Art Should Look Beautiful
Classical Architecture and Other Controversies
Shortly after assuming office, President Trump revived an executive order from late in his first term which would require all new federal buildings to be built in “regional, traditional, and classical architecture.” The order didn’t simply refer to Greco-Roman columns like those adorning many of the iconic buildings on the National Mall, but also included Native American, European, and early colonial styles. The stated purpose of the order was that federal buildings should look beautiful.
Surprisingly, both the first time around and this time, the order generated some intense criticism for what would seemingly be an anodyne statement on building design. Specifically, in some quarters, Trump was accused of “fascism,” for desiring a return to aesthetically pleasing buildings and an end to ugly modernist ones.
This is interesting, because out of all the architectural movements in human history, there is only one in which many of the major figures in the early movement were associated with Italian fascism and German Nazism: modernism. While not every modernist architect was or is a Nazi, it seems strange to suggest that returning to the architecture of Solon and Cato is “fascist.”
But at stake isn’t really an argument over architectural history, but an argument over the purpose and nature of art, of which architecture is a subset. The revolution of modernism was the rejection, for the first time in human history, of aesthetic beauty as a criterion of building design. Indeed, brutalism – a subset of modernism – was a school premised on the explicit intention of creating buildings which do not look good. Brutalist buildings are designed to look imposing, frightening, disturbing, off-putting, unsettling, and even unsightly.
Classical styles – including those used by native cultures throughout Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific Islands – are designed rather with an eye towards beauty. But according to some in the modernist school, there is no such thing as beauty. It is only in the eye of the beholder. Ugly buildings can be beautiful if we pretend that they are.
Its association with the postmodern left of the late twentieth century has insulated modernism from its association with Nazism and fascism, because in most people’s minds, these two things are diametrically opposed. But a shared premise about beauty is not the only connection between postmodernism and Nazism/fascism. Indeed, the Nazis invented deconstructionism before Derrida ever did.
But I digress. The charge of fascism towards Trump’s order has little to do with a debate over ideas and much to do with the nearest weapon to hand (i.e., the word “fascism”) in a battle over aesthetic criteria in architecture.
Before we go on, I should state that one of the elementary skills required of all intelligent minds is the ability to compartmentalize. Nothing in this essay should be read as a commentary on any other policy or priority of the Trump administration, or of Donald Trump. Nor am I endorsing or condemning any other action by the administration. As long as we can keep separate in our minds our opinions about Donald Trump the person, and this particular order in question, we can proceed.
Even people who dislike Donald Trump and disagree with the policies of his administration can appreciate the value of an order like this. While it is symbolic (possibly, there won’t be any new federal buildings built in the next four years), it is nonetheless a ratification of something which the average American believes deeply: good-looking buildings are better than ugly ones.
It should come as no surprise that the denunciation of the order is often along the lines that it is elitist or privileged or disrespectful of minority cultures with different architectural traditions (notwithstanding the fact that the order encourages the building of buildings in pueblo and other non-European styles). High art, supposedly, is the province of the wealthy elite. Beautiful buildings aren’t accessible to the common man or woman.
But actually, the common man or woman is most likely to benefit from this order. Generally, it is only very-educated people who appreciate styles like modernism. The ordinary citizen tends to have a pretty ordinary definition of what makes a building beautiful, namely that it looks good. The most popular buildings for tourists visiting their nation’s capital continue to be the buildings built with an eye towards grandeur (the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the White House, the United States Congress, the Jefferson Memorial, the Smithsonian museums), and the buildings which tend to puzzle visitors are the brutalist federal buildings which cluster around them.
Despite their attacks on classical architecture as privileged, it is generally the fans of modernism who are out of touch. Just as many who claim to stand for the working-person revile mass culture and look down on consumerism, they imagine that they are tearing down outdated standards to empower the downtrodden when what they are actually doing is engaging in ritualistic efforts to prove they aren’t like the masses.
Consumerism and mass culture may not always be pretty, but they show us very clearly what the average American wants. Perhaps that disappoints some people, but it should be a lesson in human nature. Mass culture generally produces art which is bland, uninspired, and nonetheless naturally appealing in certain basic aesthetic criteria that the vast majority of human beings obviously appreciate (if they didn’t, there wouldn’t be a market for it).