The Principles of AestheticsParker, De Witt H. (De Witt Henry)
Philosophy
The Principles of Aesthetics
Parker, De Witt H. (De Witt Henry)
Aesthetics
This purposive unity cannot well be secured without spatial contiguity;
here, as in sculpture, a unified life demands a unified material. Yet
sometimes detached structures belong together functionally, and may
be felt as one aesthetically, provided they are similar in design and
some one of them is dominant; otherwise, each claims to be a distinct
individual, and aesthetic rivalry is the result.
Functional unity, although necessary, is not sufficient for aesthetic
unity; in addition, there must be formal unity--design, composition.
To study this adequately would require a separate treatise, which has
not yet been written, so far as I know, with anything approaching
philosophical depth and completeness; but for our plan it will be
sufficient to show how the general principles of aesthetic form are
illustrated in architecture; and because of the perspicuity of things
spatial, these principles are nowhere else so lucidly manifest.
Since architecture is a spatial art, unity in variety is chiefly a
matter of harmony and balance rather than of evolution, and of these
harmony is perhaps the most conspicuous. Harmony is secured in many
ways.
First, by giving the whole building or parts of the building a simple
geometrical form readily perceived,--for example, the cruciform plan
of many Gothic cathedrals, the oblong plan and oblong surmounted by
a triangle in the facade of the Greek temple, the octagonal shape of
a Renaissance chapel. A higher degree of harmony is obtained when the
same shape is repeated throughout the various parts of the
building,--the cylinder in the columns, the triangle or semicircle in
the arches and gables. A step further is taken in the same direction
when the different similar parts are all of the same size, as in the
Greek temple, where the columns are all of one size, and similar parts
of columns of equal size, and the metopes and triglyphs likewise.
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