Why Beauty Matters

In 2019, Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan debuted his artwork entitled Comedian at Art Basel Miami. The artwork consisted of a fresh banana duct-taped to a wall, and sold for $120,000.

Later, when the world-famous artwork visited Korea, a student removed the banana, ate it, then replaced the peel. When the artist was told this had happened, he simply replied “No problem.” Many contemporary artists, as well as architects, seem to have given up on making their work beautiful. In today’s session, we will use our reasoning skills to think carefully about whether that was a good decision, and whether beauty is something valuable, something that we shouldn’t give up on so lightly. For today you will watch a one-hour documentary produced in 2009 by the BBC and philosopher Roger Scruton, called Why Beauty Matters. Scruton argues that beauty is essential for a good life, and that the lack of beauty in our art and architecture shows that something has gone horribly wrong in our culture, with real-world consequences for all of us. We will discuss in class whether he is right or wrong about this.

Text: Why Beauty Matters (2009) - Roger Scruton, produced by the BBC 

Further Reading: Scruton, Roger. Beauty: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011