Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 2

by Unknown

The method of analysis employed has been to go through a certain number of architectural photographs, picking out all the examples of repeated forms of any description, and classifying them according to the principles which they exemplified or seemed to violate. For this purpose a collection of about five thousand photographs from the library of Robinson Hall, Harvard University, was analyzed. The photographs were taken in order of styles: Greek, Roman, Romanesque, Gothic, Italian and French Renaissance, and modern. The examples of the different points in question were taken as they came in the cataloguing of the library stacks, without respect to whether they appeared to bear out the previous conclusions or not.

VARIATION OF ALTERNATING UNITS

The first principle which we shall consider is the variation allowable in the units of an alternating series. It will be remembered that the principle was as follows: (1) In any series of two alternating units, the one on which the most energy is expended is regarded as the principal unit, the less important one as an alternate. Variation of the principal unit is allowable, often desirable and even necessary; variation of the alternate never allowable, unless other circumstances change the situation. If the minor unit is changed, so that in interest it equals the major unit, the rest-phase of the rhythm is destroyed, the effect is of two rival repetitions going along together, and fatigue results. If variation in the alternates exceeded that of the principal units, the balance of the rhythm would change, the alternate become the major unit, and a new series begin.

From the very nature of the case, then, it will be impossible to look for variations in alternates, which make it exceed the principal units in interest. We must investigate alternating series, in order to see if one of the elements remains the same, while the other may or may not vary. If this were true, a rest-phase for the rhythm would be assured in the series, while the principal unit might vary, provided the same amount of attention were required in each case. (2) It will also be remembered that size and limiting shape were the factors that could not vary without doing violence to the rhythm, while content might vary almost without restriction. (3) The position of alternating units as regards each other cannot vary; the two units are so dependent on each other that the position of one must remain halfway between two of the opposite kind. In other words, if the two series of units run between each other, they form one series or rhythm. Two rhythms cannot be kept up alongside; so if one unit, however regularly placed with regard to another of its own kind, recurs at unequal distances from the other units, the feeling of the repetition is lost, the rhythm broken, unless the two units can be grouped into one, and so make a single rhythm again.

We shall, then, look for alternating series, of which the two units are at equal and invariable distances from each other; the variations of content (if such there are) occur only in the major unit; and are of the filling, not of the including shape or size.

It may be readily seen that there are difficulties in finding alternating series which exactly illustrate this particular point, or in reducing them to any system. It was necessary to look through many photographs to find one that presented the required conditions (i. e., two repeated series of units, alternating with each other), and when found, they were of so many different varieties, from windows in an apse to reliefs on a fountain, that each has had to be described by itself, and any rigid classification was impossible. Moreover, it was difficult to find a scale of judgment by which to decide whether a series was really alternating or plain repetition. From one point of view, every repetition is alternating, that is, the repeated unit always alternates with an empty space. Although such repetitions bear out the theory still further, and emphasize yet more strongly the invariability of alternates, and the possibility of variations in the principal units, I have used the term in a stricter sense, and only given illustrations of repeated objects, when one unit actually alternated with another definite unit.

Had the other sense of the term been used, examples might have been multiplied without limit, of slightly varying repeated units, and unvarying alternate blank spaces. But it was felt that such accumulation of illustration was unnecessary, and that what was true in a stricter sense of the term would be recognized as true for the larger number of cases that might be cited with a wider meaning. If the minor units had a definite enclosing outline, they were counted even though they were blank within, but without an enclosing outline, that is, if they were mere spaces, they were not considered, although the fact that there is such universal use of this type of decoration shows only more conclusively how the necessity of the invariability of alternates is taken for granted as an axiom of design.

Another type of alternate repetition was not included in the illustrations, i. e., when two sets of units alternated, without variation in either one. To this class belong all the conventionalized designs used so much in all kinds of decoration, and of which a very full account is given in Owen Jones's Grammar of Ornament.

These, to be sure, illustrate the negative points, viz., that size and shape are unalterable for rhythmic repetition; that distances must be equal and invariable; and that alternate units must not vary. But since the principal units do not vary either, it seemed needless to give them as examples of the point in question. A mention of this class of alternating repetitions, of which there is such a great number, is enough to show that they fall within the theory. But one example is as good as a thousand, and their inclusion among the illustrations for rhythmic alternates will be taken for granted without further mention.

We are left, then, to the consideration of those alternating repetitions alone, where both have a definite outline, and one or both varies to a greater or lesser extent. The effort will be to show that the unit which for some reason is of principal importance in the rhythm, is the one chosen to vary, and if not that the repetition suffers thereby.