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…