Art and Architecture
or
Architect and Public
The cynic may read my
heading and say it reminded him of the old story of the man who looked at a
tombstone bearing the inscription. "Here lies a lawyer and an honest
man.'' ''I wonder," he said, "why they buried those two men in the
same grave.'' There would be much justification for such a gibe, for in
innumerable cases, especially in this part of the world, art has no part in the
making of a building. The position of the art of architecture is peculiar. Not
only is there no branch of art about which there is more popular ignorance and
indifference, but in none is the identity of the artist submerged to the same
extent. The names of great painters, of great writers, are known to everybody
with any pretence to education and culture, but how many people know the names
of half a dozen of the world's greatest architects? The average Briton a few
years ago was familiar with one name, Sir Christopher Wren. If he recognises
another to-day, it is because Sir Edwin Lutyens designed the Cenotaph in
Whitehall. Take our own modest achievements. What proportion of Christchurch
people could tell you who designed the Provincial Council Chamber, which is
probably the most beautiful building in New Zealand? Possibly you might find a
wider knowledge of the authorship of the Anglican Cathedral, and you might be
agreeably surprised if you went to Dunedin and asked who designed the leading
churches there. I confess I do not know who designed the Supreme Court at
Auckland, and I am certain that ninety-nine per cent of Auckland people share
my ignorance.
This ignorance and
indifference are attracting some attention in England. A year or two ago Mr. W.
J. Locke, who is an architect as well as the author of "The Morals of
Marcus Ordeyne" and "The Beloved Vagabond,"' appealed to the
Press to educate the public in the principles of architecture, as it did in the
principles of other arts. "Of all the arts," said the
"Manchester Guardian" a few weeks ago, "architecture is the only
one whose achievements from year to year pass almost unreviewed in the general
Press. New books, new plays, new pictures, and new music are, as a matter of
course, subjected to serious criticism in every daily newspaper which values
its reputation. Yet architecture, the parent art, is also the one art whose
products we all see every day, without going out of our way or paying at a
door.'' More than this, architecture is the one art from which you cannot
escape. You are not obliged to go to the theatre to see "Sunday" or
"The Girl Who Took the Wrong Turning.'' If in your maturity you tire of
"Napoleon Crossing the Alps,'' or "In Love" or "His Majesty
the Baby," which you once thought beautiful, you can put the picture under
the house. But you cannot get away from the exterior and interior of buildings.
You have to live in them and with them. Every day of your life they please you
or annoy you, or in a subtle way, unknown to you, influence your taste.
Architecture has been described as frozen music. It might be added that it is
immovable. To live in an ugly house is like having to live with a gramophone
that unceasingly grinds out ragtime. The power of the architect or the builder
to beautify or to make ugly is therefore illimitable.
Is it not strange,
then, that there should be so little interest in architecture? It is quite
common to find a man prepared to spend two or three thousand pounds on a
dwelling, to say nothing of larger sums spent on other kinds of buildings,
without the assistance of an architect. What, he asks you, is the good of an
architect? He (the spender) knows what he wants, and he can trust his builder,
so why worry? That there is an art in designing a house, and that it requires
special training—to say nothing of other reasons why it is advisable to employ
an architect—does not occur to him. Far be it from me to suggest that all
architects are artistic, or that many a builder cannot erect just as good a
house as some of them. There are architects and architects, just as there are
doctors and doctors. What I am pleading for is the recognition of the
architect's art as necessary to the community, the raising of the standard of
his competence, and the education of the public in the principles of
architecture. Under our laws, while no one but a licensed plumber is allowed to
put in a drain, anyone can design the house to which the drain is attached. I
am not saying no one but trained architects should be allowed to design: the objections to such a proposal are pretty
obvious. But there is the anomaly. Drains, being tangible and material things,
are of more importance than dignity and beauty.
The public, as I have
tried to show, cannot be entirely blamed for its ignorance and lack of taste.
How is it to get easy access to the principles of architecture? Recently there
was formed in England an Architectural Club, composed of leading architects and
a number of writers and other persons interested in the art, the object being
to enlarge public appreciation of good architecture. The movement promises well. Why, asked a
famous London editor at the first dinner of the club, should not architects
sign their works? Why not, indeed? It would certainly add to the interest of a
Sunday afternoon walk in Auckland's suburbs if every house bore the signature
of the designer, be he architect or builder. Then we should be able to sheet
home the pepper-pot towers, the carbuncle bay windows, and the wedding-cake
decoration round the verandahs.
There is this to be
thankful for about architecture in New Zealand, that the last generation has
seen a marked improvement in domestic design at any rate. The old stereotyped
box house, and the “T"-house and '"return verandah" type, with
their monotonous-and wasteful interiors, their narrow, little-used verandahs,
their ugly roofs, and the tasteless over-elaboration of their detail, are not
nearly so common as they used to be. The bungalow style has revolutionised and
wrought a vast change of the better. But the bungalow is being widely
vulgarised. Hundreds of houses are going up that are meant to be artistic, but
are merely ‘arty.' They are pretentious, overloaded with ornament, finicky in
design, restless in outline. Perhaps the besetting sin of our domestic architecture
is violation of the laws of line. Instead of getting simplicity and dignity and
beauty of line, people will break their houses into innumerable angles and
excrescences and fiddly faddly little ornamentations and sometimes make the
design all the worse by painting it in half a dozen colours. The old-fashioned
house was a plain woman, but often she was soberly dressed. Some modern
bungalows are like a woman who wears in the street a summer picture hat, a
winter fur coat, and silk stockings and suede shoes. Surely something could be
done to spread knowledge of the elements of design.
Cyrano.
"Art and Architecture."
Auckland Star,
9 September 1922, 17.
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