Otakar Novotný: Agreements and Discrepancies
All visual arts, even though we can regard them as a completely objective expression of an abundance of mental forces, an expression of satisfied calm and also of uneasy tragicness, are not free from subjective influences of music and poetry, even in cases when they consciously and diligently strive for it. If we assume that the effects of subjectivism on visual arts are the same across all categories—and there is no reason to assume otherwise—then nothing hinders their absolute ideological equivalence, differing only in the diverse technique of formal expression.* The expressive technique burdens visual arts disproportionately more than tone burdens music or words burden poetry; the visual artist performs a dual task: first, awakening instinct and organizing reason, and then expressing them plastically (painting, which uses colored pastes, is also plastic in this sense). Therefore, visual products often lag behind verbal expression of artistic goals, especially architecture, which is still partially dictated by profane needs. The creative visual process— and this is the only case we will discuss—produces, in every case, space that is geometrical but more so filled with life. Sculpture and painting have so far strived to reproduce natural forms, whether in a naturalistically faithful or stylized manner, while architecture, due to its overall concepts, has found no motives in nature that would entice it to imitate. Thus, it has been considered solely as a spatial art and is often schoolishly distinguished from sculpture, the art of plastic form, light, and shadow, and from painting, the art of color on a plane. In reality, however, such substantial differences never existed; these were merely formalist questions, because fundamentally all visual arts are spatial creations, with architecture and sculpture being real, and painting being fictitious. The precise boundaries between individual categories cannot be established in any way; where the expressive means of one category cease, the other begins. The notion that for architecture lines, for sculpture forms, and for painting colors are the basic shaping elements is an academic prejudice. For all arts, it is only space, and it depends solely on how it is reproduced. The outer creative process in architecture and sculpture is fundamentally the same; in painting, it is somewhat, actually only seemingly, different. All efforts to allocate expressive means to the realm of the relevant art (lines to architecture, forms to sculpture, etc.), which would transcend the "purity" of style must fail, getting stuck in absurdities and impossibilities of further development. As soon as architecture is architectural, sculpture is plastic, and painting is painting—nothing further can be made of them, trivially put. Examples: the pyramid, Greek sculpture (with its development up to the Baroque), Impressionism leading to Neo-Impressionism. Only chaos supports mental work; the expressive possibilities of one category must encroach upon the expressive capacities of another art. Today such seemingly inconsiderate inconsistencies impress us the most. For instance, Eastern architecture encroaches into sculpture, Gothic into painting, and Egyptian sculpture (sphinxes, colossi, and some small sculptures) undoubtedly possesses all the characteristics of architecture, while Baroque sculpture is influenced by painting. In painting, we also find elements of architectonic (Christian mosaics, contemporary efforts) and sculptural (beginning consciously with Masaccio). And it is precisely these epochs that were the most artistically fertile; visual arts were not free from even secondary influences of poetry and music; they were periods when the world was bubbling and fermenting.
In the evolution of all kinds of visual art in any historical era, we can clearly see three stages: in the beginnings architectural, later plastic, and finally a tendency purely painterly, after which the developmental period ends and art begins a new life. Development can only be called development in a certain sense, as art gradually loses its original monumentality caused by the limitation of artistic elements to the smallest possible number. Architecture begins with the pyramid and progresses through the Greek temple to Baroque facades; sculpture begins with a separate bronze figure but further creates stone groups and ends with small porcelain genres; painting initially delineates color planes (mosaic), in frescoes solves plastic problems with color, while luminism and Impressionism conclude the development with framed paintings. Such a three-part variation can also be traced in the grander context, as in every age the art that was the most consistent overshadowed its sisters. Architecture was of high standard in Egypt, sculpture in the Middle Ages, painting in recent years, while other arts were subordinated. However, between these phases, there are also periods when culture was leveled, as was the case in Greece. The beginning of this century has ended this variation; it begins anew, and architecture is thus destined to lead once again in the nearest time.
The prerequisites for good architecture, as proclaimed in the revival period of the last century, were not of fundamental nature. Meeting purpose and construction was a correction, but not a rejuvenation. How unnecessary all the struggles from thirty years ago now seem; the reaction had to come, but the struggle indeed hastened it. Architecture as art presupposes reason in the selection of overall and purposeful form; material and constructive rationalism, which was once the goal, is today the starting point. Let us hope that the danger of “artistic industrialization” of architecture has been averted.
Architecture is to be regarded as the spatial art par excellence. Let us note that this condition can be satisfied in two ways, depending on whether greater emphasis is placed on the framing or on the frame, whether on space itself or on its limitation, and that from this diverse accentuation we can arrive at diametrically different opinions about the formal tasks of architecture. The Renaissance and its derivatives—already antiquity shows the first seeds—were based on the principle of framing; the focal point of the visual lay in the frame, column, lintel, window trim; thus, there is an undeniable planar character in construction—first Greek products, and primarily Egypt and Gothic, are based on the principle of mass. However, if I remind myself that the space I must create—this is the general task of the architect—truly creates, as air space, then the boundary elements lose their importance, as they were obtained in centuries when all valuable tectonic knowledge was placed in the floor, walls, and ceiling. If, however, the bounded and the bounding are valued equally, then architecture suddenly loses its barren decorativeness, which bothers us, for instance, in the Renaissance. Perhaps not today, but in the near future, our refined senses will be able to perceive the airy form of space, which we currently do not see, being engaged in the perception of coarser forms and specifically more material ones. Air-filled space, filled with life that ripples and vibrates, provokes in construction material forms that will be a spontaneous reaction embracing the structure against expansive space. Antiquity did so unconsciously; forms arose here through one-sided aestheticization, and it is merely evidence of otherwise precise logical thinking that some shapes (the fluting of shafts, ceiling panels, the overall concept of the Greek temple) can be justified even by the opposite path; rather than deriving from the dead static functions of visible mass, they originate from the very organism of space. Gothic proceeded so far that it began to compose space. Little weight was placed on the bounding factors; the wall is neglected; instead, space develops freely, tectonically based on entirely different foundations than antiquity did. Not solely on the basis of the principle of load and support, of borne and bearing, but based on organic forces expressing themselves in curved and oblique lines, based on the overall plastic expression that does not isolate mass as a separate component but holds it together with space as a whole. The cause of satisfaction from beautiful space is not the feeling of perfect framing but another aesthetic moment: being surrounded within the space. The feeling accessible to all, by which framing itself acts, is very labile, remembering that the object of framing can be one person once, another the next, alone or in a cluster; an aesthetically correct frame must be guided by its content, that which it frames, and there would be none here if the framed object changed. We should also refrain from considering to a certain extent sentimental feelings of "shelter, home, coziness, sublimity" as components in the sense of the elementary, determined not by aesthetics but by some custom. Similarly, let us also disregard romantic reminiscences of the feeling of sublimity of the individual as part of no less sublime nature. Thus, we must consider as the object of framing only a higher idea, in artistic terms a living space itself. Then it is indeed indifferent how subjective a person’s position towards the creation is and it is also entirely the same whether it is inside or outside of the space. Principally, thus, it is necessary to attribute equal importance to the exterior as to the interior, if a work is to arise in true artistry.
Various historical styles, moreover, have had different formal developments of space, but one thing remains: the feeling that this or that space evokes in us (I already speak of the exterior and interior as equal factors), despite all the religious development, social upheavals, and changes in worldviews, remains comparatively the same through all these times. Therefore, it is not form that operates, but the spirit of space and hence also of mass.
Sculpture has no other shaping laws than architecture, but there is a lack of distinction between bounded space and the limitation of space. Sculpture fills space with itself, with its mass, while architecture also consists of air spaces—mass in architecture is merely the boundary of masses filled with life. Sculpture transfers life from the outside inward, from reality into foreign material environments; architecture with its construction goes from the inside outward. This circumstance also poses the problem of how to connect sculpture with construction. Caryatids, consoles, gargoyles cannot be considered plastic expressions; they are architecture. By incorporating them into the construction unit, we change their function—as noted, sculpture operates from the outside in, while architecture operates from the inside out—and to express this function precisely would be a resolution. Otherwise, sculpture is merely unnecessary decoration, especially if it fails to distinguish the ideally represented world from the physical world of supportive architecture (if, for example, in a work of art that aims for unity, an architectural motive is directly connected with the depicted organic object, a funerary obelisk with a statue of an angel leaning against it, etc.). There ensues an unartistic wandering between the reality of dead architectural mass and the illusion of genuine life. Similarly, connecting different materials is merely decorative, which can never lead to a grand conception. Referring to antiquity is not entirely correct since this motive was already the last reminiscence of barbarism in antiquity. Today, we do not know what to do with sculpture. In confusion, we fill every niche with it, where any square is possible, and architecture continually searches in vain for its sculptural—and ultimately, it can be said also its painterly—complement. Meanwhile, the problem of the outer formal connection between sculpture and architecture (of a perfectly ideological connection was already spoken) lies in the fact that sculpture—emotionally and content-wise closer to the common human soul than architecture—should distance itself from the observer, so that (according to Hildebrand) "figures belong more to architecture than to the public." So that architecture is not merely a necessary static skeleton, but also a motive that calls for sculpture and is unthinkable without it. Until the apparatus of superficial architectural elements (plinths, frames, columns) disappears, which do not solve anything, but merely cover shortcomings, it will not be possible to speak of the unity of the two arts in artistic coherence. It seems that the relief currently takes on a special and important role. In architectural space, it represents a necessary component, a wall, and thus serves an active function. Free sculpture, on the other hand, disrupts space by filling space within space. It is possible that the significance of relief is merely provisional until free sculpture manages to overcome the problems it faces. Thus far, free sculpture must also be regarded in space as a planar element—it sounds paradoxical, but because when placed in a niche or similar manner—as we can only imagine so far—it always connects directly with the wall or another of its architectural motives, which, in the context of our considerations, we must view from a higher perspective as planar (even if it was not factually so), thus making it collectively a planar whole.
Painting—despite certain subtleties of a technical nature—does not actually create spaces; it merely depicts them and therefore has the capacity not to physically delimit them but merely to present excerpts from them. Thus, while architecture and sculpture can create whole and complete works in every sense, painting must content itself with fragments that require many further literary contemplations, many supplements, and are therefore enigmatic in a certain sense. Truly, no other art has been subjected to such combative controversies as painting.
One advantage that painting has over other visual arts is that it does not have to care about materially raw unity, which costs architecture and sculpture half of all work. Painting achieves physical unity already on the surface upon which it is placed. However, the issue of ideological unity is quite different; here difficulties accumulate precisely in the opposite relationship. In wall painting, the pretended perspective depth ideologically contradicts the planar wall, with its function as the boundary of space. If our efforts are thus aimed at a higher homogeneity of the entire space, then painting must limit itself to decoration in the narrowest sense, to line and color, and must completely avoid all illusory elements, all light and air, perspective and mood, everything that suggests or even only recalls reality. The decoration in the sense just mentioned also speaks this: a painting as a painting, as an independently consumable organism, requires perception to occur directly within it, so the observing subject assumes his imaginary position right in its surface. The decorative painting permits the observer to be anywhere outside of it. Whereas the first case requires complete absorption, the second mode allows for entirely objective observation. While one can see in this fact (in the decorative painting) an extraordinary advantage of possible unity of space concerning the observer, conversely, one cannot disregard a certain profanation of this phenomenon and the subsequent underestimation of decoration, which is overly rooted. Thus, the problem is such: to somehow connect the subjective effect of the "image" with the objectivity of "decoration" and this can perhaps be achieved if form and color are not just mere means, but are an independent artistic expression. That such a path is correct is otherwise evidenced by the circumstance that in spaces correctly composed as space, any materialistic image presenting space again only fictionally appears as a stark dissonance. The image must then obviously operate helplessly, as its expressive means are weak compared to the plastic possibilities of architecture and sculpture. Practically, the correctness of these views is demonstrated, for example, by the difference between the Ravenna mosaic and the painted Baroque dome, that is, the difference between a form that is to a certain extent abstract—undoubtedly, this abstractness can still further develop as today’s painting efforts show—and a form that is illusory, which is indeed a very primitive mistake.
Today, there is a desire to connect all visual arts into a single cultural expression that also interacts with other arts. It will most likely be architecture that will act as an intermediary. It will seek agreement and contradictions, will compromise, and will organize the struggle. It is already far enough to shake off the ballast of academic aesthetics, filled with struggles for purposefulness and the true material of products, disputes that were in fact never deep contradictions. Classical aesthetics only obstructed the requirements of profane needs, just as aristocratic exclusivity obstructed the democratization of art. Art "developed" as if someone resolved to satiate his nourishment by swallowing money instead of food. Academic teachings rolled out one after another, yielding nothing fertile, turning back and forth and art was dying. We have come to the view that the Greek temple and Gothic cathedral, Phidias and Michelangelo, Holbein and Greco cannot be attained, but nonetheless we toil and kill ourselves in efforts that are in a certain sense imitative; we still consider their goals as our own today. Therefore, it is necessary to acknowledge and take a different path, one that is our own and more feasible today. We may encounter great masters of the past, but in a different direction than as epigones. Today's currents are aimed at freedom, artistic freedom, which, however, would not be anarchy of thought, but a natural agreement of the ideal with the real. This, of course, cannot be achieved through superficial reactivity; it is very convenient to be a realist since the ancestors floated in romanticism, to emphasize construction where it was overlooked, to love rationality where symbolism prevailed. Thus, we could work in endless variations without yielding anything fruitful. Modern art has indeed so far only carried out pioneering work, laying foundations, leveling, organizing, correcting much, and still struggling. And amidst all this, what good was meant to come has remained aside, coming by itself, without our contribution, and we cloaked the new appearances in tolerable garments that we sought to associate with traditional principles despite all the insurmountable chasms of tradition and Americanized progress. **
Today’s artists are like bees, devoid of passion and ambition, who in ecstatic exhausting efforts voluntarily destroy themselves, just to sustain not art but artistic efforts that will later give birth to it.
We shall therefore reach architecture in the nearest future, its dictation will be purposefully democratic (not as political, but as a social organization), the form governed solely by space as mass, rhythmically articulated; architectural creation will not consist of inventing new forms on the old program, but rather applying a limited number of geometric elements to new needs. Only efforts for the merging of all visual arts will remain, hastened by the fact that painting and sculpture are moving into the realm where architecture already resides, into the sphere of organic forces based on the most general mechanical laws. Art Nouveau managed to connect architecture with sculpture and painting well, but only ornamentally and in minor tasks. For it to happen in a monumental form remains reserved for the near future.
* For extended reflections, it is necessary indeed to make a distinction between architecture that quells thirst for rich spiritual life, the architecture of temples, tombs, triumphal arches, symbolic architecture, and one could say, in a certain sense, abstract, and profane construction that serves everyday needs. Although the exact boundaries of these distinctions could not generally be determined, they are nonetheless quite indisputable in individual cases.
** Architecture, like other arts, has been industrialized and Americanized; the word is somewhat stretched today. Fundamentally, however, it unabashedly signifies worldviews that do not nurture national character, which will arrive with strong efforts in any case.
In the evolution of all kinds of visual art in any historical era, we can clearly see three stages: in the beginnings architectural, later plastic, and finally a tendency purely painterly, after which the developmental period ends and art begins a new life. Development can only be called development in a certain sense, as art gradually loses its original monumentality caused by the limitation of artistic elements to the smallest possible number. Architecture begins with the pyramid and progresses through the Greek temple to Baroque facades; sculpture begins with a separate bronze figure but further creates stone groups and ends with small porcelain genres; painting initially delineates color planes (mosaic), in frescoes solves plastic problems with color, while luminism and Impressionism conclude the development with framed paintings. Such a three-part variation can also be traced in the grander context, as in every age the art that was the most consistent overshadowed its sisters. Architecture was of high standard in Egypt, sculpture in the Middle Ages, painting in recent years, while other arts were subordinated. However, between these phases, there are also periods when culture was leveled, as was the case in Greece. The beginning of this century has ended this variation; it begins anew, and architecture is thus destined to lead once again in the nearest time.
The prerequisites for good architecture, as proclaimed in the revival period of the last century, were not of fundamental nature. Meeting purpose and construction was a correction, but not a rejuvenation. How unnecessary all the struggles from thirty years ago now seem; the reaction had to come, but the struggle indeed hastened it. Architecture as art presupposes reason in the selection of overall and purposeful form; material and constructive rationalism, which was once the goal, is today the starting point. Let us hope that the danger of “artistic industrialization” of architecture has been averted.
Architecture is to be regarded as the spatial art par excellence. Let us note that this condition can be satisfied in two ways, depending on whether greater emphasis is placed on the framing or on the frame, whether on space itself or on its limitation, and that from this diverse accentuation we can arrive at diametrically different opinions about the formal tasks of architecture. The Renaissance and its derivatives—already antiquity shows the first seeds—were based on the principle of framing; the focal point of the visual lay in the frame, column, lintel, window trim; thus, there is an undeniable planar character in construction—first Greek products, and primarily Egypt and Gothic, are based on the principle of mass. However, if I remind myself that the space I must create—this is the general task of the architect—truly creates, as air space, then the boundary elements lose their importance, as they were obtained in centuries when all valuable tectonic knowledge was placed in the floor, walls, and ceiling. If, however, the bounded and the bounding are valued equally, then architecture suddenly loses its barren decorativeness, which bothers us, for instance, in the Renaissance. Perhaps not today, but in the near future, our refined senses will be able to perceive the airy form of space, which we currently do not see, being engaged in the perception of coarser forms and specifically more material ones. Air-filled space, filled with life that ripples and vibrates, provokes in construction material forms that will be a spontaneous reaction embracing the structure against expansive space. Antiquity did so unconsciously; forms arose here through one-sided aestheticization, and it is merely evidence of otherwise precise logical thinking that some shapes (the fluting of shafts, ceiling panels, the overall concept of the Greek temple) can be justified even by the opposite path; rather than deriving from the dead static functions of visible mass, they originate from the very organism of space. Gothic proceeded so far that it began to compose space. Little weight was placed on the bounding factors; the wall is neglected; instead, space develops freely, tectonically based on entirely different foundations than antiquity did. Not solely on the basis of the principle of load and support, of borne and bearing, but based on organic forces expressing themselves in curved and oblique lines, based on the overall plastic expression that does not isolate mass as a separate component but holds it together with space as a whole. The cause of satisfaction from beautiful space is not the feeling of perfect framing but another aesthetic moment: being surrounded within the space. The feeling accessible to all, by which framing itself acts, is very labile, remembering that the object of framing can be one person once, another the next, alone or in a cluster; an aesthetically correct frame must be guided by its content, that which it frames, and there would be none here if the framed object changed. We should also refrain from considering to a certain extent sentimental feelings of "shelter, home, coziness, sublimity" as components in the sense of the elementary, determined not by aesthetics but by some custom. Similarly, let us also disregard romantic reminiscences of the feeling of sublimity of the individual as part of no less sublime nature. Thus, we must consider as the object of framing only a higher idea, in artistic terms a living space itself. Then it is indeed indifferent how subjective a person’s position towards the creation is and it is also entirely the same whether it is inside or outside of the space. Principally, thus, it is necessary to attribute equal importance to the exterior as to the interior, if a work is to arise in true artistry.
Various historical styles, moreover, have had different formal developments of space, but one thing remains: the feeling that this or that space evokes in us (I already speak of the exterior and interior as equal factors), despite all the religious development, social upheavals, and changes in worldviews, remains comparatively the same through all these times. Therefore, it is not form that operates, but the spirit of space and hence also of mass.
Sculpture has no other shaping laws than architecture, but there is a lack of distinction between bounded space and the limitation of space. Sculpture fills space with itself, with its mass, while architecture also consists of air spaces—mass in architecture is merely the boundary of masses filled with life. Sculpture transfers life from the outside inward, from reality into foreign material environments; architecture with its construction goes from the inside outward. This circumstance also poses the problem of how to connect sculpture with construction. Caryatids, consoles, gargoyles cannot be considered plastic expressions; they are architecture. By incorporating them into the construction unit, we change their function—as noted, sculpture operates from the outside in, while architecture operates from the inside out—and to express this function precisely would be a resolution. Otherwise, sculpture is merely unnecessary decoration, especially if it fails to distinguish the ideally represented world from the physical world of supportive architecture (if, for example, in a work of art that aims for unity, an architectural motive is directly connected with the depicted organic object, a funerary obelisk with a statue of an angel leaning against it, etc.). There ensues an unartistic wandering between the reality of dead architectural mass and the illusion of genuine life. Similarly, connecting different materials is merely decorative, which can never lead to a grand conception. Referring to antiquity is not entirely correct since this motive was already the last reminiscence of barbarism in antiquity. Today, we do not know what to do with sculpture. In confusion, we fill every niche with it, where any square is possible, and architecture continually searches in vain for its sculptural—and ultimately, it can be said also its painterly—complement. Meanwhile, the problem of the outer formal connection between sculpture and architecture (of a perfectly ideological connection was already spoken) lies in the fact that sculpture—emotionally and content-wise closer to the common human soul than architecture—should distance itself from the observer, so that (according to Hildebrand) "figures belong more to architecture than to the public." So that architecture is not merely a necessary static skeleton, but also a motive that calls for sculpture and is unthinkable without it. Until the apparatus of superficial architectural elements (plinths, frames, columns) disappears, which do not solve anything, but merely cover shortcomings, it will not be possible to speak of the unity of the two arts in artistic coherence. It seems that the relief currently takes on a special and important role. In architectural space, it represents a necessary component, a wall, and thus serves an active function. Free sculpture, on the other hand, disrupts space by filling space within space. It is possible that the significance of relief is merely provisional until free sculpture manages to overcome the problems it faces. Thus far, free sculpture must also be regarded in space as a planar element—it sounds paradoxical, but because when placed in a niche or similar manner—as we can only imagine so far—it always connects directly with the wall or another of its architectural motives, which, in the context of our considerations, we must view from a higher perspective as planar (even if it was not factually so), thus making it collectively a planar whole.
Painting—despite certain subtleties of a technical nature—does not actually create spaces; it merely depicts them and therefore has the capacity not to physically delimit them but merely to present excerpts from them. Thus, while architecture and sculpture can create whole and complete works in every sense, painting must content itself with fragments that require many further literary contemplations, many supplements, and are therefore enigmatic in a certain sense. Truly, no other art has been subjected to such combative controversies as painting.
One advantage that painting has over other visual arts is that it does not have to care about materially raw unity, which costs architecture and sculpture half of all work. Painting achieves physical unity already on the surface upon which it is placed. However, the issue of ideological unity is quite different; here difficulties accumulate precisely in the opposite relationship. In wall painting, the pretended perspective depth ideologically contradicts the planar wall, with its function as the boundary of space. If our efforts are thus aimed at a higher homogeneity of the entire space, then painting must limit itself to decoration in the narrowest sense, to line and color, and must completely avoid all illusory elements, all light and air, perspective and mood, everything that suggests or even only recalls reality. The decoration in the sense just mentioned also speaks this: a painting as a painting, as an independently consumable organism, requires perception to occur directly within it, so the observing subject assumes his imaginary position right in its surface. The decorative painting permits the observer to be anywhere outside of it. Whereas the first case requires complete absorption, the second mode allows for entirely objective observation. While one can see in this fact (in the decorative painting) an extraordinary advantage of possible unity of space concerning the observer, conversely, one cannot disregard a certain profanation of this phenomenon and the subsequent underestimation of decoration, which is overly rooted. Thus, the problem is such: to somehow connect the subjective effect of the "image" with the objectivity of "decoration" and this can perhaps be achieved if form and color are not just mere means, but are an independent artistic expression. That such a path is correct is otherwise evidenced by the circumstance that in spaces correctly composed as space, any materialistic image presenting space again only fictionally appears as a stark dissonance. The image must then obviously operate helplessly, as its expressive means are weak compared to the plastic possibilities of architecture and sculpture. Practically, the correctness of these views is demonstrated, for example, by the difference between the Ravenna mosaic and the painted Baroque dome, that is, the difference between a form that is to a certain extent abstract—undoubtedly, this abstractness can still further develop as today’s painting efforts show—and a form that is illusory, which is indeed a very primitive mistake.
Today, there is a desire to connect all visual arts into a single cultural expression that also interacts with other arts. It will most likely be architecture that will act as an intermediary. It will seek agreement and contradictions, will compromise, and will organize the struggle. It is already far enough to shake off the ballast of academic aesthetics, filled with struggles for purposefulness and the true material of products, disputes that were in fact never deep contradictions. Classical aesthetics only obstructed the requirements of profane needs, just as aristocratic exclusivity obstructed the democratization of art. Art "developed" as if someone resolved to satiate his nourishment by swallowing money instead of food. Academic teachings rolled out one after another, yielding nothing fertile, turning back and forth and art was dying. We have come to the view that the Greek temple and Gothic cathedral, Phidias and Michelangelo, Holbein and Greco cannot be attained, but nonetheless we toil and kill ourselves in efforts that are in a certain sense imitative; we still consider their goals as our own today. Therefore, it is necessary to acknowledge and take a different path, one that is our own and more feasible today. We may encounter great masters of the past, but in a different direction than as epigones. Today's currents are aimed at freedom, artistic freedom, which, however, would not be anarchy of thought, but a natural agreement of the ideal with the real. This, of course, cannot be achieved through superficial reactivity; it is very convenient to be a realist since the ancestors floated in romanticism, to emphasize construction where it was overlooked, to love rationality where symbolism prevailed. Thus, we could work in endless variations without yielding anything fruitful. Modern art has indeed so far only carried out pioneering work, laying foundations, leveling, organizing, correcting much, and still struggling. And amidst all this, what good was meant to come has remained aside, coming by itself, without our contribution, and we cloaked the new appearances in tolerable garments that we sought to associate with traditional principles despite all the insurmountable chasms of tradition and Americanized progress. **
Today’s artists are like bees, devoid of passion and ambition, who in ecstatic exhausting efforts voluntarily destroy themselves, just to sustain not art but artistic efforts that will later give birth to it.
We shall therefore reach architecture in the nearest future, its dictation will be purposefully democratic (not as political, but as a social organization), the form governed solely by space as mass, rhythmically articulated; architectural creation will not consist of inventing new forms on the old program, but rather applying a limited number of geometric elements to new needs. Only efforts for the merging of all visual arts will remain, hastened by the fact that painting and sculpture are moving into the realm where architecture already resides, into the sphere of organic forces based on the most general mechanical laws. Art Nouveau managed to connect architecture with sculpture and painting well, but only ornamentally and in minor tasks. For it to happen in a monumental form remains reserved for the near future.
* For extended reflections, it is necessary indeed to make a distinction between architecture that quells thirst for rich spiritual life, the architecture of temples, tombs, triumphal arches, symbolic architecture, and one could say, in a certain sense, abstract, and profane construction that serves everyday needs. Although the exact boundaries of these distinctions could not generally be determined, they are nonetheless quite indisputable in individual cases.
** Architecture, like other arts, has been industrialized and Americanized; the word is somewhat stretched today. Fundamentally, however, it unabashedly signifies worldviews that do not nurture national character, which will arrive with strong efforts in any case.
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