aesthetic barbarism | Theodore Dalrymple writes:

Cité radieuse de Rezé

Dalrymple writes that the modernists were adept at claiming that their architecture was both

a logical development to and æsthetic successor of classical Greek architecture; and
utterly new and unprecedented

The latter, he points out, was nearer the mark. They created buildings that,

not only in theory but in practice, were incompatible with all that had gone before, and intentionally so. Any one of their buildings could, and often did, lay waste a townscape, with devastating consequences. What had previously been a source of pride for inhabitants became a source of impotent despair.

Le Corbusier’s books

are littered with references to the Parthenon and other great monuments of architectural genius: but how anybody can see anything in common between the Parthenon and the Unité d’habitation (an appellation that surely by itself ought to tell us everything we need to know about Corbusier), other than that both are the product of human labour, defeats me.

Cité radieuse de Marseille

Aesthetic vandalism

There is hardly a beautiful church in the country, writes Dalrymple,

whose interior the Church of England has not wrecked by its pursuit of false gods. If ever a Bolshevik government were to come to power it would find its work of turning churches into museums of religion and atheism half-done.

Come into the cathedral, children. We've cleared away all that boring religious stuff to make it more relevant to you

Suffer the little yobs to come into the cathedral: we’ve cleared away all that boring religious stuff to make it more relevant to them

Visual desecration

In Winchester cathedral, for example, you will find

many dreadful modern artworks
stacks of steel chairs and other things one expects to find in a furniture warehouse
many brightly-coloured notices
a large cardboard cutout of a dinosaur
a prominent notice warning people to watch their step at the entrance to a side-chapel

The desecration is

indicative of a loss of confidence, of faith. There is nothing dedicated to the glory of God because there is no God.

I don’t care what you say, those side-chapels are lethal

Authors of the barbarism

Among the many notices is one

informing visitors who is in the cathedral hierarchy, just as hospitals put up notices with photos of the most important people in the hospital (Director of Strategic Planning, Director of Diversity, Director of Quality Assurance, etc.)