Beauty Will Save the World

Beauty Will Save the World: Recovering the Human in an Ideological Age by Gregory Wolfe, 257 pages

In this collection of essays, Gregory Wolfe confronts two interconnected cultural problems.  The first is political - most modern art is nihilistic, which is both a cause and a consequence of the fact that most conservatives reject modern art wholesale.  The second is religious - serious Christian artists are likely to find their faith derided by the secular establishment, while, at the same time, their work will not be accepted by the "Christian" counterculture unless it is trite and simplistic.  Advocating for an imaginative traditionalist conservatism that traces its genealogy back to Burke, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Eliot, Wolfe seeks both to encourage artists and convince conservatives and Christians to expand their understanding of modern art.

The early chapters of Beauty Will Save the World are unfortunately repetitive, as the reader is treated to similar arguments and litanies of creative worthies in the different essays.  As the book moves into considerations of the works of individual artists, however, it becomes more interesting, and the final essays are the best in the collection.  It is no accident that these are studies of the thinkers who have had the most immediate impact on Wolfe himself - the entire collection is strikingly personal in a way that is somewhat surprising but entirely fitting.