This is just my take on it, but I've always viewed art that is beautiful as something that points to transcendence beyond the piece itself, it breaks the closed loop and points to some higher ideal.
Anti-human art and architecture, of which Brutalism is one example in my book, is revolutionary in that it attempts to sever the connection between humanity and higher ideals / planes of existence, creating closed loops of despair and grayness.
In Japan (where I have the most cultural experience outside of the US), there is a phrase "inki-kusai" which is similar to our word "inky" - it calls to mind dark, moldy places filled with litter and insects. I think it's one reason that solar reverence has been so prevalent in their history, sunlight and fresh air serve as disinfectants.
Separating humans from simple beasts of burden, toiling away in suffering, hoping only to be well-fed, and survive another day -- but no more.
Aesthetics are a respite.
Without, man becomes alienated from his humanity. Demoralized from losing a powerful moralizing force.
My interpretation of Marx, Engels, Hegel, et al.
In a certain vein, the U.S. lacks the same richness for it, compared to much older Western European countries (who haven't had theirs, their history, their culture, their identity, the very things that enliven their soul, destroyed by oppressive regimes. E.g. Stalinist communism).
Why do the French constantly raise hell when things are going poorly? Because it's in their history, it's their aesthetic that they cling tight to; for otherwise, they would be swallowed up by the world, and swept away.
One could even postulate that this is why our nation (the U.S.) has had such a rough adolescence, and hasn't yet made any truly novel attempts at Making Things Better (TM).
All are demoralized, with no true moralizing factors besides one's kin (but those are always unstable sources of moralization, and liable to one day disappear -- compared to the more concrete nature of culture).
If you kill a man's family and friends, what can bring him out of this abyss? Having lost his only moralizing force, that which enlivens the soul, what is there truly left for him to do, but become an animal toiling away until he one day dies?
Attacks on culture are rampant eveywhere, but the U.S. has not yet cemented theirs in the ground -- so there's not much at all of a culture to attack.
Truly exciting times: to think what happens in the next hundred years will serve as a foundation for the future.
There will still be strife; but what type of culture will mature?
There are two stories that come to mind, and I agree with your assessment.
1. In 2007 during the height of the financial market crash CNBC had a helicopter hovering over the northern VA house of a finance guy from one of the banks / insurers who was going belly up that had killed himself. The striking thing to me was how poor, aesthetically, the house was. Typical DC burbs McMansion trash. Plastic (vinyl) patio railing that was leaning here and there as it began to fail, landscaping that was obviously maintained by someone who had no concept of the original landscape design (bushes were either over or under trimmed). Windows that didn't match, but were rather selected from a catalog of pre-made designs haphazardly to fit a pre-drawn opening. Of course he killed himself when the money was taken, he had nothing of real value... if his living arrangements were any indication he spent all his money on worthless shit.
2. The story about the all glass Apple HQ injuring its employees because they couldn't subconsciously tell where the walls were as they walked around the building. They would incessantly walk into glass walls and break their noses, bruise their chins, etc. I wanna say I heard later that Apple silently had the building modified. If the ideology that built such an office building had to describe itself in a sentence, it would have to be "turning the collective eyes of the employees into the eye of Sauron, only without the dark lord's self awareness."
