A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volumes 1 and 2, 3rd ed.: From the Earliest Times to the Present DayFergusson, James
History
A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volumes 1 and 2, 3rd ed.: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day
Fergusson, James
Architecture -- History
When from the Æsthetic Arts we turn to the Sciences and Technic Arts, we
find, as just pointed out, that the individual becomes much less
important and the process everything. Every astronomer now knows more
than Newton; every chemist than John Dalton. Any ordinary mechanic can
start from a higher point than was reached by a Watt or an Arkwright or
a Stephenson, and can surpass them. But no man can mount on the
shoulders of such men as Handel or Mozart or Beethoven, and surpass
them; and the higher we ascend in the scale of arts the more important
does the individual become and the less so the process. A Phidias, a
Raphael, a Shakespeare, are yet unsurpassed, and possibly never may be.
All men may be taught to carve, to colour, and to write mechanically,
and may even be instructed to practise these processes so as to afford
pleasure to themselves and others; but when from this we rise to
Phonetic painting, sculpture, or poetry, and the still higher region of
philosophy, the individual becomes all in all, and his special genius
there stamps the true value on the production.
In this respect, again, Architecture is singularly happy as a means of
study. As a Technic art it is practised in the same progressive
principles as all its sister arts, irrespective of individuality. As an
Æsthetic art it is hardly so individual as music, because its forms and
colours are permanent and capable of being repeated with such
improvements as each experiment suggests in every subsequent building;
but when it attempts Phonetic forms of utterance, these are seldom so
absolutely integral that they cannot be separated from the building and
judged of apart. A Greek Temple or a Mediæval cathedral without painting
and sculpture may be poor and inanimate, but still so beautiful in its
form, so grand from its mass, and so imposing from its durability, that
in its Technic-Æsthetic form alone it may command our admiration, more
perhaps than any other work of human hands, except of course, as said
before, the highest intellectual forms of Phonetic art. Architecture
thus combines in itself the steady progressive perfectibility of a
Technic art quite independent of the intellectual capabilities of the
architect, combined with the Æsthetic appreciation of form and colour
which is mostly universal, and can at all events be generally inculcated
and learned. But its greatest glory is that it can enlist in its service
the higher branches of Phonetic sculpture and painting, which can be
exercised only by specially gifted individuals. It is difficult to
conceive all these qualities being equally combined in the person of any
one architect, and in practice it is by no means necessary for success
that it should be so, though, if possible, the combination would no
doubt be advantageous. In criticising, on the contrary, it is always
necessary to separate and distinguish between the mechanical, the
sensuous, and the intellectual part of a design. Without this an
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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