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Left: The cloister windows of Notre Dame of Paris
I walk by Ryerson University almost daily in order to get to and from the downtown amenities (stores, bank, subways, etc.). Yesterday evening, I saw a young man taking photos of the new Image Arts building. I asked him what attracted him to the building. He said he liked the simple square. The building in the evening is impressively lit, and glows in dark shades of blue and yellow. Other times, it lights up in fluorescent pinks and purples. I'm not sure if this lighting extravaganza is to honor the new building, or if it will continue regularly. In any case, for a building that calls itself image arts, it is a cheesy decoration. But, it accentuates the box-like structure of the building.
I asked this young man if he's a film or photography student. He said neither, but was studying to be a counselor for LGBT youth. "Lesbian---Gay---Bisexual---Transgender---Youth" I said. Yes, he answered.
I asked him if architecture hadn't regressed. "Think about the medieval cathedrals, or the renaissance palaces. All we do now is glass boxes. Lego for grown ups. We're back to simple squares and circle, just a little above the line in the sand drawn with a piece of stick."
He informed me of the level modern technology has reached in order to build an almost exclusively glass building, since the glass is now essentially as strong as concrete.
Yes, but we have lost art in the process. Also, the medieval stained glass windows were no less of a technical feat. Their designers had to work with coloring the glass, designing the shapes, figures and forms within the glass, and making it function as a window. Think of the beauty of the glass in Notre Dame Cathedral. And the strength of those windows which held up arches.
I'm not into ornamentation, he replied nonchalantly, referencing (I think, although I may be giving him too much credit) the early twentieth century anti-ornament movement.
I don't think he's been to Paris, or even bothered with the history of glass and glass structures, when he gave me his quick, empty response.
"So what do you do" he asked me. I said I'm a former image arts (Ryerson) student of film and photography and that I tell people like him, one person at a time, that modern art, for all its supposed sophistication, has done us a great disservice, and is slowly dismantling our art and culture. And that my task as an image maker is to revive the tradition of the arts (of the image arts), and pick it up where modernism has thrown it aside, scornfully rejecting thousands of years of wisdom and erudition.
"Good bye, I have to be off now!" I said. Less than a minute later, I heard him shout from the (now empty) skating rink in front of the building: "I'm off too!" I hope he meant that he was done with those photos. Perhaps he just needed someone to jolt his intellect a little. I waved back, and walked on. But someone who has embraced this contrary life, this anti-life, is hardly going to be influenced by a five minute conversation. What he wants is the ultimate destruction of the traditional and religious society that condemns his "lifestyle." The less powerful this tradition, and its concrete reminders, the better for him and his ilk. Juvenile, even infantile art of basic shapes and design will certainly help with that regression, and ultimate destruction. One step at a time towards the gotterdammerung.