Jun 11, 2015 10:55 PM
http://www.city-journal.org/2015/25_2_ur...otton.html
EXCERPT: [...] Alain de Botton’s vision of “enlightened capitalism” was prominent as well: in his recent book, "Art as Therapy," coauthored with cultural critic John Armstrong, he describes his vision for “an economy that harnesses the magnificent productive forces of capitalism to a more accurate understanding of the range and depth of our needs.” He cites Lego in children’s toys, All Nippon Airways in aviation, Innocent Smoothies in fruit juice (and, presumably, the School of Life in adult education) as examples of “businesses that have successfully reconciled an idea of the good with capitalist strictures.” The seminar urged us to be artful in our everyday lives. Imagine you’re in a video game, we were told, when navigating your way through the Central London rush-hour masses. Be grateful for periods of boredom—they can be productive “incubation phases” for creative output.
[...] In de Botton’s 2012 book, "Religion for Atheists," he laments the lack of fraternity offered by existence: “In the lonely canyons of the modern city, there is no more honored emotion than love. However, this is not the love of which the religious speak, not the expansive, universal brotherhood of mankind; it is a more jealous, restricted and ultimately meaner variety. It is a romantic love which sends us on a maniacal quest for a single person with whom we hope to achieve a life-long and complete communion, one person in particular who will spare us any need for people in general.”
He proposes the establishment of urban “agape restaurants,” where guests would be provided with copies of a “Book of Agape,” which he describes fancifully as a guidebook that would be “somewhat reminiscent of the Jewish Haggadah or the Catholic missal.” Guests would be steered away from the usual conversational platitudes about occupation and status and toward inner sentiment, such as “What do you regret?,” “Whom can you not forgive?,” or “What do you fear?” The goal would be to foster compassion and self-reckoning: “Our conversations would . . . reveal to us the extent to which, behind our well-defended facades, most of us are going a little out of our minds—and so have reason to stretch out a hand to our equally tortured neighbours.” An agape restaurant would permit “our fear of strangers to recede,” as “the poor would eat with the rich, the black with the white, the orthodox with the secular, the bipolar with the balanced.” But do the rich and the poor in any city have enough intimate dark fears in common to find gratification in sharing them with strangers—and to do so without the language of a common faith?
[...] What de Botton’s critics object to most, even more than the slick marketing and commercialism he excels in, are his ideas themselves. The media reacted harshly, for instance, to de Botton and art historian John Armstrong’s Art as Therapy exhibit, an “intervention” featured in 2014 at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and in 2015 at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. The exhibitions followed de Botton and Armstrong’s 2013 publication of "Art as Therapy". A lavish coffee-table book, Art as Therapy argues that while cultural dogma tells us that art is, somehow, vital, our encounters with it in museums and galleries leave us confused and uninspired.
The fault, de Botton and Armstrong say, lies not in our own shortcomings but in the art establishment’s refusal to answer the question of what art is for. (See “What Is Art For?,” Autumn 2013.) Armstrong and de Botton argue that art is a therapeutic medium that compensates for our human failings, enhances and preserves our virtues, and aids us along life’s stations of love, marriage, death, desire, and power. The point of visiting a museum is to expose oneself to beautiful objects that can make us good and wise; de Botton wants to demystify this.
[...] The media’s rejection of de Botton’s ideas reflects queasiness at a mass culture organized around solipsism. But this ire is misplaced: the ironic, detached stance, with which they seem most comfortable, is ultimately more vacuous—so self-absorbed as to fall short of asserting anything. His detractors accuse de Botton of being addicted to individual enchantment, but they are addicted to cynicism. Determined to eject him from their art-world clique, they fail to address his central claims: that museum attendance is declining, that museums are badly underfunded, and that the public finds art intimidating and inaccessible, even as secular, atomized human beings need art more than ever. De Botton aims to render our relationship with art more intimate and direct, to nudge us toward sensitivity and attention. We should seek a more transcendent experience of art, he suggests, than merely observing art’s “formal relationships.”...
EXCERPT: [...] Alain de Botton’s vision of “enlightened capitalism” was prominent as well: in his recent book, "Art as Therapy," coauthored with cultural critic John Armstrong, he describes his vision for “an economy that harnesses the magnificent productive forces of capitalism to a more accurate understanding of the range and depth of our needs.” He cites Lego in children’s toys, All Nippon Airways in aviation, Innocent Smoothies in fruit juice (and, presumably, the School of Life in adult education) as examples of “businesses that have successfully reconciled an idea of the good with capitalist strictures.” The seminar urged us to be artful in our everyday lives. Imagine you’re in a video game, we were told, when navigating your way through the Central London rush-hour masses. Be grateful for periods of boredom—they can be productive “incubation phases” for creative output.
[...] In de Botton’s 2012 book, "Religion for Atheists," he laments the lack of fraternity offered by existence: “In the lonely canyons of the modern city, there is no more honored emotion than love. However, this is not the love of which the religious speak, not the expansive, universal brotherhood of mankind; it is a more jealous, restricted and ultimately meaner variety. It is a romantic love which sends us on a maniacal quest for a single person with whom we hope to achieve a life-long and complete communion, one person in particular who will spare us any need for people in general.”
He proposes the establishment of urban “agape restaurants,” where guests would be provided with copies of a “Book of Agape,” which he describes fancifully as a guidebook that would be “somewhat reminiscent of the Jewish Haggadah or the Catholic missal.” Guests would be steered away from the usual conversational platitudes about occupation and status and toward inner sentiment, such as “What do you regret?,” “Whom can you not forgive?,” or “What do you fear?” The goal would be to foster compassion and self-reckoning: “Our conversations would . . . reveal to us the extent to which, behind our well-defended facades, most of us are going a little out of our minds—and so have reason to stretch out a hand to our equally tortured neighbours.” An agape restaurant would permit “our fear of strangers to recede,” as “the poor would eat with the rich, the black with the white, the orthodox with the secular, the bipolar with the balanced.” But do the rich and the poor in any city have enough intimate dark fears in common to find gratification in sharing them with strangers—and to do so without the language of a common faith?
[...] What de Botton’s critics object to most, even more than the slick marketing and commercialism he excels in, are his ideas themselves. The media reacted harshly, for instance, to de Botton and art historian John Armstrong’s Art as Therapy exhibit, an “intervention” featured in 2014 at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and in 2015 at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. The exhibitions followed de Botton and Armstrong’s 2013 publication of "Art as Therapy". A lavish coffee-table book, Art as Therapy argues that while cultural dogma tells us that art is, somehow, vital, our encounters with it in museums and galleries leave us confused and uninspired.
The fault, de Botton and Armstrong say, lies not in our own shortcomings but in the art establishment’s refusal to answer the question of what art is for. (See “What Is Art For?,” Autumn 2013.) Armstrong and de Botton argue that art is a therapeutic medium that compensates for our human failings, enhances and preserves our virtues, and aids us along life’s stations of love, marriage, death, desire, and power. The point of visiting a museum is to expose oneself to beautiful objects that can make us good and wise; de Botton wants to demystify this.
[...] The media’s rejection of de Botton’s ideas reflects queasiness at a mass culture organized around solipsism. But this ire is misplaced: the ironic, detached stance, with which they seem most comfortable, is ultimately more vacuous—so self-absorbed as to fall short of asserting anything. His detractors accuse de Botton of being addicted to individual enchantment, but they are addicted to cynicism. Determined to eject him from their art-world clique, they fail to address his central claims: that museum attendance is declining, that museums are badly underfunded, and that the public finds art intimidating and inaccessible, even as secular, atomized human beings need art more than ever. De Botton aims to render our relationship with art more intimate and direct, to nudge us toward sensitivity and attention. We should seek a more transcendent experience of art, he suggests, than merely observing art’s “formal relationships.”...