Awkward, clumsy, or misshapen, or dark, unremittingly violent

A quote from ON FAIRY STORIES, an essay by professor J.R.R. Tolkien:

We may indeed be older now, in so far as we are heirs in enjoyment or in practice of many generations of ancestors in the arts. In this inheritance of wealth there may be a danger of boredom or of anxiety to be original, and that may lead to a distaste for fine drawing, delicate pattern, and “pretty” colours, or else to mere manipulation and over-elaboration of old material, clever and heartless. But the true road of escape ...