BEAUTY IN THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS: ARCHITECTURE
In the arts which we have studied so far, beauty has been the sole or
chief end; in the industrial arts, beauty can be only a part of their
total meaning. No matter how much of an artist a builder or a potter
may be, he is necessarily controlled by the practical needs which
houses and pots subserve. This was the original condition of all
artists; for "in the beginning," before life's various aims were
distinguished and pursued in isolation, the beautiful was always married
to some other interest. Our method of study has, therefore, reversed
the temporal order; but with intent, for we believe that the nature
of a thing is better revealed in its final than in its rudimentary
form. To complete our survey of the arts, we must, however, give some
consideration to those works in which the unity of the useful and the
beautiful is still preserved; and as an example we have chosen
architecture, the most magnificent of them all.
First, we must clear up what might seem to be an inconsistency in our
thinking. In our definition of art we insisted upon the freedom of
beauty and the contrast between the aesthetic and the practical
attitudes, yet now we are admitting that some things may be at once
useful and beautiful. It would seem as if we must either modify our
definition of art or else deny beauty to such objects as bridges and
buildings. But we cannot do the latter, for the beauty of Brooklyn
bridge or Notre Dame in Paris is a matter of direct feeling, which no
theory can disestablish. And it is impossible to solve the problem by
supposing that in the industrial arts beauty and utility are extraneous
to each other, two separable aspects, which have no intimate connection.
For the fact that a bridge spans a river or that a church is a place
of worship is an element in its beauty. The aesthetic meaning of the
object depends upon the practical meaning. You cannot reduce the beauty
of a bridge or a cathedral to such factors as mere size and fine
proportions, without relation to function. No preconceived idea of the
purity of beauty can undermine our intuition of the beauty of utility.
Yet the dependence of beauty upon utility in the industrial arts is
not at variance with the freedom from practical attitudes which we
have claimed for it. For the beauty is still in the realm of perception,
of contemplation, not of use. It is a pleasure in seeing how the purpose
is expressed in the form and material of the object, not a pleasure
in the possession of the object or an enjoyment of its benefits. I may
take pleasure in the vision of purpose well embodied in an object which
another man possesses, and my admiration will be as disinterested as
my appreciation of a statue. And even if I do make use of the object,
I may still get an aesthetic experience out of it, whenever I pause and
survey it, delighting in it as an adequate expression of its purpose
and my own joy in using it. Then beauty supervenes upon mere utility,
and a value for contemplation grows out of and, for the moment,
supplants a value in use. I now take delight in the perception of an
object when formerly I took delight only in its use; I now enjoy the
expression of purpose for its present perceived perfection, when once
I enjoyed it only for its ulterior results. Such intervals of restful
contemplation interrupt the activity of every thoughtful maker or user
of tools. Thus the practical life may enter into the aesthetic, and
that which grows out of exigence may develop into freedom.
There is one more objection which may be urged against the aesthetic
character of the expression of practical purpose, namely, that the
appreciation of it is an affair of intellect, not of feeling. This
would indeed be fatal if it were necessarily true; but all men who
love their work know that they put into admiration for their tools as
much of warm emotion as of mind. There remains, however, the genuine
difficulty of communicating this emotional perception of useful objects,
of making it universal. It must be admitted that the attitude of the
average beholder towards a useful object is usually practical, not
contemplative, or else purely intellectual, an effort to understand
its structure, with the idea of eventual use. Most works of industrial
art produce no aesthetic experience whatever. But to be a genuine and
complete work of fine art, an object must be so made that it will
immediately impel the spectator to regard it aesthetically.
From what we have already established, we know how this requirement
can be met: by elaborating the outer aspects of the object in the
direction of pleasure and expression. By this means the beauty of mere
appearance will strike and occupy the mind, inducing the aesthetic
attitude towards the outside, from which it may then spread and embrace
the inner, purposive meaning. The obviously disinterested and warmly
emotional admiration of the shape will prevent the admiration for the
purposive adaptation from being cold and abstract. Hence, although
from the point of view of utility the beauty of mere appearance may
seem to be a superfluity, it is almost indispensable from an aesthetic
point of view, since it raises the appreciation of the purpose to the
aesthetic plane. And we can understand how enthusiastic workmen, whose
admiration for their work is already aesthetic, must necessarily desire
to consecrate and communicate this feeling by beautifying the appearance
of their products; how inevitably, through the ages, they have made
things not only as perfect as they could, but as charming.
When developed for the ends of the aesthetic life, the useful object
exhibits, therefore, two levels of beauty: first, that of appearance,
of form and sensation, line and shape and color; and second, that of
purpose spoken in the form. The first is of the vague and immediate
character so well known to us; the second is more definite and less
direct, since it depends upon the interpretation of the object in terms
of its function. The relation between the two is like that which
obtains, in a painting, between color and line, on the one hand, and
representation, on the other. When the first level of beauty is richly
developed on its own account, it becomes ornament. In a Greek vase,
for example, there is a beauty of symmetrical, well-proportioned shape,
delicate coloring of surface, and decorative painting, which might be
felt by people who knew nothing of its use; and, in addition, for those
who have this knowledge, a beauty in the fine balance of parts in the
adjustment of clay to its final cause. These factors, which we have
distinguished by analysis, should, however, be felt as one in the
aesthetic intuition of the object; the form, although beautiful in
itself, should reveal the function, and the decoration, no matter how
charming, should be appropriate and subordinate. Otherwise, as indeed
so often happens, the beauty of one aspect may completely dominate the
others; when the object either remains a pretty ornament perhaps, but
is functionally dead; or else, if it keep this life, loses its unity
in a rivalry of beautiful aspects.
All these points are strikingly illustrated in architecture. The
architects claim that their art is a liberal one aiming at beauty, yet
most buildings to-day are objects of practical interest alone. Their
doors are merely for entrance, their windows for admission of light,
their walls for inclosure. Few people, as they hurry in or out of an
office building or a railway station, stay to contemplate the majesty
of the height or the elegance of the facade; they transact their
business, buy their tickets, check their luggage, and go. Even when
the building has some claim to beauty, the mood of commercial life
stifles observation; or, if the building is observed, there is no
strong emotion or vivid play of imagination, no permanent impression
of beauty lingering in the memory, no enrichment of the inner life,
such as a musical air or a poem affords, but only a transient and
fruitless recognition. For this reason many have thought that buildings
must become useless, as castles and ruined temples are, in order to
be beautiful. Yet, in proportion as this is true, it involves a failure
on the part of architecture, a failure to make the useful a part of
the beautiful. A building, which was designed to be a habitation of
man, when taken apart from the life which it was meant to shelter and
sustain, is an abstraction or a vain ornament at best. If the company
which peopled it are gone, it can win significance only if we re-create
them in the imagination, moving in the halls or worshiping at the
altars. We cannot get rid of the practical for the sake of the aesthetic,
but must take up the practical into the aesthetic. For this reason
architecture has achieved its greatest successes where its uses have
been most largely and freely emotional, most closely akin to the
brooding spirit of beauty--in religious buildings.
Most buildings, it must be admitted, are not beautiful at all. In order
to be beautiful, they should be alive, and alive all over, as a piece
of sculpture is alive; there should be no unresponsive surfaces or
details; but most of our buildings are dead--dead walls, dead lines,
oblong boxes, neat and commodious, but dead. The practical problems
which the architect has to solve are so complex and difficult, and the
materials which he uses are so refractory, that there is inevitably
a sacrifice of the beauty of appearance to utility. The very size of
a building makes it aesthetically unmanageable all over. Here the lesser
industrial arts, like the goldsmith's, have an advantage in the superior
control which the workman can exert over his materials; his work is
that of a single mind and hand; it does not require, as architecture
does, the cooperation of a crowd of unfeeling artisans. In architecture,
mechanical necessities and forms threaten to supplant aesthetic
principles and shapes. The heavy square blocks, the rectangular lines,
seem the antithesis of life and beauty. "All warmth, all movement, all
love is round, or at least oval.... Only the cold, immovable,
indifferent, and hateful is straight and square.... Life is round, and
death is angular." [Footnote: Ellen Key, _The Few and the Many_,
translated from a quotation in Max Dessoir, _Aesthetik und Allgemeine
Kunstwissenschaft_, page 396.] What vividness of imagination or
sentiment can transmute these dead and hollow masses into a life
universally felt?
And yet, in a series of works of art among the most magnificent that
man possesses, this miracle was achieved. The Greek temples and Gothic
cathedrals are so much alive that they seem not to have been made with
hands, but to have grown. The straight lines have been modified into
delicate curves, the angles have given place to arches, the stiff and
mathematical have been molten into movement and surprise, the heaviness
has been so nicely balanced or overcome that it has been changed into
lightness, with the help of human and animal sculpture and floral
carving the inorganic has been transformed into the organic, by means
of painting and stained glass even the dull surfaces of walls and
windows have been made to glow into life. Artists wrought each portion
and detail, and built the whole for the glory of God and the city, a
monument for quiet contemplation, not a mere article to be used. With
few exceptions, any architectural beauty that we create is but a feeble
echo of theirs. Some day we may be able to produce something worthy
to be placed by its side, but only when we have sanctified our life
with communal aims. The aesthetic effect of a building depends upon
many factors, of which only a few can be analyzed by us in this short
chapter. If we abstract from its relation to purpose, architecture is
fundamentally an art of spatial form. Working freely with it, under
the sole limitation of function, the architect can make of this form
a complex, various, and beautiful language intelligible to all men,
and possessed of a systematic, yet fluent logic. Of this language the
simplest element is line. At first view, as we approach a building
from the outside, its beauty, as in the case of sculpture, is
essentially pictorial. For, although a building is a three-dimensional
solid in reality, each view of it is a two-dimensional surface, bounded
by lines and divided and diversified within by other lines. Now these
lines have their life and beauty like the lines of a picture. How they
get this life and what its specific quality is in the case of particular
lines, we need not explain again; but no one can fail to feel the
upward movement of the vertical lines of the Gothic style, the repose
of the horizontal lines of the Renaissance style, the playful grace
of the Rococo. Naturally, since the front of a building, where one
enters, is the most important and the most constantly in view, its
pictorial beauty is elaborated with especial care by the architect.
This is the justification of the overshadowing preeminence of the
facade in Renaissance palaces, which indeed was oftentimes the only
visible part of the outside of the building. When, however, the building
is perspicuous all round, it should, like a statue, present a beautiful
view from every standpoint.
In architecture, as in painting, the visual elements are adapted to
one or the other of the two chief ways of seeing. Either the surfaces
are seen as wholes primarily and the details in subordination; or else
the parts stand out clear and distinct, and the whole is their
summation. The former is always the case when the surfaces are left
plain with few divisions, or, if the surfaces are divided, when the
lines intersect and intermingle, as is exemplified in late Renaissance
or Baroque work, where the walls are covered with lavish ornament, the
enframement of windows is broken by moldings and sculpture which carry
into the surrounding spaces, and where, instead of embracing one story,
the "orders" comprise the entire height of the building. The second
possibility is well illustrated by the early classical Renaissance,
where the surface of each story, sharply separated from the others by
the line of the frieze, is divided regularly by arches or columns,
each window clearly enframed, and every sculptured ornament provided
with a niche.
There is, however, this fundamental difference between architectural
and pictorial lines: the latter are usually pure kinematical lines,
lines of free and un-resisted movement, while the former are usually
dynamical, lines of force which move against the resistance of mass.
In a picture objects are volatilized into light and have lost all
weight; but in architecture, since they are present in reality and not
in mere semblance, their weight is retained. A Greek column, for
example, not only moves upward, but also against the superincumbent
load of the entablature which it carries. The difference between the
two arts can be appreciated by comparing the picture of a building
with the building itself; in the former, despite the fact that we know
how heavy the dome or pediment is, and how strong therefore the piers
or columns that support it, we hardly feel them as heavy or strong at
all--the forces and masses have been transformed into abstract lines
and shapes. Sometimes, however, architectural lines and surfaces remain
purely kinematical; on the inside of our rooms, for example, when the
surfaces are smooth, and especially when they are decorated, we often
feel no tension of conflicting forces, but only a quiet play of
movements; it is as if the walls had been changed into the paper or
paint that covers them. The vividness of the expression of mechanical
forces in architecture depends, moreover, upon the kind of materials
employed; it is greater in marble than in wood, and less in our modern
constructions of steel and glass, where the piers move in single
vertical lines from the bottom to the top of the building, than in the
old forms, where the upper part of the building is frankly carried by
the lower.
The mere expression of mechanical forces in a building would not,
however, be aesthetic by itself, no matter how obvious to the mind.
We must not only know these forces to be there, we must also feel them
as there; we must appreciate them in terms of our own experiences in
supporting weights and overcoming resistances. We must transform the
mechanical into the vital, the material into the human. Art is an
expression of life, not of mathematics. And this translation is not
the result of an unusual, artificial attitude assumed for the sake of
aesthetic appreciation; it is the natural mode of apperceiving force
and mass. We cannot see a column supporting an entablature without
feeling that it stands firm to bear the weight, much as we should stand
if we were in its place. If this is a "pathetic fallacy," it is one
which we all inevitably commit. Even the skeptic, if he were to examine
carefully into his own mind, would find that he commits it, whenever
he gives to the column, not a casual or merely calculating regard, but
a free and earnest attention. If he gives his mind to the column and
lets the column take hold of his mind, allowing his psychological
mechanism to work unhampered, he will commit it. The aesthetic intuition
of force--the human way of appreciating it--is, in fact, primary; the
purely mechanical and mathematical is an abstraction, superimposed for
practical and scientific purposes.
The interplay of humanized mechanical energies, of which architecture
is the expression, may be conceived as the resultant of four chief
forces, acting each in a definite direction: upward, downward, outward,
and inward. The downward force is associated with the weight of the
materials of which the building is constructed. To all physical objects
we ascribe a tendency toward the earth. An unsupported weight will
fall, and even when supported will exert a pressure downward. And this
tendency is no mere directed force in the physical sense, but an
impulse, in the personal sense. For when with hand or shoulder we
support a weight, we inevitably interpret it in terms of our own
voluntary muscular exertion in resisting it; even as we strive to
resist it, so it seems to strive to fall. Although this force is exerted
downward, it shows itself in the horizontal lines of a building, in
string courses, parapets, cornices, friezes; for the horizontal is the
line parallel to the earth, toward which the force is directed, and
along which we lie when we rest.[Footnote: Compare the discussion of
Lipps, _Aesthetik_, Bd. 1, Dritter Abschnitt, although I am far
from accepting all of his analyses.]
Opposed to the downward force is the upward force. If an object does
not fall, it must be supported by a force in the upward direction; the
hand must exert a force perpendicular to the mass which it carries;
the body must hold itself erect in order to bear its own weight. Just
so, an architectural member, if it is not to collapse, must raise
itself upward. Upward forces are revealed by the vertical lines of a
building--the prevailing lines of columns, piers, shafts, pinnacles,
towers, spires. We interpret vertical lines as moving upward, partly
because the eye moves upward in scanning them, partly because we
ourselves move in lines of this general direction in going from the
bottom to the top of a building. Even when we are at the top of a
building we apprehend its vertical lines as rising rather than as
descending, because we ourselves had to rise in order to get there.
Converging lines, as of towers and spires, we also interpret in the
same way as going to the point of meeting above.
Acting in conjunction with the downward force is an outward one. The
lower parts of a construction tend to spread out as they give way under
the weight of the superincumbent masses; if they are very much broader
than the latter, they give the impression of great weight carried. As
a result, a horizontal line is introduced, and the longer it is in
comparison with the vertical line of height, the heavier the effect.
Compare, for example, the impression made by a tall and thin triangular
shape, with a low and broad one; and compare also the relative lengths
of the horizontal and the vertical lines. The former shape seems simply
to rise, while the latter lifts. We seem to observe the working of
this outward force, as Lipps has remarked, in the spreading out of the
trunks of trees at the base and in the feet of animals; and we feel
it in ourselves whenever we spread our limbs apart to brace ourselves
to withstand a load.
Whenever the outward force is resisted, it gives evidence of the
existence of a force operating in the opposed direction--inward. Without
this force, the lower parts of a construction would lack all solidity
and spread like a molten mass on the ground. This is especially striking
where the material, instead of spreading outward and downward, seems
to press itself inward and upward. Compare, for example, a shape whose
base-line is smaller than the line of its top with one in which the
reverse holds true. The former gives the impression of lightness and
agility, with a prevailing upward trend, the other an impression of
weight and heaviness, with a prevailing trend towards the ground.
Obviously, the outward and the inward forces are correlative and
complementary: we have already observed that a construction would
collapse without the inward; we can now see that it would disappear
entirely without the outward. Obviously, also, the inward and upward
go together, and the downward and outward.
Even a plain rectangular wall manifests the interplay of these forces.
The horizontal dimension represents the downward and outward force of
the weight; the vertical dimension, the upward forces, which prevent
the wall from collapsing in itself and hold it upright; while the
lateral boundaries give evidence of the inward tension that keeps the
mass together. But the most beautiful expressions of architectural
forces are to be found in the historical styles. In each style there
is a characteristic relationship between the forces, imparting a
distinctive feeling. I shall offer a brief analysis of some of these.
Many have recognized that the classical Greek construction, as
illustrated in the Doric temple, expresses a fine equilibrium between
the upward and the downward forces, embodied in the vertical and
horizontal lines respectively. The upward force is manifest primarily
in the vertical columns, and is emphasized there by the flutings, the
slight progressive narrowing toward the top, and the inward effort of
the necking just below the echinus. The downward force is embodied in
the horizontal lines of the lintel, architrave, cornice, and in the
hanging mutules and gutta. The two forces come to rest in the abaci,
which, as the crowning members of the columns, directly carry the
weight of the entire entablature. The equilibrium between the horizontal
and the vertical tendencies is, however, not a static but a moving
one; for the two opposing forces are present in every part of the
building from the stylobate to the ridge of the triangular pediment.
The downward force is already manifest in the widened base of the
column, where it works in conjunction with the inward tendency, and
shows its effect at the critical points at the top of the supporting
column--in the spreading echinus with its horizontal bands beneath and
in the horizontal lines of the abaci. The upward force, on the other
hand, is continued right through the solid mass of the entablature,
in the vertical lines of the triglyphs, in the antefixes, and even to
the very apex of the building, where the ascending lines of the
triangular pediment meet. The resulting total effect is that of a
perfect, yet swaying balance.
The aesthetic effect derived from the interplay of forces in the Ionic
form is similar to that in the Doric, only more delicate and elastic.
The slender columns, being less rugged and resistant than the Doric,
seem to transmit the weight supported, which shows itself, therefore,
in the outward spreading molded base; but this apparent lack of strength
in the column is compensated for by the elastic energy in the coiled
spring of the volutes, upon which, with the slight mediation of a
narrow band, the entablature rests. Here most of the upward energy of
the Ionic form is concentrated; for although the dentils of the frieze
perform the function of the triglyphs, they are too small to do it
effectively; the style lacks, therefore, the gentle harmonizing of
forces all over, characteristic of the Doric, and evinces instead a
clean-cut elastic tension at a given point. This effect is, however,
somewhat softened by the breaking up of the downward force of weight
by means of the recessed divisions of the architrave. In the Corinthian
capital, which has the same general feeling as the Ionic, the elastic
tension is still further diminished through the renewed emphasis on
the mediating abacus, the reduction of the size of the volutes, and
the overhanging floral carvings. However, by reason of the strength
given by the bell and the projecting outward and upward curving form
of the abacus, the suggestion of weakness in the Corinthian form is
overcome, but the gentleness remains.
If the Greek construction expresses a balance between the upward and
downward forces, the arched forms that followed express the victory
of the upward. In the arch the upward force, instead of being arrested
where the support meets the mass to be carried, is continued throughout
the mass itself. Of the two chief types of arches, the round and the
pointed, each has a specific feeling. We shall study the round form
first, where the vertical tendency is indeed victorious, but only
through reconciliation and compromise.
In the round arch all four forces are beautifully expressed. The upward
is manifest, first, in the vertical pier, which acts very much as the
column does, and, in Roman work, was often replaced by the column. The
opposing downward force is expressed in the horizontal upper bound of
the arch and in the line of the impost, also horizontal, which breaks
the vertical line and so marks the place where the two forces come
into sharpest conflict. In this conflict, the vertical is victorious;
for, instead of being stopped by the impost, it is carried up throughout
the entire construction by means of the upward and inward curving of
the arch. The very curve of the arch shows, however, that the victory
is not absolute; for its circular form is obviously determined as a
compromise between an inward centripetal force, moving upward and
diminishing the breadth of the arch to a mere point at its apex, and
an outward centrifugal force, gradually spreading the arch downward
until it reaches its greatest breadth at the impost, where it is
arrested by the opposing vertical force in the pier. To the historical
imagination, the round arch seems, therefore, to express the genial
classical idea of a control by the higher nature which nevertheless
did no violence to the demands of the lower. In the spherical dome the
effect is the same, only the interplay of forces operates in three
dimensions instead of two.
When arches are superposed, the upward movement proceeds in stages,
beginning anew at each horizontal division of the wall space. The use
of entablatures applied to the wall and of engaged columns, common in
Roman work, seems to involve an attempt at a fusion of two contradictory
styles, and is usually condemned as such. This contradiction can be
solved, however, by viewing the entablatures as mere weightless lines
of division of the wall, usually marking off the different stories,
and by viewing the columns in a similar fashion as having no supporting
function--which is actually the case--and as simply serving the purpose
of framing the arches. At most they merely indicate the direction of
the chief contending forces,--the parallel lintels signalizing the
force of weight, and the vertical columns, standing one upon the other,
pointing the movement of the upward force. They have, therefore, a
pictorial rather than a dynamic significance.
Differences of feeling in arched forms depend upon the relative height
of arches and supporting piers and columns. The vertical effect is
strongly emphasized when the latter are relatively high, while the
effect of weight is increased in flattened arches, which for this
reason are especially appropriate for crypts and prison entrances.
Interesting complications are introduced in arcades or intersecting
vaults, where a single column serves as a support for two or more
arches; for there the vertical force is divided, flowing in different
directions in the little triangular piece of wall between, or along
the ribs of the vaults. Something similar occurs in the Byzantine dome
on pendentives, only instead of supporting the horizontal weight of
a gallery or a vault, the triangular pendentives meet the outward
thrust of a superposed dome.
In Renaissance architecture and the modern classical revivals, where
Greek and Roman styles are freely adapted to novel modes of life and
purpose, no essentially new form was added to architectural speech.
There were combinations of old forms into more complex structures, but
no new important elements. The most outstanding novelty is perhaps the
reversed relation between the whole and the parts. [Footnote: See P.
Frankl, _Die Entwicklungsphasen der neueren Baukunst_, 1914.] In
the classic styles, whether arched or Greek, the whole is built up of
the parts additively; each is a relatively independent center of energy
complete in itself; first the columns, then the architrave, frieze,
and cornice, then the pediment; or first one row of arches, then another
row on top of this, and so on. Coordination is the governing principle.
But in the modern adaptations, even where coordination rather than
subordination rules in the pictorial sphere, the whole is first
dynamically and the parts are secondary. In the typical Renaissance
facade, for example, the arches of the windows are rather openings in
the walls than supporting members. They are centers of little eddies
of force, rather than independent parts of the main determining stream
of energy. The wall rises as a whole to its heavy overhanging cornice,
despite the horizontal divisions marking the stories. There are,
however, important differences between the various modern types; the
earlier Renaissance forms, for example, keeping closer to the antique
than the later Baroque and Rococo.
The complete triumph of the vertical tendency, foreshadowed in the
Roman, was proclaimed in Gothic architecture in the use of the pointed
arch. For in the round arch the vertical has not conquered after all;
the horizontal is still active there, even to the apex of the arch,
where the tangential line is parallel to the earth, the line of weight.
But in the pointed style the victory of the vertical is clearly
decisive,--the upward and inward forces, by elongating and narrowing
the curve of the arch to a point, have dominated the downward and
outward. The great height of the piers, the gabled roofs, the ribs of
the vaults the pointed form of the windows, the towers, spires, and
pinnacles,--all proclaim it. Yet this victory does not occur without
opposition; for the higher the vaulting, the greater the weight to be
carried; the greater, therefore, the outward thrust, which had to find
its expression and its stay in the buttress. But even the buttress,
although it bears witness to the outward and horizontal force of weight,
was nevertheless so fashioned with its gable and pinnacle, or its own
arched form, as to aid the upward movement. The thinness of walls and
partitions, and the piercing of these with arches and windows, by
lightening the force of weight, also contributed to increase the
vertical movement. At sight of a true Gothic cathedral, we feel
ourselves fairly lifted off the ground and rushed upward.
In thinking of the beauty of architecture, we are all too apt to
consider the exterior exclusively, forgetting that the inside of a
building, where we live, is even more important practically, and is
capable of at least as great an aesthetic effect.
The characteristic aesthetic effect of the interior is a function of
the inclosed space, the volume, not of the inclosing walls taken singly.
The walls are only the limits of this space, they are not the space
itself. Of course, the walls within have their own beauty, of surface
and pervading energy, but this does not differ markedly from that of
the walls seen from the outside, and what we have established for the
one holds for the other. But the beauty of the inclosed space is
something entirely new.
In itself, however, mere volume of space is no more aesthetic than
mere bounding line or surface; in order to become beautiful, it must
become alive. But how can space--the most abstract thing in the
world--become alive? By having the activities which it incloses felt
into it. Just as our bodies are felt to be alive because our activities
express themselves there, so our rooms, because we live and move within
them. As we enter a cathedral and look down the long aisle, the movement
of our eyes inevitably suggests the movement of our bodies; or, as we
look up and our eyes follow the ribs of the vaulting, it is as if we
ourselves were borne aloft; in the imagination we move through the
open spaces; and since we do not actually move, we locate our impulses
to movement, not in our bodies, but in the space through which we take
our imagined flight. Every object suggests movement to it, and we fill
the intervening space with this imagined movement, provided only we
stay our activities and give time for the imagination to work its will.
Thus all space may become alive with the possibilities of movement
which it offers.
The aesthetic effects of volume vary chiefly according to size and
shape. In order to be appreciated, these effects must in general be
somewhat striking; otherwise they pass unnoticed, and we simply take
the interiors of our buildings as matters of course.
It is a curious fact that an impression of vastness can be secured by
inclosing a relatively small space. A square, like the Place de la
Concorde, or even the inside of a cathedral, produces a feeling of
size almost, if not quite, as great as an open prairie or sea. The
reason, I suppose, is that an inclosed space offers definite points
as stimuli and goals for suggested movements. As we imaginatively reach
out and touch these points, we seem to encompass their distance; and
the volume of our own bodies seems to be magnified accordingly. The
boundaries of the space become a second and greater integument. This
is of decisive importance; for the aesthetic appreciation of size is
relative to an appreciation of the size of our own bodies; in nature
itself there is nothing either large or small. Along with the sense
of vastness goes a sense of freedom; the one is the aesthetic experience
resulting from the imaginative reaching of the goal of a movement, the
other is the feeling of the imagined movement itself.
When, on the other hand, an inclosure is small, as in the case of a
cell, and especially when the ceiling or vault is low, as in a crypt,
it feels cabined and confined, because our own possibilities of movement
are restricted. In order to avoid this feeling, if a space is limited
in one direction, it must be free in another; if narrow, it must be
long; if small in plan, it must be high, as in a tower.
The form of an inclosed space is also expressive. There are two chief
types, the longitudinal and the radial; but since these may exist
either in plan or in elevation, four possibilities result: the
longitudinal-horizontal, as in an aisle; the longitudinal-vertical,
as in a tower; the radial-horizontal, illustrated by every equilateral
plan--triangle, square, regular polygon, and above all, the most perfect
form of this type, the circle; and finally, the radial-vertical, of
which domed spaces, like the Pantheon or St. Paul's, are examples. The
terms used to designate them, together with the examples, afford a
good idea of what these space forms are, making further description
unnecessary. It is interesting to observe how different the expression
of the square and the triangle is when they determine the plan of an
inclosed space from what it is when they are the shapes of walls.
[Footnote: Compare Fritz Hoeber: _Systematik der
Architekturproportionen_, II, B, a. ] In the case of the latter,
according to the analysis which we have given of them, the figures
represent an interplay of antagonistic horizontal and vertical forces,
about an axis drawn perpendicular to the midpoint of the base line;
while as plans they express forces homogeneous in kind radiating from
their centers. The feeling of longitudinal forms is one of continued
movement, forward or upward as the case may be; when the distance is
very great, the feeling is of infinity, either of vista, as in an
aisle, or of height, as in a tower, for even when the point at the end
is clearly seen and known, we continue it in the imagination. The
radial forms, on the other hand, even when the axes are very long,
express completeness and security, for no matter how far we go in any
one direction, we have to proceed along a line which brings us back
to our starting point; in following to the top the movement of the
curved line of a dome or an apse, the continuation of the same line
carries us down on the other side to a point corresponding to the one
from which we set out; if we wander, we return home.
With reference to the division of interiors into parts, the same two
types are exemplified which we found in studying the visual and the
dynamic aspects of buildings. Either the parts of the interior space
are clearly marked off from each other, and the perception of the whole
which they constitute is reached by a process of summation; or else,
to one standing within, the space is first perceived as a whole, and
its parts, lacking clear definition, are perceived subsequently. In
the former type, the parts are of pronounced individuality, and the
whole is their free and joint work; in the latter, the parts are merged,
and tend to be lost in the whole. These two possibilities exist whether
the space be of radial or longitudinal form. In general, the classical
styles lend themselves to the coordinate type of division of the
interior, while the later styles favor the subordination of the parts
to the whole.
The other factors in the beauty of architecture, besides the expression
of the forces resident in its forms, can receive only scant notice
from us. Among these is light--its admission, exclusion, and diffusion.
A house with ample windows flooded with sunshine shares the feeling
of an open day; a cathedral, dimly lighted, stimulates a mood of
brooding mystery and meditation, like some dark forest. Another factor
is color. Color plays a double part in architecture: first, to enliven
the neutral tones of certain materials; and second, to impart specific
moods. It was no barbaric taste, but a keen feeling for life and warmth
that induced the Greeks to paint their temples; and without their rose
windows, Gothic cathedrals are like faces from which the glow of life
is departing. The different colors have the same feelings in
architecture that they have in painting. The reds and purples of
ecclesiastical stained glass stimulate the passion of adoration, the
blues deepen it, and the yellows seem to offer a glimpse of heavenly
bliss. Sound, its presence or its absence, is another factor in
architectural expression: the quiet of the church in contrast with the
noise of the busy street outside, the peal of the organ, or the chorus
of young voices. Although architecture is a spatial art and music a
temporal art, they nevertheless go well together because the emotions
aroused by both are vague and voluminous, and the sounds, reverberating
from the walls and filling the inclosed spaces, seem to fuse with them.
Ornamental carving performs a diversifying and enlivening function
similar to that of color. So long as its lines follow those of the
architectural forms, it may well be rich and elaborate. It is fitting,
moreover, that buildings designed to be houses of the gods should
contain their images, and that the same spirit that expresses itself
in playful lines should become embodied in griffin and gargoyle.
Finally, erected in the open, with no shelter or enframement, a building
is, in large measure, a part of nature and possesses something of the
beauty of nature. Rooted to one place like a tree, it shares the beauty
of its site, and responds to the ever varying effects of light and
shadow, rain and mist and snow.
The abstract beauty of architecture can be understood without any
knowledge of the purposes of buildings. A Hindu who knows nothing of
our civilization cannot fail to be responsive to Notre Dame, any more
than we can fail to admire the beauty of Taj Mahal. The very simplest
architectural forms, like the pyramids or the Washington monument,
provided they are of sufficient size and mass, speak an eloquent
language which is immediately understood. And the content of their
speech is not so abstract as might be judged from our previous studies
of it; for in architecture, as in music, concrete emotions and
sentiments flow into the channel cut by the form. Longing, aspiration,
and mystery have universally been felt into a form pointing skyward;
and the feeling of incompleteness has been lost, and security regained,
in an overarching dome.
There is, however, this difference between architecture and music. In
music, the emotional content is purely personal; while in architecture,
it may become social and historical. Architectural purposes are all
social: the purposes of a family, a nation, a cult. And the purposes
of the greatest of buildings--of those which serve the nation and
religion--are also historical; about them gather the traditions of
a community. Centers of the life of a people, created by it and enduring
with it, they become its symbols; or outlasting it, memorials and
witnesses to it. The vague emotions aroused by the architectural forms
are pointed and enriched by this spirit: the vastness, seclusion,
magnificence, mystery, and aspiration of the Gothic cathedral become
associated with the life of the medieval Catholic church; the fine
balance, clarity, and simplicity of the Greek temple with the best in
Greek culture. This interpretation of a building in terms of its purpose
and history is necessary to a complete aesthetic appreciation. Without
it, a building may have many beauties, all the beauties which we have
analyzed; but they are all separate, and there is no beauty of the
whole. It is the life which the many parts and aspects serve that makes
them into one.
I shall close this chapter with a brief discussion of architectural
composition. The unity of a building is constituted primarily by the
necessary adjustment of part to part which makes possible the life
that it incloses. How the parts serve this purpose is not immediately
evident to intuition; nor can it be; yet it should be intelligible to
a thoughtful study. The knowledge thus gained may then enter into an
imaginative vision, for which the building will seem like an organism
pulsing with life.
This purposive unity cannot well be secured without spatial contiguity;
here, as in sculpture, a unified life demands a unified material. Yet
sometimes detached structures belong together functionally, and may
be felt as one aesthetically, provided they are similar in design and
some one of them is dominant; otherwise, each claims to be a distinct
individual, and aesthetic rivalry is the result.
Functional unity, although necessary, is not sufficient for aesthetic
unity; in addition, there must be formal unity--design, composition.
To study this adequately would require a separate treatise, which has
not yet been written, so far as I know, with anything approaching
philosophical depth and completeness; but for our plan it will be
sufficient to show how the general principles of aesthetic form are
illustrated in architecture; and because of the perspicuity of things
spatial, these principles are nowhere else so lucidly manifest.
Since architecture is a spatial art, unity in variety is chiefly a
matter of harmony and balance rather than of evolution, and of these
harmony is perhaps the most conspicuous. Harmony is secured in many
ways.
First, by giving the whole building or parts of the building a simple
geometrical form readily perceived,--for example, the cruciform plan
of many Gothic cathedrals, the oblong plan and oblong surmounted by
a triangle in the facade of the Greek temple, the octagonal shape of
a Renaissance chapel. A higher degree of harmony is obtained when the
same shape is repeated throughout the various parts of the
building,--the cylinder in the columns, the triangle or semicircle in
the arches and gables. A step further is taken in the same direction
when the different similar parts are all of the same size, as in the
Greek temple, where the columns are all of one size, and similar parts
of columns of equal size, and the metopes and triglyphs likewise.
A more complex type of harmony, since it admits of greater variety,
is proportionality. Proportionality may be of various kinds. It may
be merely the existence of a definite numerical relation between the
dimensions of single parts, or the areas of various parts, of a
building. This, in turn, may be either a simple arithmetical relation,
such as exists between the parts of a Greek facade, each being some
simple multiple of the unit or module; or a more complex relation like
the Golden Section, where the smaller is to the larger dimension as
the larger is to the sum of both; or like that which obtains when
different parts form a geometrical series, where each is smaller or
larger than the preceding by some fraction of the latter. The relation
between the length and breadth of the facade of the Ducal Palace in
Florence illustrates the Golden Section; the heights of the stories
of the Peller House in Nuremberg form a geometrical series. This type
of harmony is most complete when the proportion between the dimensions
of the different parts is the same as that of the whole building,--by
the ancients called _concinnitas_ because it produces a feeling
akin to that of musical harmony. Dominance of a particular kind of
line, horizontal or vertical, also gives harmony. Finally, harmony is
secured by sameness of direction of line: the alignment of windows or
parallelism between moldings dividing the surfaces of walls, for
example.
The relations, so seemingly mathematical, upon which architectural
harmony is based, need not be exact, for two reasons: minor deviations
are not perceptible, and even when perceptible, they give to the whole
a feeling of life. Our experience with living things has taught us
that, despite their orderliness, there is no exact mathematical
regularity in their proportions; hence forms which cannot be precisely
formulated are better fitted to symbolize life to us than the rigidly
geometrical. The same experience has taught us that the curvilinear
forms are closer to life than the angular; hence again the tendency,
for aesthetic purposes, to introduce minute departures from the
plumb-line and rule. There is, however, a type of life specifically
human, the life of reason, which is best symbolized by mathematical
relations; hence the Greeks, and all those who have followed the
classical ideal, all who have had a passion for reason, have felt the
circle and the square, and every other exact embodiment of clarity and
intelligence, to be beautiful. In no other art has the passion for the
intelligible been so perfectly expressed as in classical architecture.
Next in importance to harmony as a mode of unity in variety in
architecture is balance. Balance implies emphatic variety, or contrast.
One mode of balance, that between the upward and the downward
tendencies, we have already discussed. There is another mode, similar
to that which exists in painting and sculpture, the balance between
the right and left members of a building. In order that this type of
balance may be appreciated, there must be some axis or line of mediation
between the parts, from which the opposing tendencies take their start;
otherwise we view the parts together, instead of in opposition. For
example, there is balance between two wings of a building which are
separated by some central member or link; balance between the aisles
of a church on either side of the nave; balance between the sets of
three columns right and left of the door in the Greek hexastyle temple.
Such cases of symmetry between equal right and left parts are the
simplest examples of balance; but there are other, more complex types.
For example, the parts may be unequal, yet balance nevertheless,
provided their inequality is compensated for by some enrichment of
design or ornament in the lesser part. Or again, there may be a balance
between contrasting shapes, such as the square and the triangle, when
they make an equal claim upon the attention.
Although, since architecture is a static art, evolution is not so
important as harmony and balance, it exists nevertheless. In a
colonnade, as you look down it, with the height of the columns
diminishing in perspective, there is a rhythmical movement of eye and
attention toward the last column as a goal. There is the same rhythmical
movement in following the arches on either side of the nave of a church
leading to the apse.
There is a rhythmical movement in the progressive diminution of the
height of the stories of a building, going towards the top. In such
spatio-temporal rhythms, the proportional equality between the members
corresponds to the equal intervals in temporal rhythms, and the
alternation between member and intervening space, or between member
and line of division, corresponds to the alternation between heavy and
light accents. Last, evolution is present in architecture, whenever,
often without rhythmical divisions, the attention is impelled to move
along lines that meet at a point which serves as a climax, as in all
triangular forms where the lines lead up to the apex,--pointed windows
or arches, towers ending in belfries or pinnacles.
Dominance, with its correlative, subordination, are everywhere present
in architecture. In general, size and a central position, which usually
go together, determine preeminence. The largest masses and those which
occupy a central position inevitably rule the others. The towers and
the facade dominate the exterior of a Gothic cathedral, the middle
doorway is superior to those which flank it, and within, the central
and larger nave dominates the smaller aisles on either side. When there
are many dominant elements, as is necessarily the case in a large
building, they must be unified by balance, if there are two, or by
subordination to one of them, if three or more; otherwise, each claims
to be the whole and the building falls apart into its members. There
cannot well be three vertical dominant parts, because the central one
makes a claim to preeminence which cannot be satisfied without
superiority in size. A central member should, therefore, either be
made larger than those flanking it, or else should be reduced to the
status of a mere subordinate link between the others.
In the horizontal division of a building into stories--as, for example,
in the Palazzo Farnese near Rome--it is easier for the prominent parts
to be equal, because they are better united by the evident contiguity
of their masses, by their inclosure in a simple geometrical shape, and
enframement between base and overhanging cornice. Yet here also we
observe the tendency to make the middle larger or otherwise dominant,
exemplified even in the building cited, where the central part is
distinguished by the ornamental shield, upon which the attention is
focused. When there are four horizontal divisions, our tendency is to
divide them into groups of two; but unless this grouping is clearly
marked by a molding or other such device, our purpose is defeated
because each of the two can itself be divided into two parts, whence
we get the four parts again, among which there is not sufficient unity.
When, however, there are more than four stories, they cease to function
as individuals and become members of a series, the rhythm of which
creates the necessary unity. Even in this case, however, the tendency
toward grouping into three with the middle dominant persists; for, as
a rule, the stories are divided by moldings into three parts, of which
the central part is the largest. Four equal stories are difficult
because they at once resist an arrangement into threes and yet fall
short of being the series which they suggest. When a series of stories
is divided into three parts, a superior aesthetic effect is gained if
the height of each story diminishes in some regular ratio from the
bottom to the top, thus expressing the gradual overcoming of the
downward force by the upward,--the rhythm becomes dynamical as well
as kinematical.
All good architectural styles illustrate the principle of impartiality,
which demands the careful elaboration of parts. Yet, as we have
indicated, there are two possibilities: some styles are founded on the
idea of the subordination of the parts to the whole, and so permit of
a less elaborate execution of details, while others are based on the
idea of coordination among the parts within the whole, and so require
that each part be vividly clear, distinct from the others, and possessed
of a pronounced individual beauty. These two types are exemplified in
each of the three aspects of a building--the visual, the dynamic, and
the voluminal. For the Greek and Roman architecture and for that of
the Renaissance, the former was the ideal; while the latter is clearly
characteristic of the more modern forms; between these stand the
Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic, in which a union of the two types,
in what has well been called an organic type, was attempted, and perhaps
achieved in the last. The former has the feeling of the mechanical,
rational view of life, which is the classical; the latter has the
feeling of the mystical and organic view, which is modern.[Footnote:
See P. Frankl, _Die Entwieklungsphasen der neueren Baukunst_, 1914.]