Austere (art)

The Austere School of music, architecture and visual art was a prominent  artistic movement on the planet of Adelphia in the second century TE.

Origins
Rooted in the ideology of the Post-Gaud artistic revolution, the Austere School, or simply Austerity, was a somewhat less intense and prescriptive response to the excesses of Gaud-era arts and architecture. While Post-Gaud art was a predominantly reactionary rejection of Gaud aesthetic values, Austerity represented a concerted attempt to construct a wholly new, uniquely Adelphian aesthetic. Famed Mirandan art critic Zolediz Andreev in his article "Post-Gaud or Post-Ghad?" in Nebula wrote:

"The spectre of foreign occupation hung over Adelphia long after the actual presence of jackbooted Zarakkanian troops.   The forms and concepts of Gaud art are, of course, transparently influenced by the culture of Ghad, at least in the way that a carnival caricature is influenced by a real human face.  Even the post-Gaud movement, in all of its self-aware rebellion against Gaud forms, finds itself ironically defined by the culture of oppression.  Only a century after they had regained their independence did the planet finally hazard an attempt to define itself artistically."

Characteristics
In practice, of course, this distinction can be somewhat difficult to see for the casual observer, as both post-gaud and austere art are characterized by similarly simplistic designs, muted color scemes, and lack of texture. As Andreev later wrote:

''The distinction between post-gaud and Austere is not one of forms, which are lowly and irrelevant, but rather of intention and spirit. For evidence, we need look no farther than the work of Etrian Valent, who defined the Austere school with his "Reinterpretations" series. ''

Reinterpretations ''reexamined all of Valent's pre-austerity, post-gaud work. Wh'en we look at Noir, we see a painting about defying the conventions of the Gaud, a complete and reactionary denial of Gaud's excesses. But when we look at Black, which to the unenlightened eye is a very similar painting, we see a bold and innocent and (dare I say?) naive interpretation of Adelphia as a planet. The Great Cold of her ice caps. The dark of the spu'chu mines. The long night of the occupation. There is no question in my mind that Austerity was the very birth of truly Adelphian art.''

Decline
The Austere school's relevence to Adelphian culture began to decline in the latter part of the 100's TE, as the pre-frost movement gathered support among Adelphia's wealthy mining class. Austere architecture remains prominent in many of Adelphia's largest and most popular public housing units, industrial complices and parking structures.