Aesthetics is the small change of art.

But what if art is itself devalued?

Anyone could make something beautiful, but only a genius could make ART. — Arthur Krystal

is, Mr. Krystal might agree, no longer true, since nowadays everybody is an artist and beauty is uncommon.

At least the 21C is beyond Modernism, when

the rift between art and beauty following the First World War was a considered attempt by the avant-garde to expose the irrelevance of the aesthetic ideals that had dominated the literary and plastic arts since the Renaissance. — Ibid.

We, who adore Ozu and you, were never fooled.

"Man is hungry for beauty. There is a void." The phrase is Oscar Wilde's, and it's one we might easily pass over. It is not witty. It is not novel. It's not even informative. Actually, it's rather simplistic. What does it tell us that we don't already know? "Man is hungry for beauty. There is a void." Nine words. Take a moment. Say them aloud. What else is there to be said? — Ibid.

And indeed artists of whatever manifesto always compete for the same beautiful women and boys.

Leo never tells you anything you don't know. — Sylvia Donohue