is a journalist and editorial advisor at Philonomist. She was previously the chief editor of Le Monde des Débats (1999-2001), Courrier International (2001-2005) and Le Monde (2005-2008), before joining the financial newspaper La Tribune as deputy managing editor. She won a national journalism award for her coverage of the financial crisis, which she also wrote about in her book Capital Sin. The Story of the Financial Crisis (2009).
Picture: © Elie Axas
Dear reader,
It’s hard to forget the headline of the 2010 feature story in the French magazine Télérama, which resounded like a slap in the face: “How did France become so ugly?” The article looked into the sullen and indistinguishable “commercial zones” which crowd the outskirts of French cities, with their vast car parks and buildings shaped like shoe boxes. Thirteen years later, the government’s announcement of a plan to try to repair the aesthetic and environmental damage they have caused has yet to meet with much criticism. It’s as if, after travelling across the country on their way back from holiday, the French had noticed the stark contrast between carefully renovate city centre and these “non-places”, as anthropologist Marc Augé described them in his 1992 book of the same name, due to their lack of identity, history, and human connection.
The problem is that we work less and less in these city centres which are saturated with history, human connections, and identity, and more and more in these trivialised outskirts marked only by dull consumerism and cars as far as the eyes can see. Half-asleep after their drive into work through endless roundabouts, employees – whether cashiers or researchers – slump into their desk chairs with a sigh. There’s nothing within eyesight to delight or distract their gaze. Everything is clean, functional, optimised, air-conditioned. Nothing is beautiful. If they’re only there to work, some will say, what difference does it make? The right to hygiene and safety is enshrined in the country’s Labour Code, but there is no mention of beauty anywhere. But I know a manager who left his job for purely aesthetic reasons: his company had decided to relocate from Paris’ luxury district to a suburb devoid of charm.
What if beauty helped us work better? In this regard, a trip to the executive floor of a large company can be instructive. Up there, everything is beautiful: large windows, breathtaking views, soft carpets, leather seats, master paintings; and wood, wood everywhere, whether classic or designer furniture. White metal storage cabinets, melamine desks, and plastic seats are for the lower floors. Two interpretations are possible: either the contrast is a symbolic marker of power; or it’s to ensure that the big bosses live up to their big salary by working well, beautifully well!
‘Physiologically speaking, everything ugly weakens and oppresses human beings’
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Because beauty can be tremendously energising. “Physiologically speaking, everything ugly weakens and oppresses human beings,” says Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols (1888). This suggests that beauty and ugliness are first felt, before being assessed according to aesthetic criteria. “You can measure the effect of the ugly with a dynamometer. Whenever human beings are depressed, they sense that something ‘ugly’ is nearby. Their feeling of power, their will to power, their courage, their pride – it all falls with the ugly and rises with the beautiful.”
As we approach any of France’s 1,500 peri-urban commercial areas, we can almost feel the strength leaving us. Yes, we go there to consume or to work; but who in their right mind would say they feel good there?
Ugliness is also a symptom of moral desertion. In his book titled “To be able to produce a beautiful work”, the sociologist Jean-Philippe Bouilloud explores the different connections between work and beauty by focusing on the pleasure of a job well done, on beautiful work relationships, but also on the work environment itself. In the 19th century, industry, banking, and business made a point of decorating their buildings. The old principle put forward by the Roman architect Vitruvius (in his essay On Architecture) remained true: a construction must be solid, useful, and beautiful. The 20th century then did everything to get rid of ornament, seen as a useless effort without rational meaning. Now was the time for pure profitability and usefulness! The French designer Raymond Loewy, who emigrated to the United States in the 1920s with the ambition of making the world more beautiful, lamented: “Could society not have industrialised without becoming ugly?” He went on to convince the American business community that beauty is an asset to encourage consumers to buy their products. Taken on by marketing, beauty then became anything but free.
But that’s not the kind of beauty Jean-Philippe Bouilloud advocates. He sides instead with Théophile Gautier, who writes in Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) : “Nothing is really beautiful but that which cannot be made use of; everything that is useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some need, and the needs of man are vile and disgusting, like his poor, weak nature.” By combining the need for meaning and the need for beauty, pretty things help counterbalance the rationalisation of the world. The sociologist goes so far as to argue that aesthetic concerns must be recognised as an ethical imperative, “because it concerns everyone in the world of work,” and adds that “beauty is a moral right.”
Sophie Gherardi
Picture © Mick Haupt / Unsplash
