“MUSEUM COMPLEX”

Grey River Argus, 1 December 1938, Page 5

“MUSEUM COMPLEX”

Mr J. E. Barton, who may be fairly described as a candid friend of the public, has a stimulating article, “Architecture and the Public To-day,” in the “Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects.”

"So soon as you turn tW that region of so-called ‘art.’ which the massesl 1 persist in regarding as mysterious and] sacroscant, you stumble on a bog of tenacious superstitions,” he writes. “It seems almost a pity that the words ‘art’ and ‘architecture’ have to go on being used. The mass of our public I is not frequently given to entering art I galleries, nor to inspecting great public buildings: but when it has occasion 1 I to make such visits, you may notice] that the majority always assume what| they feel to be a suitably ecclesiastical demeanour. Their very faces are changed. They seem to be saying to themselves: ‘We have now left normal life behind. We must not judge these things as we should judge familiar pursuits or commodities. We submit ourselves to be impressed by costly and sacred elaborations, which we view with distant and incomprehending respect, because we have been vaguely informed that they are good for our souls! “One of the first steps In art education is to break down this museum complex. You should take every opportunity of trying to convince people that false veneration is the worst enemy of real taste. Why it is that a severe modern building, or a some* what’ abstract work of architectural sculpture, ■ will causw resentment or even rage in a crowd of nice quiet people who in their own lives have not given one consecutive hour to serious study of the arts? I have no doubt at all that such disturbances are psychologically similar to the religious riots that break out among peaceful primitive tribes. Nothing is more inflammable than a mixture oi respectable custom, irrational sentiment and gross ignoranqe. Everywhere to-day you And a type of mina which in most things is fairly reasonable, but which seems to abandon all logic when it touches any question of the architectural arts. The person who is innocent even of rudimentary ideas about design or craftsmanship will trust himself to that most dangerous of spiritual guides, the habit of association. If you are an associationist, you can be persuaded to a semblance of devotion by any shamGothic eruption of pinnacles and crockets, however bad. The same i habit will work the other way round, in resistance to new visual expeii-l ences. Numbers of men, well educa-| ted in the school sense, are hazily convinced that cubism and communism are more or less the same thing. “A good writer has said that ‘as we grow older, we realise that platitudes are true.” Personally I hold that in architectural education you are justified in pushing the functional creed for all it is worth. If you emphasise the bearing of good design on health, social welfare, convenience, business efficiency and civic patriotism, you are likely to get more and more of a hearing. The notion of town and regional planning is beginning to Seize on the popular imagination. As soon as the public ceases to think of architecture in terms of the isolated building, and begins to' conceive of larger relations and or-I ganised schemes, it will subconsciously have moved a little towards the principles and emotional value of design itself.”