Page 72 - Studio International - July August 1974

to pacify themselves (he suggests yoga, etc) by-passing the complex relation of text and Quarterly, December 1973, a special issue on
there are 'teachers' to do the job: chemicals, illustration that makes the book such a powerful number patterns in architecture. Here the
electrodes, etc. Then he passes from the instrument. The first showing of the emphasis was on the meaning of number in
individual to society; according to Cage it's exhibition on which the Language of Pattern medieval building — and there is a remarkable
electronic technology that enables us to draw is based was at the ICA, part of a month of analysis of the Rose Window of Chartres
parallels between individual and social Islamic art and ideas. As such it was only Cathedral. It shows how the mystical numbers
experience ' . . . for we have, through electronic marginally relevant, but the impression of a are woven into construction, which then
technology, extended the central nervous somewhat unsatisfactory explanation of becomes a potent carrier, through its
system (Marshall McLuhan). Mind, formerly Islamic pattern has remained. geometrical elegance, of a whole apparatus
housed in each person's head, is now also In fact the book, slightly more clearly than of philosophical meaning.
exteriorized, at home outside (nature, society) the exhibition, is only marginally concerned In this sense our buildings are shallow and
globally, and, more and more, outerspatially, with Islamic patterns. It tries to show (by barbaric, based on repetitive grids and
that is, universally ("God" made "definite" — taking certain Arabic patterns as a base) how ignorant of deeper meanings. The current
Buckminster Fuller).' Before it was the a complex geometry can be built up from the interest in number and pattern, to which this
Pan-American, now it's the Pan-Galactic primary forms and solids. Some of these games book is a valuable if somewhat flawed
Conscience! So: 'Global (at least) Mind must were used in Islamic decoration, but that is not contribution, is an indication that we know that
be pacified. This will not be accomplished by really the point. much is missing in our culture. We are
means of politics,' so don't get any wrong ideas First, however, to describe the book itself: searching for meaning, and for symbol
about engaging in political activity. What we four-colour dust-jacket illustrating Islamic (perhaps as an antidote) at a time when
need is a healthy dose of fascist genetic patterns, then, on rather thick paper, 112 pages, concepts are immediately current world-wide,
engineering: 'population stabilized (birth and half of which contain two-colour drawings, and only too rapidly used up. This is
death rates changingly balanced) and upgraded black and blue, though the latter is referred particularly true of words (remember
(eugenics)'. Now, now, don't get angry: to as red in much of the text which faces them. `redevelopment', 'communications', 'pollution',
Nothing's accomplished in the way of Global This simple exhibition format makes for a `environment') but it also applies to forms.
Discipline by being angry.' Here Cage takes stupefying monotony, not improved by the They, too, are parroted around the world —
the opportunity to slander the militant sans-serif type. As an explanatory manual it pilotis in Aberdeen and Abidjan, curtain walls
student risings of 1968: they should not have communicates with difficulty, and the terse in Stockholm and Jeddah.
struggled, according to Cage, because 'de jargon does not help either. Perhaps they can be made more
Gaulle's position (was) subsequently But with perseverance a great deal can be significant by a universal geometry, an
strengthened'. dug out of this book, which could be valuable `integrative pattern . . . now within our current
And so it goes on. But all his squirming and possibly life enhancing. We do need a cosmology' but it seems unlikely. In the end,
gets him nowhere; in the end he has to admit: pattern language to complement our barren buildings are most acceptable when related to
`There'll be violence . . . , but attention placed architecture, though whether a 'scaleless multi- their site, neighbours and social requirements,
elsewhere will minimize it (Daniel in the dimensional continuum, seen as complex, which extend the quality of what is already
Lion's Den).' Cage can safe-deposit his appearing almost random, often sensed rather there. But that is quite another ball game.
`attention' in the deepest vaults of the Bank than known, a projection of our common THEO CROSBY
of Heaven and it won't prevent the experience (knowledge)' is what we require is
reactionary violence of US imperialism debatable. But it's a valid line of enquiry, which
collapsing ignominiously before the relates to other research into the magic of Brain drain
revolutionary upsurge of the world's people. numbers. Here the Vedic Square is explored Edvard Munch in the male brain vol. I by Gösta
Cage's political line has not changed. But as a mechanism for generating pattern and a Svenaeus. 356 pp with index and notes. Also
the situation in the world has. The decline of vast number of stars and shapes are produced vol. 2, 325 pp, 618 illustrations in black and
US imperialism is reflected in the difference from this extraordinary numeric construction. white with notes. Published by The New Society
in style between the two articles. The There follow some more complex constructions of Letters at Lund. Printed and translated from
succulent phrases of 'Other People Think' in two and three dimensions, culminating in the original Swedish with the assistance of the
have degenerated into the fragmented two buildings by the partnership based on the State Humanist Research Council, Lund, 1973.
burbling of 'These Days.' If anyone believes that geometry of deformed cubes.
I have manipulated Cage's views by cleverly These buildings, though illustrative of the Gösta Svenaeus, a Swedish scholar, who for
stringing together quotations, they had better power and fascination of geometry, also more than twenty years has been obsessed by
buy the book and convince themselves. For demonstrate the fatal self-regard of much the personality and the art of Munch, the
the rest, the material in this book is of modern architecture. Architects concerned leading Norwegian painter and the initiator,
academic interest only. q with geometry, such as Buckminster Fuller, or together with the later Van Gogh, of
CORNELIUS CARDEW Frei Otto, or Soleri conceive their work in Expressionism east of the Rhine, presents in his
isolation. The buildings do not relate to any most recent book the final version of his
existing structure or city, so their authors tend studies on this artist. Munch himself was a man
Numbers game to invent a more suitable philosophy and way of obsessed by ideas which had their roots in
The Language of Pattern by Keith Albarn, life with which to animate their inventions. certain tragic events of his early childhood.
Jenny Miall Smith, Stanford Steele and The philosophy is always 'holistic' (a word They exercised an emotional impact on him
Dinah Walker. 112 pp, illustrations. invented by J. C. Smuts to describe his own throughout his private life and on his art. These
Thames & Hudson, London. £3.5o. vague over-view of world problems, and under ideas of Munch's — in particular those about
whose cover he was to construct the South death, anguish and womanhood — were
A book based on an exhibition is subject to African social system) and because claiming steeped in melancholy and pessimism.
many disadvantages. The illustrations tend a total view, is therefore exclusive. And often Together with the idea of the fin de siècle, its
to oversimplification and the writing to a intolerant. decadence and its revolutionary tenets,
compression which sometimes becomes simply However, the numbers game is of enduring psychological as well as social, they form the
unintelligible. The inevitable panel system intellectual fascination and readers might also seed-bed out of which grew an art so powerful
translates too readily into the page layout, care to look at the Architectural Association and novel that it created a spiritual climate on

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