The West suffered a loss of idealism and collective self-confidence
Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2025 8:12 am
Among the many other works that should not be missed while at the N.M.A.A. is a large canvas by Frederick Judd Waugh entitled The Knight of the Holy Grail (1912). The artist, best known for his seascapes, here shows Sir Galahad being guarded by angels to the secret chalice. "A Nordic fantasy" the museum plaque informs us.
Which is true enough, for the composition includes both a knight and angels, two of the most abiding figures in Western iconography depicting one of our most enduring legends. The quest for the hallowed phone number list cup has come to represent almost every virtue of Western man: courage, self mastery, moral excellence and ontological knowledge. Together, these qualities lead to a state of grace or harmony with creation and the creator.
Daniel Chester French, the sculptor best known perhaps for Minute Man (1875) and Alma Mater (1903), has a smaller piece here entitled The Spirit of Life (1914). The artist symbolizes the spirit of life as a winged Nordic female. This statue served as a working model for a larger sculpture contained within the Spencer Trask Memorial at Saratoga Spings, New York. Unfortunately, the spirit of death was also abroad in the year of 1914. Probably the most enduringly grievous casualities of the First Great Fratricidal War were psychological., expressed most acutely in the visual arts. The West has never completely regained its nerve nor recovered its optimism and sense of mission buried in the carnage of World War I.
Which is true enough, for the composition includes both a knight and angels, two of the most abiding figures in Western iconography depicting one of our most enduring legends. The quest for the hallowed phone number list cup has come to represent almost every virtue of Western man: courage, self mastery, moral excellence and ontological knowledge. Together, these qualities lead to a state of grace or harmony with creation and the creator.
Daniel Chester French, the sculptor best known perhaps for Minute Man (1875) and Alma Mater (1903), has a smaller piece here entitled The Spirit of Life (1914). The artist symbolizes the spirit of life as a winged Nordic female. This statue served as a working model for a larger sculpture contained within the Spencer Trask Memorial at Saratoga Spings, New York. Unfortunately, the spirit of death was also abroad in the year of 1914. Probably the most enduringly grievous casualities of the First Great Fratricidal War were psychological., expressed most acutely in the visual arts. The West has never completely regained its nerve nor recovered its optimism and sense of mission buried in the carnage of World War I.