How to Study Architecture
9781465635747
288 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting share the distinctive title of the Fine Arts, or, as the Italians and French more fitly call them, the Beautiful Arts; the arts, that is to say, of beautiful design. They are known by their beauty. By their beauty they appeal to the eye and through the eye to the mind, stirring in us emotions or feelings of pleasure—a higher kind of pleasure than that which is derived solely from the gratification of the senses—the kind which is distinguished as æsthetic. The term æsthetic is derived from a Greek word, meaning perception. Originally it described the act of perceiving “objects” by means of the senses—“objects” meaning anything that can be perceived through the senses. But the term æsthetic has come to have another meaning, especially in respect to sense-perceptions derived from seeing and hearing. It means that the perception gives us pleasure, because it stirs in us a sense of beauty. It may do so without any conscious activity on the part of our mind. We may be absorbed in the delight of the sensation; or it may appeal to our mind—to our memory or imagination—in such a way as to set us thinking and feeling not only about the immediate “object” but also about something which our mind associates with it. For example: by simple sense-perception we discover that one tree is taller than another, or that one tree is an elm, another a silver birch. Our perception may stop there; but not if we are in a mood to contemplate. Then the perception that one tree is taller than the other may be followed by the feeling that the taller tree gives us more satisfaction. It may seem to us to be a better proportioned tree: its parts are more pleasingly related to the whole mass; or it may seem to be in a fitter relation to the spot it occupies and to the other “objects” near it. Again, having ascertained by pure sense-impression that one tree is an elm and the other a silver birch, we may find ourselves thinking about the qualities of difference presented by the two trees. With what splendid assurance the elm trunk rears up! How majestically the branches radiate from it and bear their glorious masses of abundant foliage! On the other hand, how dainty are the stems and branches of the silver birch, how delicately graceful the sprays of tiny leaves! “How sensitive!” perhaps we say. For to our imagination the slender tree may seem to be endowed with senses that respond to every movement of the air, to every glancing of the sunlight. In all these cases we have gone beyond mere sense-perception. We are no longer interested only in the “object.” Our interest has become subjective. We are interested in the subject not the object of the verb, to perceive—the subject whoperceives, in this case, ourself; how the thing affects oneself; how it stirs in one a sense of beauty. By this time our thoughts may have been withdrawn from the concrete object and have passed on to “abstract” ideas, suggested by the object. It is grandeur of growth, as embodied in the elm, fragile tenderness, as expressed in the birch, that absorb our thought; and the wonder also how qualities so different can survive the rude shocks of nature, and find, each its special function in the scheme of nature’s beauty. In thus feeling external objects through our own experience of life and our own sense of beauty, we are employing the sense-perception that is specially called æsthetic. And it is in the degree to which objects of architecture, sculpture, or painting have the capacity of stimulating this æsthetic appreciation that they properly belong in the company of the Fine Arts.
