it seems to me like the article is more about elucidating beauty as a mechanism of decadence than an attempt to upend natural selection as a core component of the theory of evolution. the article basically says that beauty (however defined for a given species) can be both a selective and maladaptive pressure, where conventionally it's thought of only as a selective pressure.

species die out because of maladaptive pressures. that doesn't contradict the theory of evolution and natural selection's role in it.