Has Europe lost its sense of beauty

Has Europe lost its sense of beauty? - , Thursday 27 June Liszt Institute Brussels What has become of beauty in the West today? From iconoclastic campaigns against paintings and statues (said to be too representative of Western colonialism) to the trend to upend “traditional beauty standards” in fashion in favour of plus-sized models, beauty seems to be conspicuous in its unfathomable nature. Today, public artworks are more likely to aim to shock or disgust than inspire feelings of harmony, and even the Renaissance nude is treated with unease. It seems as if the pursuit of harmonious and transcendent beauty, once revered since antiquity, now incites not admiration but suspicion. The classical ideals of beauty are vilified as dogmas of taste, associated with conservative, populist, and even racist mentalities. This suspicion that there is something inherently regressive in those who mourn contemporary culture’s turn away from beauty goes hand in hand with an unease with universal