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"The Mona Lisa"... "The Pieta"... "The Girl
with a Pearl Earring." 

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For a score of centuries, artists enriched Western society with their works of astonishing beauty.

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"The Night Watch"...

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"The Thinker"... 

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"The Rocky Mountains."

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Master after master, from Leonardo, to Rembrandt, to Bierstadt, produced works that inspired,
uplifted, and deepened us.

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And they did this by demanding of themselves the highest standards of excellence, improving upon the work of

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each previous generation of masters, and continuing
to aspire to the highest quality attainable.

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But something happened on the way to the 20th
Century. The profound, the inspiring and the

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beautiful were replaced by the new, the different,
and the ugly. 

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Today the silly, the pointless, and the purely offensive are held up as the best of modern art.

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Michelangelo carved his "David" out of a rock.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art just

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offers us a rock, -- a rock -- all 340 tons
of it. That's how far standards have fallen.

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How did this happen? How did the thousand-year
ascent towards artistic perfection and excellence

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die out?

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It didn't. It was pushed out.

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Beginning in the late 19th century, a group dubbed

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The Impressionists rebelled against the French
Academie des Beaux Arts and its demand for

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classical standards. Whatever their intentions,
the new modernists sowed the seeds of aesthetic

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relativism -- the "beauty is in the eye of
the beholder" mentality.

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Today everybody loves the Impressionists.

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And, as with most revolutions, the first generation or so produced work of genuine merit. 

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Monet, Renoir, and Degas still maintained elements

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of disciplined design and execution,

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but with each new generation standards declined until there were no standards. 

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All that was left
was personal expression.

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The great art historian Jacob Rosenberg wrote
that quality in art "is not merely a matter

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of personal opinion but to a high degree . . . objectively
traceable."

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But the idea of a universal standard of quality in art is now usually met with strong resistance

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if not open ridicule.

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"How can art be objectively measured?" I'm
challenged. In responding, I simply point

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to the artistic results produced by universal
standards compared to what is produced by relativism.

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The former gave the world "The
Birth of Venus" and "The Dying Gaul," while

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the latter has given us "The Holy Virgin Mary,"
fashioned with cow dung and pornographic images,

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and "Petra," the prize-winning sculpture of
a policewoman squatting and urinating -- complete

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with a puddle of synthetic urine.

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Without aesthetic standards we have no way
to determine quality or inferiority. Here's

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a test I give my graduate students, all talented
and well educated. 

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Please analyze this Jackson Pollock painting and explain why it is good.

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It is only after they give very eloquent answers

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that I inform them that the painting is actually
a close up of my studio apron.

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 I don't blame them; I would probably have done the same since it's nearly impossible to differentiate

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between the two.

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"And who will determine quality?" is another
challenge I'm given. If we are to be intellectually

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honest, we all know of situations where professional
expertise is acknowledged and depended upon.

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Take figure skating in the Olympics, where
artistic excellence is judged by experts in

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the field. Surely we would flinch at the contestant
who indiscriminately threw himself across

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the ice and demanded that his routine be accepted
as being as worthy of value as that of the

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most disciplined skater.

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Not only has the quality of art diminished,
but also the subject matter has gone from

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the transcendent to the trashy. Where once
artists applied their talents to scenes of

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substance and integrity from history, literature,
religion, mythology, etc., many of today's

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artists merely use their art to make statements,

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often for nothing more than shock value.

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Artists of the past also made statements at times,

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but never at the expense of the visual excellence of their work. 

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It's not only artists who are
at fault; it is equally the fault of the so-called

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art community: the museum heads, gallery owners,
and the critics who encourage and financially

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enable the production of this rubbish. It
is they who champion graffiti and call it

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genius, promote the scatological and call
it meaningful. It is they who, in reality,

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are the naked emperors of art, for who else
would spend $10 million dollars on a rock

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and think it is art.

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But why do we have to be victims of all this
bad taste? We don't.

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By the art we patronize at museums or purchase
at galleries, we can make our opinions not

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only known but felt. An art gallery, after
all, is a business like any other. If the

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product doesn't sell, it won't be made. We
can also support organizations like The Art

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Renewal Center that work to restore objective
standards to the art world. And we can advocate

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the teaching of classical art appreciation
in our schools.

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Let's celebrate what we know is good and ignore
what we know is not.

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By the way, the white background you see behind
me is not simply a white graphic backdrop.

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It is a pure white painting by noted artist
Robert Rauschenberg at the San Francisco Museum

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of Modern Art.

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I'm Robert Florczak for Prager University.