Beauty

In the arts, the concept of 'beauty' has become suspicious, since many artists in the last century reacted to conventional, empty forms of 'beauty' which were mere commercial exploitations of the underdeveloped masses. The birth of modernism cannot be properly understood if not only the influence of scientific and social notions of progress are considered, but also the official art of the 19C salon with its imitations of traditional painting and sculpture, and the routine of the concert hall with its repetition of performing the classics, to which new but superficial and bland imitations were added with the aim of an easy success with the average, 'bourgeois' audiences. Truth, authenticity and originality should take the place that the notion of beauty had occupied for ages. Hence the emancipation of ugliness, disruption, fragmentation and the like as authentic expressions of modern times.

Another cause of the rejection of beauty in the last century was the idea of 'functionalism', which was supposed to represent progress and improvement, and especially: an agent for cleansing the mind from cluttered convention. Hence the awful modernist extensions and interventions in the historic cityscapes of Europe. Also we see this 'functionalism' in fashion, although women's fashion mostly kept something of the stylishness of old. But men's fashion became a riot of functionalism as if beauty were something effeminate, and thus taboo for the proud male in a modern, functionalist world of science and enterprise.

The idea that form follows function - one of the tenets of modernism -  reveals a purely materialist mindset: namely, beauty is also a function, not a materialist one, but a function of the soul. Our environment influences our inner life, either consciously or subconsciously. Therefore, the human soul needs beauty to feel connected to the world, which in its pristine state is full of beauty. Almost all things in nature have beauty, in a stunning variety, and the human being as an aesthetic 'design' reflects one of the most accomplished natural creations. Since we have developed as a part of nature over the millennia, our faculties of recognition of the beautiful is a perfectly natural given, and its perversions or erosions do not diminish their importance. Hence it is perfectly natural that artistic expression if it is related to this core of our evolutionary heritage, will have beauty as one of its elements.

The misunderstanding of what beauty actually means, seems in these years gradually dissolving.

As philosopher Andreas Dorschel writes: 

"In contemporary discussions about aesthetics, the theme of beauty has become a concern of the best minds, like Alexander Nehamas: ‘Only a Promise of Happiness; the Place of Beauty in a World of Art’; Sir Roger Scruton: Beauty’; Paolo Euron: ‘Art, Beauty and Imitation’; Denis Dutton: ‘The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution’. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Dorschel

The late British philospher Sir Roger Scruton produced a very notable BBC documentary about the concept of beauty, wholeheartedly recommended: 

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/why-beauty-matters/