Navigator, September, 2004

Editor's Desk

In This Issue

Letters to the Editor

Feature Article:

Why Art Became Ugly by Stephen Hicks
Popular commentators often deplore the ugliness and meaninglessness of contemporary art. But their laments simply state the obvious: Art has so debased itself that it is now irrelevant to the world most people inhabit. These presentations do not note how extraordinary that fact is, historically speaking, nor do they explain what has brought art to this condition. Stephen Hicks, in "Why Art Became Ugly," begins by explaining the fundamental ideas that have created and guided modern and postmodern art; he explores the artistic dead-end those movements have reached; and then, in an inspiring coda, he calls on the members of today's art world to launch an artistic revolution worthy of the scientific and technological revolutions around them.

Perspectives:

The Poetry of Freedom by John Enright
After Rose Wilder Lane wrote a review of Anthem, wondering which literary genre it belonged to, Ayn Rand wrote to her: "Anthem is a poem." Seen in that light, it is surely one of the greatest poems about freedom. But it is far from the only one, as John Enright makes clear in this brief excerpt from his lecture at The Objectivist Center's 2003 summer seminar. Included are selections from Byron, Milton, Dryden and others.

Free Verse by Roger Donway
As a supplement to John Enright's article, Navigator's editor offers a further selection of poems that celebrate personal and political freedom.

Cultural Calender:

The Doctor as Lockean by Roger Donway
Thomas Sydenham, follower of Francis Bacon's methodology and close friend of John Locke, brought an intense empiricism to seventeenth-century medicine. As a result, the age of the Enlightenment dubbed him "the English Hippocrates."

Soundings

Suggested Readings on Art and Culture

Logbook and Sightings