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CONCLUSION
Any argument in
support of a special claim necessitates certain apparent injustices,
sets up certain provisional limitations, and can therefore be
judged with fairness only by those who make due allowance for these conditions. In the
discussion of aesthetics such impartiality
can seldom be expected. Not unnaturally, people resent any attempt to
dogmatize on matters so generally thought to lie within the domain of
individual judgment Many hold that in questions of taste GefUbl ist
alia; while those who believe that
beyond the oscillations of fashion certain fixed laws may be discerned
have as yet agreed upon no formula defining their belief. In short, our
civilization has not yet developed any artistic creed so generally recognized
that it may be invoked on both sides of an argument without risk of
misunderstanding.
This is true at
least of those forms of art that minister only to the aesthetic sense.
With architecture and its allied branches the case is different
Here beauty depends on fitness, and the practical requirements of
life are the ultimate test of fitness.
If, therefore, it can
be proved that the old practice was based upon a clearer perception of these
requirements than is shown by
modern decorators, it may be claimed not unreasonably
that the
Conclusion
197
old methods are better than the new. It
seems, however, that the distinction
between the various offices of art is no longer clearly recognized. The merit of house-decoration is now seldom measured by the standard of practical fitness; and
those who would set up such a
standard are suspected of proclaiming individual preferences under the guise of general principles.
In this book, an
endeavor has been made to draw no conclusion unwarranted by the premises; but
whatever may be thought of the soundness of some of the deductions, they must be
regarded,
not as a criticism of individual work, but simply of certain tendencies in modern
architecture. It must be remembered, too, that the book is merely a sketch,
intended to indicate the lines along which further study may profitably
advance.
It may seem
inconsequent that an elementary work should include much
apparently unimportant detail. To pass in a single chapter from a
discussion of abstract architectural laws to the combination of colors
in a bedroom carpet seems to show lack of plan ? yet the transition is
logically justified. In the composition of a whole there is no negligible
quantity: if the decoration of a room is planned on certain definite
principles, whatever contributes line or color becomes a factor in the composition. The relation of proportion to decoration is like that
of anatomy to sculpture : underneath
are the everlasting laws. It was the recognition of this principle that kept
the work of the old architect-decorators (for the two were one) free from the
superfluous, free from the
intemperate accumulation that marks so many modern rooms. Where each detail had
its determinate part, no superficial accessories
were needed to make up a whole: a great draughtsman represents with a few strokes what lesser artists can express only
by a multiplicity of lines.
198 The
Decoration of Houses
The supreme
excellence is simplicity. Moderation, fitness, relevance—these are the
qualities that give permanence to the work of the great architects. Tout ce qui riest
pas nuessaire est nuisible. There is a sense in which works of art may be
said to endure by virtue of that which is
left out of them, and it is this "tact
of omission " that characterizes the master-hand.
Modern civilization
has been called a varnished barbarism: a definition that might well be applied
to the superficial graces of much modern decoration. Only a return to
architectural principles can raise the decoration of houses to the level of
the past Vasari said of the Farnesina palace that it was not built, but really born—non murato ma
veramente nato; and this phrase is but the expression of an ever-present
sense—the sense of interrelation of parts, of unity of the whole.
There is no absolute perfection, there is no communicable ideal; but much that is empiric, much that is
confused and extravagant, will give
way before the application of principles based on common sense and regulated by the laws of harmony and
proportion.