man or a woman with unclouded vision, who is able to see in the
flounderings of untrained amateurs the stirrings of _demos_ from his
age-long sleep. These, often forsaking paths more profitable, lend
their skilled assistance, not seeking to impose the ancient outworn
forms upon the Newness, but by a transfusion of consciousness
permitting it to create forms of its own. Such a one, in architecture,
Louis Sullivan has proved himself; in music Harry Barnhart, who evokes
the very spirit of song from any random crowd. The _demos_ found voice
first in the poetry of Walt Whitman who has a successor in Vachel
Lindsay, the man who walked through Kansas, trading poetry for food
and lodging, teaching the farmers' sons and daughters to intone
his stirring odes to Pocahontas, General Booth, and Old John Brown.
Isadora Duncan, Gordon Craig, Maeterlinck, Scriabine are perhaps
too remote from the spirit of democracy, too tinged with old-world
æstheticism, to be included in this particular category, but all
are image-breakers, liberators, and have played their part in the
preparation of the field for an art of democracy.
To the architect falls the task, in the new dispensation, of providing
the appropriate material environment for its new life. If he holds the
old ideas and cherishes the old convictions current before the war
he can do nothing but reproduce their forms and fashions; for
architecture, in the last analysis, is only the handwriting of
consciousness on space, and materialism has written there already all
that it has to tell of its failure to satisfy the mind and heart of
man. However beautiful old forms may seem to him they will declare
their inadequacy to generations free of that mist of familiarity which
now makes life obscure. If, on the other hand, submitting himself
to the inspiration of the _demos_ he experiences a change of
consciousness, he will become truly and newly creative.
His problem, in other words, is not to interpret democracy in terms
of existing idioms, be they classic or romantic, but to experience
democracy in his heart and let it create and determine its new forms
through him. It is not for him to _impose_, it is for him to be
_imposed upon_.
"The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast soul that o'er him planned"
says Emerson in _The Problem_, a poem, which seems particularly
addressed to architects, and which every one of them would do well to
learn by heart.
If he is at a loss to know where to go and what to do in order to be
played upon by these great forces let him direct his attention to
the army and the army camps. Here the spirit of democracy is
already incarnate. These soldiers, violently shaken free from their
environment, stripped of all but the elemental necessities of life;
facing a sinister destiny beyond a human-shark-infested ocean,
are today the fortunate of earth by reason of their realization of
brotherhood, not as a beautiful theory, but as a blessed fact of
experience. They will come back with ideas that they cannot utter,
with memories that they cannot describe; they will have dreamed dreams
and seen visions, and their hearts will stir to potencies for which
materialism has not even a name.
The future of the country will be in their young hands. Will they
re-create, from its ruins, the faithless and loveless feudalism
from which the war set them free? No, they will seek only for
self-expression, the expression of that aroused and indwelling spirit
which shall create the new, the true democracy. And because it is a
spiritual thing it will come clothed in beauty; that is, it will find
its supreme expression through the forms of art. The architect who
assists in the emprise of weaving this garment will be supremely
blessed, but only he who has kept the vigil with prayer and fasting
will be supremely qualified.
III
AFTER THE WAR
"When the old world is sterile
And the ages are effete,
He will from wrecks and sediment
The fairer world complete."
_The World Soul_. Emerson.
He whom the World Soul "forbids to despair" cannot but hope; and he
who hopes tries ever to imagine that "fairer world" yearning for birth
beyond this interval of blood and tears. Prophecy, to all but the
anointed, is dangerous and uncertain, but even so, the author cannot
forbear attempting to prevision the architecture likely to arise from
the wrecks and sediment left by the war. As a basis for this forecast
it is necessary first of all briefly to classify the expression of the
building impulse from what may be called the psychological point of
view.
Broadly speaking, there are not five orders of architecture--nor
fifty--but only two: _Arranged_ and _Organic_. These correspond to the
two terms of that "inevitable duality" which bisects life. Talent and
genius, reason and intuition, bromide and sulphite are some of the
names we know them by.
Arranged architecture is reasoned and artificial; produced by talent,
governed by taste. Organic architecture, on the other hand, is the
product of some obscure inner necessity for self-expression which
is sub-conscious. It is as though Nature herself, through some human
organ of her activity, had addressed herself to the service of the
sons and daughters of men.
Arranged architecture in its finest manifestations is the product of
a pride, a knowledge, a competence, a confidence staggering to behold.
It seems to say of the works of Nature, "I'll show you a trick worth
two of that." For the subtlety of Nature's geometry, and for her
infinite variety and unexpectedness, Arranged architecture substitutes
a Euclidian system of straight lines and (for the most part) circular
curves, assembled and arranged according to a definite logic of
its own. It is created but not creative; it is imagined but not
imaginative. Organic architecture is both creative and imaginative. It
is non-Euclidian in the sense that it is higher-dimensional--that is,
it suggests extension in directions and into regions where the spirit
finds itself at home, but of which the senses give no report to the
brain.
[Illustration: PLATE VIII. IMAGINATIVE SKETCH BY HENRY P. KIRBY]
To make the whole thing clearer it may be said that Arranged and
Organic architecture bear much the same relation to one another that
a piano bears to a violin. A piano is an instrument that does not give
forth discords if one follows the rules. A violin requires absolutely
an ear--an inner rectitude. It has a way of betraying the man of
talent and glorifying the genius, becoming one with his body and his
soul.
Of course it stands to reason that there is not always a hard and fast
differentiation between these two orders of architecture, but there
is one sure way by which each may be recognized and known. If the
function appears to have created the form, and if everywhere the
form follows the function, changing as that changes, the building is
Organic; if on the contrary, "the house confines the spirit," if the
building presents not a face but however beautiful a mask, it is an
example of Arranged architecture.
The Gothic cathedrals of the "Heart of Europe"--now the place of
Armageddon--represent the most perfect and powerful incarnation of
the Organic spirit in architecture. After the decadence of mediaeval
feudalism--synchronous with that of monasticism--the Arranged
architecture of the Renaissance acquired the ascendant; this was
coincident with the rise of humanism, when life became increasingly
secular. During the post-Renaissance, or scientific period, of which
the war probably marks the close, there has been a confusion of
tongues; architecture has spoken only alien or dead languages, learned
by rote.
But in so far as it is anything at all, æsthetically, our architecture
is Arranged, so if only by the operation of the law of opposites, or
alternation, we might reasonably expect the next manifestation to
be Organic. There are other and better reasons, however, for such
expectancy.
Organic architecture is ever a flower of the religious spirit. When
the soul draws near to the surface of life, as it did in the two
mystic centuries of the Middle Ages, it _organizes_ life; and
architecture, along, with the other arts becomes truly creative. The
informing force comes not so much _from_ man as _through_ him. After
the war that spirit of brotherhood, born in the camps--as Christ was
born in a manger--and bred on the battlefields and in the trenches of
Europe, is likely to take on all the attributes of a new religion of
humanity, prompting men to such heroisms and renunciations, exciting
in them such psychic sublimations, as have characterized the great
religious renewals of time past.
If this happens it is bound to write itself on space in an
architecture beautiful and new; one which "takes its shape and
sun-color" not from the niggardly mind, but from the opulent heart.
This architecture will of necessity be organic, the product not of
self-assertive personalities, but the work of the "Patient Daemon"
organizing the nation into a spiritual democracy.
The author is aware that in this point of view there is little of
the "scientific spirit"; but science fails to reckon with the soul.
Science advances facing backward, so what prevision can it have of a
miraculous and divinely inspired future--or for the matter of that,
of any future at all? The old methods and categories will no longer
answer; the orderly course of evolution has been violently interrupted
by the earthquake of the war; igneous action has superseded aqueous
action. The casements of the human mind look out no longer upon
familiar hills and valleys, but on a stark, strange, devastated
landscape, the ploughed land of some future harvest of the years.
It is the end of the Age, the _Kali Yuga_--the completion of a major
cycle; but all cycles follow the same sequence: after winter, Spring;
and after the Iron Age, the Golden.
The specific features of this organic, divinely inspired architecture
of the Golden Age cannot of course be discerned by any one, any more
than the manner in which the Great Mystery will present itself anew to
consciousness. The most imaginative artist can imagine only in
terms of the already-existent; he can speak only the language he has
learned. If that language has been derived from mediaevalism, he
will let his fancy soar after the manner of Henry Kirby, in his
_Imaginative Sketches_; if on the contrary he has learned to think in
terms of the classic vernacular, Otto Rieth's _Architectur-Skizzen_
will suggest the sort of thing that he is likely to produce. Both
results will be as remote as possible from future reality, for the
reason that they are so near to present reality. And yet some germs of
the future must be enfolded even in the present moment. The course
of wisdom is to seek them neither in the old romance nor in the new
rationalism, but in the subtle and ever-changing spirit of the times.
[Illustration: PLATE IX. ARCHITECTURAL SKETCH BY OTTO RIETH]
The most modern note yet sounded in business, in diplomacy, in social
life, is expressed by the phrase, "Live openly!" From every quarter,
in regard to every manner of human activity, has come the cry, "Let
in the light!" By a physical correspondence not the result of
coincidence, but of the operation of an occult law, we have, in a very
real sense, let in the light. In buildings of the latest type devoted
to large uses, there has been a general abandonment of that "cellular
system" of many partitions which produced the pepper-box exterior, in
favour of great rooms serving diverse functions lit by vast areas of
glass. Although an increase of efficiency has dictated and determined
these changes, this breaking down of barriers between human beings
and their common sharing of the light of day in fuller measure, is a
symbol of the growth of brotherhood, and the search, by the soul, for
spiritual light.
Now if this fellowship and this quest gain volume and intensity, its
physical symbols are bound to multiply and find ever more perfect
forms of manifestation. So both as a practical necessity and as a
symbol the most pregnant and profound, we are likely to witness in
architecture the development of the House of Light, particularly as
human ingenuity has made this increasingly practicable.
Glass is a product still undergoing development, as are also those
devices of metal for holding it in position and making the joints
weather tight. The accident and fire hazard has been largely overcome
by protecting the structural parts, by the use of wire glass, and
by other ingenious devices. The author has been informed on good
authority that shortly before the outbreak of the war a glass had been
invented abroad, and made commercially practicable, which shut out
the heat rays, but admitted the light. The use of this glass would
overcome the last difficulty--the equalization of temperatures--and
might easily result in buildings of an entirely novel type, the
approach to which is seen in the "pier and grill" style of exterior.
This is being adopted not only for commercial buildings, but for
others of widely different function, on account of its manifest
advantages. Cass Gilbert's admirable studio apartment at 200 West
Fifty-Seventh Street, New York, is a building of this type.
In this seeking for sunlight in our cities, we will come to live on
the roofs more and more--in summer in the free air, in winter under
variformed shelters of glass. This tendency is already manifesting
itself in those newest hotels whose roofs are gardens, convertible
into skating ponds, with glazed belvideres for eating in all weathers.
Nothing but ignorance and inanition stand in the way of utilization of
waste roof spaces. People have lived on the roofs in the past, often
enough, and will again.
[Illustration: PLATE X. RODIN STUDIOS, 200 WEST 57TH STREET, NEW YORK]
By shouldering ever upward for air and light, we have too often
made of the "downtown" districts cliff-bound canyons--"granite deeps
opening into granite deeps." This has been the result of no inherent
necessity, but of that competitive greed whose nemesis is ever to
miss the very thing it seeks. By intelligent co-operation, backed
by legislation, the roads and sidewalks might be made to share the
sunlight with the roofs.
This could be achieved in two ways: by stepping back the façades
in successive stages--giving top lighting, terraces, and wonderful
incidental effects of light and shade--or by adjusting the height of
the buildings to the width of their interspaces, making rows of tall
buildings alternate with rows of low ones, with occasional fully
isolated "skyscrapers" giving variety to the sky-line.
These and similar problems of city planning have been worked out
theoretically with much minuteness of detail, and are known to every
student of the science of cities, but very little of it all has been
realized in a practical way--certainly not on this side of the water,
where individual rights are held so sacred that a property owner may
commit any kind of an architectural nuisance so long as he confines
it to his own front yard. The strength of IS, the weakness of _should
be_, conflicting interests and legislative cowardice are responsible
for the highly irrational manner in which our cities have grown great.
The search for spiritual light in the midst of materialism finds
unconscious symbolization in a way other than this seeking for the
sun. It is in the amazing development of artificial illumination. From
a purely utilitarian standpoint there is almost nothing that cannot
now be accomplished with light, short of making the ether itself
luminiferous. The æsthetic development of this field, however, can be
said to have scarcely begun. The so recent San Francisco Exposition
witnessed the first successful effort of any importance to enhance the
effect of architecture by artificial illumination, and to use colored
light with a view to its purely pictorial value. Though certain
buildings have since been illuminated with excellent effect, it
remains true that the corset, chewing-gum, beer and automobile
sky signs of our Great White Ways indicate the height to which our
imagination has risen in utilizing this Promethean gift in any but
necessary ways. Interior lighting, except negatively, has not been
dealt with from the standpoint of beauty, but of efficiency; the
engineer has preempted this field to the exclusion of the artist.
All this is the result of the atrophy of that faculty to worship and
wonder which alone induces the mood from which the creation of beauty
springs. Light we regard only as a convenience "to see things by"
instead of as the power and glory that it inherently is. Its intense
and potent vibrations and the rainbow glory of its colour beat at the
door of consciousness in vain. When we awaken to these things we shall
organize light into a language of spontaneous emotion, just as from
sound music was organized.
It is beside the purpose of this essay to attempt to trace the
evolution of this new art form, made possible by modern invention, to
indicate what phases it is likely to pass through on the way to what
perfections, but that it is bound to add a new glory to architecture
is sure. This will come about in two ways: directly, by giving color,
quality, subtlety to outdoor and indoor lighting, and indirectly by
educating the eye to color values, as the ear has been educated by
music; thus creating a need for more color everywhere.
As light is the visible symbol of an inner radiance, so is color the
sign manual of happiness, of joy. Our cities are so dun and drab in
their outward aspects, by reason of the weight of care that burdens
us down. We decry the happy irresponsibility of the savage, and the
patient contentment of the Oriental with his lot, but both are able
to achieve marvels of color in their environment beyond the compass
of civilized man. The glory of mediaeval cathedral windows is a still
living confutation of the belief that in those far-off times the human
heart was sad. Architecture is the index of the inner life of those
who produced it, and whenever it is colorful that inner life contains
an inner joy.
In the coming Golden Age life will be joyous, and if it is joyous,
colour will come into architecture again. Our psychological state even
now, alone prevents it, for we are rich in materials and methods to
make such polychromy possible. In an article in a recent number
of _The Architectural Record_, Mr. Leon V. Solon, writing from an
entirely different point of view, divines this tendency, and expresses
the opinion that color is again renascent. This tendency is so marked,
and this opinion is so shared that we may look with confidence toward
a color-evolution in architectural art.
The question of the character of what may be called the ornamental
mode of the architecture of the New Age is of all questions the most
obscure. Evolution along the lines of the already existent does not
help us here, for we are utterly without any ornamental mode from
which a new and better might conceivably evolve. Nothing so betrays
the spiritual bankruptcy of the end of the Iron Age as this.
The only light on this problem which we shall find, dwells in the
realm of metaphysics rather than in the world of material reality.
Ornament, more than any other element of architecture, is deeply
psychological, it is an externalization of an inner life. This is
so true that any time-worn fragment out of the past when art was
a language can usually be assigned to its place and its period, so
eloquent is it of a particular people and a particular time. Could we
therefore detect and understand the obscure movement of consciousness
in the modern world, we might gain some clue to the language it would
later find.
It is clear that consciousness is moving away from its absorption in
materiality because it is losing faith in materialism. Clairvoyance,
psychism, the recrudescence of mysticism, of occultism--these signs
of the times are straws which show which way the wind now sets, and
indicate that the modern mind is beginning to find itself at home in
what is called _the fourth dimension_. The phrase is used here in
a different sense from that in which the mathematician uses it, but
oddly enough four-dimensional geometry provides the symbols by
which some of these occult and mystical ideas may be realized by the
rational mind. One of the most engaging and inspiring of these
ideas is that the personal self is a _projection_ on the plane of
materiality of a metaphysical self, or soul, to which the personal
self is related as is the shadow of an object to the object
itself. Now this coincides remarkably with the idea implicit in all
higher-space speculation, that the figures of solid geometry
are projections on a space of three dimensions, of corresponding
four-dimensional forms.
All ornament is in its last analysis geometrical--sometimes directly
so, as in the system developed by the Moors. Will the psychology
of the new dispensation find expression through some adaptation of
four-dimensional geometry? The idea is far from absurd, by reason of
the decorative quality inherent in many of the regular hypersolids of
four-dimensional space when projected upon solid and plane space.
If this suggestion seems too fanciful, there is still recourse to the
law of analogy in finding the thing we seek. Every fresh religious
impulse has always developed a symbology through which its truths are
expressed and handed down. These symbols, woven into the very texture
of the life of the people, are embodied by them in their ornamental
mode. The sculpture of a Greek temple is a picture-book of Greek
religion; the ornamentation of a Gothic cathedral is a veritable bible
of the Christian faith. Almost all of the most beautiful and enduring
ornaments have first been sacred symbols; the swastika, the "Eye of
Buddha," the "Shield of David," the wheel, the lotus, and the cross.
Now that "twilight of the world" following the war perhaps will
witness an _Avatara_--the coming of a World-Teacher who will rebuild
on the one broad and ancient foundation that temple of Truth which
the folly and ignorance of man is ever tearing down. A material
counterpart of that temple will in that case afterward arise. Thus
will be born the architecture of the future; and the ornament of that
architecture will tell, in a new set of symbols, the story of the
rejuvenation of the world.
In this previsioning of architecture after the war, the author
must not be understood to mean that these things will be realized
_directly_ after. Architecture, from its very nature, is the most
sluggish of all the arts to respond to the natural magic of the
quick-moving mind--it is Caliban, not Ariel. Following the war the
nation will be for a time depleted of man-power, burdened with
debt, prostrate, exhausted. But in that time of reckoning will come
reflection, penitence.
"And I'll be wise hereafter,
And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass
Was I, to take this drunkard for a god,
And worship this dull fool."
With some such epilogue the curtain will descend on the great drama
now approaching a close. It will be for the younger generations, the
reincarnate souls of those who fell in battle, to inaugurate the work
of giving expression, in deathless forms of art, to the vision of that
"fairer world" glimpsed now only as by lightning, in a dream.
[Illustration]
ESSAYS
ORNAMENT FROM MATHEMATICS
I
THE WORLD ORDER
No fact is better established than that we live in an _orderly_
universe. The truth of this the world-war may for the moment, and to
the near and narrow view appear to contradict, but the sweep of human
history, and the stars in their courses, show an orderliness which
cannot be gainsaid.