Page 28 - Studio International - September 1968

might better be read, 'Don't look at it; look at me'. The artists' was too readily accepted as having merely practical consequences.
declaration of independence from social responsibility, so-called, The breakthrough came, the Modern Movement began, with the
his attempt to create a self-sufficient moral order based upon aes- thinking and work of a number of architects around the beginning
thetics, could not be expected to satisfy a population bewildered in of the century. Such men as Sullivan and Wright in America,
its standards by the profusions of a machine culture. In the visual Henry van de Velde in Belgium and Germany, and Adolph Loos
arts at least, the long course toward independence, begun in the and Otto Wagner in Austria began to see the relationship of the
Renaissance, was seen to have led to the isolation of artists, to the machine to the fundamental concepts of their profession. The chaotic
enclave of the Academy or to the exile of Bohemia. state of architecture, its subservience to past styles, its confusion with
Those who accepted the machine more often than not resigned mere building persuaded men such as these to go back to first prin-
themselves to it. If the public wanted machine work, as it clearly did, ciples, to think what architecture could be, how it might serve the
the most that could be accomplished was to mitigate the evils it needs of contemporary society. Those needs were actual, discernible,
imposed— the aesthetic evils, that is. Design must be improved. The not theoretical.
artist must be induced to take an interest once again in applied art. Architecture, properly practised, embraces all the arts and takes
This smacks of Morris; it is Morris compromised. Scarcely anyone account of present realities. Ideally, it is sensitive to the resources
at this stage saw the machine itself as a creative instrument, with its open to it, for in architecture formulation and realization are, to all
own logical potential for aesthetic expression. This was perhaps practical intents, identical. The architect seeks the perfect means to
because the machine had been made to mimic the handicraft in the achieve his ends, the perfect ends to express his means.
first instance; what it was capable of, apart from simple variation or The revulsion from stylistic archaeology or heterodoxy and from the
deliberate copying, had not yet been thought of. The most forward tyranny of ornament decreed by the Pugins and Ruskins of the world
view had been offered in 1882 by the designer Lewis F. Day: allowed architects such as those I've named to discover new materials
`Whether we like it or not, machinery and steam-power, and and resources and to develop uses for them in terms of basic principles
electricity for all we know, will have something to say concerning the and of their own characteristics. Machine technology was at last
ornament of the future.' But the emphasis is, characteristically, recognized as a source of supply, as an instrument of standardization,
upon ornament, and there is no clue as to what the powers cited are as a tool of design and of facture. In 1901, Wright could assert that
gifted to produce. the 'noble possibilities' of the machine were perverted by the
It was inevitable, romantic attachments being irrational, that a few designers, were 'forced to ... degradation ... by the Arts themselves'.
men should fall in love with the machine. Their descendents are the I am not suggesting that the release into Modernism comes all at
poets who admire turbines and behave as if this taste gave them a once. There is a persistent indebtedness to the very influences that
special licence to understand society. are actually in process of repudiation. In some aspects of their
What was lacking in the intellectual response to the glories and thought, Morris and Ruskin retained favour into the 1930s. Also,
depradations of the industrial revolution was the willingness to re- there are false starts and blind alleys to take into account; Art
think one's assumptions in terms of its realities. The reactions did Nouveau might be though to be one such cul de sac. Then too, there
not produce sufficient self-questioning, especially among men con- is the interruption of World War I; as it were, optimism paused, then
cerned with the arts. To view the problem another way, the machine bounded forward.

above Werner Graeff Rhythm study 1920 above left Theory of stage-craft 'Dematerialization' figure
(form of metaphysical expression)
Illustrations to this article were taken from the
Bauhaus exhibition arranged by the above right 'Jointed doll' figure (principles of the functioning of the
Wurtembergischer Kunstoevein and first shown human body)
in the Kunstgebäude, Stuttgart. earlier this
year. The exhibition will be shown at the Royal
Academy of Arts, Burlington House, from
September 20 to October 27.