"From the Fountainhead to the Future" by Alexandra York: Summary and main points.
"From
the Fountainhead to the Future"
-by Alexandra York
The essay "From the Fountainhead to the
Future" by Alexandra York argues that a classical ideal of beauty should
be the foundation for contemporary art. She starts with the quote, "He who
has access to the fountain does not go to the water pot." York believes
art has become political and lacks aesthetic value. She claims its true
purpose—expressing the highest ideals of humanity—has been lost in recent
decades.
York looks back to ancient Greece to find an artistic
vision that can inspire deep thinking and noble living. She identifies a
troubling split in the twentieth century, where art expresses political ideas
while rejecting objective beauty. This has led modern art to create division,
pitting classes and races against one another while ignoring any standards of
grace and beauty.
For York, painting and sculpture should be
representational, music should follow the principles of melody and harmony, and
literature should meet Matthew Arnold's standard for culture: "the best
that has been thought and said in the world." However, York does not
support simply imitating Greek ideals. She points to the Renaissance as an
example. Renaissance artists did not copy classical works, but used classical
principles to create original art. York argues that this is the approach
contemporary artists should take.
Nihilistic: Rejecting all religious and moral principles in the belief that life is
meaningless.
Dichotomy: A division or contrast between two things that are represented as opposed or entirely different things.
Main Points of the essay:
·
York thinks that the visual arts should
represent the outer world.
·
She says that melody, tonality, and
harmony should be in music; rhythm, meaning, and idea should be in written
works.
·
She claims that written art should have
positive content. (Greek art had moral and spiritual parts.)
·
The Greek ideal was personal character,
physical fitness, and spiritual wholeness.
·
In American society, by the early 1950s,
individualism focused only on money, and people became self-centered.
·
Morality changed into permissiveness,
individual freedom turns into license, and objective judgment of art changed
into subjective.
·
At the end of 20th century, people praised
politics and had to attain maximum satisfaction - there is a division between
black and white, men and women, mind and body, art and meaning.
·
Today's media lacks faith in spirituality;
they rush to find out about serial killers, rapists, and so on.
·
According to the writer, we live in an
emotional crisis world.
·
Family bonds and ties are secondary, while
money has become the center of happiness.
·
York thinks that it is essential to have
emotional fuel to correct us.
·
It means that not only the mind, but the heart
and soul should also be nurtured.
·
According to her, beauty possesses
redemptive power - but if beauty is created by human hand, it can be more
redemptive and more powerful.
·
To be beautiful in art, there should be
reason, ideas, and logic that make it meaningful to us.
·
Beauty helps us to get an aesthetic arrest
- it can be in both natural and manmade objects.
·
She supports Renaissance Europeans because
they did not try to repeat the Greek ideal but tried to give a rebirth of
ideas.
·
She advocates that instead of copying
Greek art, we need to give freshness and innovativeness to the art.
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