I'm so glad you took on the concept of beauty, Ted. People do confuse it with physical prettiness, which doesn't do it justice. Beauty is a quality of wholeness or harmony that generates pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. The "beauty business" really IS skin deep. But that's not the kind of beauty that should matter to artists.
As a designer, I've thought about beauty a lot. Not only thought about it, but got my hands into the clay of it. Beauty can be rough, awkward, harsh, frightening, and even a little ugly, as long as it contains the elements of rightness, elegance, and surprise. Rightness includes qualities like integrity, honesty, and fitness for duty. Elegance is about simplicity, efficiency, and craftsmanship. Surprise is that tingle, or excitement, or emotional pop when you first encounter something special.
Using these as guidelines, a traffic jam fails the beauty test, and so does a landfill. A landfill doesn't communicate wholeness or harmony to many people. At the other end of the spectrum, the movie Casablanca does embody wholeness and harmony, giving pleasure, meaning, and satisfaction to a broad audience.
Any artist who isn't hot on the trail of beauty is rejecting the very thing that makes life worth living.
All you say is true. I wake every morning and go outside and declare to God that I will walk in beauty and offer up the gift from my hands and my heart. Then I go create. I fail often but thats ok too.
The trouble is that the 'art world' - the gatekeepers (art schools, agents, galleries) have rejected beauty wholesale, equating it, as Tad says, with kitsch sentimentality. Those artists - and they exist - who pursue beauty find themselves unable to mount shows or sell through galleries. Thoroughly depressing.
Do you have examples? If you're speaking of trendy galleries in Manhattan and elsewhere, then what's on the walls is what art dealers believe will sell. The world of commercial galleries is one of cutthroat competition and collectors who view works as equivalent to blue chip investments. It's an ugly scene, and absolutely not reflective of what a huge number of artists are actually creating. But they will never get commercial representation, let alone fullpage ads for gallery shows in publications like ARTforum.
Aesthetics and ideals change. The Impressionists' work was thought to be ugly, incomprehensible and other not-beautiful things. Manet was attacked for his "Olympia," which shows a nude (and very real) courtesan, not a neo-classical Venus. The same thing happened to people like Matisse, yet during his lifetime, the consensus shifted significantly.
One can take a word and do whatever they please with it. I still love the word beauty and I use it a lot, as well the word truth. There is such a profound sense of unworthiness, and hatred toward the body, the feminine aspect in our culture, as well toward aging. I see the attachment to a youthful appearance as a form of morbidity, a crude relatoinship to death, unexplored, unspoken, a kind of dull materialism. When you can see beauty, and feel beautiful, you are free, and you will not be buying it from anyone.
well.. if beauty is truth, then truth is scary, think about waking up with puffy eyes in the morning, caked makeup from the night before, does that represent truth, "I'm ugly" that's bewildering.
I've supported myself as an artist for over 40 years. Many times I've asked myself, "what is beauty?"
BEAUTY IS THE INTERFACE BETWEEN OUR EVERYDAY LIVES AND THE DIVINE MIND.
And I'm doing my best to make sure that the Electronic World doesn't erase that connection.
... I just re-read my comment. Sorry if I sounded kind of preachy here. When this answer came to me about 7 years ago, it seemed so profound and I wanted to share it. There are some GREAT answers and ideas in this thread!
Great answer! This essay has really made me think about our collective responsibility to keep that interface and dialogue alive. It's also made me think about the backdrop of mass consumerism, tech and conversations about mental health. We can't deny that there is an interplay of modern day factors that hinder that interface being seen and respected as a virtue. The minds of many are distracted and affected.
You've probably written about this somewhere, so forgive me if you have. But Sontag's "Against Interpretation" teaches us an important lesson that strikes me as relevant to your point here.
The lesson is this: the practice of distinguishing (what gets called) the form of a work of art from (what gets called) its content is a practice that invites, encourages, and perpetuates precisely the commodification, manipulation, and critical mediatedness of beauty you lament here.
This is because the very concept of content (as that which is opposed to form) is that of something that may be extracted from the artwork, leaving the original form behind, and then delivered, unchanged, in some other form. It is therefore the concept of that which can be captured by the words of a critic in order for the uninitiated to "get" the artwork; the concept of something the critic can reveal only by applying some theory; the concept of that which can be manufactured at scale, simulated, bought and sold; the concept of something which can be "incorrect" in various ways, and so on.
A seeker seeks out beauty for it's own intrinsic sake, not for the validation of society. It opens our hearts and senses to higher realities. Not everyone is ready to accept beauty. That includes songwriters, composers, artists, writers etc...
I never understood hard, edgy rock. Punk, Metal etc... Where's the beauty in that? Than I watched Rick Beato's interview with guitarist from Metallica, Kirk Hammett. And he acknowledged, that their music is about people getting in tune with their rage. So if I ever need that medicine, I know where to go find it.
People use the arts to get in touch with the unconscious material they need to work on. Jazz Pianist Hal Galper, who was part of the Phil Woods Quintet, says on a video on youtube, "We listen to what we need." That is a profound statement and thought about it for a long time. That's Plato level stuff!
When I was a kid, I watched the Omen (my parents had no idea what the movie was about) and it scared the hee bee jee bee's out of me. And eventually watched the Exorcist on tv. The horror genre helps people get in touch with their shadow in ways they can't consciously deal with. At this stage of my life, I ain't scared of No Ghosts. So I don't need to go to horror flick. I'd be bored. There will always be a need for it.
Society needs Stephen King's and Alfred Hitchcock and Metallica as it serves people on their journey. They need to clear out the darkness to accept the beauty.
Put some music on that is softer, more subtle or even sentimental music for somebody that is a thrill seeker, and it will drive them nuts. Force a Metallica listener to listen to an hour of Barry Manilow Or Paul Anka and they will descend into madness.
If a person wants to get intune with their jiggy, there is music for that. James Brown, Cameo, any good funka dunk will do.
So I understand why beauty is not everyones cup of tea. They are not ready for it.
I don't want to listen to Yoko Ono screaming and throwing stuff at a canvas. That's for her.
"You must protest! You must protest! It is your diamond duty.
Ah, but in such an ugly time, the true protest is beauty."
Phil Ochs wrote this during the 1960s resistance to the Vietnam war. (I always thought Ochs was head and shoulders above Bob Dylan as a poet, songwriter, and resistance storyteller.) Even today in so-called post-modern times, beauty is ever a protest. Against ugliness of heart and spirit. Against cruelty that runs amok because it has power. Against all that is petty, mean, and vile. I search for beauty all the time and try to convey it in my fiction. But without ugliness, how would we know the difference?
Beauty makes us vulnerable. It bypasses the irony and the posturing that insiders and gatekeepers rely on. It asks both artist and those encountering the art to stop and feel. It suggests to them that they may feel differently from others, and lose the safety of the herd. It bypasses our constructed identities. And almost without exception, it requires skill, which requires devotion and commitment to a practice. Beauty demands all the things that we actually can't buy with money.
In Texas we say Beauty may be skin deep but ugly goes clean to the bone. That's shorthand for no need to argue with stupid or mean people because they care about nothing but themself.
Another sad truth: plastic surgery is often sought to remedy an emotional and/or spiritual deficiency. And it fails miserably in this regard, since the way we perceive ourselves is so much more than what we or others see.
lots of lip products enhance or temporarily enhance lips, it's a nice look, and if you don't like the injection lite look, it goes away on its own in less than 12 hours
I'm not so sure about the point being made here. Popular tastes, and economic success, have never aligned with so-called refined tastes in any sort of artistic endeavor. Talented artists go hungry while producers of pedestrian work get rich. Or people spend their money on botox instead of theater tickets. That is a very old story. But today I can listen to the best (according to my tastes) music ever recorded for $10/month, and so can anybody else. Same for literature, which is even cheaper. We all have the freedom to seek out, and enjoy, beautiful works -- regardless of the whims of the supposed "gatekeepers" of culture. Sometimes I regret that popular tastes don't align with mine. But most of the time I'm happy I don't have to fight the crowds. People who worry about "gatekeepers" are talking about economics, not art. We live in a golden age of artistic expression. The former barriers for artists to produce beautiful work -- however that term is defined -- are almost non-existent today.
I think Ted's point is a broader one, not strictly confined to the arts. It is that ugliness not only exists, it always has, but is actually on parade and running things at the moment. If Mark Twain were around today, he might be making that same point.
At least that's how I heard it, and think about it. I think it has to do with the loss of the feeling of shame for selfish acts in our ME FIRST, ME ONLY society, and how we have gotten used to that.
There is a possible inner moral beauty as well as outer beauty, but it is being out marketed by the Botoxes in our lives. Shallow cover ups.
People have long been worried about corruption of our ideals. This is always a danger of this. It is so easy to gradually become corrupted.
When everything becomes just a thing to be sold, nothing is worth anything.
I see beauty, creativity, and love as a central nexus. I see the deepest beauty coming from the heart. I also believe that most humans begin with that sort of beauty. I have been in a few countries and in every one of them two year olds did not need lessons in how to dance. Children will dance spontaneously, no grownups needed! Dance is an expression of joy and love. Also, young children know about goodness. Here is a study that documented that goodness comes from deep in the heart.
Young Children and Adults Show Differential Arousal to Moral and Conventional Transgressions_2020
I don't recall when I began telling people that the deepest truth was spoken by a poet who did not live to see his thirtieth birthday, the last stanza of his poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
One of the greatest sources of frustration to me has been how so many people are unable to understand that. Had more people thought that way Trump would have been expelled from the presidency within 48 hours after he put children in cages. I spent twenty years of my life trying to convince scientists that their belief in a machine universe was the worst kind of ugly and not true. They told me I was a romantic fool who refused to grow up and see the world as it really was. I listen to music everyday. Without that I am not sure I could stand living in this insane world. I also sing and dance and read poetry and novels. There is so much beauty that it is tempting to disappear into a world where ugliness is excluded. But the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil is a fool's paradise. We have an immune system to protect our bodies from death dealing invaders but the cancer that forms within and says I am really you is the most dangerous. Unbounded selfishness is the highway to death for all of us. We must find a way to remove the cancer.
Great peice. I disagree that people who get facials and plastic surgery are interested in beauty. They are interested in vanity and not what Roger Scruton would call disinterested beauty or useless beauty.
Horrifying that the word "beauty" has become synonymous with "not aging" as though we are supposed to be only partially here, frozen in some kind of time vault like Han Solo in carbonite. But who is buying us? Who is putting all this frozen-faced forever-young version of beauty on display? For a while, I rejected beauty as a siren call luring paychecks to drown in a futile attempt to look twenty forever, but then motherhood freed me from this plastic version of beauty. Now I believe in beauty for the same reason I pray, because I have a soul. Beauty can call to us like fireflies in a dark yard. I agree with you that beauty and truth lead us to goodness. I wish we could reset the narrative of beauty to normalize laugh lines, silver heads, skin that has enjoyed the sun... your piece really made me think. Let's bring the intensity and desire and unabashed belief that beauty will change the world. Like you say, our beauty is more real than theirs...
Beauty has been consumerist since at least forever. Historically, for women, it was their only currency, and it is still a form of currency for both men and women. Every woman remembers that even as a little girl, she was taught to be concerned with her personal aesthetics. When all you own is your body, if that, one is taught to make the most of it.
It isn't just women. Men have their own aesthetic that serves as currency. It's no surprise that taller, better looking men tend to get higher salaries. Corporate competition is more of a beauty contest than anyone likes to admit. Look at all those cookie cutter CEOs.
Go back 20 or 30 thousand years, and you'll find shells and pebbles pierced to be strung on a necklace or other adornment. Some of those artifacts were found hundreds of miles from their source. Beauty was consumerist then, and it's consumerist now.
If you look at the arts, beauty is still important. Movies don't just hire actors based on their diction. Stock photo models aren't chosen off the street. Song lyrics, popular poetry, are chosen to please, even be catchy. Travel brochures emphasize the beauty offered at their destination. The consumer arts, the ones that most people will pay money for, are still about beauty.
The fine arts are different. There was an anti-beauty movement that started late in the 19th century in opposition to the rising consumer culture. It rejected the contemporary idea of beauty. The goal was épater le bourgeois, to shock the consumer class. That kind of art tends to be bought by the wealthy and wealthy institutions. It's a totally different animal. The whole point was to distinguish the wealthy from the merely prosperous.
Which is why The Picture of Dorian Grey is still so powerful, I think. Male beauty was as important to the Greeks and Romans as it was to Dorian Grey's image of himself - certainly more so than female beauty, on the whole. (Most women, whether goddesses or mortals, shown in Greek art are clothed, up to a certain point. But male figures were almost invariably nude.)
I'm so glad you took on the concept of beauty, Ted. People do confuse it with physical prettiness, which doesn't do it justice. Beauty is a quality of wholeness or harmony that generates pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. The "beauty business" really IS skin deep. But that's not the kind of beauty that should matter to artists.
As a designer, I've thought about beauty a lot. Not only thought about it, but got my hands into the clay of it. Beauty can be rough, awkward, harsh, frightening, and even a little ugly, as long as it contains the elements of rightness, elegance, and surprise. Rightness includes qualities like integrity, honesty, and fitness for duty. Elegance is about simplicity, efficiency, and craftsmanship. Surprise is that tingle, or excitement, or emotional pop when you first encounter something special.
Using these as guidelines, a traffic jam fails the beauty test, and so does a landfill. A landfill doesn't communicate wholeness or harmony to many people. At the other end of the spectrum, the movie Casablanca does embody wholeness and harmony, giving pleasure, meaning, and satisfaction to a broad audience.
Any artist who isn't hot on the trail of beauty is rejecting the very thing that makes life worth living.
All you say is true. I wake every morning and go outside and declare to God that I will walk in beauty and offer up the gift from my hands and my heart. Then I go create. I fail often but thats ok too.
The trouble is that the 'art world' - the gatekeepers (art schools, agents, galleries) have rejected beauty wholesale, equating it, as Tad says, with kitsch sentimentality. Those artists - and they exist - who pursue beauty find themselves unable to mount shows or sell through galleries. Thoroughly depressing.
There will always be people whose souls need beauty. They will search for it and find it. And be happy to pay the artist. :-)
Do you have examples? If you're speaking of trendy galleries in Manhattan and elsewhere, then what's on the walls is what art dealers believe will sell. The world of commercial galleries is one of cutthroat competition and collectors who view works as equivalent to blue chip investments. It's an ugly scene, and absolutely not reflective of what a huge number of artists are actually creating. But they will never get commercial representation, let alone fullpage ads for gallery shows in publications like ARTforum.
Aesthetics and ideals change. The Impressionists' work was thought to be ugly, incomprehensible and other not-beautiful things. Manet was attacked for his "Olympia," which shows a nude (and very real) courtesan, not a neo-classical Venus. The same thing happened to people like Matisse, yet during his lifetime, the consensus shifted significantly.
Food for thought?
Well spoken, it is a tragedy both that our society has bastardized the meaning of “beauty” and has brainwashed subsequent generations to buy that lie.
And the men who hold high places
Must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality
Closer to the heart
Closer to the heart
The blacksmith and the artist
Reflect it in their art
They forge their creativity
Closer to the heart
Yes closer to the heart
_N. Peart
I've done years of modeling. I look totally different with every photographer I work with. Surprisingly I have pretty strong longevity.
One can take a word and do whatever they please with it. I still love the word beauty and I use it a lot, as well the word truth. There is such a profound sense of unworthiness, and hatred toward the body, the feminine aspect in our culture, as well toward aging. I see the attachment to a youthful appearance as a form of morbidity, a crude relatoinship to death, unexplored, unspoken, a kind of dull materialism. When you can see beauty, and feel beautiful, you are free, and you will not be buying it from anyone.
Love the analogy of beauty to freedom! I hadn't thought of that yet.
well.. if beauty is truth, then truth is scary, think about waking up with puffy eyes in the morning, caked makeup from the night before, does that represent truth, "I'm ugly" that's bewildering.
I've supported myself as an artist for over 40 years. Many times I've asked myself, "what is beauty?"
BEAUTY IS THE INTERFACE BETWEEN OUR EVERYDAY LIVES AND THE DIVINE MIND.
And I'm doing my best to make sure that the Electronic World doesn't erase that connection.
... I just re-read my comment. Sorry if I sounded kind of preachy here. When this answer came to me about 7 years ago, it seemed so profound and I wanted to share it. There are some GREAT answers and ideas in this thread!
Great answer! This essay has really made me think about our collective responsibility to keep that interface and dialogue alive. It's also made me think about the backdrop of mass consumerism, tech and conversations about mental health. We can't deny that there is an interplay of modern day factors that hinder that interface being seen and respected as a virtue. The minds of many are distracted and affected.
You said it well, but the words got in the way.
This is lovely--I'm stealing it! It's not preachy, btw.
You've probably written about this somewhere, so forgive me if you have. But Sontag's "Against Interpretation" teaches us an important lesson that strikes me as relevant to your point here.
The lesson is this: the practice of distinguishing (what gets called) the form of a work of art from (what gets called) its content is a practice that invites, encourages, and perpetuates precisely the commodification, manipulation, and critical mediatedness of beauty you lament here.
This is because the very concept of content (as that which is opposed to form) is that of something that may be extracted from the artwork, leaving the original form behind, and then delivered, unchanged, in some other form. It is therefore the concept of that which can be captured by the words of a critic in order for the uninitiated to "get" the artwork; the concept of something the critic can reveal only by applying some theory; the concept of that which can be manufactured at scale, simulated, bought and sold; the concept of something which can be "incorrect" in various ways, and so on.
Thank you for the reminder that in great works of art, the form and the content serve the same master.
A seeker seeks out beauty for it's own intrinsic sake, not for the validation of society. It opens our hearts and senses to higher realities. Not everyone is ready to accept beauty. That includes songwriters, composers, artists, writers etc...
I never understood hard, edgy rock. Punk, Metal etc... Where's the beauty in that? Than I watched Rick Beato's interview with guitarist from Metallica, Kirk Hammett. And he acknowledged, that their music is about people getting in tune with their rage. So if I ever need that medicine, I know where to go find it.
People use the arts to get in touch with the unconscious material they need to work on. Jazz Pianist Hal Galper, who was part of the Phil Woods Quintet, says on a video on youtube, "We listen to what we need." That is a profound statement and thought about it for a long time. That's Plato level stuff!
When I was a kid, I watched the Omen (my parents had no idea what the movie was about) and it scared the hee bee jee bee's out of me. And eventually watched the Exorcist on tv. The horror genre helps people get in touch with their shadow in ways they can't consciously deal with. At this stage of my life, I ain't scared of No Ghosts. So I don't need to go to horror flick. I'd be bored. There will always be a need for it.
Society needs Stephen King's and Alfred Hitchcock and Metallica as it serves people on their journey. They need to clear out the darkness to accept the beauty.
Put some music on that is softer, more subtle or even sentimental music for somebody that is a thrill seeker, and it will drive them nuts. Force a Metallica listener to listen to an hour of Barry Manilow Or Paul Anka and they will descend into madness.
If a person wants to get intune with their jiggy, there is music for that. James Brown, Cameo, any good funka dunk will do.
So I understand why beauty is not everyones cup of tea. They are not ready for it.
I don't want to listen to Yoko Ono screaming and throwing stuff at a canvas. That's for her.
"You must protest! You must protest! It is your diamond duty.
Ah, but in such an ugly time, the true protest is beauty."
Phil Ochs wrote this during the 1960s resistance to the Vietnam war. (I always thought Ochs was head and shoulders above Bob Dylan as a poet, songwriter, and resistance storyteller.) Even today in so-called post-modern times, beauty is ever a protest. Against ugliness of heart and spirit. Against cruelty that runs amok because it has power. Against all that is petty, mean, and vile. I search for beauty all the time and try to convey it in my fiction. But without ugliness, how would we know the difference?
Reminds me of the Eden story. How would you know things are beautiful if you hadn't seen anything but beauty.
Beauty makes us vulnerable. It bypasses the irony and the posturing that insiders and gatekeepers rely on. It asks both artist and those encountering the art to stop and feel. It suggests to them that they may feel differently from others, and lose the safety of the herd. It bypasses our constructed identities. And almost without exception, it requires skill, which requires devotion and commitment to a practice. Beauty demands all the things that we actually can't buy with money.
I love that "beauty halts traffic" (my quote)
Thank you for this revelatory gem🙏💎🙏
In Texas we say Beauty may be skin deep but ugly goes clean to the bone. That's shorthand for no need to argue with stupid or mean people because they care about nothing but themself.
Another sad truth: plastic surgery is often sought to remedy an emotional and/or spiritual deficiency. And it fails miserably in this regard, since the way we perceive ourselves is so much more than what we or others see.
I get that some women's lips are very attractive. However, the obviously augmented lips of some people are a big turn off for me.
lots of lip products enhance or temporarily enhance lips, it's a nice look, and if you don't like the injection lite look, it goes away on its own in less than 12 hours
I'm not so sure about the point being made here. Popular tastes, and economic success, have never aligned with so-called refined tastes in any sort of artistic endeavor. Talented artists go hungry while producers of pedestrian work get rich. Or people spend their money on botox instead of theater tickets. That is a very old story. But today I can listen to the best (according to my tastes) music ever recorded for $10/month, and so can anybody else. Same for literature, which is even cheaper. We all have the freedom to seek out, and enjoy, beautiful works -- regardless of the whims of the supposed "gatekeepers" of culture. Sometimes I regret that popular tastes don't align with mine. But most of the time I'm happy I don't have to fight the crowds. People who worry about "gatekeepers" are talking about economics, not art. We live in a golden age of artistic expression. The former barriers for artists to produce beautiful work -- however that term is defined -- are almost non-existent today.
I think Ted's point is a broader one, not strictly confined to the arts. It is that ugliness not only exists, it always has, but is actually on parade and running things at the moment. If Mark Twain were around today, he might be making that same point.
At least that's how I heard it, and think about it. I think it has to do with the loss of the feeling of shame for selfish acts in our ME FIRST, ME ONLY society, and how we have gotten used to that.
There is a possible inner moral beauty as well as outer beauty, but it is being out marketed by the Botoxes in our lives. Shallow cover ups.
People have long been worried about corruption of our ideals. This is always a danger of this. It is so easy to gradually become corrupted.
When everything becomes just a thing to be sold, nothing is worth anything.
I see beauty, creativity, and love as a central nexus. I see the deepest beauty coming from the heart. I also believe that most humans begin with that sort of beauty. I have been in a few countries and in every one of them two year olds did not need lessons in how to dance. Children will dance spontaneously, no grownups needed! Dance is an expression of joy and love. Also, young children know about goodness. Here is a study that documented that goodness comes from deep in the heart.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00548/full
Young Children and Adults Show Differential Arousal to Moral and Conventional Transgressions_2020
I don't recall when I began telling people that the deepest truth was spoken by a poet who did not live to see his thirtieth birthday, the last stanza of his poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44477/ode-on-a-grecian-urn
was
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
One of the greatest sources of frustration to me has been how so many people are unable to understand that. Had more people thought that way Trump would have been expelled from the presidency within 48 hours after he put children in cages. I spent twenty years of my life trying to convince scientists that their belief in a machine universe was the worst kind of ugly and not true. They told me I was a romantic fool who refused to grow up and see the world as it really was. I listen to music everyday. Without that I am not sure I could stand living in this insane world. I also sing and dance and read poetry and novels. There is so much beauty that it is tempting to disappear into a world where ugliness is excluded. But the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil is a fool's paradise. We have an immune system to protect our bodies from death dealing invaders but the cancer that forms within and says I am really you is the most dangerous. Unbounded selfishness is the highway to death for all of us. We must find a way to remove the cancer.
Great peice. I disagree that people who get facials and plastic surgery are interested in beauty. They are interested in vanity and not what Roger Scruton would call disinterested beauty or useless beauty.
Horrifying that the word "beauty" has become synonymous with "not aging" as though we are supposed to be only partially here, frozen in some kind of time vault like Han Solo in carbonite. But who is buying us? Who is putting all this frozen-faced forever-young version of beauty on display? For a while, I rejected beauty as a siren call luring paychecks to drown in a futile attempt to look twenty forever, but then motherhood freed me from this plastic version of beauty. Now I believe in beauty for the same reason I pray, because I have a soul. Beauty can call to us like fireflies in a dark yard. I agree with you that beauty and truth lead us to goodness. I wish we could reset the narrative of beauty to normalize laugh lines, silver heads, skin that has enjoyed the sun... your piece really made me think. Let's bring the intensity and desire and unabashed belief that beauty will change the world. Like you say, our beauty is more real than theirs...
Have we lost our innate ability to be moved by awe?
Beauty has been consumerist since at least forever. Historically, for women, it was their only currency, and it is still a form of currency for both men and women. Every woman remembers that even as a little girl, she was taught to be concerned with her personal aesthetics. When all you own is your body, if that, one is taught to make the most of it.
It isn't just women. Men have their own aesthetic that serves as currency. It's no surprise that taller, better looking men tend to get higher salaries. Corporate competition is more of a beauty contest than anyone likes to admit. Look at all those cookie cutter CEOs.
Go back 20 or 30 thousand years, and you'll find shells and pebbles pierced to be strung on a necklace or other adornment. Some of those artifacts were found hundreds of miles from their source. Beauty was consumerist then, and it's consumerist now.
If you look at the arts, beauty is still important. Movies don't just hire actors based on their diction. Stock photo models aren't chosen off the street. Song lyrics, popular poetry, are chosen to please, even be catchy. Travel brochures emphasize the beauty offered at their destination. The consumer arts, the ones that most people will pay money for, are still about beauty.
The fine arts are different. There was an anti-beauty movement that started late in the 19th century in opposition to the rising consumer culture. It rejected the contemporary idea of beauty. The goal was épater le bourgeois, to shock the consumer class. That kind of art tends to be bought by the wealthy and wealthy institutions. It's a totally different animal. The whole point was to distinguish the wealthy from the merely prosperous.
THIS
Which is why The Picture of Dorian Grey is still so powerful, I think. Male beauty was as important to the Greeks and Romans as it was to Dorian Grey's image of himself - certainly more so than female beauty, on the whole. (Most women, whether goddesses or mortals, shown in Greek art are clothed, up to a certain point. But male figures were almost invariably nude.)