straining at gnats and a swallowing of camels, by minds "benumbed
by culture," and hearts made faint by the tyranny of precedent. He
complains that they make no distinction between _was_ and _is_,
too readily assuming that all that is left us moderns is the humble
privilege to select, copy and adapt.
The current mannerisms of Architectural criticism must often
seem trivial. For of what avail is it to say that this is too
small, that too large, this too thick, and that too thin, or
to quote this, that, or the other precedent, when the real
question may be: Is not the entire design a mean evasion? Why
magnify this, that, or the other little thing, if the entire
scheme of thinking that the building stands for is false, and
puts a mask upon the people, who want true buildings, but do
not know how to get them so long as Architects betray them
with Architectural phrases?
And so he goes on with his Jeremiad: a prophet of despair, do you
say? No, he seeks to destroy only that falsity which would confine
the living spirit. Earlier and more clearly than we, he discerned the
menace to our civilization of the unrestricted play of the masculine
forces--powerful, ruthless, disintegrating--the head dominating the
heart. It has taken the surgery of war to open our eyes, and behold
the spectacle of the entire German nation which by an intellectual
process appears to have killed out compassion, enthroning
_Schrecklichkeit_. In the heart alone dwells hope of salvation. "For
he who knows even a genuinely little of Mankind knows this truth: the
heart is greater than the head. For in the heart is Desire; and from
it come forth Courage and Magnanimity."
You have not thought deeply enough to know that the heart in
you is the woman in man. You have derided your femininity,
where you have suspected it; whereas, you should have known
its power, cherished and utilized it, for it is the hidden
well-spring of Intuition and Imagination. What can the brain
accomplish without these two? They are the man's two inner
eyes; without them he is stone blind. For the mind sets forth
their powers both together. One carries the light, the other
searches; and between them they find treasures. These they
bring to the brain, which first elaborates them, then says to
the will, "Do"--and Action follows. Poetically considered,
as far as the huge, disordered resultant mass of your
Architecture is concerned, Intuition and Imagination have not
gone forth to illuminate and search the hearts of the people.
Thus are its works stone blind.
It is the absence of poetry and beauty which makes our architecture
so depressing to the spirits. "Poetry as a living thing," says Mr.
Sullivan, "stands for the most telling quality that a man can impart
to his thoughts. Judged by this test your buildings are dreary, empty
places." Artists in words, like Lafcadio Hearn and Henry James, are
able to make articulate the sadness which our cities inspire, but
it is a blight which lies heavy on us all. Theodore Dreiser says, in
_Sister Carrie_--a book with so much bitter truth in it that it was
suppressed by the original publishers:
Once the bright days of summer pass by, a city takes on the
sombre garb of grey, wrapped in which it goes about its labors
during the long winter. Its endless buildings look grey,
its sky and its streets assume a sombre hue; the scattered,
leafless trees and wind-blown dust and paper but add to the
general solemnity of color. There seems to be something in
the chill breezes which scurry through the long, narrow
thoroughfares productive of rueful thoughts. Not poets alone,
nor artists, nor that superior order of mind which arrogates
to itself all refinement, feel this, but dogs and all men.
The excuse that we are too young a people to have developed an
architecture instinct with that natural poetry which so charms us in
the art of other countries and other times, Mr. Sullivan disposes
of in characteristic fashion. To the plea that "We are too young to
consider these accomplishments. We have been so busy with our material
development that we have not found time to consider them," he makes
answer as follows:
Know, then, to begin with, they are not accomplishments but
necessaries. And, to end with, you are old enough, and
have found the time to succeed in nearly making a fine art
of--Betrayal, and a science of--Graft. Know that you are
as old as the race. That each man among you had in him the
accumulated power of the race, ready at hand for use, in the
right way, when he shall conclude it better to think straight
and hence act straight rather than, as now, to act crooked
and pretend to be straight. Know that the test, plain, simple
_honesty_ (and you all know, every man of you knows, exactly
what that means) is always at your hand.
Know that as all complex manifestations have a simple basis
of origin, so the vast complexity of your national unrest, ill
health, inability to think clearly and accurately concerning
simple things, really vital things, is easily traceable to the
single, actual, active cause--Dishonesty; and that this points
with unescapable logic and in just measure to each individual
man!
The remedy;--_individual honesty_.
To the objection that this is too simple a solution, Mr. Sullivan
retorts that all great solutions are simple, that the basic things of
the universe are those which the heart of a child might comprehend.
"Honesty stands in the universe of Human Thought and Action, as its
very Centre of Gravity, and is our human mask-word behind which abides
all the power of Nature's Integrity, the profoundest _fact_ which
modern thinking has persuaded Life to reveal."
If, on the other hand, the reader complains, "All this is above our
heads," Mr. Sullivan is equally ready with an answer:
No, it is not. _It is close beside your hand!_ and therein
lies its power.
Again you say, "How can honesty be enforced?"
It cannot be enforced!
"Then how will the remedy go into effect?"
It cannot _go_ into effect. It can only come into effect.
"Then how can it come?"
Ask Nature.
"And what will Nature say?"
Nature is always saying: "I centre at each man, woman and
child. I knock at the door of each heart, and I wait. I wait
in patience--ready to enter with my gifts."
"And is that all that Nature says?"
That is all.
"Then how shall we receive Nature?"
By opening wide your minds! For your greatest crime against
yourselves is that you have locked the door and thrown away
the key!
Thus, by a long detour, Mr. Sullivan returns to his initial
proposition, that the falsity of our architecture can be corrected
only by integrity of thought. "Thought is the fine and powerful
instrument. Therefore, _have thought for the integrity of your own
thought_."
Naturally, then, as your thoughts thus change, your growing
architecture will change. Its falsity will depart; its reality
will gradually appear. For the integrity of your thought as
a People, will then have penetrated the minds of your
architects.
Then, too, _as your basic thought changes, will emerge a
philosophy, a poetry, and an art of expression in all things;
for you will have learned that a characteristic philosophy,
poetry and art of expression are vital to the healthful growth
and development of a democratic people_.
Some readers may complain that these are after all only glittering
generalities, of no practical use in solving the specific problems
with which every architect is confronted. On the contrary they are
fundamental verities of incalculable benefit to every sincere artist.
Shallowness is the great vice of democracy; it is surface without
depth, a welter of concrete detail in which the mind easily loses
those great, underlying abstractions from which alone great art can
spring. These, in this essay, Mr. Sullivan helps us to recapture, and
inspires us to employ. He would win us from our insincerities, our
trivialities, and awaken our enormous latent, unused power. He says:
Awaken it.
Use it.
Use it for the common good.
Begin now!
For it is as true today as when one of your wise men said
it:--
"The way to resume is to resume!"
COLOR AND CERAMICS
The production of ceramics--perhaps the oldest of all the useful
arts practised by man; an art with a magnificent history--seems to be
entering upon a new era of development. It is more alive today, more
generally, more skilfully, though not more _artfully_ practised than
ever before. It should therefore be of interest to all lovers of
architecture, in view of the increasing importance of ceramics in
building, to consider the ways in which these materials may best be
used.
Looking at the matter in the broadest possible way, it may be said
that the building impulse throughout the ages has expressed itself
in two fundamentally different types of structure: that in which the
architecture--and even the ornament--is one with the engineering; and
that in which the two elements are separable, not in thought alone,
but in fact. For brevity let us name that manner of building in which
the architecture is the construction, _Inherent_ architecture, and
that manner in which the two are separable _Incrusted_ architecture.
To the first class belong the architectures of Egypt, Greece, and
Gothic architecture as practised in the north of Europe; to the
second belong Roman architecture of the splendid period, Moorish
architecture, and Italian Gothic, so called. In the first class the
bones of the building were also its flesh; in the second bones and
flesh were in a manner separable, as is proven by the fact that they
were separately considered, separately fashioned. Ruined Karnak, the
ruined Parthenon, wrecked Rheims, show ornament so integral a part
of the fabric--etched so deep--that what has survived of the one has
survived also of the other; while the ruined Baths of Caracalla the
uncompleted church of S. Petronio in Bologna, and many a stark mosque
on many a sandy desert show only bare skeletons of whose completed
glory we can only guess. In them the fabric was a framework for the
display of the lapidary or the ceramic art--a garment destroyed, rent,
or tattered by time and chance, leaving the bones still strong, but
bare.
This classification of architecture into Inherent and Incrusted is not
to be confused with the discrimination between architecture that is
_Arranged_, and architecture that is _Organic_, a classification which
is based on psychology--like the difference between the business man
and the poet: talent and genius--whereas the classification which
the reader is asked now to consider is based rather on the matter
of expediency in the use of materials. Let us draw no invidious
comparisons between Inherent and Incrusted architecture, but regard
each as the adequate expression of an ideal type of beauty; the one
masculine, since in the male figure the osseous framework is more
easily discernible; the other feminine, because more concealed and
overlaid with a cellular tissue of shining, precious materials, on
which the disruptive forces in man and nature are more free to act.
It is scarcely necessary to state that it is with Incrusted
architecture that we are alone concerned in this discussion, for to
this class almost all modern buildings perforce belong. This is by
reason of a necessity dictated by the materials that we employ, and by
our methods of construction. All modern buildings follow practically
one method of construction: a bony framework of steel--or of concrete
reinforced by steel--filled in and subdivided by concrete, brick,
hollow fire-clay, or some of its substitutes. To a construction of
this kind some sort of an outer encasement is not only æsthetically
desirable, but practically necessary. It usually takes the form of
stone, face-brick, terra-cotta, tile, stucco, or some combination of
two or more of these materials. Of the two types of architecture the
Incrusted type is therefore imposed by structural necessity.
The enormous importance of ceramics in its relation to architecture
thus becomes apparent. They minister to an architectural need instead
of gratifying an architectural whim. Ours is a period of Incrusted
architecture--one which demands the encasement, rather than the
exposure of structure, and therefore logically admits of the
enrichment of surfaces by means of "veneers" of materials more
precious and beautiful than those employed in the structure, which
becomes, as it were, the canvas of the picture, and not the picture
itself. For these purposes there are no materials more apt, more
adaptable, more enduring, richer in potentialities of beauty than the
products of ceramic art. They are easily and inexpensively produced of
any desired shape, color, texture; their hard, dense surface resists
the action of the elements, is not easily soiled, and is readily
cleaned; being fashioned by fire they are fire resistant.
So much then for the practical demands, in modern architecture, met by
the products of ceramic art. The æsthetic demand is not less admirably
met--or rather _might_ be.
When, in the sixteenth century, the Renaissance spread from south
to north, color was practically eliminated from architecture. The
Egyptians had had it, hot and bright as the sun on the desert; we
know that the Greeks made their Parian marble glow in rainbow tints;
Moorish architecture was nothing if not colorful, and the Venice
Ruskin loved was fairly iridescent--a thing of fire-opal and pearl.
In Italian Renaissance architecture up to its latest phase, the color
element was always present; but it was snuffed out under the leaden
colored northern skies. Paris is grey, London is brown, New York is
white, and Chicago the color of cinders. We have only to compare them
to yellow Rome, red Siena, and pearl-tinted Venice, to realize how
much we have lost in the elimination of color from architecture.
We are coming to realize it. Color played an important part in the
Pan-American Exposition, and again in the San Francisco Exposition,
where, wedded to light, it became the dominant note of the whole
architectural concert. Now these great expositions in which the
architects and artists are given a free hand, are in the nature of
preliminary studies in which these functionaries sketch in transitory
form the things they desire to do in more permanent form. They are
forecasts of the future, a future which in certain quarters is
already beginning to realize itself. It is therefore probable that
architectural art will become increasingly colorful.
The author remembers the day and the hour when this became his
personal conviction--his personal desire. It happened years ago in
the Albright Gallery in Buffalo--a building then newly completed, of a
severely classic type. In the central hall was a single doorway,
whose white marble architrave had been stained with different colored
pigments by Francis Bacon; after the manner of the Greeks. The effect
was so charming, and made the rest of the place seem by contrast so
cold and dun, that the author came then and there to the conclusion
that architecture without polychromy was architecture incomplete. Mr.
Bacon spent three years in Asia Minor, and elsewhere, studying
the remains of Greek architecture, and he found and brought home a
fragment of an antefix from the temple of Assos, in which the applied
color was still pure and strong. The Greeks were a joyous people. When
joy comes back into life, color will come back into architecture.
Ceramic products are ideal as a means to this end. The Greeks
themselves recognized their value for they used them widely and
wisely: it has been discovered that they even attached bands of
colored terra-cotta to the marble mouldings of their temples. How
different must have been such a temple's real appearance from
that imagined by the Classical Revivalists, whose tradition of the
inviolable cold Parian purity of Greek architecture has persisted,
even against archæological evidence to the contrary, up to the present
day.
In one way we have an advantage over the Greek, if we only had the wit
to profit by it. His palette, like his musical scale, was more limited
than ours. Nearly the whole gamut of the spectrum is now available to
the architect who wishes to employ ceramics. The colors do not
change or fade, and possess a beautiful quality. Our craftsmen and
manufacturers of face-brick, terra-cotta, and colored tile, after much
costly experimentation, have succeeded in producing ceramics of a
high order of excellence and intrinsic beauty; they can do practically
anything demanded of them; but from that quarter where they
should reap the greatest commercial advantage--the field of
architecture--there is all too little demand. The architect who should
lead, teach and dictate in this field, is often through ignorance
obliged to learn and follow instead. This has led to an ignominious
situation--ignominious, that is, to the architect. He has come
to require of the manufacturer--when he requires anything at
all--assistance in the very matter in which he should assist: the
determination of color design. It is no wonder that the results are
often bad, and therefore discouraging. The manufacturers of ceramics
welcome co-operation and assistance on the part of the architect with
an eagerness which is almost pathetic, on those rare occasions when
assistance is offered.
But the architect is not really to blame: the reason for his failure
lies deep in his general predicament of having to know a little of
everything, and do a great deal more than he can possibly do well. To
cope with this, if his practice warrants the expenditure, he surrounds
himself with specialists in various fields, and assigns various
departments of his work to them. He cannot be expected to have on
his staff a specialist in ceramics, nor can he, with all his manifold
activities, be expected to become such a specialist himself. As a
result, he is usually content to let color problems alone, for they
are just another complication of his already too complicated life;
or he refers them to some one whom he thinks ought to know--a
manufacturer's designer--and approves almost anything submitted. Of
course the ideal architect would have time for every problem, and
solve it supremely well; but the real architect is all too human:
there are depressions on his cranium where bumps ought to be;
moreover, he wants a little time left to energize in other
directions than in the practice of his craft. One of the functions
of architecture is to reveal the inherent qualities and beauties of
different materials, by their appropriate use and tasteful display.
An onyx staircase on the one hand, and a portland cement high altar
on the other, alike violate this function of architecture; they
transgress that beautiful necessity which decrees that precious
materials should serve precious uses and common materials should
serve utilitarian ends. Now color is a precious thing, and its highest
beauties can be brought out only by contrast with broad neutral tinted
spaces. The interior walls of a mediaeval cathedral never competed
with its windows, and by the same token, a riot of polychromy all
over the side of a building is not as effective, even from a chromatic
point of view, as though it were confined, say, to an entrance and a
frieze. Gilbert's witty phrase is applicable here:
"Where everybody's somebody, nobody's anybody."
Let us build our walls, then, of stone, or brick, or stucco,--for
their flat surfaces and neutral tints conduce to that repose so
essential to good architectural effect: but let us not rest content
with this, but grant to the eye the delight and contentment which it
craves, by color and pattern placed at those points to which it is
desirable to attract attention, for they serve the same æsthetic
purpose as a tiara on the brow of beauty, or a ring on a delicate
white hand. But just as jewelry is best when it is most individual,
so the ornament of a building should be in keeping with its general
character and complexion. A color scheme should not be chosen at
random, but dictated by the prevailing tone and texture of the wall
surfaces, with which it should harmonize as inevitably as the blossom
of a bush with its prevailing tone of stems and foliage. In a building
this prevailing tone will inevitably be either cold or warm, and the
color scheme just as inevitably should be either cold or warm; that
is, there should be a preponderance of cold colors over warm, or vice
versa. Otherwise the eye will suffer just that order of uneasiness
which comes from the contemplation of two equal masses, whereas it
experiences satisfaction in proportionate unequals.
Nothing will take the place of an instinctive colour-sense, but even
that needs the training of experience, if the field be new, and a few
general principles of all but universal application will not be amiss.
First of all it should be remembered that the intensity of color
should be carefully adjusted to its area. It is dangerous to try to
use high, pure colors, unrelieved and uncontrasted, in large masses,
but the brightest, strongest colors may be used with safety in units
of sufficiently restricted size. For harmony, as well as for richness,
the law of complementaries, in its most general application, is
the safest of all guides, but it must be followed with fine
discrimination. Complementary colors are like married pairs, if they
find the right adjustment with one another they are happy--that is,
there is an effect of beauty--but lacking such adjustment they are
worse off together than apart. Every artist who experiments in color
soon finds out for himself that instead of using two colors directly
complementary, it is better to "split" one of them, that is, use
instead of one of them two others, which combined will yield the
color in question. For example, the color complementary to red is
green-blue. Now green-blue is equidistant between yellow-green and
blue-violet, so if for red and blue-green; red, yellow-green and
blue-violet be substituted the combination loses its obviousness and
a certain harshness without losing anything of its brilliance, or
without departing from the optical law involved. Such a combination
corresponds to a diminished triad in music.
Another important consideration with regard to color as employed by
the architect dwells in those optical changes effected by distance and
position: the relative visibility of different colors and combinations
of colors as the spectator recedes from them, and the environmental
changes which colors undergo--in bright sunlight, in shadow, against
the sky, and with relation to backgrounds of different sorts.
The effect of distance is to make colors merge into one another, to
lower the values, but not all equally. Yellow loses itself first,
tending toward white. The effect of distance, in general, is to
disintegrate and decompose, thus giving "vibration" as it is called. A
knowledge of these and kindred facts will save the architect from many
disappointments and enable him to obtain wonderful chromatic effects
by simple means.