Decline and Fall of Western Art

The Decline and Fall of Western Art by Brendan MP Heard, 319 pages

It is not particularly hard to say that the emperor has no clothes.  It is easy enough to notice when he flaunts his nakedness with the same assertiveness with which the modern art world flaunts its ugliness.  It is more difficult to explain why this deranged naked man is dancing his way through our museums and public spaces.  It is even more difficult to imagine how we can get him to stop.

To his credit, it is the difficult things that Brendan Heard attempts in The Decline and Fall of Western Art.  The extent to which he succeeds is another matter.  His account of the historical breakdown of Western art is tentative and somewhat superficial, with Picasso, Duchamp, and Kandinsky as the expected villains.  However, Heard is canny enough to understand that our cultural ruin has its roots in political and theological disorders, and his analysis of the impact of materialism and feminism on art is better developed, although more vituperative.  Heard's solutions hinge on a metaphysical revival, to which end he proposes a kind of mere neo-Platonism compatible with a wide variety of religious commitments.

Heard sets his ambitions high, but his scanty one-page bibliography is one sign that his reach exceeds his grasp.  He writes with passion and wit, but certain errors suggest that he is parroting second-hand (and possibly second-rate) sources rather than speaking from personal experience - although St Thomas Aquinas was doubtless more of a Platonist than is commonly supposed, he was certainly not a believer in a "universe-as-God Neoplatonic philosophy".  As this is Heard's first book, it can be hoped that there will be sequels, and that he and his writing will grow deeper and broader with time.