practice in a different field is that upon which is based Delsarte's
famous art of expression. It has schooled some of the finest actors
in the world, and raised others from mediocrity to distinction. The
Delsarte system is founded upon the idea that man is a triplicity of
physical, emotional, and intellectual qualities or attributes, and
that the entire body and every part thereof conforms to, and expresses
this triplicity. The generative and digestive region corresponds with
the physical nature, the breast with the emotional, and the head
with the intellectual; "below" represents the nadir of ignorance and
dejection, "above" the zenith of wisdom and spiritual power.
This seems a natural, and not an arbitrary classification, having
interesting confirmations and correspondencies, both in the outer
world of form, and in the inner world of consciousness. Moreover, it
is in accord with that theosophic scheme derived from the ancient and
august wisdom of the East, which longer and better than any other
has withstood the obliterating action of slow time, and is even now
renascent. Let us therefore attempt to classify the colors of the
spectrum according to this theory, and discover if we can how nearly
such a classification is conformable to reason and experience.
The red end of the spectrum, being lowest in vibratory rate, would
correspond to the physical nature, proverbially more sluggish than the
emotional and mental. The phrase "like a red rag to a bull," suggests
a relation between the color red and the animal consciousness
established by observation. The "low-brow" is the dear lover of the
red necktie; the "high-brow" is he who sees violet shadows on the
snow. We "see red" when we are dominated by ignoble passion. Though
the color green is associated with the idea of jealousy, it is
associated also with the idea of sympathy, and jealousy in the last
analysis is the fear of the loss of sympathy; it belongs, at all
events to the mediant, or emotional group of colors; while blue and
violet are proverbially intellectual and spiritual colors, and
their place in the spectrum therefore conforms to the demands of our
theoretical division. Here, then, is something reasonably certain,
certainly reasonable, and may serve as an hypothesis to be confirmed
or confuted by subsequent research. Coming now finally to the
consideration of the musical parallel, let us divide a color scale of
twelve steps or semi-tones into three groups; each group, graphically
portrayed, subtending one-third of the arc of a circle. The first or
red group will be related to the physical nature, and will consist of
purple-red, red, red-orange, and orange. The second, or green group
will be related to the emotional nature, and will consist of yellow,
yellow-green, green, and green-blue. The third, or blue group will be
related to the intellectual and spiritual nature, and will consist
of blue, blue-violet, violet and purple. The merging of purple into
purple-red will then correspond to the meeting place of the
highest with the lowest, "spirit" and "matter." We conceive of this
meeting-place symbolically as the "heart"--the vital centre. Now
"sanguine" is the appropriate name associated with the color of
the blood--a color between purple and purple-red. It is logical,
therefore, to regard this point in our color-scale as its
tonic--"middle C"--though each color, just as in music each note, is
itself the tonic of a scale of its own.
Mr. Louis Wilson--the author of the above "ophthalmic color scale"
makes the same affiliation between sanguine, or blood color, and
middle C, led thereto by scientific reasons entirely unassociated with
symbolism. He has omitted orange-yellow and violet-purple; this
makes the scale conform more exactly with the diatonic scale of
two tetra-chords; it also gives a greater range of purples, a color
indispensable to the artist. Moreover, in the scale as it stands, each
color is exactly opposite its true spectral complementary.
The color scale being thus established and broadly divided, the next
step is to find how well it justifies itself in practice. The most
direct way would be to translate the musical chords recognized and
dealt with in the science of harmony into their corresponding color
combinations.
For the benefit of such readers as have no knowledge of musical
harmony it should be said that the entire science of harmony is based
upon the _triad_, or chord of three notes, and that there are various
kinds of triads: the major, the minor, the augmented, the diminished,
and the altered. The major triad consists of the first note of the
diatonic scale, or tonic; its third, and its fifth. The minor triad
differs from the major only in that the second member is lowered a
semi-tone. The augmented triad differs from the major only in that the
third member is raised a semi-tone. The diminished triad differs from
the minor only in that the third member is lowered a semi-tone. The
altered triad is a chord different by a semi-tone from any of the
above.
The major triad in color is formed by taking any one of the twelve
color-centers of the ophthalmic color scale as the first member of
the triad; and, reading up the scale, the fifth step (each step
representing a semi-tone) determines the second member, while the
third member is found in the eighth step. The minor triad in color is
formed by lowering the second member of the major triad one step; the
augmented triad by raising the third member of the major triad one
step, and the diminished triad by lowering the third member of the
minor triad one step.
[Illustration: Figure 18. MAJOR TRIAD, MINOR TRIAD, AUGMENTED TRIAD,
DIMINISHED TRIAD]
These various triads are shown graphically in Figure 18 as
triangles within a circle divided into twelve equal parts, each part
representing a semi-tone of the chromatic scale. It is seen at a
glance that in every case each triad has one of its notes (an apex) in
or immediately adjacent to a different one of the grand divisions of
the colour scale hereinbefore established and described, and that the
same thing would be true in any "key": that is, by any variation of
the point of departure.
This certainly satisfies the mind in that it suggests variety in
unity, balance, completeness, and in the actual portrayal, in color,
of these chords in any "key" this judgment is confirmed by the eye,
provided that the colors have been thrown into proper _harmonic
suppression_. By this is meant such an adjustment of relative values,
or such an establishment of relative proportions as will produce the
maximum of beauty of which any given combination is capable. This
matter imperatively demands an æsthetic sense the most sensitive.
So this "musical parallel," interesting and reasonable as it is, will
not carry the color harmonist very far, and if followed too literally
it is even likely to hamper him in the higher reaches of his art,
for some of the musical dissonances are of great beauty in color
translation. All that can safely be said in regard to the musical
parallel in its present stage of development is that it simplifies and
systematizes color knowledge and experiment and to a beginner it is
highly educational.
If we are to have color symphonies, the best are not likely to be
those based on a literal translation of some musical masterpiece into
color according to this or any theory, but those created by persons
who are emotionally reactive to this medium, able to imagine in color,
and to treat it imaginatively. The most beautiful mobile color effects
yet witnessed by the author were produced on a field only five inches
square, by an eminent painter quite ignorant of music; while some of
the most unimpressive have been the result of a rigid adherence to the
musical parallel by persons intent on cutting, with this sword, this
Gordian knot.
Into the subject of means and methods it is not proposed to enter, nor
to attempt to answer such questions as to whether the light shall be
direct or projected; whether the spectator, wrapped in darkness, shall
watch the music unfold at the end of some mysterious vista, or
whether his whole organism shall be played upon by powerful waves
of multi-coloured light. These coupled alternatives are not mutually
exclusive, any more than the idea of an orchestra is exclusive of that
of a single human voice.
In imagining an art of mobile color unconditioned by considerations
of mechanical difficulty or of expense, ideas multiply in truly
bewildering profusion. Sunsets, solar coronas, star spectra, auroras
such as were never seen on sea or land; rainbows, bubbles, rippling
water; flaming volcanoes, lava streams of living light--these and a
hundred other enthralling and perfectly realizable effects suggest
themselves. What Israfil of the future will pour on mortals this new
"music of the spheres"?
LOUIS SULLIVAN
PROPHET OF DEMOCRACY
Due tribute has been paid to Mr. Louis Sullivan as an architect in
the first essay of this volume. That aspect of his genius has been
critically dealt with by many, but as an author he is scarcely
known. Yet there are Sibylline leaves of his, still let us hope in
circulation, which have wielded a potent influence on the minds of a
generation of men now passing to maturity. It is in the hope that his
message may not be lost to the youth of today and of tomorrow that the
present author now undertakes to summarize and interpret that message
to a public to which Mr. Sullivan is indeed a name, but not a voice.
That he is not a voice can be attributed neither to his lack of
eloquence--for he is eloquent--nor to the indifference of the younger
generation of architects which has grown up since he has ceased,
in any public way, to speak. It is due rather to a curious fatality
whereby his memorabilia have been confined to sheets which the
winds of time have scattered--pamphlets, ephemeral magazines, trade
journals--never the bound volume which alone guards the sacred flame
from the gusts of evil chance.
And Mr. Sullivan's is a "sacred flame," because it was kindled solely
with the idea of service--a beacon to keep young men from
shipwreck traversing those straits made dangerous by the Scylla of
Conventionality, and the Charybdis of License. The labour his writing
cost him was enormous. "I shall never again make so great a sacrifice
for the younger generation," he says in a letter, "I am amazed to
note how insignificant, how almost nil is the effect produced, in
comparison to the cost, in vitality to me. Or perhaps it is I who
am in error. Perhaps one must have reached middle age, or the Indian
Summer of life, must have seen much, heard much, felt and produced
much and been much in solitude to receive in reading what I gave in
writing 'with hands overfull.'"
This was written with reference to _Kindergarten Chats. A sketch
Analysis of Contemporaneous American Architecture_, which constitutes
Mr. Sullivan's most extended and characteristic preachment to the
young men of his day. It appeared in 1901, in fifty-two consecutive
numbers of _The Interstate Architect and Builder_, a magazine now
no longer published. In it the author, as mentor, leads an imaginary
disciple up and down the land, pointing out to him the "bold,
upholsterrific blunders" to be found in the architecture of the day,
and commenting on them in a caustic, colloquial style--large, loose,
discursive--a blend of Ruskin, Carlyle and Whitman, yet all Mr.
Sullivan's own. He descends, at times, almost to ribaldry, at others
he rises to poetic and prophetic heights. This is all a part of his
method alternately to shame and inspire his pupil to some sort of
creative activity. The syllabus of Mr. Sullivan's scheme, as it
existed in his mind during the writing of _Kindergarten Chats_,
and outlined by him in a letter to the author is such a torch of
illumination that it is quoted here entire.
A young man who has "finished his education" at the
architectural schools comes to me for a post-graduate
course--hence a free form of dialogue.
I proceed with his education rather by indirection and
suggestion than by direct precept. I subject him to certain
experiences and allow the impressions they make on him to
infiltrate, and, as I note the effect, I gradually use a
guiding hand. I supply the yeast, so to speak, and allow the
ferment to work in him.
This is the gist of the whole scheme. It remains then to
determine, carefully, the kind of experiences to which I shall
subject the lad, and in what order, or logical (and especially
psychological) sequence. I begin, then, with aspects that
are literal, objective, more or less cynical, and brutal, and
philistine. A little at a time I introduce the subjective,
the refined, the altruistic; and, by a to-and-fro increasingly
intense rhythm of these two opposing themes, worked so to
speak in counterpoint, I reach a preliminary climax: of
brutality tempered by a longing for nobler, purer things.
Hence arise a purblind revulsion and yearning in the lad's
soul; the psychological moment has arrived, and I take him
at once into the _country_--(Summer: The Storm). This is the
first of the four out-of-door scenes, and the lad's first
real experience with nature. It impresses him crudely but
violently; and in the tense excitement of the tempest he is
inspired to temporary eloquence; and at the close is much
softened. He feels in a way but does not know that he has been
a participant in one of Nature's superb dramas. (Thus do
I insidiously prepare the way for the notion that creative
architecture is in essence a dramatic art, and an art of
eloquence; of subtle rhythmic beauty, power, and tenderness).
Left alone in the country the lad becomes maudlin--a callow
lover of nature--and makes feeble attempts at verse. Returning
to the city he melts and unbosoms--the tender shaft of the
unknowable Eros has penetrated to his heart--Nature's subtle
spell is on him, to disappear and reappear. Then follow
discussions, more or less didactic, leading to the second
out-of-door scene (Autumn Glory). Here the lad does most of
the talking and shows a certain lucidity and calm of mind. The
discussion of Responsibility, Democracy, Education, etc., has
inevitably detached the lurking spirit of pessimism. It has
to be:--Into the depths and darkness we descend, and the
work reaches the tragic climax in the third out-of-door
scene--Winter.
Now that the forces have been gathered and marshalled the
true, sane movement of the work is entered upon and pushed
at high tension, and with swift, copious modulations to its
foreordained climax and optimistic peroration in the fourth
and last out-of-door scene as portrayed in the Spring Song.
The _locale_ of this closing number is the beautiful spot in
the woods, on the shore of Biloxi Bay:--where I am writing
this.
I would suggest in passing that a considerable part of the
K.C. is in rhythmic prose--some of it declamatory. I have
endeavoured throughout this work to represent, or reproduce
to the mind and heart of the reader the spoken word and
intonation--not written language. It really should be read
aloud, especially the descriptive and exalted passages.
There was a movement once on the part of Mr. Sullivan's admirers to
issue _Kindergarten Chats_ in book form, but he was asked to tone it
down and expurgate it, a thing which he very naturally refused to do.
Mr. Sullivan has always been completely alive to our cowardice when
it comes to hearing the truth about ourselves, and alive to the danger
which this cowardice entails, for to his imaginary pupil he says,
If you wish to read the current architecture of your country,
you must go at it courageously, and not pick out merely the
little bits that please you. I am going to soak you with it
until you are absolutely nauseated, and your faculties turn
in rebellion. I may be a hard taskmaster, but I strive to be
a good one. When I am through with you, you will know
architecture from the ground up. You will know its virtuous
reality and you will know the fake and the fraud and the
humbug. I will spare nothing--for your sake. I will stir up
the cesspool to its utmost depths of stench, and also the
pious, hypocritical virtues of our so-called architecture--the
nice, good, mealy-mouthed, suave, dexterous, diplomatic
architecture, I will show you also the kind of architecture
our "cultured" people believe in. And why do they believe in
it? Because they do not believe in themselves.
_Kindergarten Chats_ is even more pertinent and pointed today than it
was some twenty years ago, when it was written. Speech that is full of
truth is timeless, and therefore prophetic. Mr. Sullivan forecast some
of the very evils by which we have been overtaken. He was able to do
this on account of the fundamental soundness of his point of view,
which finds expression in the following words: "Once you learn to look
upon architecture not merely as an art more or less well, or more or
less badly done, but as a _social manifestation_, the critical eye
becomes clairvoyant, and obscure, unnoted phenomena become illumined."
Looking, from this point of view, at the office buildings that the
then newly-realized possibilities of steel construction were sending
skyward along lower Broadway, in New York, Mr. Sullivan reads in them
a denial of democracy. To him they signify much more than they seem
to, or mean to; they are more than the betrayal of architectural
ignorance and mendacity, they are symptomatic of forces undermining
American life.
These buildings, as they increase in number, make this city
poorer, morally and spiritually; they drag it down and down
into the mire. This is not American civilization; it is the
rottenness of Gomorrah. This is not Democracy--it is savagery.
It shows the glutton hunt for the Dollar with no thought for
aught else under the sun or over the earth. It is decadence of
the spirit in its most revolting form; it is rottenness of
the heart and corruption of the mind. So truly does this
architecture reflect the causes which have brought it into
being. Such structures are _profoundly anti-social_, and as
such, they must be reckoned with. These buildings are not
architecture, but outlawry, and their authors criminals in the
true sense of the word. And such is the architecture of lower
New York--hopeless, degraded, and putrid in its pessimistic
denial of our art, and of our growing civilization--its
cynical contempt for all those qualities that real humans
value.
We have always been very glib about democracy; we have assumed that
this country was a democracy because we named it so. But now that
we are called upon to die for the idea, we find that we have never
realized it anywhere except perhaps in our secret hearts. In the life
of Abraham Lincoln, in the poetry of Walt Whitman, in the architecture
of Louis Sullivan, the spirit of democracy found utterance, and to
the extent that we ourselves partake of that spirit, it will find
utterance also in us. Mr. Sullivan is a "prophet of democracy" not
alone in his buildings but in his writings, and the prophetic note is
sounded even more clearly in his _What is Architecture? A Study in the
American People of Today_, than in _Kindergarten Chats_.
This essay was first printed in _The American Contractor_ of January
6, 1906, and afterwards issued in brochure form. The author starts
by tracing architecture to its root in the human mind: this physical
thing is the manifestation of a psychological state. As a man thinks,
so he is; he acts according to his thought, and if that act takes the
form of a building it is an emanation of his inmost life, and reveals
it.
Everything is there for us to read, to interpret; and this
we may do at our leisure. The building has not means of
locomotion, it cannot hide itself, it cannot get away. There
it is, and there it will stay--telling more truths about him
who made it, than he in his fatuity imagines; revealing his
mind and his heart exactly for what they are worth, not a whit
more, not a whit less; telling plainly the lies he thinks;
telling with almost cruel truthfulness his bad faith, his
feeble, wabbly mind, his impudence, his selfish egoism, his
mental irresponsibility, his apathy, his disdain for real
things--until at last the building says to us: "I am no more a
real building than the thing that made me is a real man!"
Language like this stings and burns, but it is just such as is
needful to shame us out of our comfortable apathy, to arouse us to
new responsibilities, new opportunities. Mr. Sullivan, awake among
the sleepers, drenches us with bucketfuls of cold, tonic, energizing
truth. The poppy and mandragora of the past, of Europe, poisons us,
but in this, our hour of battle, we must not be permitted to dream on.
He saw, from far back, that "we, as a people, not only have betrayed
each other, but have failed in that trust which the world spirit of
democracy placed in our hands, as we, a new people, emerged to fill
a new and spacious land." It has taken a world war to make us see the
situation as he saw it, and it is to us, a militant nation, and not
to the slothful civilians a decade ago, that Mr. Sullivan's stirring
message seems to be addressed.
The following quotation is his first crack of the whip at the
architectural schools. The problem of education is to him of all
things the most vital; in this essay he returns to it again and again,
while of _Kindergarten Chats_ it is the very _raison d'être_.
I trust that a long disquisition is not necessary in order to
show that the attempt at imitation, by us, of this day, of the
by-gone forms of building, is a procedure unworthy of a free
people; and that the dictum of the schools, that Architecture
is finished and done, is a suggestion humiliating to every
active brain, and therefore, in fact, a puerility and a
falsehood when weighed in the scales of truly democratic
thought. Such dictum gives the lie in arrogant fashion, to
healthful human experience. It says, in a word: the American
people are not fit for democracy.
He finds the schools saturated with superstitions which are the
survivals of the scholasticism of past centuries--feudal institutions,
in effect, inimical to his idea of the true spirit of democratic
education. This he conceives of as a searching-out, liberating, and
developing the splendid but obscured powers of the average man, and
particularly those of children. "It is disquieting to note," he says,
"that the system of education on which we lavish funds with such
generous, even prodigal, hand, falls short of fulfilling its true
democratic function; and that particularly in the so-called higher
branches its tendency appears daily more reactionary, more feudal.
It is not an agreeable reflection that so many of our university
graduates lack the trained ability to see clearly, and to think
clearly, concisely, constructively; that there is perhaps more showing
of cynicism than good faith, seemingly more distrust of men than
confidence in them, and, withal, no consummate ability to interpret
things."
In contrast to the schoolman he sketches the psychology of the
active-minded but "uneducated" man, with sympathy and understanding,
the man who is courageously seeking a way with little to guide and
help him.
Is it not the part of wisdom to cheer, to encourage such a
mind, rather than dishearten it with ridicule? To say to it:
Learn that the mind works best when allowed to work naturally;
learn to do what your problem suggests when you have reduced
it to its simplest terms; you will thus find that all
problems, however complex, take on a simplicity you had
not dreamed of; accept this simplicity boldly, and with
confidence, do not lose your nerve and run away from it, or
you are lost, for you are here at the point men so heedlessly
call genius--as though it were necessarily rare; for you are
here at the point no living brain can surpass in essence,
the point all truly great minds seek--the point of vital
simplicity--the point of view which so illuminates the mind
that the art of expression becomes spontaneous, powerful, and
unerring, and achievement a certainty. So, if you seek and
express the best that is in yourself, you must search out the
best that is in your people; for they are your problem, and
you are indissolubly a part of them. It is for you to affirm
that which they really wish to affirm, namely, the best that
is in them, and they as truly wish you to express the best
that is in yourself. If the people seem to have but little
faith it is because they have been tricked so long; they are
weary of dishonesty, more weary than they know, much more
weary than you know, and in their hearts they seek honest and
fearless men, men simple and clear in mind, loyal to their own
manhood and to the people. The American people are now in a
stupor; be on hand at the awakening.