Page 38 - Studio International - October 1972

(Left to right) Bristol Box-kite 1910, A. B. Roe's Mark i triplane 1909, same Mark i triplane (crashed)
From box-kite to Concorde emotionally moving activity, partly for real and
obvious reasons, partly for specifically visual
ones (the aircraft is apparently unsupported),
partly for unconscious connections (Freud on
Raymond Durgnat the significance of flight in dreams). One must
also allow for the play of all the hopes and fears
bound up in technology. These are obvious in
By and large, discussions of form in fine arts and facto beautiful. And it may bear a deceptive wartime, when life and death are in the scale,
design remain distinct fields. Each has its own resemblance to a rule of thumb which was but even civil aircraft can be potent symbols,
idioms and publications. It is rare to find in common enough among aircraft designers in whether of patriotism or of the human spirit. It's
fine-art magazines serious coverage of early days, when design was largely still certainly arguable that the public's sensitivity to
technological products. Yet their visual appeal to intuitive: 'Nit looks right, it is right'. But the form is moulded very much less by the influence,
our myths and values, their obvious sculptural two propositions are not equivalent. The first whether direct or 'percolating down', of the
potentialities, and the general cultural relevance depends on one of two notions : either, that any Bauhaus, or of Futurism or Constructivism, or
of principles as diverse as those of the Bauhaus given object has only one function, or, that there indeed of any other fine-art movement, than by
and Buckminster Fuller, ought ideally to prevail are no contradictions between these functions. the technological processes which so many
over what is not so much the William Morris The most elegant functional compromise avant gardes have had merely to recognize as
glorification of pre-industrial craft as the inertia between various desiderata is not, however, already dynamic and then relate to a new
of habit. It's sad how rarely we allow our necessarily the gestalt most pleasing to the eye. context. The influence stems initially, directly
sensitivities their natural expansion outwards It is surely vain to wish away other aspects of a and continuously from certain technological
from the finesse of minimalism towards spontaneous response — whether empathy or totems, of which the aeroplane, for obvious
technological objects, which, for good that general projection of emotions and reasons, presents a visually pure and striking
traditional reasons, have pre-empted the associations which, perhaps more than anything form. This is not to question that artist and
aesthetic interest of the general public. The else, forms the basis of the common and engineer may reach similar general forms, by
Futurists' enthusiasm over racing-cars was understandable habit of thinking of beauty as different routes, but it's worth remembering
perpetuated by that popular interest in speed something other than functional requirements. how far the influence on the general public is
records which endured until the late forties. Not The careless equation of functional fitness less the former's than the latter's.
that a rather boyish avant-garde faith in the with functional simplicity has been largely Not that the aesthetic influence of aircraft has
spiritual power of technological form is responsible for the current monotony of bland been altogether happy. A second great class of
adequate to the complexity of the public's box shapes, derived, with depressingly totemic object, the motor-car, owes too much to
interest. Vintage and veteran cars also have impeccable logic, from the simple 'functional' it. Automobiles have sprouted tailfins, even
ready access to the public's imaginative nerve, fact that so many things, from slide projectors to tailplanes, and back-seat passengers have been
like the mixtures of diffuse erotic fantasy and toasters, number among their functions the one forced into cramped crouching positions by
social image-mongering noted by Ernest common function of containing other things. forms which at best are relatively pointless
Dichter, too rapidly dismissed as mere Among the first welcome signs of a reaction one (streamlining making negligible difference
vulgarisms by purists of form. Certainly ships may include not only recent outbursts of below 8o mph) and at worst dysfunctional
have always possessed their aesthetic aura. psychedelic and biomorphic forms, but, in the (streamlining the roofline but not the body
Jean Guitton' cites Samuel Pepys's remark sphere of industrial design, the perspex covers profile approximates an aerofoil cross-section,
about Charles II's new yacht, 'She will be a which allow TV sets to display their i.e., a wing, with a significant deterioration in
pretty thing . . .', and goes on to urge the multi-coloured innards. road-holding at speed) One might excuse the--
importance of aesthetics even in warship design: On first impression aeroplanes might seem streamlining of hairdryers, as some kind of
`the warship is not always at war, and there is the more suitable to a mixture of futurist and external illustration of inner process, but the
duty of showing the flag'. Bauhaus aesthetics. We still associate flight with streamlining of prams effectively expresses the
We're all familiar with the pious hope — or precariousness, and therefore the single-minded poverty of modern myths. An equally irrelevant
dogma — to the effect that the functional is ipso tour-de-force of speed. Flight is certainly an emphasis on speed is largely responsible for
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