Readings/Reflections

I read Judith Barter's Prairie School and the Decorative Arts and the Art Institute of Chicago.

There were many questions and concerns that arose for me...

First, I must comment on her essay format and her last paragraphs. I felt startled by the ending. It ended every abruptly and I thought that further reflection or summary was missing, although I suppose she was mainly cataloging the, can I say incestuous happenings of inspiration, collaboration, design theorizing and house designing of the peoples affiliated with the Prairie School and its beliefs...

I first want to comment on the following statement made by Wright

"The reality of a room was to be found in the space enclosed by the roof and walls, not by the roof and walls themselves."

Now focusing on a work and design of total integration makes me think back to Heinrich Wolfflin's article when he postulates architecture and design in Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architetcure.

He writes

...since large forms of architecture cannot respond to every minute change in popular

sentiment, a gradual alienation sets in, and the style becomes a lifeless schema maintained

only by tradition. The individual forms continue to be used but without understanding; they are falsely applied and thus completely derived of life. The pulse of the age then has to be felt elsewhere: in the minor decorative arts, in the lines of ornament, of lettering, and so on.

This quote then leads me to the haunting introduction from Hermann Muthesius in his Aims of the Werkbund when he describes us 'wading knee deep in the brutalization of forms" and goes on to say we are surrounded by \buildings of inferior quality".

How must we create function through architecture and structure and not feel alienated?

Is that a problem anymore?

With the erotic sentiments of art nouveau seeping their way into homes I see it safe to call these works self-representational through the communal memory of a demand or need or even deviant provocation that was present at the time.

Can we validate forms as brutal if they are representing ourselves in a specific moment in time?

I thought about Wright and company, I will say, and their complete integration of pattern, motif, and design, for specific places and if the longevity of design was questioned at the time.

How can we approach design now when the modernist belief in ultimate ideology or ultimate form or ultimate truth is no longer that valid. In the acceptance of design as self-representational and cathectic for individuals to impose their own meaning upon objects can that alone make something authentic?

I was also interested in the shift of artisanal crafts to the embrace of machine made objects. The idea that machine made objects could make things simpler and more perfects and more true.