Fashion and the Satanic Transcendentals - with Jonathan Pageau

see full video here!: 👉    • Modern Art Is Collapsing: Jonathan Pageau ...  

Jonathan Pageau and Andrew Gould join me as we discuss modern culture's artistic decline. What if modern culture no longer pursues truth, goodness, and beauty, but instead chases their opposites? In this conversation, we explore a striking idea: that contemporary art, architecture, and media are governed not by the classical transcendentals, but by their inversions, sentimentality, cruelty, and fashion. These forces promise intensity, shock, and novelty, but rarely endure. They feel powerful at first, yet collapse as quickly as they appear. (clip from Pursuit of Beauty Podcast Episode

At the heart of this discussion is the difference between love and infatuation. True beauty draws us slowly, binds us over time, and deepens with familiarity. Fashion, by contrast, relies on surprise and novelty. It dazzles briefly, demands attention, and then fades. This distinction helps explain why so much modern design feels exciting in the moment, yet dated or embarrassing only a few decades later.

Architecture becomes a revealing test case. Buildings celebrated as bold, innovative, and “of the moment” often age poorly, while classical, Gothic, or even Baroque forms continue to resonate centuries later. The conversation examines why certain styles transcend their historical moment while others collapse into visual nostalgia, like shag carpet or forgotten trends.

Importantly, this is not a rejection of innovation. Fashion plays a necessary role by introducing new possibilities, much like the court jester—mostly nonsense, but occasionally profound. For every ten failures, one enduring form may emerge. The danger lies in mistaking novelty itself for love, or shock for meaning.

The discussion then turns to sacred art and iconography, where innovation and continuity must coexist. Using examples from Orthodox icon painting, including Rublev, Father Silouan, and Father Zenon, we examine how true creativity arises from deep immersion in tradition, not from copying the past, nor from rebellion for its own sake.

A fascinating detour explores “mannerism,” elongation, and proportion in art and architecture. Are these distortions mere decadence, or do they serve a deeper aesthetic purpose? When successful, they ennoble the figure and draw the eye upward. When they fail, they become grotesque or alienating. The difference lies in whether the form still serves its purpose.

Ultimately, this conversation asks a hard question: have we trained ourselves to crave novelty so intensely that we’ve lost the capacity for lasting love and beauty? If so, recovering beauty will require more than new styles—it will require new habits of attention, patience, and discernment.