Gothic Architecture
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Author : William Morris
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By the word Architecture is, I suppose, commonly understood the art
of ornamental
building, and in this sense I shall often have to use it here. Yet I
would not like
you to think of its productions merely as well constructed and well
proportioned
buildings, each one of which is handed over by the architect to other
artists to
finish, after his designs have been carried out (as we say) by a
number of
mechanical workers, who are not artists. A true architectural work
rather is a
building duly provided with all necessary furniture, decorated with
all due
ornament, according to the use, quality, and dignity of the building,
from mere
moldings or abstract lines, to the great epical works of sculpture
and painting,
which, except as decorations of the nobler form of such buildings,
cannot be
produced at all. So looked on, a work of architecture is a harmonious
cooperative
work of art, inclusive of all the serious arts, all those which are
not engaged in
the production of mere toys, or of ephemeral prettinesses.
Now, these works of art are man's expression of the value of life,
and also the
production of them makes his life of value: and since they can only
be produced by
the general good-will and help of the public, their continuous
production, or the
existence of the true Art of Architecture, betokens a society which,
whatever
elements of change it may bear within it, may be called stable, since
it is founded
on the happy exercise of the energies of the most useful part of its
population.
What the absence of this Art of Architecture may betoken in the long
run it is not
easy for us to say: because that lack belongs only to these later
times of the
world's history, which as yet we cannot fairly see, because they are
too near to
us; but clearly in the present it indicates a transference of the
interest of
civilized men from the development of the human and intellectual
energies of the
race to the development of its mechanical energies. If this tendency
is to go along
the logical road of development, it must be said that it will destroy
the arts of
design and all that is analogous to them in literature; but the
logical outcome of
obvious tendencies is often thwarted by the historical development;
that is, by
what I can call by no better name than the collective will of
mankind; and unless
my hopes deceive me, I should say that this process has already
begun, that there
is a revolt on foot against the utilitarianism which threatens to
destroy the Arts;
and that it is deeper rooted than a mere passing fashion. For myself
I do not
indeed believe that this revolt can effect much, so long as the
present state of
society lasts; but as I am sure that great changes which will bring
about a new
state of society are rapidly advancing upon us, I think it is a
matter of much
importance that these two revolts should join hands, or at least
should learn to
understand one another. If the New society when it comes (itself the
result of the
ceaseless evolution of countless years of tradition) should find the
world cut off
from all tradition of art, all aspiration towards the beauty which
man has proved
that he can create, much time will be lost in running hither and
thither after the
new thread of art; many lives will be barren of a manly pleasure
which the world
can ill afford to lose even for a short time. I ask you, therefore,
to accept what
follows as a contribution toward the revolt against utilitarianism,
toward the
attempt at catching-up the slender thread of tradition before it be
too late.
Now, that Harmonious Architectural unit, inclusive of the arts in
general, is no
mere dream. I have said that it is only in these later times that it
has become
extinct: until the rise of modern society, no Civilization, no
Barbarism has been
without it in some form; but it reached its fullest development in
the Middle Ages,
an epoch really more remote from our modern habits of life and
thought than the
older civilizations were, though an important part of its life was
carried on in
our own country by men of our own blood. Nevertheless, remote as
those times are
from ours, if we are ever to have architecture at all, we must take
up the thread
of tradition there and nowhere else, because that Gothic Architecture
is the most
completely organic form of the Art which the world has seen; the
break in the
thread of tradition could only occur there: all the former
developments tended
thitherward, and to ignore this fact and attempt to catch up the
thread before that
point was reached, would be a mere piece of artificiality,
betokening, not new
birth, but a corruption into mere whim of the ancient traditions.
In order to illustrate this position of mine, I must ask you to allow
me to run
very briefly over the historical sequence of events which led to
Gothic
Architecture and its fall, and to pardon me for stating familiar and
elementary
facts which are necessary for my purpose. I must admit also that in
doing this I
must mostly take my illustrations from works that appear on the face
of them to
belong to the category of ornamental building, rather than that of
those complete
and inclusive works of which I have spoken. But this incompleteness
is only on the
surface; to those who study them they appear as belonging to the
class of complete
architectural works; they are lacking in completeness only through
the consequences
of the lapse of time and the folly of men, who did not know what they
were, who,
pretending to use them, marred their real use as works of art; or in
a similar
spirit abused them by making them serve their turn as instruments to
express their
passing passion and spite of the hour.
We may divide the history of the Art of Architecture into two
periods, the Ancient
and the Medieval: the Ancient again may be divided into two styles,
the barbarian
(in the Greek sense) and the classical. We have, then, three great
styles to
consider: The Barbarian, the Classical, and the Medieval. The two
former, however,
were partly synchronous, and at least overlapped somewhat. When the
curtain of the
stage of definite history first draws up, we find the small exclusive
circle of the
highest civilization, which was dominated by Hellenic thought and
science, fitted
with a very distinctive and orderly architectural style. That style
appears to us
to be, within its limits, one of extreme refinement, and perhaps
seemed so to those
who originally practiced it. Moreover, it is ornamented with
figure-sculpture far
advanced towards perfection even at an early period of its existence,
and swiftly
growing in technical excellence; yet for all that, it is, after all,
a part of the
general style of architecture of the Barbarian world, and only
outgoes it in the
excellence of its figure-sculpture and its refinement. The bones of
it, its merely
architectural part, are little changed from the Barbarian or primal
building, which
is a mere piling or jointing together of material, giving one no
sense of growth in
the building itself and no sense of the possibility of growth in the
style.
The one Greek form of building with which we are really familiar, the
columnar
temple, though always built with blocks of stone, is clearly a
deduction from the
wooden god's-house or shrine, which was a necessary part of the
equipment of the
not very remote ancestors of the Periclean Greeks; nor had this
god's-house changed
so much as the city had changed from the Tribe, or the Worship of the
City (the
true religion of the Greeks) from the Worship of the Ancestors of the
Tribe. In
fact, rigid conservatism of form is an essential part of Greek
architecture as we
know it. From this conservatism of form there resulted a jostling
between the
building and its higher ornament. In early days, indeed, when some
healthy
barbarism yet clung to the sculpture, the discrepancy is not felt;
but as
increasing civilization demands from the sculptors more naturalism
and less
restraint, it becomes more and more obvious, and more and more
painful; till at
last it becomes clear that sculpture has ceased to be a part of
architecture and
has become an extraneous art bound to the building by habit or
superstition. The
form of the ornamental building of the Greeks, then, was very
limited, had no
capacity in it for development, and tended to divorce from its higher
or epical
ornament. What is to be said about the spirit of it which ruled that
form? This I
think; that the narrow superstition of the form of the Greek temple
was not a
matter of accident, but was the due expression of the exclusiveness
and
aristocratic arrogance of the ancient Greek mind, a natural result of
which was a
demand for pedantic perfection in all the parts and details of a
building; so that
the inferior parts of the ornament are so slavishly subordinated to
the superior,
that no invention or individuality is possible in them, whence comes
a kind of
bareness and blankness, a rejection in short of all romance, which
does not indeed
destroy their interest as relics of past history, but which puts the
style of them
aside as any possible foundation for the style of the future
architecture of the
world. It must be remembered also that this attempt at absolute
perfection soon
proved a snare to Greek architecture; for its could not be kept up
long. It was
easy indeed to ensure the perfect execution of a fret or a dentil;
not so easy to
ensure the perfection of the higher ornament: so that as Greek energy
began to fall
back from its high-water mark, the demand for absolute perfection
became rather a
demand for absolute plausibility, which speedily dragged the
architectural arts
into mere Academicism.
But long before classical art reached the last depths of that
degradation, it had
brought to birth another style of architecture, the Roman style,
which to start
with was differentiated from the Greek by having the habitual use of
the arch
forced upon it. To my mind, organic Architecture, Architecture which
must
necessarily grow, dates from the habitual use of the arch, which,
taking into
consideration its combined utility and beauty, must be pronounced to
be the
greatest invention of the human race. Until the time when man not
only had invented
the arch, but had gathered boldness to use it habitually,
architecture was
necessarily so limited, that strong growth was impossible to it. It
was quite
natural that a people should crystallize the first convenient form of
building they
might happen upon, or, like the Greeks, accept a traditional form
without
aspiration towards anything more complex or interesting. Till the
arch came into
use, building men were the slaves of conditions of climate,
materials, kind of
labor available, and so forth. But once furnished with the arch, man
has conquered
Nature in the matter of building; he can defy the rigors of all
climates under
which men can live with fair comfort: splendid materials are not
necessary to him;
he can attain a good result from shabby and scrappy materials. When
he wants size
and span he does not need a horde of war-captured slaves to work for
him; the free
citizens (if there be any such) can do all that is needed without
grinding their
lives out before their time. The arch can do all that architecture
needs, and in
turn from the time when the arch comes into habitual use, the main
artistic
business of architecture is the decoration of the arch; the only
satisfactory style
is that which never disguises its office, but adorns and glorifies
it. This the
Roman architecture, the first style that used the arch, did not do.
It used the
arch frankly and simply indeed, in one part of its work, but did not
adorn it; this
part of the Roman building must, however, be called engineering
rather than
architecture, though its massive and simple dignity is a wonderful
contrast to the
horrible and restless nightmare of modern engineering. In the other
side of its
work, the ornamental side, Roman building used the arch and adorned
it, but
disguised its office, and pretended that the structure of its
buildings was still
that of the lintel, and that the arch bore no weight worth speaking
of. For the
Romans had no ornamental building of their own (perhaps we should say
no art of
their own) and therefore fitted their ideas of the ideas of the
Greek
sculpture-architect on to their own massive building; and as the
Greek plastered
his energetic and capable civilized sculpture on to the magnified
shrine of his
forefathers, so the Roman plastered sculpture, shrine, and all, on to
the magnified
shrine of his forefathers, so the Roman plastered sculpture, shrine,
and all, on to
his magnificent engineer's work. In fact, this kind of front-building
or veneering
was the main resource of Roman ornament; the construction and
ornament did not
interpenetrate; and to us at this date it seems doubtful if he gained
by hiding
with marble veneer the solid and beautiful construction of his wall
of brick or
concrete; since others have used marble far better than he did, but
none have built
a wall or turned an arch better. As to the Roman ornament, it is not
in itself
worth much sacrifice of interest in the construction: the Greek
ornament was
cruelly limited and conventional; but everything about it was in its
place, and
there was a reason for everything, even though that reason were
founded on
superstition. But the Roman ornament has no more freedom than the
Greek, while it
has lost the logic of the latter: it is rich and handsome, and that
is all the
reason it can give for its existence; nor does its execution and its
design
interpenetrate. One cannot conceive of the Greek ornament existing
apart from the
precision of its execution; but well as the Roman ornament is
executed in all
important works, one almost wishes it were less well executed, so
that some mystery
might be added to its florid handsomeness. Once again, it is a piece
of necessary
history, and to criticize it from the point of view of [the] work of
to-day would
be like finding fault with a geological epoch: and who can help
feeling touched by
its remnants which show crumbling and battered amid the incongruous
mass of
modern houses, amid the disorder, vulgarity and squalor of some
modern town? If I
have ventured to call your attention to what it was as architecture,
it is because
of the abuse of it which took place in later times and has even
lasted into our own
anti-architectural days; and because it is necessary to point out
that it has not
got the qualities essential to making it a foundation for any
possible new-birth of
the arts. In its own time it was for centuries the only thing that
redeemed the
academical period of classical art from mere nothingness, and though
it may almost
be said to have perished before the change came, yet in perishing it
gave some
token of the coming change, which indeed was as slow as the decay of
imperial Rome
herself. It was in the height of the tax-gathering period of the
Roman Peace, in
the last days of Diocletian (died 313) in the palace of Spalato which
he built
himself to rest in after he was satiated with rule, that the rebel,
Change first
showed in Roman art, and that the builders admitted that their false
lintel was
false, and that the arch could do without it.
This was the first obscure beginning of Gothic or organic
Architecture; henceforth
till the beginning of the modern epoch all is growth uninterrupted,
however slow.
Indeed, it is slow enough at first: Organic Architecture took two
centuries to free
itself from the fetters which the Academical ages had cast over it,
and the Peace
of Rome had vanished before it was free. But the full change came at
last, and the
architecture was born which logically should have supplanted the
primitive
lintel-architecture, of which the civilized style of Greece was the
last
development. Architecture was become organic; henceforth no
academical period was
possible to it, nothing but death could stop its growth.
The first expression of this freedom is called Byzantine Art, and
there is nothing
to object to in the name. For centuries Byzantium was the center of
it, and its
first great work in that city (the Church of the Holy Wisdom, built
by Justinian in
the year 540) remains its greatest work. The style leaps into sudden
completeness
in this most lovely building: for there are few works extant of much
importance of
earlier days. As to its origin, of course buildings were raised all
through the
sickness of classical art, and traditional forms and ways of work
were still in
use, and these traditions, which by this time included the forms of
Roman building,
were now in the hands of the Greeks. This Romano-Greek building in
Greek hands met
with traditions drawn from many sources. In Syria, the borderland of
so many races
and customs, the East mingled with the West, and Byzantine art was
born. Its
characteristics are simplicity of structure and outline of mass;
amazing delicacy
of ornament combined with abhorrence of vagueness: it is bright and
clear in
color, pure in line, hating barrenness as much as vagueness;
redundant, but not
florid, the very opposite of Roman architecture in spirit, though it
took so many
of its forms and revivified them. Nothing more beautiful than its
best works has
ever been produced by man, but in spite of its stately loveliness &
quietude,
it was the mother of fierce vigor in the days to come, for from its
first days in
St Sophia, Gothic architecture has still one thousand years of life
before it. East
and West it overran the world wherever men built with history behind
them. In the
East it mingled with the traditions of the native populations,
especially with
Persia of the Sassanian period, and produced the whole body of what
we, very
erroneously, call Arab Art (for the Arabs never had any art) from
Ispahan to
Granada, In the West its settled itself in the parts of Italy that
Justinian had
conquered, notably Ravenna, and thence came to Venice. From Italy, or
perhaps even
from Byzantium itself, it was carried into Germany and pre-Norman
England, touching
even Ireland and Scandinavia. Rome adopted it, and sent it another
road through the
south of France, where it fell under the influence of provincial
Roman
architecture, and produced a very strong orderly and logical
substyle, just what
one imagines the ancient Romans might have built, if they had been
able to resist
the conquered Greeks who took them captive. Thence it spread all over
France, the
first development of the architecture of the most architectural of
peoples, and in
the north of that country fell under the influence of the
Scandinavian and Teutonic
tribes, and produced the last of the round-arched Gothic styles,
(named by us
Norman) which those energetic warriors carried into Sicily, where it
mingled with
the Saracenic Byzantine and produced lovely works. But we know it
best in our own
country; for Duke William's intrusive monks used it everywhere, and
it drove out
the native English style derived from Byzantium through Germany.
Here on the verge of a new change, a change of form important enough
(though not a
change of essence), we may pause to consider once more what its
essential qualities
were. It was the first style since the invention of the arch that did
due honor to
it, and instead of concealing it decorated it in a logical manner.
This was much;
but the complete freedom that it had won, which indeed was the source
of its
ingeniousness, was more. It had shaken off the fetters of Greek
superstition and
aristocracy, and Roman pedantry, and though it must needs have had
laws to be a
style at all, it followed them of free will, and yet unconsciously.
The cant of the
beauty of simplicity (i.e., bareness and barrenness) did not afflict
it; it was not
ashamed of redundancy of material, or super-abundance of ornament,
any more than
nature is. Slim elegance it could produce, or sturdy solidity, as its
moods went.
Material was not its master, but its servant: marble was not
necessary to its
beauty; stone would do, or brick, or timber. In default of carving it
would set
together cubes of glass or whatsoever was shining and fair-hued, and
cover every
portion of its interiors with a fairy coat of splendor; or would mold
mere
plaster into intricacy of work scarce to be followed, but never
wearying the eyes
with its delicacy and expressiveness of line. Smoothness it loves,
the utmost
finish that the hand can give; but if material or skill fail, the
rougher work
shall so be wrought that it also shall please us with its inventive
suggestion. For
the iron rule of the classical period, the acknowledged slavery of
every one but
the great man, was gone, and freedom had taken its place; but
harmonious freedom.
Subordination there is, but subordination of effect, not uniformity
of detail; true
and necessary subordination, not pedantic.
The full measure of this freedom Gothic Architecture did not gain
until it was in
the hands of the workmen of Europe, the gildsmen of the Free Cities,
who on many a
bloody field proved how dearly they valued their corporate life by
the generous
valor with which they risked their individual lives in its defense.
But from the
first, the tendency was towards this freedom of hand and mind
subordinated to the
cooperative harmony which made the freedom possible. That is the
spirit of Gothic
Architecture.
Let us go on a while with our history: up to this point the progress
had always
been from East to West, i.e., the East carried the West with it; the
West must now
go to the East to fetch new gain thence. A revival of religion was
one of the
moving causes of energy in the early Middle Ages in Europe, and this
religion (with
its enthusiasm for visible tokens of the objects of worship) impelled
people to
visit the East, which held the center of that worship. Thence arose
the warlike
pilgrimages of the crusades among races by no means prepared to turn
their cheeks
to the smiter. True it is that the tendency of the extreme West to
seek East did
not begin with the days just before the crusades. There was a thin
stream of
pilgrims setting eastward long before, and the Scandinavians had
found their way to
Byzantium, not as pilgrims but as soldiers, and under the name of the
Voerings a
bodyguard of their blood upheld the throne of the Greek Kaiser, and
many of them,
returning home, bore with them ideas of art which were not lost on
their scanty but
energetic populations. But the crusades brought gain from the East in
a far more
wholesale manner; and I think it is clear that part of that gain was
the idea of
art that brought about the change from round-arched to pointed
Gothic. In those
days (perhaps in ours also) it was the rule for conquerors in any
country to assume
that there could be no other system of society save that into which
they had been
born; and accordingly conquered Syria received a due feudal
government, with the
King of Jerusalem for Suzerain, the one person allowed by the heralds
to bear metal
on metal in his coat-armor. Nevertheless, the Westerners who settled
in this new
realm, few in number as they were, readily received impressions from
the art which
they saw around them, the Saracenic Byzantine Art, which was, after
all,
sympathetic with their own minds: and these impressions produced the
change. For it
is not to be thought that there was any direct borrowing of forms
from the East in
the gradual change from the round-arched to the pointed Gothic: there
was nothing
more obvious at work than the influence of a kindred style, whose
superior
lightness and elegance gave a hint of the road which development
might take.
Certainly this change in form, when it came, was a startling one:
the
pointed-arched Gothic, when it had grown out of its brief and most
beautiful
transition, was a vigorous youth indeed. It carried combined strength
and elegance
almost as far as it could be carried: indeed, sometimes one might
think it overdid
the lightness of effect, as e.g., in the interior of Salisbury
Cathedral. If some
abbot or monk of the eleventh century could have been brought back to
his rebuilt
church of the thirteenth, he might almost have thought that some
miracle had taken
place: the huge cylindrical or square piers transformed into clusters
of slim,
elegant shafts; the narrow round-headed windows supplanted by tall
wide lancets
showing the germs of the elaborate traceries of the next century, and
elegantly
glazed with pattern and subject; the bold vault spanning the wide
nave instead of
the flat wooden ceiling of past days; the extreme richness of the
moldings with
which every member is treated; the elegance and order of the floral
sculpture, the
grace and good drawing of the imagery: in short, a complete and
logical style with
no longer anything to apologize for, claiming homage from the
intellect, as well as
the imagination of men; the developed Gothic Architecture which has
shaken off the
trammels of Byzantium as well as of Rome, but which has,
nevertheless, reached its
glorious position step by step with no break and no conscious effort
after novelty
from the wall of Tiryns and the Treasury of Mycenae.
This point of development was attained amid a period of social
conflict, the
facts and tendencies of which, ignored by the historians of the
eighteenth century,
have been laid open to our view by our modern school of evolutionary
historians. In
the twelfth century the actual handicraftsmen found themselves at
last face to face
with the development of the earlier associations of freemen which
were the
survivals from the tribal society of Europe: in the teeth of these
exclusive and
aristocratic municipalities the handicraftsmen had associated
themselves into
guilds of craft, and were claiming their freedom from legal and
arbitrary
oppression, and a share in the government of the towns; by the end of
the
thirteenth century they had conquered the position everywhere and
within the next
fifty or sixty years the governors of the free towns were the
delegates of the
craft guilds, and all handicraft was included in their associations.
This period of
their triumph, marked amid other events by the Battle of Courtray,
where the
chivalry of France turned their backs in flight before the Flemish
weavers, was the
period during which Gothic Architecture reached its zenith. It must
be admitted, I
think, that during this epoch, as far as the art of beautiful
building is
concerned, France and England were the architectural countries par
excellence; but
all over the intelligent world was spread this bright, glittering,
joyous art,
which had now reached its acme of elegance and beauty; and moreover
in its
furniture, of which I have spoken above, the excellence was shared in
various
measure betwixt the countries of Europe. And let me note in passing
that the
necessarily ordinary conception of a Gothic interior as being a
colorless
whitey-gray place dependent on nothing but the architectural forms,
is about as far
from the fact as the corresponding idea of a Greek temple standing in
all the
chastity of white marble. We must remember, on the contrary, that
both buildings
were clad, and that the noblest part of their real raiment was their
share of a
great epic, a story appealing to the hearts and minds of men. And in
the Gothic
building, especially in the half century we now have before us, every
part of it,
walls, windows, floor, was all looked on as space for the
representation of
incidents of the great story of mankind, as it had presented itself
to the minds of
men then living; and this space was used with the greatest frankness
of
prodigality, and one may fairly say that wherever a picture could be
painted there
it was painted.
For now Gothic Architecture had completed its furniture: Dante,
Chaucer, Petrarch;
the German Hero ballad-epics, the French Romances, the English
Forest-ballads, that
epic of revolt, as it has been called, the Icelandic Sagas, Froissart
and the
Chroniclers, represented its literature. Its painting embraces a host
of names (of
Italy and Flanders chiefly) the two great realists Giotto and Van
Eyck at their
head: but every village has its painter, its carvers, its actors
even; every man
who produces works of handicraft is an artist. The few pieces of
household goods
left of its wreckage are marvels of beauty; its woven cloths and
embroideries are
worthy of its loveliest building, its pictures and ornamented books
would be enough
in themselves to make a great period of art, so excellent they are in
epic
intention, in completeness of unerring decoration, and in marvelous
skill of hand.
In short, those masterpieces of noble building, those specimens of
architecture, as
we call them, the sight of which makes the holiday of our lives
to-day, are the
standard of the whole art of those times, and tell the story of all
the
completeness of art in the heyday of life, as well as that of the sad
story which
follows. For when anything human has arrived at quasi-completion
there remains for
it decay and death, in order that the new thing may be born from it;
and this
wonderful joyous art of the Middle Ages could by no means escape its
fate.
In the middle of the fourteenth century Europe was scoured by that
mysterious
terror the Black Death (a terror similar to which perhaps waylays the
modern world)
and, along with it, the no less mysterious pests of Commercialism and
Bureaucracy
attacked us. This misfortune was the turning point of the Middle
Ages; once again a
great change was at hand.
The birth and growth of the coming change was marked by art with all
fidelity.
Gothic Architecture began to alter its character in the years that
immediately
followed on the Great Pest; it began to lose its exaltation of style
and to suffer
a diminution in the generous wealth of beauty which it gave us in its
heyday. In
some places, e.g., England, it grew more crabbed, and even sometimes
more
common-place; in others, as in France, it lost order, virility, and
purity of line.
But for a long time yet it was alive and vigorous, and showed even
greater capacity
than before for adapting itself to the needs of a developing society:
nor did the
change of style affect all its furniture injuriously; some of the
subsidiary arts
as e.g., Flemish tapestry and English wood-carving, rather gained
than lost for
many years.
At last, with the close of the fifteenth century, the Great Change
became obvious;
and we must remember that it was no superficial change of form, but a
change of
spirit affecting every form inevitably. This change we have somewhat
boastfully,
and as regards the arts quite untruthfully, called the New Birth. But
let us see
what it means.
Society was preparing for a complete recasting of its elements: the
Medieval
Society of Status was in process of transition into modern Society of
Contract. New
classes were being formed to fit the new system of production which
was at the
bottom of this; political life began again with the new birth of
bureaucracy; and
political, as distinguished from natural, nationalities were being
hammered
together for the use of that bureaucracy, which was itself a
necessity to the new
system. And withal a new religion was being fashioned to fit the new
theory of
life: in short, the Age of Commercialism was being born.
Now some of us think that all this was a source of misery and
degradation to the
world at the time, that it is still causing misery and degradation,
and that as a
system it is bound to give place to a better one. Yet we admit that
it had a
beneficent function to perform; that amid all the ugliness and
confusion which it
brought with it, it was a necessary instrument for the development of
freedom of
thought and the capacities of man; for the subjugation of nature to
his material
needs. This Great Change, I say, was necessary and inevitable, and on
this side,
the side of commerce and commercial science and politics, was a
genuine new birth.
On this side it did not look backward but forward: there had been
nothing like it
in past history; it was founded on no pedantic model; necessity, not
whim, was its
crafts-master.
But, strange to say, to this living body of social, political,
religious,
scientific New Birth was bound the dead corpse of a past art. On
every side it bade
men look forward to some change or other, were it good or bad: on the
side of art,
with the sternest pedagogic utterance, it bade men look backward
across the days of
the `Fathers and famous men that begat them,' and in scorn of them,
to an art that
had been dead a thousand years before. Hitherto, from the very
beginning the past
was past, all of it that was not alive in the present, unconsciously
to the men of
the present. Henceforth the past was to be our present, and the
blankness of its
dead wall was to shut out the future from us. There are many artists
at present who
do not sufficiently estimate the enormity, the portentousness of this
change, and
how closely it is connected with the Victorian Architecture of the
brick box and
the slate lid, which helps to make us the dullards that we are. How
on earth could
people's ideas of beauty change so? you may say. Well, was it their
ideas of beauty
that changed? Was it not rather that beauty, however unconsciously,
was no longer
an object of attainment with the men of that epoch?
This used once to puzzle me in the presence of one of the so-called
masterpieces of
the New Bible, the revived classical style, such a building as St
Paul's in London,
for example. I have found it difficult to put myself in the frame of
mind which
could accept such a work as a substitute for even the latest and
worst Gothic
building. Such taste seemed to me like the taste of a man who should
prefer his
lady-love bald. But now I know that it was not a matter of choice on
the part of
any one then alive who had an eye for beauty: if the change had been
made on the
grounds of beauty it would be wholly inexplicable; but it was not so.
In the early
days of the Renaissance there were artists possessed of the highest
qualities; but
those great men (whose greatness, mind you, was only in work not
carried out by
cooperation, painting, and sculpture for the most part) were really
but the fruit
of the blossoming-time, the Gothic period; as was abundantly proved
by the
succeeding periods of the Renaissance, which produced nothing but
inanity and
plausibility in all the arts. A few individual artists were great
truly; but
artists were no longer the masters of art, because the people had
ceased to be
artists: its masters were pedants. St Peter's in Rome, St Paul's in
London, were
not built to be beautiful, or to be beautiful and convenient. They
were not built
to be homes of the citizens in their moments of exaltation, their
supreme grief or
supreme hope, but to be proper, respectable, and therefore to show
the due amount
of cultivation and knowledge of the only peoples and times that in
the minds of
their ignorant builders were not ignorant barbarians. They were built
to be the
homes of a decent unenthusiastic ecclesiasticism, of those whom we
sometimes call
Dons now-a-days. Beauty and romance were outside the aspirations of
their builders.
Nor could it have been otherwise in those days; for, once again,
architectural
beauty is the result of the harmonious and intelligent cooperation of
the whole
body of people engaged in producing the work of the workman; and by
the time that
the changeling New Birth was grown to be a vigorous imp, such workmen
no longer
existed. By that time Europe had begun to transform the great army
of
artist-craftsmen, who had produced the beauty of her cities, her
churches,
manor-houses and cottages, into an enormous stock of human machines,
who had little
chance of earning a bare livelihood if they lingered over their toil
to think of
what they were doing: who were not asked to think, paid to think, or
allowed to
think. That invention we have, I should hope, about perfected by this
time, and it
must soon give place to a new one. Which is happy; for as long as the
invention is
in use you need not trouble yourselves about architecture, since you
will not get
it, as the common expression of our life, that is a genuine thing.
But at present I am not going to say anything about direct remedies
for the
miseries of the New Birth; I can only tell you what you ought to do
if you can. I
want you to see that from the brief historic review of the progress
of the Arts it
results that to-day there is only one style of Architecture on which
it is possible
to found a true living art, which is free to adapt itself to the
varying conditions
of social life, climate, and so forth, and that that style is Gothic
architecture.
The greater part of what we now call architecture is but an imitation
of an
imitation of an imitation, the result of a tradition of dull
respectability, or of
foolish whims without root or growth in them.
Let us look at an instance of pedantic retrospection employed in the
service of
art. A Greek columnar temple when it was a real thing, was a kind of
holy railing
built round a shrine: these things the people of that day wanted, and
they
naturally took the form of a Greek Temple under the climate of Greece
and given the
mood of its people. But do we want those things? If so, I should like
to know what
for. And if we pretend we do and so force a Greek Temple on a modern
city, we
produce such a gross piece of ugly absurdity as you may see spanning
the Lochs at
Edinburgh. In these islands we want a roof and walls with windows cut
in them; and
these things a Greek Temple does not pretend to give us.
Will a Roman building allow us to have these necessaries? Well, only
on the terms
that we are to be ashamed of wall, roof and windows, and pretend that
we haven't
got either of them, but rather a whimsical attempt at the imitation
of a Greek
Temple.
Will a neo-classical building allow us these necessities? Pretty much
on the same
terms as the Roman one; except when it is rather more than half
Gothic. It will
force us to pretend that we have neither roof, walls, nor windows,
nothing but an
imitation of the Roman travesty of a Greek Temple.
Now a Gothic building has walls that it is not ashamed of; and in
those walls you
may cut windows wherever you please; and, if you please may decorate
them to show
that you are not ashamed of them; your windows, which you must have,
become one of
the great beauties of your house, and you have no longer to make a
lesion in logic
in order not to sit in pitchy darkness in your own house, as in the
sham sham-Roman
style: your window, I say, is no longer a concession to human
weakness, an ugly
necessity (generally ugly enough in all conscience) but a glory of
the Art of
Building. As for the roof in the sham style: unless the building is
infected with
Gothic common sense, you must pretend that you are living in a hot
country which
needs nothing but an awning, and that it never rains or snows in
these islands.
Whereas in a Gothic building the roof both within and without
(especially within,
as is most meet) is the crown of its beauties, the abiding place of
its brain.
Again, consider the exterior of our buildings, that part of them that
is common to
all passersby, and that no man can turn into private property unless
he builds
amid an inaccessible park. The original of our neo-classic
architecture was
designed for marble in a bright dry climate, which only weathers it
to a golden
tone. Do we really like a neo-classic building weather-beaten by the
roughness of
hundreds of English winters from October to June? And on the other
hand, can any of
us fail to be touched by the weathered surface of a Gothic building
which has
escaped the restorers' hands? Do we not clearly know the latter to be
a piece of
nature, that more excellent mood of nature that uses the hands and
wills of men as
instruments of creation?
Indeed time would fail me to go into the many sides of the contrast
between the
Architecture which is a mere pedantic imitation of what was once
alive, and that
which after a development of long centuries has still in it, as I
think, capacities
for fresh developments, since its life was cut short by an arbitrary
recurrence to
a style which had long lost all elements of life and growth. Once for
all, then,
when the modern world finds that the eclecticism of the present is
barren and
fruitless, and that its needs and will have a style of architecture
which, I must
tell you once more, can only be as part of a change as wide and deep
as that which
destroyed Feudalism; when it has come to that conclusion, the style
of architecture
will have to be historic in the true sense; it well not be able to
dispense with
tradition; it cannot begin at least with doing something quite
different from
anything that has been done before; yet whatever the form of it may
be, the spirit
of it will be sympathy with the needs and aspirations of its own
time, not
simulation of needs and aspirations passed away. Thus it will
remember the history
of the past, make history in the present, and teach history in the
future. As to
the form of it, I see nothing for it but that the form, as well as
the spirit, must
be Gothic; an organic style cannot spring out of an eclectic one, but
only from an
organic one. In the future, therefore, our style of architecture must
be Gothic
Architecture.
And meanwhile of the world demanding architecture, what are we to do?
Meanwhile?
After all, is there any meanwhile? Are we not now demanding Gothic
Architecture and
crying for the fresh New Birth? To me it seems so. It is true that
the world is
uglier now than it was fifty years ago; but then people thought that
ugliness a
desirable thing, and looked at it with complacency as a sign of
civilization, which
no doubt it is. Now we are no longer complacent, but are grumbling in
a dim
unorganized manner. We feel a loss, and unless we are very unreal and
helpless we
shall presently begin to try to supply that loss. Art cannot be dead
so long as we
feel the lack of it, I say: and though we shall probably try many
roundabout ways
for filling up the lack; yet we shall at last be driven into the one
right way of
concluding that in spite of all risks, and all losses, unhappy and
slavish work
must come to an end. In that day we shall take Gothic Architecture by
the hand, and
know it for what it was and what it is.
Bibliographical Note
Title
Gothic Architecture
Delivery
11th February 1889 at a meeting sponsored by the Haldane Trustees at
the Corporation Galleries, Glasgow
9th April 1889 at a meeting sponsored by the Guild and School of
Handicraft which was held in the Lecture Room of Toynbee Hall for students
of the University Settlements scheme
7th November 1889 at a meeting sponsored by the Arts and Crafts
Exhibition Society at the opening of their second exhibition at the New
Gallery, Regent Street, London
20th November 1889 at a meeting sponsored by the Hammersmith Branch of
the SL at Kelmscott House, Hammersmith
12th April 1890 before the Artists' Club at the Club Rooms, Eberle
Street, Liverpool
2nd May 1890 at a meeting sponsored by the Fabians at the St James's
Hall Restaurant
28th November 1890 at a meeting held at Barnard's Inn
Publication
Gothic Architecture: A Lecture for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition
Society, Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1893
From : Marxists.org
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Gothic Architecture -- Added : February 24, 2021
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