It would be very easy to give numberless illustrations of the harm resulting from this very wide-spread and far-reaching error in our conception and teaching of the duties of the designer, of the way he should go to work, and the methods he should follow.
We do not now require to be told that to fasten thin strips of wood to the face of a brick or stone wall in imitation of half-timber work is bad; but I may just in passing point out, that it was this same fault in our training and in our conception of the whole question, which ever made this possible, and rendered us able to tolerate it. We saw the beauty of old timber and plaster construction, and not seeing also that that beauty resulted from straightforwardly & honestly using the best form of construction known for these materials, we thought of the finished effect only, and imagined we got it by imitating it in other construction, where the conditions and requirements and the difficulties to be met and overcome were different. Nor do we need to think about these things much before we can see that it is wrong to erect gable, projection, cove, parapet, continuation of a bay window, or what not, for no useful purpose but solely for the display of even constructionally genuine half-timber work, that it may, by its echo of the beauties we have felt to exist in some true art work in the past, lead us to suppose that it too is beautiful.
But to avoid all possibility of becoming in the least personal, I will not take my illustrations from recent times, for it is easy to find them in abundance without. The abominations of the Renaissance are in themselves enough. These abominations were simply the outcome of giving the study of the finished result in the beautiful work of the past undue prominence in men’s minds, and allowing this study to smother the feeling for what had constituted the beauty in that work. As all know, the Renaissance came from the revival of the study of old Greek and Roman work in the 14th, 15th & 16th centuries. Men then began again to see the beauty that was in a Greek capital, shaft and base, but had not first learned to see that that beauty was the result primarily of the simple and direct way in which the pillar fulfilled its functions, in the form of construction in which it was used; and they began to use it again, and tried to work it in just as it was, and at the stage it had reached in the process of its evolution. They began to introduce it in buildings of a different construction, and in places where the conditions were very different from those under which it was so great. It had been beautiful where it supported a roof and cornice, and stood strong and adequate under their dead crushing weight: but it was now introduced in conjunction with the dome, the thrust of which it was entirely unsuited to sustain, therefore chains hidden in the masonry (like those in our own St. Paul’s Cathedral), were requisitioned, and we got an apparently stone building so constructed that it would not stand up in stone, just as we have to-day on every hand imitation half-timber buildings which would not stand up if of timber construction. It had been beautiful in the sunny climes of Greece and Italy, where the shade of the entablature it supported was needed, and an attribute of beauty: but it was now placed where the wall could not be set back from it, but must be brought out to it, and must have windows unshaded by cornice, frieze, & architrave. Therefore the pillar stood in front of it, carrying nothing, doing nothing, and a melancholy, painful thing to all who beheld it rightly.
They studied the ornament of the Greeks, but failed to notice how it was in all cases subordinated to, and explained and enhanced the general forms and contours and emphasized the construction; and the result was the meaningless inanity and vapid gracefulness of their compiled arabesques and ornament on pilasters, their festoons, and all the rest of the imitative and uninspired artificialities of the style.
The work became lifeless & compiled. In a Gothic cathedral, of the times before the Renaissance tainted our northern work, one feels the mason honestly developing the resources of his material, age by age. Behind one of Wren’s spires one always sees the man with paper and drawing instruments, hard mechanical lines laboriously measured off on a drawing board, with mathematical calculations of proportion figured all round the margin.
And apropos of all this, may I be allowed parenthetically to say, that there is a movement on foot to make architecture a close profession. I do not propose to enter here into this, or into the question whether any true standard of qualification in architecture, or any other art, can possibly be secured by examination; but all I have been saying has a very distinct bearing on the policy of those who advocate that all who would enter the profession of an architect, should go through the same course of study as definitely laid down by them; a course which begins with the study of ancient work, and, in so far as it includes at all those things which constitute the true training, brings them forward in the reverse order from the one indicated above. But this is not the point I wish to show; I wish emphatically to say that to train all would-be architects in such a way that they can pass the same examinations is bad enough; but for all to go through the same mill in preparation for these examinations, not allowing those who have other ideas of what an architect’s training should be a free hand to act upon their own convictions, can only have most disastrous results to architecture, as it would to any other art.
It is well to think earnestly of our education in art, and to fit ourselves for true appreciation; but when we have done this, if we come to actively practise an art, to keep a watch upon our motives is our only true guide. Everything depends on this. If the motive is unworthy the art will be unworthy. Unless we create any work of art, unless we write, paint, design, or whatever it may be, first with a desire to create an influence for good, to bring home to others something of the true & beautiful which might otherwise escape them, our art will be unworthy.
The first thing that must go to the making of an artist is not that he shall have the power to express himself, but that he shall have that within him which needs expression. The artist’s duty is a very grave and solemn one; it is for him to rouse in others the power of seeing truth and beauty, “The best impart the gift of seeing to the rest.”
BARRY PARKER.