patrick.net

RWSGFY says

A school principal in Tallahassee, Florida, has been fired following parental complaints about a lesson on Michelangelo’s marble masterpiece David (1501-04), which was deemed “pornographic” by one aggrieved parent.

Who is the principle and what is the school?

I find this hard to believe in a time where tranny time story hour is the new rage. I could believe this in the 1980's but not now.

We fought against this shit, and won. Now we have to fight against perverts prancing around in front of 5 year olds. Never ending battle.

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/may-2023/

Behold, the new Richard Gilder Center for Science — an addition to New York’s American Museum of Natural History, designed by Jeanne Gang, the most-published architect on The Eyesore of the Month!

Here’s what you get when you ask computer aided design (CAD) to give you a “bat cave.” CAD is universal now in the architecture biz. This technology has aggravated the feedback loop between the human tendency to seek novelty and the bizarre-ness of every new building produced in our culture. Even before CAD arrived on the scene, novelty-seeking drove post-World War Two building design. That itself derived from the accelerated sense of “progress” induced by our turbo-charged cheap oil economy, which brought on dizzying technological innovation, another feedback loop. The net result was the buildings that represented human endeavor — especially, public buildings, museums, courthouses, libraries — had to look like nothing ever seen before. This programming also served to demolish people’s sense of history, of which the thinking classes were increasingly ashamed, especially after the fiasco of two world wars and Auschwitz.

What was wrong with this grand cavalcade of novelty-seeking, you might ask? It was creative… innovative… diverse! Well, yes. But it also tended to ignore the archetypal symbolic language that buildings need to project in order to inform people what each building means and what its role is in human endeavor. You could no longer distinguish a school from an insecticide factory. It also obliterated the anthropomorphic element in architecture that fitted buildings into a design ethos that reflected human form, in particular the “tripartite” configuration of top, middle, base (head, trunk, feet) which is the basis of many so-called classicisms.

Yet another consequence of perpetual novelty-seeking for the sake of “progress” is that buildings no longer relate to the other buildings around them. Each is a one-off, and so there is no continuity or unity in the urban pattern. The result is an unfortunate urban cacophony which only ends up expressing the disordered condition of our society.

Now you know.

Compare to, say:

Patrick says

Behold, the new Richard Gilder Center for Science

What it looks like when you are consumed by an amoeba.

Patrick says

Yet another consequence of perpetual novelty-seeking for the sake of “progress” is that buildings no longer relate to the other buildings around them. Each is a one-off, and so there is no continuity or unity in the urban pattern.

Seriously? I like those older neighborhoods where each house is distinctly different, as opposed to the newer subdivisions where each house is just a color scheme variation on the same 3 models throughout.

RWSGFY says

The recent rain storm has washed all the shit into the bay. Poor fishes.

No joke. When it rains, it pours into...

Patrick says

What seems so out of place to me is that the beauty was built at a time when America was not as "wealthy". I've said this more than a few times but I really believe it...G.R.E.E.D. is the most destructive human trait.

https://notthebee.com/article/i-am-sorry-to-tell-you-this-but-this-is-a-new-water-fountain-that-was-just-unveiled-in-the-historic-city-of-vienna-

If there ever was an argument for aliens, it is the heritage of monumental art and architecture that simply cannot be duplicated today with known technology. A lot of it HAD to have been created, albeit for the grandiosity and psychopathy of the complicit dynastic ruling classes, with some kind of 3D modeling, secret science and energy carving, anti gravity, or inter dimensional transforms.

As usual usual, the secret knowledges and technologies were held close to the chest of the various covert societies, just like today.

That is Vienna's newest fountain

Wow! Vienna is highly regarded for its classical visual art, but is absolutely peerless as being the center of music in what is actually called the "Viennese Era," which ran from 1750 to 1830 and included Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Schubert was actually born there.

Patrick says

What is it?

Ceffer says

A lot of it HAD to have been created, albeit for the grandiosity and psychopathy of the complicit dynastic ruling classes, with some kind of 3D modeling, secret science and energy carving, anti gravity, or inter dimensional transforms.

There is absolutely nothing that was done before that we can't do today. That includes Damascus steel and and Roman concrete.

The error is "I can't figure out how they did this with primitive tools!" - are you SURE they only had primitive tools? In 200 years time, people will be asking "how did they make this mechanical watch without a 3d CAD tool and laser cutting? Must be aliens!"

Most people don't even understand how a computer chip is made, although everybody uses them. Your typical person, TODAY doesn't know how an incandescent light bulb works, although that's trivial to understand, although the manufacturing process is complex.

We haven't lost technology, we've lost methods, because we have better methods. We don't bother with vacuum tubes, because transistors are a million times better. We don't bother with analog because digital is better. We might go back to analogue though because for niche areas, it's useful. We can do multiplication with analog circuits almost instantaneously, but the result has a precision error.

GNL says

What is it?

@GNL

It's Mont St. Michele in northern France.

https://sukwan.substack.com/p/what-do-you-dream-about

This marble statue is named the Release from Deception, or Il Disinganno. It was painstakingly carved by Genoese sculptor Francesco Queirolo and was produced over a period of 7 years from 1752-1759

Patrick says

https://sukwan.substack.com/p/what-do-you-dream-about

This marble statue is named the Release from Deception, or Il Disinganno. It was painstakingly carved by Genoese sculptor Francesco Queirolo and was produced over a period of 7 years from 1752-1759

That truly is amazing.

https://barsoom.substack.com/p/the-reenchantment-of-the-world

It wasn’t even that long ago that we lived in a more beautiful world. The aesthetic disconnect between the architecture of the pre- and post-WWII eras is so shockingly total that it is as if one civilization had wiped out another entirely. Walk down the street in any old European city, and one sees the fossilized remnants of that lost civilization, that alien people who held certain things sacred. Forget about the cathedrals, those jewels of architectural wonder. Even the ordinary buildings erected by our recent forebears, the apartment blocks, pumping stations, post offices, train stations, and so on, were built with an eye to beauty, embellished with carvings, porticoes, ironwork, sculptures, friezes, and other decorative flourishes, their proportions pleasing to the eye, their forms organically integrated with the wider aesthetic of both natural and urban environs. This was the architecture of a people for whom beauty was not a mere afterthought, but a central concern, for beauty glorified the soul, and the soul’s purpose was to glorify God.

Even the churches we build now – stark boxes marked out as religious merely by affixing a rectilinear cross to the unadorned wall facing the broad parking lot – do not evoke a sense of quiet awe, transportation into dumbstruck wonder, or deep and reverent peace. They are not meant to evoke anything. They are simply cheap to build, maximizing seating space and volume for a given quantity of material.

Patrick says

Even the ordinary buildings erected by our recent forebears, the apartment blocks, pumping stations, post offices, train stations, and so on, were built with an eye to beauty, embellished with carvings, porticoes, ironwork, sculptures, friezes, and other decorative flourishes, their proportions pleasing to the eye, their forms organically integrated with the wider aesthetic of both natural and urban environs.

Yes, back when labor was cheap.

I think we use to have a lot more master craftsmen. We don't build anything to last the ages.

Amazing, a fountain created in 2022 which is actually pleasant to look at:

In March 2022 the construction of the fountain in St. Peter's square was completed.[40] In the base of the marble fountain there are four lions. Above the visitor can see four members of the Danaids.[41] The fountain has a width of 7 meters and a height of 5 meters, while the fountain was designed in collaboration with the Supreme School of Fine Arts in Athens.[42]

Maybe there is hope that not everything modern will always be utter shit.

I like simple. Ornate structures are annoying and ugly to me. It's not about the skill either. People can still make this stuff. It's the upkeep of it.

I'm an MCM guy at heart, but there's still details that you can add that are artistic. Shit like that fountain annoys me and reminds me of Europe which I have no interest in. You have to go in annually, likely on taxpayer $$$$ and clean it and maintain it.

I don't like all glass structures or vanilla cladded buildings in high rises. In houses I like using this https://vintageplywood.com/collections/weldtex Accent walls and exterior in certain spots. I'd post photos of my house but don't want to dox myself with a reverse image search.

https://jameshowardkunstler.substack.com/p/eyesore-of-the-month-is-back-nov

Eyesore of the Month is Back (Nov. '24)

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.



Behold, the new Rose des Vents student apartments at the Technopôle Angus, Montreal, Canada! Zut alors ! ! ! Our neighbor to the north, laboring harshly under the regime of Justin Trudeau, has developed an extreme penchant for self-punishment. Hence, its student housing draws inspiration from the great 1954 movie by director Don Siegel, Riot in Cell Block 11. Yes, Looks exactly like the municipal lockup in a small-to-medium city. The two top floors just scream “Exercise Yard” with all that chain-link fencing. The ground floor has even less character than the building above, signifying nothing. Since that’s where the building meets the street, it will serve as a people-repellant. (People like to know what they’re walking into.) Designed by the Montreal architecture firm ADHOC. Now, imagine it in January of a Montreal winter: windswept, with giant piles of filthy snow all around.

DOGEWontAmountToShit says

See this?

It was TITTIES that saved Perseus!

Yeah, I'm not super ornate. I like Federal Architecture. Tudor style houses, clean lines, etc.

However when it comes to statuary, paintings, etc. anything before beats the living shit out of modern art.