The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4) / Hegel's Aesthetik

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

ARCHITECTURE

Art, by enabling its content to attain a realized existence under a definite form, becomes a particular art. We may therefore now for the first time refer to it as an actual art and find therein the real beginning of art. With this particularity, however, in so far as it purports to bring before us the objectivity of the Idea of the beautiful and art, we have presented to us at the same time in its notional significance a totality of what is particular. For this reason when we now, in the sphere of the specific arts, begin our examination of the same with the art of building this must not merely be accepted in the sense that architecture asserts itself as the art which, by virtue of its notional definition, is first presented to us as such an object of inquiry, but we may equally accept as a result, that it is also in relation to its existence the art first to be considered. In supplying, however, an answer to the question, what the mode of origin was, which fine art, relatively to its notion and realized form, has received, we must exclude the experience of history no less than reflections, conjectures, and ordinary conceptions, which merely have reference to objective history, and are so readily and in such variety propounded. In other words, men are ordinarily actuated by an impulse, to bring before their mental vision anything in its original mode of appearance for the reason that the beginning is the simplest mode, under which the fact asserts itself. And connected with this impulse we have present behind it the covert conviction that the simple mode of appearance informs us of the fact in its notional significance and real origin, and the further amplification of such a beginning to the actual point in the process which only really concerns us is further with a like readiness conceived under the trivial mode of thought, that a process so understood has gradually brought art forward to the crucial stage above indicated. A beginning, however, of this simplicity is, if we look at its content, something which, taken by itself, is so unimportant, that for philosophical thought it can only appear as wholly accidental, albeit it is for the ordinary consciousness only just in such a way that the origin can be readily grasped. For example, we have the story, as an explanation of the origin of the art of painting, told us of a maiden who followed the dim outline of the shadow of her sleeping lover. In the same way we have sometimes a cave and sometimes a hollow tree adduced as the point of departure in the art of building. Beginnings of this kind are so intelligible in themselves that further comment on the fact appears unnecessary[30]. In particular the Greeks invented many charming tales to explain the origins not merely of fine art, but also ethical institutions and other conditions of life, all of which satisfied the primary need to make such beginnings visible to the imagination. Such beginnings are not substantiated by history, and yet they do not aim at making the manner of origin intelligible directly as a process involved in the notion, but purport to confine their explanation to the field of objective history.

DIVISION OF SUBJECT

We have, then, in such a way to establish the beginning of art from its notional significance, that the first problem of art is made to consist in giving form to that which is essentially objective, the ground, that is, of Nature, the external environment, and by doing so to make that which is without ideal import to conform both to significance and form, both of which still remain external to it, for the reason that they are not either the form or significance inherent in the objective material. The art, which has set before it this task is, as we have seen, an architecture which has already discovered its first elaboration under the modes of sculpture, or painting and music[31].

If we now direct our attention to the most primitive origins of the art of building, we find at the earliest stage that we can accept for such a beginning the hut, regarded as the human dwelling, and the temple, as the exterior enclosure of the god and his community. With a view to define this commencement more closely a dispute has been raised with reference to the nature of the material employed for building, whether, that is to say, it originated in buildings of wood, which is the opinion of Vitruvius, and is supported by Hirt in a similar reference, or rather from those of stone. This contrast of original material is no doubt of importance, for it does not merely concern its external quality as one might at first sight suppose, but rather the architectonic character of fundamental forms; for instance, the kind of decoration united with it is essentially bound up with this external material. We may, however, entirely set aside the distinction as a purely subordinate aspect of the matter rather referable to what is accidental and empirical, and devote our attention to a point of more importance.

In other words, in dealing with houses, temples, and other buildings we are confronted with the essential condition, to which we attribute the fact that buildings of this kind are merely means which presuppose an external end. Hut and house of God alike presuppose those who dwell in them, and for whom they have been erected, men and the images of gods. Man is also prompted by a desire to leap and sing; he requires the mediacy of human speech; but speech, leaping, shouting, and singing are not as yet poetry, the dance and music. And when within the architectonic adaptation of means to ends in order to satisfy specific needs, in part referable to daily life and in part to the religious cultus or the state, the impulse in the direction of artistic form and beauty asserts itself, we find at the same time a division apparent in the kind of building above mentioned. On the one hand we have man, thinking man, or the image of the god as the essential object, for which, from the other point of view, architecture merely supplies the means of environment and covering. With such a divided point of view we are unable to constitute our beginning, which is in its nature the immediate, and simple, not a relativity or essential relation of this sort; rather we must look for a point of departure, where a distinction of this kind does not yet arise.

In this respect we have already at an earlier stage stated that the art of building corresponds to the symbolic type of art, and in a unique degree gives realization to the principle of the same as particular art because architecture generally is adapted to suggest the significances implanted in it purely in the external framework of the environment. If the distinction, then, above referred to between the object of the external cover independently presented in the living man, or the temple's image, and the building regarded as the fulfilment of such an object, is to be absent from our earliest stage, we shall have to look about us for buildings which precisely, as works of sculpture, do stand up in independent self-subsistence, which in short carry their significance in themselves rather than in some other object or necessity. This is a point of the highest importance, which I have never found raised hitherto, although it goes to the root of the matter, and alone is capable of disclosing the manifold nature of external forms, and of supplying a thread to conduct us through the maze of architectonic configuration. A self-subsistent art of building of this kind will also to a similar degree differ from sculpture on this ground, namely, that it, as architecture, does not create images, whose significance is that which is essentially spiritual and personal, and which itself intrinsically possesses the principle of an appropriated embodiment throughout adequate to its ideal import, but builds up works which, in their exterior form, can merely give an impress of the significance in a symbolic way. And for this reason this type of architecture, both in respect to its content and, its presentation, is really of a symbolic type.

All that we have said with reference to the principle of this stage of art applies equally to its mode of presentation. Here, too, we find that the mere distinction between buildings of wood and stone is not sufficient, in so far as the same points to a means of limiting and enclosing a defined space for a specific religious or other human purposes, as is the case with dwellings, palaces, and temples. Such a space, may be obtained either by hollowing out essentially solid and stable masses, or conversely, by preparing walls and roofs to enclose it. We can make our beginning of the art of building with neither of these alternatives, which we should consequently define as an inorganic form of sculpture; such a type no doubt piles up independently stable images, but while doing so does not in any way make the end of free beauty and the manifestation of Spirit in the bodily form commensurate with the end it pursues, but in general terms sets up a purely symbolic form, which purports in itself to indicate and express a particular idea.

Architecture is, however, unable to remain standing at such a point of departure. Its function indeed consists just in this, namely, to build up external Nature as an environment which emanates from Spirit itself through the gates of art under the forms of beauty, and to build it for the independently present life of mind, that is mankind, or for the images of the gods that are set up and clothed by man in objective form, and to build up the same as that which no longer carries its significance in itself, but discovers the same in another, that is man, and his necessities and objects of family and State-life, culture and so forth, and by so doing surrenders the self-subsistency of such buildings.

Regarded under this aspect we may assume the advance of architecture to consist in this, that it suffers the above indicated distinction between end and means to appear in separation, and constructs for man, or the individual human form of gods, which is the work of sculpture, an architectural dwelling, palace, or temple analogous to the significance of the same.