- Modernism isn't a collection a movements across different countries/mediums in the early 20th century, but a "movement" whose "heart" is making intellectuals feel better than regular folks.
- No space for differing aesthetic opinions, the only real art is what you feel in your gut.
- Modernists are actively trying to change the places you live in work, despite the fact that the height of the movement happening decades ago.
- Specifically call out Jazz/Atonal music, apropos nothing.
Look, I'm all for differing opinions, but yours are more political than aesthetic (proving the parent's point). Plenty of modern architecture is aesthetically pleasing to the untrained eye. Some of it is not, and some of it is just objectively bad. However, your particular point of view, which presupposes some elite cabal, pushing there modernist agenda/degenerate art on an unknowing and unwilling populace, deserves some more scrutiny.
In this context architecture is mostly about homes, so gut reactions aren't unreasonable.
And the Modernists very much were trying to change the landscape.
Here's a video about the Smithsons who designed one of the UK's largest housing projects. They're clearly serious and well-intentioned, but also... "eccentric" is probably a diplomatic description.
But... it's worth remembering that these projects were replacements for slum housing, not showcase palaces and cathedrals. While they weren't ideal, they did usually manage to be warmer, healthier, cleaner, and more sanitary than the hovels they typically replaced.
Over time some of the harder egdes of modernism have been filed off, and modern projects seem to be trying to learn from the past, while still keeping the functionalism of the original modernists.
There are plenty of blocks on the European mainland which are very liveable, built in that style. And unless Mr Dalrymple wants to propose a new archiectural style that he thinks can improve on them, it's not worth taking him seriously - except as a self-indulgent grumbler.
- Modernism isn't a collection a movements across different countries/mediums in the early 20th century, but a "movement" whose "heart" is making intellectuals feel better than regular folks.
- No space for differing aesthetic opinions, the only real art is what you feel in your gut.
- Modernists are actively trying to change the places you live in work, despite the fact that the height of the movement happening decades ago.
- Specifically call out Jazz/Atonal music, apropos nothing.
Look, I'm all for differing opinions, but yours are more political than aesthetic (proving the parent's point). Plenty of modern architecture is aesthetically pleasing to the untrained eye. Some of it is not, and some of it is just objectively bad. However, your particular point of view, which presupposes some elite cabal, pushing there modernist agenda/degenerate art on an unknowing and unwilling populace, deserves some more scrutiny.