 00:23:05.710 from the ordinary world of our appetites 00:23:05.710 --> 00:23:09.293 to the illuminated sphere of contemplation. 00:23:12.206 --> 00:23:14.968 A flash of sunlight, a remembered melody, 00:23:14.968 --> 00:23:17.827 the face of someone loved, these dawn on us 00:23:17.827 --> 00:23:19.987 in the most distracted moments, 00:23:19.987 --> 00:23:22.926 and suddenly, life is worthwhile. 00:23:22.926 --> 00:23:26.259 (soft orchestral music) 00:23:30.910 --> 00:23:32.590 These are timeless moments 00:23:32.590 --> 00:23:36.757 in which we feel the presence of another and higher world. 00:23:40.670 --> 00:23:42.766 From the beginning of Western civilization, 00:23:42.766 --> 00:23:46.406 poets and philosophers have seen the experience of beauty 00:23:46.406 --> 00:23:48.739 as calling us to the divine. 00:23:52.062 --> 00:23:55.987 Plato, writing in Athens in the fourth century BC, 00:23:55.987 --> 00:23:58.051 argued that beauty is the sign 00:23:58.051 --> 00:24:00.384 of another and higher order. 00:24:03.966 --> 00:24:07.163 Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he wrote, 00:24:07.163 --> 00:24:09.992 you will be able to nourish true virtue 00:24:09.992 --> 00:24:12.409 and become the friend of God. 00:24:16.408 --> 00:24:18.526 Plato was an idealist. 00:24:18.526 --> 00:24:21.469 He believed that human beings are pilgrims 00:24:21.469 --> 00:24:23.806 and passengers in this world 00:24:23.806 --> 00:24:26.568 while always aspiring beyond it 00:24:26.568 --> 00:24:30.735 to the eternal realm where we will be united with God. 00:24:36.443 --> 00:24:39.928 God exists in a transcendental world 00:24:39.928 --> 00:24:41.726 to which we humans aspire, 00:24:41.726 --> 00:24:44.559 but which we cannot know directly. 00:24:47.550 --> 00:24:50.990 But one way of glimpsing that heavenly sphere here below 00:24:50.990 --> 00:24:54.157 is through the experience with beauty. 00:24:58.188 --> 00:25:00.188 This leads to a paradox. 00:25:01.225 --> 00:25:03.763 For Plato, beauty was first and foremost 00:25:03.763 --> 00:25:07.966 the beauty of the human face and the human form. 00:25:07.966 --> 00:25:09.384 The love of beauty, he thought, 00:25:09.384 --> 00:25:14.046 originates in eros, a passion that all of us feel. 00:25:14.046 --> 00:25:17.385 We would call this passion romantic love. 00:25:17.385 --> 00:25:20.285 For Plato, eros was a cosmic force 00:25:20.285 --> 00:25:24.452 which flows through us in the form of sexual desire. 00:25:28.185 --> 00:25:31.329 But if human beauty arouses desire, 00:25:31.329 --> 00:25:34.824 how can it have anything to do with the divine? 00:25:34.824 --> 00:25:39.283 Desire is for the individual living in this world. 00:25:39.283 --> 00:25:41.283 It is an urgent passion. 00:25:43.641 --> 00:25:47.022 Sexual desire presents us with a choice, 00:25:47.022 --> 00:25:50.022 adoration or appetite, love or lust. 00:25:53.225 --> 00:25:57.142 Lust is about taking, but love is about giving. 00:26:02.003 --> 00:26:05.545 Lust brings ugliness, the ugliness of human relations 00:26:05.545 --> 00:26:07.401 in which one person treats another 00:26:07.401 --> 00:26:09.651 as a disposable instrument. 00:26:13.241 --> 00:26:15.065 To reach the source of beauty, 00:26:15.065 --> 00:26:16.862 we must overcome lust. 00:26:16.862 --> 00:26:20.612 (playful instrumental music) 00:26:23.414 --> 00:26:27.081 (somber instrumental music) 00:26:34.025 --> 00:26:37.113 This longing without lust is what we mean today 00:26:37.113 --> 00:26:38.530 by platonic love. 00:26:41.529 --> 00:26:44.307 When we find beauty in a youthful person, 00:26:44.307 --> 00:26:46.787 it is because we glimpse the light of eternity 00:26:46.787 --> 00:26:48.691 shining in those features 00:26:48.691 --> 00:26:51.614 from a heavenly source beyond this world. 00:26:51.614 --> 00:26:55.114 (soft instrumental music) 00:26:57.571 --> 00:26:59.705 The beautiful human form is an invitation 00:26:59.705 --> 00:27:03.455 to unite with it spiritually, not physically. 00:27:05.993 --> 00:27:08.073 Our feeling for beauty is, therefore, 00:27:08.073 --> 00:27:11.592 a religious and not a sensual emotion. 00:27:11.592 --> 00:27:15.092 (soft instrumental music) 00:27:19.230 --> 00:27:22.110 This theory of Plato's is astonishing. 00:27:22.110 --> 00:27:25.491 Beauty, he thought, is a visitor from another world. 00:27:25.491 --> 00:27:28.190 We can do nothing with it save contemplate 00:27:28.190 --> 00:27:30.057 its pure radiance. 00:27:30.057 --> 00:27:33.132 Anything else pollutes and desecrates it, 00:27:33.132 --> 00:27:35.148 destroying its sacred aura. 00:27:35.148 --> 00:27:38.648 (soft instrumental music) 00:27:44.182 --> 00:27:48.266 Plato's theory may seem quaint to people today, 00:27:48.266 --> 00:27:53.174 but it is one of the most influential theories in history. 00:27:53.174 --> 00:27:54.689 Throughout our civilization, 00:27:54.689 --> 00:27:58.838 poets, storytellers, painters, priests, and philosophers 00:27:58.838 --> 00:28:03.005 have been inspired by Plato's views on sex and love. 00:28:08.977 --> 00:28:11.243 If we are to just look in the poetry corner 00:28:11.243 --> 00:28:13.356 as to then books by people who have tried to express 00:28:13.356 --> 00:28:15.798 the Platonic vision of the erotic, 00:28:15.798 --> 00:28:17.715 let's see who there is. 00:28:19.926 --> 00:28:24.262 Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, John Donne Here and There, 00:28:24.262 --> 00:28:27.635 Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer, 00:28:27.635 --> 00:28:29.340 especially The Knight's Tale, 00:28:29.340 --> 00:28:31.664 The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, 00:28:31.664 --> 00:28:34.951 incredible expressions of the Platonic love here, 00:28:34.951 --> 00:28:37.596 Cavalcanti, who is the master of Dante, 00:28:37.596 --> 00:28:40.609 and Dante himself definitely, 00:28:40.609 --> 00:28:44.177 oh Spencer of course, The Fairy Queen, 00:28:44.177 --> 00:28:47.662 Dafydd ap Gwilym, to take the Welsh version of it all, 00:28:47.662 --> 00:28:51.572 The Women Troubadours, Christina Rosetti. 00:28:51.572 --> 00:28:55.217 I don't believe it more Victorian about it. 00:28:55.217 --> 00:28:56.717 Ah, so it goes on. 00:29:00.176 --> 00:29:03.676 (soft instrumental music) 00:29:09.617 --> 00:29:12.530 The early Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli 00:29:12.530 --> 00:29:16.110 illustrated the theory in this famous painting, 00:29:16.110 --> 00:29:20.277 which shows the birth of Venus, goddess of erotic love. 00:29:21.675 --> 00:29:25.993 Venus looks on the world from a place beyond desire. 00:29:25.993 --> 00:29:29.494 She is inviting us to transcend our earthly appetites 00:29:29.494 --> 00:29:33.661 and unite with her through the pure love of beauty. 00:29:36.577 --> 00:29:39.953 Botticelli's model was Simonetta Vespucci. 00:29:39.953 --> 00:29:42.913 Botticelli loved her until the end of her short life 00:29:42.913 --> 00:29:46.433 and actually asked to be buried at her feet. 00:29:46.433 --> 00:29:49.435 She represented to him Plato's ideal. 00:29:49.435 --> 00:29:54.051 This was beauty to be contemplated but not possessed. 00:29:54.051 --> 00:29:57.251 (soft instrumental music) 00:29:57.251 --> 00:29:59.297 Plato and Botticelli are telling us 00:29:59.297 --> 00:30:03.195 that real beauty lies beyond sexual desire, 00:30:03.195 --> 00:30:07.217 so we can find beauty not only in a desirable young person 00:30:07.217 --> 00:30:11.974 but also in a face full of age, grief, and wisdom, 00:30:11.974 --> 00:30:13.595 such as Rembrandt painted. 00:30:13.595 --> 00:30:17.095 (soft instrumental music) 00:30:21.195 --> 00:30:23.174 The beauty of a face is a symbol 00:30:23.174 --> 00:30:26.113 of the life expressed in it. 00:30:26.113 --> 00:30:28.475 It is flesh become spirit, 00:30:28.475 --> 00:30:30.395 and in fixing our eyes on it, 00:30:30.395 --> 00:30:33.978 we seem to see right through into the soul. 00:30:36.513 --> 00:30:38.635 Painters like Rembrandt are important 00:30:38.635 --> 00:30:40.832 for showing us that beauty is an ordinary, 00:30:40.832 --> 00:30:43.035 everyday kind of thing. 00:30:43.035 --> 00:30:45.035 It lies all around us. 00:30:45.035 --> 00:30:47.073 We need only the eyes to see it 00:30:47.073 --> 00:30:49.195 and the hearts to feel. 00:30:49.195 --> 00:30:51.228 The most ordinary event can be made 00:30:51.228 --> 00:30:53.762 into something beautiful by a painter 00:30:53.762 --> 00:30:56.622 who can see into the heart of things. 00:30:56.622 --> 00:31:00.122 (soft instrumental music) 00:31:09.650 --> 00:31:12.332 So long as the belief in a transcendental god 00:31:12.332 --> 00:31:15.954 was firmly anchored in the heart of our civilization, 00:31:15.954 --> 00:31:19.186 artists and philosophers continued to think of beauty 00:31:19.186 --> 00:31:20.436 in Plato's way. 00:31:22.110 --> 00:31:24.391 Beauty was the revelation of God 00:31:24.391 --> 00:31:26.058 in the here and now. 00:31:29.314 --> 00:31:31.031 This religious approach to the beautiful 00:31:31.031 --> 00:31:32.864 lasted for 2000 years. 00:31:34.631 --> 00:31:37.730 But in the 17th century, the scientific revolution 00:31:37.730 --> 00:31:40.311 began to sow the seeds of doubt. 00:31:40.311 --> 00:31:43.747 (soft instrumental music) 00:31:43.747 --> 00:31:46.572 The medieval church accepted the ancient view 00:31:46.572 --> 00:31:50.739 that the Earth lies at the center of the universe. 00:31:52.551 --> 00:31:55.772 Then, Copernicus and Galileo proved that the Earth 00:31:55.772 --> 00:31:59.855 circles the sun, and Newton completed their work, 00:32:00.770 --> 00:32:03.267 describing a clockwork universe 00:32:03.267 --> 00:32:05.751 in which each moment follows mechanically 00:32:05.751 --> 00:32:07.431 from the one before. 00:32:07.431 --> 00:32:10.931 (soft instrumental music) 00:32:15.027 --> 00:32:17.425 This was the Enlightenment vision 00:32:17.425 --> 00:32:18.950 which described our world 00:32:18.950 --> 00:32:20.685 as though there was no place in it 00:32:20.685 --> 00:32:22.352 for gods and spirits, 00:32:22.352 --> 00:32:25.403 no place for values and ideals, 00:32:25.403 --> 00:32:29.632 no place for anything save the regular clockwork movement 00:32:29.632 --> 00:32:32.064 which turned the moon around the Earth 00:32:32.064 --> 00:32:34.230 and the Earth around the sun 00:32:34.230 --> 00:32:36.789 for no purpose whatsoever. 00:32:36.789 --> 00:32:40.289 (soft instrumental music) 00:32:42.388 --> 00:32:44.368 At the heart of Newton's universe 00:32:44.368 --> 00:32:48.491 is a God shaped hole, a spiritual vacuum, 00:32:48.491 --> 00:32:50.470 and one philosopher in particular 00:32:50.470 --> 00:32:52.656 set out to fill this vacuum. 00:32:52.656 --> 00:32:55.413 That is the Third Earl of Shaftesbury. 00:32:55.413 --> 00:32:59.164 (light instrumental music) 00:32:59.164 --> 00:33:02.752 Science explains things, but, thought Shaftesbury, 00:33:02.752 --> 00:33:07.128 its account of the world is in one way incomplete. 00:33:07.128 --> 00:33:10.395 We can see the world from another perspective, 00:33:10.395 --> 00:33:13.808 not seeking to use it or explain it, 00:33:13.808 --> 00:33:16.891 but simply contemplating its appearance 00:33:16.891 --> 00:33:20.048 as we might contemplate a landscape or a flower. 00:33:20.048 --> 00:33:24.326 (light instrumental music) 00:33:24.326 --> 00:33:27.008 The idea that the world is intrinsically meaningful, 00:33:27.008 --> 00:33:31.087 full of an enchantment, that it needs no religious doctrine 00:33:31.087 --> 00:33:35.028 to perceive answered to a deep emotional need. 00:33:35.028 --> 00:33:37.595 Beauty was not planted in the world by God, 00:33:37.595 --> 00:33:39.967 but discovered there by people. 00:33:39.967 --> 00:33:43.467 (soft instrumental music) 00:33:56.263 --> 00:34:00.247 Shaftesbury's idea encouraged the cult of beauty 00:34:00.247 --> 00:34:03.025 which raised the appreciation of art and nature 00:34:03.025 --> 00:34:07.881 to the place once occupied by the worship of God. 00:34:07.881 --> 00:34:10.342 Beauty was to fill the God shaped hole 00:34:10.342 --> 00:34:11.643 made by science. 00:34:11.643 --> 00:34:15.143 (soft instrumental music) 00:34:16.184 --> 00:34:18.659 Artists were no longer illustrators 00:34:18.659 --> 00:34:22.744 of the sacred stories who worked as servants of the church. 00:34:22.744 --> 00:34:25.672 They were discovering the stories for themselves 00:34:25.672 --> 00:34:28.882 by interpreting the secrets of nature. 00:34:28.882 --> 00:34:31.262 Landscapes which used to be mere backgrounds 00:34:31.262 --> 00:34:34.561 to holy images became foregrounds 00:34:34.561 --> 00:34:38.351 with the human figure often lost in their folds. 00:34:38.351 --> 00:34:41.851 (soft instrumental music) 00:34:43.370 --> 00:34:45.951 But for Shaftesbury, it does not need a work of art 00:34:45.951 --> 00:34:48.992 to present us with the beauty of the world. 00:34:48.992 --> 00:34:51.071 We simply need to look on things 00:34:51.071 --> 00:34:53.904 with clear eyes and free emotions. 00:34:58.650 --> 00:35:01.733 Shaftesbury is telling us to stop using things, 00:35:01.733 --> 00:35:03.994 stop explaining them and exploiting them, 00:35:03.994 --> 00:35:06.773 but look at them instead. 00:35:06.773 --> 00:35:09.573 Then we will understand what they mean. 00:35:09.573 --> 00:35:12.672 The message of the flower is the flower. 00:35:12.672 --> 00:35:16.255 (light instrumental music) 00:35:23.997 --> 00:35:27.277 Zen Buddhists have said similar things. 00:35:27.277 --> 00:35:30.877 Only by leaving all our interests and business to one side 00:35:30.877 --> 00:35:34.738 do we encounter the real truth of the flower. 00:35:34.738 --> 00:35:38.539 Seeing things that way, we discover their beauty. 00:35:38.539 --> 00:35:42.039 (soft instrumental music) 00:35:45.682 --> 00:35:47.981 The greatest philosopher of the Enlightenment, 00:35:47.981 --> 00:35:51.080 Immanuel Kant, was profoundly influenced 00:35:51.080 --> 00:35:52.913 by Shaftesbury's idea. 00:35:54.280 --> 00:35:57.458 Kant argued that the experience of beauty 00:35:57.458 --> 00:36:00.701 comes when we put our interests to one side, 00:36:00.701 --> 00:36:03.458 when we look on things not in order to use them 00:36:03.458 --> 00:36:06.621 for our purposes or to explain how they work 00:36:06.621 --> 00:36:09.597 or to satisfy some need or appetite, 00:36:09.597 --> 00:36:13.981 but simply to absorb them and to endorse what they are. 00:36:13.981 --> 00:36:17.481 (soft instrumental music) 00:36:22.360 --> 00:36:24.360 Consider the joy you might feel 00:36:24.360 --> 00:36:27.981 when you hold a friend's baby in your arms. 00:36:27.981 --> 00:36:30.381 You don't want to do anything with the baby. 00:36:30.381 --> 00:36:32.954 You don't want to eat it, to put it to any use, 00:36:32.954 --> 00:36:36.839 or to conduct scientific experiments on it. 00:36:36.839 --> 00:36:38.920 You want simply to look at it 00:36:38.920 --> 00:36:42.242 and to feel the great surge of delight that comes 00:36:42.242 --> 00:36:44.941 when you focus all your thoughts on this baby 00:36:44.941 --> 00:36:47.160 and none at all on yourself. 00:36:47.160 --> 00:36:50.660 (soft instrumental music) 00:36:52.098 --> 00:36:53.736 That is what Kant described 00:36:53.736 --> 00:36:56.520 as a disinterested attitude, 00:36:56.520 --> 00:36:58.296 and it is the attitude that underlies 00:36:58.296 --> 00:37:00.379 our experience of beauty. 00:37:03.997 --> 00:37:06.103 To explain this is extremely difficult 00:37:06.103 --> 00:37:07.656 because if you haven't experienced it, 00:37:07.656 --> 00:37:10.039 you don't really know what it is, 00:37:10.039 --> 00:37:14.040 but everybody listening to a beautiful piece of music, 00:37:14.040 --> 00:37:17.040 looking at a sublime landscape, 00:37:17.040 --> 00:37:19.682 reading a poem which seems to contain 00:37:19.682 --> 00:37:22.024 the essence of the thing it describes, 00:37:22.024 --> 00:37:24.365 everybody in an experience like that 00:37:24.365 --> 00:37:26.448 says yes, this is enough. 00:37:27.922 --> 00:37:30.839 (soft piano music) 00:37:33.842 --> 00:37:37.624 But why is this experience so important? 00:37:37.624 --> 00:37:40.184 The encounter with beauty is so vivid, 00:37:40.184 --> 00:37:43.288 so immediate, so personal that it seems 00:37:43.288 --> 00:37:47.042 hardly to belong to the ordinary world, 00:37:47.042 --> 00:37:50.525 yet beauty shines on us from ordinary things. 00:37:50.525 --> 00:37:52.523 Is it a feature of the world 00:37:52.523 --> 00:37:55.190 or a figment of the imagination? 00:37:58.824 --> 00:38:01.525 Most of the time, our lives are organized 00:38:01.525 --> 00:38:05.848 by our everyday concerns, but every now and then, 00:38:05.848 --> 00:38:09.223 we find ourself jolted out of our complacency 00:38:09.223 --> 00:38:12.728 in the presence of something vastly more important 00:38:12.728 --> 00:38:16.044 than our immediate desires and interests, 00:38:16.044 --> 00:38:18.377 something not of this world. 00:38:19.823 --> 00:38:23.144 From Plato to Kant, philosophers have tried 00:38:23.144 --> 00:38:27.311 to capture the peculiar way in which beauty dawns on us. 00:38:29.005 --> 00:38:30.786 Like a sudden ray of sunlight 00:38:30.786 --> 00:38:32.369 or a surge of love. 00:38:34.248 --> 00:38:37.325 For Plato, the only explanation of such an experience 00:38:37.325 --> 00:38:40.124 was its transcendental origin. 00:38:40.124 --> 00:38:43.291 It speaks to us like the voice of God. 00:38:47.309 --> 00:38:50.146 And Kant too in a much more sober way 00:38:50.146 --> 00:38:52.381 believed that the experience of beauty 00:38:52.381 --> 00:38:56.298 connects us with the ultimate mystery of being. 00:38:58.343 --> 00:39:00.765 Through beauty, we are brought into the presence 00:39:00.765 --> 00:39:01.932 of the sacred. 00:39:08.061 --> 00:39:10.584 We can understand what such philosophers mean 00:39:10.584 --> 00:39:14.669 if we reflect on what we feel in the presence of death, 00:39:14.669 --> 00:39:18.527 especially the death of someone loved. 00:39:18.527 --> 00:39:20.882 We look with awe on the human body 00:39:20.882 --> 00:39:23.208 from which their life has fled. 00:39:23.208 --> 00:39:26.210 We are reluctant to touch the dead body. 00:39:26.210 --> 00:39:29.528 We see it as not properly a part of our world, 00:39:29.528 --> 00:39:32.861 almost a visitor from some other sphere. 00:39:39.565 --> 00:39:41.602 And the same sense of the transcendental 00:39:41.602 --> 00:39:45.949 arises in the experience that inspired Plato, 00:39:45.949 --> 00:39:48.349 the experience of falling in love. 00:39:48.349 --> 00:39:52.516 ("Les Contes d'Hoffmann" by Offenbach) 00:39:54.909 --> 00:39:56.962 This too is a human universal, 00:39:56.962 --> 00:40:01.144 and it is an experience of the strangest kind, 00:40:01.144 --> 00:40:03.383 the face and body of the beloved 00:40:03.383 --> 00:40:06.189 are imbued with the intensest life, 00:40:06.189 --> 00:40:08.450 but in one crucial respect, 00:40:08.450 --> 00:40:11.700 they are like the body of someone dead. 00:40:12.962 --> 00:40:17.282 They seem not to belong in the everyday world. 00:40:17.282 --> 00:40:19.464 Poets have expended thousands of words 00:40:19.464 --> 00:40:21.821 on this experience which no words 00:40:21.821 --> 00:40:23.904 seem entirely to capture. 00:40:27.682 --> 00:40:30.685 But these great changes in the stream of life, 00:40:30.685 --> 00:40:33.064 the urge to unite with another person, 00:40:33.064 --> 00:40:34.904 the loss of someone loved, 00:40:34.904 --> 00:40:38.882 are moments that we understand as sacred. 00:40:38.882 --> 00:40:42.882 (discordant instrumental music) 00:40:52.660 --> 00:40:55.208 If we look at the history of the idea of beauty, 00:40:55.208 --> 00:40:57.208 we see that philosophers and artists 00:40:57.208 --> 00:41:01.149 have had good reason to connect the beautiful and the sacred 00:41:01.149 --> 00:41:03.027 and to see our need for beauty 00:41:03.027 --> 00:41:05.506 as something deep in our nature, 00:41:05.506 --> 00:41:07.767 part of our longing for consolation 00:41:07.767 --> 00:41:11.148 in a world of danger, sorrow, and distress. 00:41:11.148 --> 00:41:15.148 (discordant instrumental music) 00:41:20.101 --> 00:41:24.087 Today, many artists look on the idea of beauty with disdain, 00:41:24.087 --> 00:41:26.823 a leftover from a vanished way of living 00:41:26.823 --> 00:41:28.802 which has no real connection with the world 00:41:28.802 --> 00:41:30.869 which now surrounds us. 00:41:30.869 --> 00:41:34.360 (discordant instrumental music) 00:41:34.360 --> 00:41:36.722 So there has been a desire to desecrate 00:41:36.722 --> 00:41:39.383 the experiences of sex and death 00:41:39.383 --> 00:41:42.759 by displaying them in trivial and impersonal ways 00:41:42.759 --> 00:41:46.407 that destroy all sense of their spiritual significance. 00:41:46.407 --> 00:41:50.407 (discordant instrumental music) 00:41:56.902 --> 00:41:58.801 Just as those who lose their religion 00:41:58.801 --> 00:42:01.666 have an urge to mock the faith that they have lost, 00:42:01.666 --> 00:42:04.423 so do artists today feel an urge 00:42:04.423 --> 00:42:07.639 to treat human life in demeaning ways 00:42:07.639 --> 00:42:10.472 and to mock the pursuit of beauty. 00:42:14.461 --> 00:42:18.407 This willful desecration is also a denial of love, 00:42:18.407 --> 00:42:20.701 an attempt to remake the world 00:42:20.701 --> 00:42:23.362 as though love were no longer a part of it, 00:42:23.362 --> 00:42:27.358 and this, it seems to me, is the most important feature 00:42:27.358 --> 00:42:29.383 of our post-modern culture, 00:42:29.383 --> 00:42:31.121 that it is a loveless culture 00:42:31.121 --> 00:42:36.103 determined to portray the human world as unlovable. 00:42:36.103 --> 00:42:39.603 (soft instrumental music) 00:42:42.502 --> 00:42:43.719 Of course this habit of dwelling 00:42:43.719 --> 00:42:47.475 on the distressing side of human life isn't new. 00:42:47.475 --> 00:42:49.725 From the beginning of our civilization, 00:42:49.725 --> 00:42:52.066 it has been one of the tasks of art 00:42:52.066 --> 00:42:55.399 to take what is most painful in the human condition 00:42:55.399 --> 00:42:58.423 and to redeem it in a work of beauty. 00:42:58.423 --> 00:43:01.090 (man screaming) 00:43:03.308 --> 00:43:05.558 - Oh you are men of stones. 00:43:06.757 --> 00:43:09.090 Had I your tongues and eyes, 00:43:09.933 --> 00:43:14.016 I'd use them so that heaven's vault should crack. 00:43:19.275 --> 00:43:21.613 She's gone forever. 00:43:21.613 --> 00:43:24.696 (lively piano music) 00:43:41.164 --> 00:43:43.590 - Art has the ability to redeem life 00:43:43.590 --> 00:43:47.757 by finding beauty even in the worst aspect of things. 00:43:50.625 --> 00:43:53.366 Mantegna's crucifixion, displaying the cruelest 00:43:53.366 --> 00:43:55.345 and most ugly of deaths, 00:43:55.345 --> 00:43:58.680 achieves a kind of majesty and serenity. 00:43:58.680 --> 00:44:02.124 It redeems the horror that it shows. 00:44:02.124 --> 00:44:04.684 In the face of death, human beings can still show 00:44:04.684 --> 00:44:07.517 nobility, compassion, and dignity, 00:44:08.806 --> 00:44:10.984 and art helps us to accept death 00:44:10.984 --> 00:44:13.484 by presenting it in such a light. 00:44:13.484 --> 00:44:16.484 (quick piano music) 00:44:20.124 --> 00:44:21.926 What about things which are not tragic 00:44:21.926 --> 00:44:24.521 but merely sordid or depraved? 00:44:24.521 --> 00:44:27.233 Can art find beauty even here? 00:44:27.233 --> 00:44:30.983 (frantic instrumental music) 00:44:37.809 --> 00:44:39.350 This painting by Delacroix 00:44:39.350 --> 00:44:44.246 shows us the artist's bed in all its sordid disorder. 00:44:44.246 --> 00:44:47.889 He too is bringing beauty to a thing that lacks it 00:44:47.889 --> 00:44:49.670 and bestowing a kind of blessing 00:44:49.670 --> 00:44:51.920 on his own emotional chaos. 00:44:55.270 --> 00:44:58.609 Delacroix says, see how these sweat stained sheets 00:44:58.609 --> 00:45:00.630 record the troubled dreams, 00:45:00.630 --> 00:45:03.990 the tormented energy of the person who has left them, 00:45:03.990 --> 00:45:05.468 and how the light picks them out 00:45:05.468 --> 00:45:09.788 as though they are still animated by the sleeper. 00:45:09.788 --> 00:45:12.646 The bed is transformed by the creative act 00:45:12.646 --> 00:45:14.230 to become something else, 00:45:14.230 --> 00:45:16.689 a vivid symbol of the human condition, 00:45:16.689 --> 00:45:20.550 and one which makes a bond between us and the artist. 00:45:20.550 --> 00:45:23.633 (lively cello music) 00:45:28.268 --> 00:45:32.689 Some people describe Tracey Emin's bed in that way, 00:45:32.689 --> 00:45:34.435 but there is all the difference in the world 00:45:34.435 --> 00:45:36.060 between a real work of art 00:45:36.060 --> 00:45:38.278 which makes ugliness beautiful 00:45:38.278 --> 00:45:40.118 and the fake work of art 00:45:40.118 --> 00:45:43.451 which shares the ugliness that it shows. 00:45:46.550 --> 00:45:48.518 This is modern life presented 00:45:48.518 --> 00:45:51.435 in all its randomness and disorder. 00:45:55.097 --> 00:45:58.902 - [David] What is it that makes that art 00:45:58.902 --> 00:46:00.855 rather than just a rumpled bed? 00:46:00.855 --> 00:46:02.556 - Well, the first thing that makes it art 00:46:02.556 --> 00:46:03.817 is because I say that it is. 00:46:03.817 --> 00:46:04.675 - [David] You say that it is. 00:46:04.675 --> 00:46:05.508 - I say that it is. 00:46:05.508 --> 00:46:07.177 - [David] The second thing is the Tate says it is. 00:46:07.177 --> 00:46:09.892 But what do you want the viewer, 00:46:09.892 --> 00:46:12.196 the visitor to the gallery to say? 00:46:12.196 --> 00:46:13.977 You presumably don't want him to say 00:46:13.977 --> 00:46:15.796 I think that's beautiful. 00:46:15.796 --> 00:46:17.972 - No, no one's actually said that, only me. 00:46:17.972 --> 00:46:19.316 - You think it's beautiful? 00:46:19.316 --> 00:46:21.113 - Yeah I do. - You do think it's beautiful. 00:46:21.113 --> 00:46:22.116 - I think it beautiful yeah. 00:46:22.116 --> 00:46:25.386 Otherwise, I wouldn't be sharing it. 00:46:25.386 --> 00:46:27.689 - How can this be a beautiful work of art 00:46:27.689 --> 00:46:29.508 if it makes no attempt to transform 00:46:29.508 --> 00:46:32.569 the raw material of an idea? 00:46:32.569 --> 00:46:35.828 It is just one sordid reality among others, 00:46:35.828 --> 00:46:37.732 literally an unmade bed. 00:46:37.732 --> 00:46:42.068 (light instrumental music) 00:46:42.068 --> 00:46:43.289 We are back with the question 00:46:43.289 --> 00:46:45.148 raised by Duchamp's urinal 00:46:45.148 --> 00:46:47.481 whether anything can be art. 00:46:49.091 --> 00:46:51.950 This question occupies both the would-be innovators 00:46:51.950 --> 00:46:55.593 and the traditionalists like Alexander Stoddart, 00:46:55.593 --> 00:46:59.508 a monumental sculptor whose works stand in public places 00:46:59.508 --> 00:47:02.068 around the world as well as in the Queen's gallery 00:47:02.068 --> 00:47:04.627 at Buckingham Palace. 00:47:04.627 --> 00:47:06.750 A defender of conceptual art 00:47:06.750 --> 00:47:09.847 might say that an idea can be beautiful, 00:47:09.847 --> 00:47:14.729 so that there's nothing wrong with conceptual art as such. 00:47:14.729 --> 00:47:18.896 - Yes, but this is in everybody's field of endeavor. 00:47:20.505 --> 00:47:23.129 The lawyer can come up with a beautiful idea. 00:47:23.129 --> 00:47:26.046 You know, the statesman, the medic. 00:47:28.148 --> 00:47:30.729 Let's cure cancer, a beautiful idea, 00:47:30.729 --> 00:47:33.374 but he doesn't say he's an artist in the back of that. 00:47:33.374 --> 00:47:37.108 Conceptual art, of course, is entirely world bound. 00:47:37.108 --> 00:47:39.828 It is in fact a kind of art that's exhausted 00:47:39.828 --> 00:47:41.950 in its veritable description, 00:47:41.950 --> 00:47:43.928 so you need to just say, 00:47:43.928 --> 00:47:46.291 half a cow in a tank of formaldehyde, 00:47:46.291 --> 00:47:49.309 and you're really all the way there. 00:47:49.309 --> 00:47:51.812 The object itself then can be dumped. 00:47:51.812 --> 00:47:55.070 Tracey Emin's bed is a perfect example of that. 00:47:55.070 --> 00:47:58.403 If you walked past a skip in some scheme 00:47:59.709 --> 00:48:01.993 and you saw that bed lying there, 00:48:01.993 --> 00:48:04.612 you would walk on, but of course, 00:48:04.612 --> 00:48:06.525 if you saw even just the torso 00:48:06.525 --> 00:48:09.524 of the Apollo Belvedere lying in that skip, 00:48:09.524 --> 00:48:10.925 you would be arrested by it, 00:48:10.925 --> 00:48:15.224 and you may even climb in and try to retrieve it. 00:48:15.224 --> 00:48:18.325 Many students come to me from sculpture departments, 00:48:18.325 --> 00:48:20.565 secretly of course, because they don't 00:48:20.565 --> 00:48:22.887 want to tell their tutors that they've come 00:48:22.887 --> 00:48:24.765 to chat with the enemy, 00:48:24.765 --> 00:48:28.386 and they say I try to become a model figure, 00:48:28.386 --> 00:48:30.866 and I modeled it in clay, and then a tutor came up 00:48:30.866 --> 00:48:33.266 and told me to cut it in half 00:48:33.266 --> 00:48:36.040 and dump some diarrhea on top of it, 00:48:36.040 --> 00:48:38.742 and that will make it interesting. 00:48:38.742 --> 00:48:41.742 - It's what I feel about the kind of 00:48:42.663 --> 00:48:46.007 standardized desecration that passes for art these days 00:48:46.007 --> 00:48:47.986 is actually a kind of immorality 00:48:47.986 --> 00:48:50.551 because it is an attempt to obliterate 00:48:50.551 --> 00:48:53.447 meaning from the human form in some way. 00:48:53.447 --> 00:48:56.711 - Well it's intent to obliterate knowledge. 00:48:56.711 --> 00:49:00.294 (light instrumental music) 00:49:03.271 --> 00:49:05.154 - The art establishment has turned away 00:49:05.154 --> 00:49:07.053 from the old curriculum 00:49:07.053 --> 00:49:10.994 which put beauty and craft at the top of the agenda. 00:49:10.994 --> 00:49:14.135 Those like Alexander Stoddart who try to restore 00:49:14.135 --> 00:49:17.150 the age old connection between the beautiful 00:49:17.150 --> 00:49:20.947 and the sacred are seen as old fashioned and absurd. 00:49:20.947 --> 00:49:24.530 (light instrumental music) 00:49:33.144 --> 00:49:35.545 The same kind of criticism is aimed at traditionalists 00:49:35.545 --> 00:49:36.878 in architecture. 00:49:39.207 --> 00:49:41.049 One target is Leon Krier, 00:49:41.049 --> 00:49:43.630 architect of the Prince of Wales' model town 00:49:43.630 --> 00:49:45.409 of Poundbury. 00:49:45.409 --> 00:49:49.608 (light instrumental music) 00:49:49.608 --> 00:49:53.593 Designing modest streets, laid out in traditional ways, 00:49:53.593 --> 00:49:56.550 using the well tried and much loved details 00:49:56.550 --> 00:49:59.029 that have served us down the centuries, 00:49:59.029 --> 00:50:03.129 Leon Krier as created a genuine settlement. 00:50:03.129 --> 00:50:06.296 The proportions are human proportions. 00:50:07.545 --> 00:50:10.526 The details are restful to the eye. 00:50:10.526 --> 00:50:14.109 (light instrumental music) 00:50:15.385 --> 00:50:17.988 This is not great or original architecture 00:50:17.988 --> 00:50:20.228 nor does it try to be. 00:50:20.228 --> 00:50:23.166 It is a modest attempt to get things right 00:50:23.166 --> 00:50:25.369 by following patterns and examples 00:50:25.369 --> 00:50:27.929 laid down by tradition. 00:50:27.929 --> 00:50:31.588 This is not nostalgia, but knowledge passed on 00:50:31.588 --> 00:50:32.921 from age to age. 00:50:37.630 --> 00:50:40.068 Architecture that doesn't respect the past 00:50:40.068 --> 00:50:41.988 is not respecting the present 00:50:41.988 --> 00:50:45.028 because it is not respecting people's primary need 00:50:45.028 --> 00:50:46.590 from architecture, which is to build 00:50:46.590 --> 00:50:48.257 a longstanding home. 00:50:49.369 --> 00:50:53.036 (lively instrumental music) 00:50:58.686 --> 00:51:00.126 I have shown some of the ways 00:51:00.126 --> 00:51:02.148 in which artists and architects 00:51:02.148 --> 00:51:05.689 have followed the call of beauty. 00:51:05.689 --> 00:51:09.486 In doing so, they have given our world meaning. 00:51:09.486 --> 00:51:12.508 (lively instrumental music) 00:51:12.508 --> 00:51:15.012 The masters of the past recognized 00:51:15.012 --> 00:51:16.847 that we have spiritual needs 00:51:16.847 --> 00:51:19.180 as well as animal appetites. 00:51:21.423 --> 00:51:24.842 For Plato, beauty was a path to God 00:51:24.842 --> 00:51:26.516 while thinkers of the Enlightenment 00:51:26.516 --> 00:51:30.378 saw art and beauty as ways in which we save ourselves 00:51:30.378 --> 00:51:32.234 from meaningless routines 00:51:32.234 --> 00:51:34.484 and rise to a higher level. 00:51:37.615 --> 00:51:40.618 But art turned its back on beauty. 00:51:40.618 --> 00:51:43.452 It became a slave to the consumer culture 00:51:43.452 --> 00:51:46.255 feeding our pleasures and addictions 00:51:46.255 --> 00:51:48.436 and wallowing in self-disgust. 00:51:48.436 --> 00:51:52.298 (lively instrumental music) 00:51:52.298 --> 00:51:54.058 That, it seems to me, is the lesson 00:51:54.058 --> 00:51:58.618 of the ugliest forms of modern art and architecture. 00:51:58.618 --> 00:52:02.276 They do not show reality, but take revenge on it, 00:52:02.276 --> 00:52:04.596 spoiling what might have been a home 00:52:04.596 --> 00:52:08.474 and leaving us to wander unconsoled and alienated 00:52:08.474 --> 00:52:10.307 in a spiritual desert. 00:52:13.994 --> 00:52:16.871 Of course it is true that there is much in the world today 00:52:16.871 --> 00:52:19.876 that distracts and troubles us. 00:52:19.876 --> 00:52:22.629 Our lives are full of leftovers. 00:52:22.629 --> 00:52:25.817 We battle through lies and distraction, 00:52:25.817 --> 00:52:27.434 and nothing resolves. 00:52:27.434 --> 00:52:31.556 (lively instrumental music) 00:52:31.556 --> 00:52:33.073 The right response, however, 00:52:33.073 --> 00:52:36.116 is not to endorse this alienation. 00:52:36.116 --> 00:52:39.716 It is to look for the path back from the desert, 00:52:39.716 --> 00:52:41.851 one that will point us to a place 00:52:41.851 --> 00:52:46.018 where the real and the ideal may still exist in harmony. 00:52:48.058 --> 00:52:51.891 ("Stabat Mater" by Pergolesi) 00:52:57.929 --> 00:53:00.168 In my own life, I have found this path 00:53:00.168 --> 00:53:02.612 more easily through music 00:53:02.612 --> 00:53:05.279 than through any other art form. 00:53:08.324 --> 00:53:12.793 Pergolesi was 26 when he wrote the Stabat Mater. 00:53:12.793 --> 00:53:15.251 It describes the grief of the holy virgin 00:53:15.251 --> 00:53:19.012 beside the cross of the dying Christ. 00:53:19.012 --> 00:53:20.473 All the suffering of the world 00:53:20.473 --> 00:53:23.129 is symbolized in its exquisite lines. 00:53:23.129 --> 00:53:26.962 ("Stabat Mater" by Pergolesi) 00:53:31.614 --> 00:53:34.073 Given that Pergolesi was suffering from tuberculosis 00:53:34.073 --> 00:53:36.473 when he wrote the Stabat Mater, 00:53:36.473 --> 00:53:40.473 he is that son dying on the cross too. 00:53:40.473 --> 00:53:42.169 In fact, he died within a few months 00:53:42.169 --> 00:53:44.252 of the work's completion. 00:53:45.753 --> 00:53:49.054 This is not a complex or ambitious piece of music, 00:53:49.054 --> 00:53:51.010 simply a heartfelt expression 00:53:51.010 --> 00:53:53.614 of the composer's faith. 00:53:53.614 --> 00:53:56.932 It shows the way in which deep and troubling emotions 00:53:56.932 --> 00:54:00.599 can achieve unity and freedom through music. 00:54:02.367 --> 00:54:05.731 The voice of Mary is written for two singers. 00:54:05.731 --> 00:54:08.612 The melody rises slowly, painfully, 00:54:08.612 --> 00:54:11.331 resolving dissonance only to be gripped 00:54:11.331 --> 00:54:14.334 by another dissonance as the voices clash, 00:54:14.334 --> 00:54:18.334 representing the conflict and sorrow within her. 00:54:21.870 --> 00:54:25.433 - [Catherine] Why don't I just give you, bar 18? 00:54:25.433 --> 00:54:27.449 - [Roger] Okay, good idea. 00:54:27.449 --> 00:54:31.282 ("Stabat Mater" by Pergolesi) 00:54:57.708 --> 00:55:00.892 - Here we have a very simple and sacred text. 00:55:00.892 --> 00:55:05.059 The mother stands grieving and weeping at the cross 00:55:06.471 --> 00:55:08.774 on which her son is hanging. 00:55:08.774 --> 00:55:10.833 That's really all that you have to say. 00:55:10.833 --> 00:55:12.229 - And a completely unmusical person 00:55:12.229 --> 00:55:14.172 would be immediately get the message 00:55:14.172 --> 00:55:16.972 that it's a piece of grieving, wouldn't they? 00:55:16.972 --> 00:55:19.532 There can be no possible doubt about that. 00:55:19.532 --> 00:55:21.372 - The music takes over the words 00:55:21.372 --> 00:55:23.565 and makes them speak to you 00:55:23.565 --> 00:55:27.153 in another language in your own heart. 00:55:27.153 --> 00:55:29.515 - Well it means that today, in our secular world, 00:55:29.515 --> 00:55:31.510 that it can delight and move 00:55:31.510 --> 00:55:33.452 without people having to know. 00:55:33.452 --> 00:55:34.455 - [Roger] Yes, exactly. 00:55:34.455 --> 00:55:35.468 - What it's about. 00:55:35.468 --> 00:55:38.346 - We learn without the theological apparatus 00:55:38.346 --> 00:55:41.329 that there is this thing called suffering, 00:55:41.329 --> 00:55:43.489 and that it's at the destiny of all of us, 00:55:43.489 --> 00:55:46.428 but also is not the end of all of us. 00:55:46.428 --> 00:55:50.261 ("Stabat Mater" by Pergolesi) 00:57:12.172 --> 00:57:14.225 In this film, I have described beauty 00:57:14.225 --> 00:57:16.308 as an essential resource. 00:57:17.559 --> 00:57:19.126 Through the pursuit of beauty, 00:57:19.126 --> 00:57:20.945 we shape the world as a home, 00:57:20.945 --> 00:57:24.524 and in doing so, we both amplify our joys 00:57:24.524 --> 00:57:27.569 and find consolation for our sorrows. 00:57:27.569 --> 00:57:30.705 ("Stabat Mater" by Pergolesi) 00:57:30.705 --> 00:57:33.569 Art and music shine a light of meaning 00:57:33.569 --> 00:57:36.060 on ordinary life, and through them, 00:57:36.060 --> 00:57:39.569 we are able to confront the things that trouble us 00:57:39.569 --> 00:57:43.736 and to find consolation and peace in their presence. 00:57:46.545 --> 00:57:49.446 This capacity of beauty too redeem our suffering 00:57:49.446 --> 00:57:52.107 is one reason why beauty can be seen 00:57:52.107 --> 00:57:54.545 as a substitute for religion. 00:57:54.545 --> 00:57:58.705 ("Stabat Mater" by Pergolesi) 00:57:58.705 --> 00:58:01.505 Why give priority to religion? 00:58:01.505 --> 00:58:04.566 Why not say that religion is a beauty substitute? 00:58:04.566 --> 00:58:08.065 Better still, why describe the two as rivals? 00:58:08.065 --> 00:58:11.644 The sacred and the beautiful stand side by side, 00:58:11.644 --> 00:58:15.323 two doors that open onto a single space, 00:58:15.323 --> 00:58:18.326 and in that space, we find our home. 00:58:18.326 --> 00:58:22.159 ("Stabat Mater" by Pergolesi) 00:58:39.804 --> 00:58:41.244 - [Broadcaster] And our Modern Beauty season 00:58:41.244 --> 00:58:43.265 continues on Monday night with large scale 00:58:43.265 --> 00:58:45.723 pieces of public art challenging the six finalists 00:58:45.723 --> 00:58:48.625 of the School of Saatchi at nine. 00:58:48.625 --> 00:58:50.465 Next tonight on BBC Two, this week's 00:58:50.465 --> 00:58:51.665 Have I Got News For You 00:58:51.665 --> 00:58:53.748 complete with extra bits.