Ray, We'll have to differ, much as I like your polymathic writings.
The ancients certainly had a sense of architectural beauty in the sense of current fashion. But they had no sense of panchronic beauty as we have. As I tried to demonstrate in my previous posting -- obviously without succeess -- one generation of builders and architects would cheerfully tear down the fruits of their predecessors. Below, you're mixing up artists and architects from entirely different eras. Leonardo da Vinci, for example, was primarily an engineer (see his fantastic exhibits in Milan) and drew everything he was involved with as accurately as possible -- essentially, they were working drawings. Today, we appreciate them as works of art and rich people pay millions for even sketches. Or da Vinci drew and painted the human form (of which, yes, the ancients had a sense of beauty for obvious reasons) on commission. We, today, appreciate the supreme products of the past as beautiful. But it's still the case that our modern notion of beauty is, like science, a byproduct of the Enlightenment. It's only since then that poets and writers have discovered the beauty of Grecian Urns, Renaissance architecture -- and even the curious realisation of the beauty of Nature! Keith At 16:18 03/10/02 -0400, you wrote: >Sorry Keith, but it is nonsense like this that makes me not listen to you. >There has always been the beauty of proportion and form. In fact the word >Per-form is built from it. Architects in various parts of the world have >built for various fashions but always to some idea of a formal language. >That is the reason that you can tell the difference between one style and >another. Novelty is important as is imagination but to say that the only >issue is cost per square foot denies the reason it took so long to build the >things in the first place. > >They wouldn't skimp on what represented the highest ideals of their thought >and religion. Tennyson? That reminds me of the death of music stuff >that the Wagnerians propogated and that you occasionally speak of. >Perhaps you should look at Di Vinci's drawings and compare them to >LeCorbusier or Louis Sullivan, Mies Van Der Rohe or the magnificent >buildings of our beloved Frank Lloyd Wright. There is a very clear >through line and the cheapness of today's UN is all that makes the aesthetic >somehow less fulfilling than Leonardo's. If you could see the way the UN >is falling apart. And then there is that cantilever at Wright's "Falling >Water" where he skimped and now we should call it "Falling Down." To much >price per square foot for the capitalist Kaufmann and too much willingness >by FLW to do anything to get the job. > >Perspective was not developed by engineers and the buildings of Tenochtitlan >in their perfection were not built by economists either although traditional >Indians were so good at economics that the English had to bring the Scots in >to do business with them. The Indian answer was to marry the Scots. That >is where I got my Scottish blood. Why not read some of those wonderful >histories by the Libertarian Sir Herbert Read. He did a whole >Encyclopedia of Art that makes very clear what I am speaking of not to >mention many masterful books on Form. You should also look at Irwin >Stein's "Form and Performance" as well as the wonderful "Music and >Discourse, Toward a Semiology of Music" by Jen-Jacques Nattiez. > >I apologize for being harsh but frankly this kind balderdash is the reason >that nothing ever gets fixed and all of those excuses are accepted for the >mess that we are in propagated by the economics and business people. If >you can get a copy of the Critic Walter Kerr's "The Decline of Pleasure" I >would highly recommend it since Kerr was in the commercial theater business >and did a very fine job of tracing the history of this nonsense from Adams >and Mill to the second rate Jevons who basically locked this attrocity in >stone. You can order it from Amazon. Can you imagine what it would >be like to have a Beatles addict talk to you about Gesualdo and the death of >choral singing and how nothing that we consider beautiful today was >important before Paul. How do you answer such stuff? > >Ray ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
