ARCHITECTURE: ANCIENT AND MODERN

Every art has its construction; even music, seemingly the most ethereal and most decorative of them all, is built around a constructive skeleton; and after careful analyzing of what seems the most complicated musical poem, the one or more simple motives around which it has been built up can be found.

What Beethoven has done for music in the Sonata form, the Doric builders have done for Architecture in the Temple form. If in any work of art the construction is imperfect, the work cannot be beautiful; and if the construction can be altogether separated from this work without destroying it, it is no art at all.

In the art of Architecture, construction seems to be more prominent than in the other arts, but this is only apparently so. There is no more and no less construction in the Greek temple, than in the sonata or poem or piece of statuary; but in modern times construction has been separated from architecture almost entirely. This fact one can observe daily in any of the large cities where some building is going on, and the steel skeleton is put up and finished long before the "architecture" is pasted against it; in fact, in many cases the architecture is put on at different heights at the same time, showing plainly that it does not grow organically.

Consider the growth of leaves and flowers and observe how they develop gradually with the framework, which carries and holds them together, in all stages of their existence. Remove the substance of the leaves, the veins, the skeleton will remain, but the tree will die, and the veins and twigs and stems will slowly decay and disappear; but remove the columns and cornices from the modern building, and it will stand as firmly, or perhaps more firmly, than before.

There never has been a period in the history of architecture when a greater change in the aspect of buildings should necessarily take place, or with a greater opportunity for the architect to design new forms of architectural art than at present. Think of the materials now generally used, such as iron and concrete,

used as they never were before. The Romans did use a construction similar to the modern concrete; they also found that this material needed stiffening, and they made re-inforced concrete, not with iron or steel as we do now, but with brick layers and arches. The results were practically the same, for the Roman as well as the modern concrete building should be conceived as cast out of one large mass of material, a monolith without elasticity, as though hollowed out of one huge piece of rock. The modern architects, or let us rather give them their proper name, 'engineers' have gone much further in the use of re-inforced concrete than their Roman brethren; but, notwithstanding this fact, the modern building is much inferior, for in a far less degree does the construction grow together with the architecture, or as it would be better to say, the architecture with the construction.

-

The Roman did exactly what is done at present; he erected the core, the skeleton, and upon its completion, he called the Greek artist to cover the building with a beautiful envelope of costly marbles, bronzes and other materials. The Greek architect, however, an artist through and through, did not understand this huge new structure, foreign to his own principles, and covered the building with marble and placed columns before the walls. These he provided with their entablature, because to his trained eye and love for truth, a column which did not carry its proper load had no reason for existence; but this entablature which necessarily implies the idea of the horizontal lintel, he placed under the arches and vaults introduced by the Roman. The Greek artist went still further, for following the curved lines of these arches and vaults he used the forms which symbolize the principles of horizontal architecture, thus proving his misunderstanding of the forms he was compelled to cover.

The Roman building therefore can be divided into two parts, the engineer's or constructive part, and the architect's or the part of architectural art, and this very possibility of distinct division constitutes the defect. This same defect is precisely the great weakness of modern architecture, with this difference, that the Greek architect, who was compelled by his conquerors to decorate the Roman building, was still a true artist, and did

his work of embellishing with as much truth and devotion as was possible under the circumstances, and still created a building which was both beautiful and magnificent. He used materials in accordance with their nature and character, he could not do otherwise being a Greek, and the modern architect apparently understands his huge structure far less well. He nails and wires all sorts of forms and ornaments against this building, not in accordance with the material used, and suggesting to the beholder dynamic functions which it is impossible for them to fulfill. This is not only the method of proceeding with so-called steel frame buildings, but with buildings constructed of any material. The "architecture" is simply placed around it, and has as little to do with the structure as an overcoat has to do with the body of the man it covers; it can be changed at any time at the command of the changing fashions.

Examine the modern buildings, such as the railroad station, custom house or bank, dressed up in their so-called monumental architecture, like the carnival prince in the masquerade; architecture inspired by, if not copied altogether from the Doric, Ionic or Corinthian temple or Roman bath. Here and there a touch of Renaissance is used; much French at present, because it is the fashion; or Italian, if more to one's taste; and as a great light in architecture recently said, "always improving on the classical forms. . . . !”

I do not mention the church, for everyone will easily understand that, no matter how free-thinking a community may be, the Christian principles cannot be expressed in the form of a Greek temple or Roman bath.

Such a period of imitative architecture, of servile copying of the great works of the past, has never existed before. Let them all pass before you in imagination, the temples and palaces of antiquity, Assyrian, Egyptian and Greek; let us go further until the best period of the Renaissance has faded away, and nowhere will you find that the one copied mechanically the forms of the other, although more or less profoundly influenced by their predecessors.

This is true even of the Renaissance; for when they began to excavate and study the classic buildings, intending to copy

them, it proved impossible, simply because times had changed. The classic forms were not understood, especially the universal use of color in ancient architecture, as ascertained in relatively modern times, was unknown. The first buildings of the Renaissance show plainly the lack of life, and one of the principal reasons was the total absence of color. The artists soon observed this defect, and began to use sculptured ornaments which took the place of the ancient coloring.

Influenced by the classics as the Renaissance was, yet this style produced an utterly different building because of the changed conditions of society. Take for instance those buildings of the Florentine school, such as the Pitti Palace and many others; do they not all express plainly the difference in civilization, politics and morals of that particular period as compared with the buildings of Rome and Greece? The early Italian palace was a fortress for the strong, as well as a dwelling for the proud and rich. The powerful families lived in a constant state of warfare and the strong walls of the palace afforded safety to the besieged.

Art in general and architecture in particular is the mirror of time; what would be left of history if those monuments of ancient architecture did not fill the gaps in the documents gathered from other sources. Each nation spoke a different language in art; and at the time, this language was understood not only by the select few, but by the whole nation. The legends and history of the past as well as those of the present were told and retold to the people; religion, forms of government, conditions of life, even the very products of the soil were recorded and expressed in the petrified books, belonging to the whole community. As late even as the reign of Louis XIV, architecture still expressed the contemporary life of society.

During the long peiod which lies between the reigns of the two great rulers, Charlemagne and Louis XIV, architecture in France had developed on new principles. The final highest expression of these new principles was the cathedral, built for the people by the people, and again the natural outcome of the social conditions.

In the cathedral the whole universe is embodied, virtue, vice

and passions, arts and sciences, in short the entire history of humanity. It was Louis XIV who extinguished the last sparks of this art which were still glowing at the time he succeeded to the throne; and marvellous it is indeed to observe in architecture the last struggle for the maintenance of the sound and true principles of medieval architecture, which this strong nation still possessed. Louis XIV crushed the art of the nation, introducing a foreign art most expressive of his personal power and love of pomp, but killing the art of the people, which in architecture has never since come to life again.

The reign of terror may have ended the political traditions of the Grand Monarque. The germs, however, of that corrupted art, lived and multiplied even until the present day, and penetrated deep into the new world, where the imitation of the art of the Louis of France is still the dream of the rich.

The Parthenon is certainly a beautiful building and will remain so forever. Even if it were taken from its foundations on the rock of Athens, and placed wherever human fancy might decree, still it would be beautiful, but only in its fullest degree for those who understand the purpose for which it was erected, the symbols of its forms and the meaning of its statuary. By a modern nation, as a whole, the beauty of this building cannot be appreciated, simply because it is a poem in a foreign language, which has first to be mastered before the contents can kindle their minds and touch their hearts.

When the columns of the Parthenon are taken away from the base and put before the wall of a modern building, the spaces between the columns pierced with windows belonging to different stories, and the whole building placed in a climate, possibly where the rays of the sun do not touch and retouch the forms calculated for the clearness and vividness of the Greek atmosphere, then these stately columns, once full of life and beauty, become a dead mass of stone, without any meaning.

The symbols embodied in the very shape, symbols expressed through forms indicating action and character of material, and the whole in perfect harmony with the laws of nature, all is lost. No modern architect ever seems to think a moment of the ignorance he exhibits in mutilating Greek architecture in this