![fed square small](https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/fed-square-small.png)
The Progressive Uglification of Everything
It is time again for the most important—which is to say the most publicised—prize in Britain for contemporary visual arts, the Turner Prize. It is as well-named as would be the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Prize for rap music or the Ceausescu Prize for the preservation of ancient churches.
Needless to say, those short-listed for the prize have done more than their little bit for the progressive uglification of the world—one would expect no less. In a world of injustice, after all, beauty as once understood is socially-regressive and unjust, the privilege of the few. To be concerned with aesthetics or to create anything in any way beautiful would thus be to be complicit with the status quo, the unbearable conditions in which 99 per cent of the world’s population are forced to live (especially in the West, and more especially artists in the West). To create beauty would be to reinforce the oppressive structures that brought about and maintain such conditions.
Anthony Daniels…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins