ART AND BUILDING.

Progress, Volume I, Issue 6, 2 April 1906, Page 136

ART AND BUILDING.

Why so persistently it should be urged that building is not an art but an industry is, at first, hard to understand. There are many assertions to the contrary, from withm and without. The craftsman devoted to building claims it as an art, and he has the authority of one of the greatest poets, claimed both m England and America. Longfellow has written — " To build That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and sculpture are but images, Are merely shadows cast by outward things On stone or canvas, having in themselves No separate existence. Architecture, Existing m itself, and not in seeming A something it is not, surpasses them As substance shadow." thereby placing the seal of his genius upon a statement greatly controverted in his time, and even now scarcely admitted. Yet, when we survey the glorious examples of artistic architecture of ancient and of modern days, we have no hesitation in claiming for building that it is, undoubtedly, an art. We may, perhaps, be spared a little space to examine this peculiar position and the questions involved in it. Thousands, because of their position, cannot understand art ; and other thousands, in spite of their position, will not understand art. What is then this art that so few understand ? It is the expression by man of everything which tends to add reasonable and healthy pleasure to the life of man. It is, in short, the pleasure of life. Without art we cannot understand the sun going down amidst inimitable colours and wondrous light, we cannot understand why it is beautiful, or the clear midnight sky with its myriad of stars, or the moonlight sea, or the green earth of springtide made joyous by the all-nourishing sun. It is strange and terrible to think of how many people there are to whom all this is as nothing, some because poverty, others because riches have made them stupid. But it does not need what we usually call education to make people understand this — simple foundation of all art — nor is civilisation in its ordinary sense necessary. For the full comprehension of art two things are necessary — due leisure and equality of condition, or to put it m other words, duly ordered labour and absence of class distinctions. It is impossible that building or any art can be thoroughly understood until society is reorganised. Art is the pleasure of life, and unless the whole people share that pleasure, art is, in the long run, impossible. All people cannot share in the pleasure while society is divided into two classes, rich and poor ; from this, however, the change is slowly but surely coming. A review m brief of the relations of art in building in earlier ages of the world will not be without profit. To pass over the conditions of men as mere savages, one comes across civilised men in history served by labour under three conditions — chattel slavery, serfdom, and wages earning. Under the classical peoples society was founded on chattel slavery. Agriculture, building, and the industrial arts were carried on for the most part by men who could be bought and sold like beasts. As a consequence building and the industrial arts, at least m the heyday of Greek art, were looked down on with contempt, and what of art went with them was kept in the strictest subjection to the intellectual arts which were the work of free citizens. Art was then kept free from corruption,, partly by simplicity of life and partly also by transcendent genius of race. To the cultivated Greek citizen there seemed nothing wrong or burdensome in chattel slavery. At last the change came. The huge crowd of starving slaves, m whose minds a revolutionary Eastern creed was fast implanting ideas quite foreign to classical civilisation, was by no means touched by the religion of city worship which once had put such irresistible might into the hands of the Roman legionaries. Attacked by slaves, Christians and barbarians, civilisation fell, and to the eyes of most historians then and since chaos took place — a chaos from which, as

people use to think, there grew accidentally the collection of independent states now known as Europe, It is now clear, however, to thinking people that the change, dreadful as it seemed to the cultivated of that time, bore with it the seeds of order, which at once began to germinate. One of the chief signs of that nascent order was to be found m the art produced at the period. Under Roman supremacy, and during the days of chattel slavery, the more intellectual arts became imitative chiefly of bygone days, or at least academical and stationary at first. The invention of Roman architecture provided a body for any new art — especially building art — to creep into, and a body which, unlike Greek temple architecture, could adapt itself to its new soul with ease. This new soul, born amidst those of feudal Europs, found expression in Byzantine, whose tendency was towards freedom — the token and effect of that new condition of labour which may be briefly described as serfdom struggling towards freedom by means of co-operation for protection of trade and handicraft. Serfdom was the condition of labour m the Middle \ges. Revolution was, however, in store for serfdom as it had been for chattel slavery. The struggle for the serf to slip from his master's grasp took the form of co-operation in various ways. Apart from the religious houses which afforded protection to labour, there were guilds. From what was in the nature of benefit societies they changed gradually into merchant guilds for the protection and regulation of handicrafts. In process of time the merchant guilds became the corporations of towns, leaving to craft guilds the organisation of labour. At first these craft guilds were thoroughly democratic. As, however, the towns grew complete, workmen began to be small capitalists and employers of journeymen who would not m the ordinary course of events become masters. This must be looked upon as the first appearance of the so-called free workman, and it is noticeable that in the building trades he made his most prominent mark. The beginning of the proletariat was felt as a trouble, and the craft guilds went on getting more and more aristocratic. The labour of the middle ages was carried on amidst a struggle far less hard, however, than is the struggle under our present system. The earnings, both of common labourers and artisans were, in regard to the price of necessaries at the time, much higher than they are now. Life was easier for the working classes — that is to say, there was more approach to equity of condition, in spite of the arbitrary distinction of noble, gentle, churl, and villein. Those who superintended labour, as well as those who did more intellectual work, were paid very little higher than ordinary craftsmen. There was little competition in the market, and next to no middleman's work. The workman again, especially in the building trades, had full control over his time his material, and his tools — of his work in short : that is he was a free workman and an artist. It was this condition of labour which produced the art the splendid edifices, the artistic sense of the Middle Ages The theories of religious enthusiasm and the like as the motive power for that art are pretty much extinct by this time — indeed, such a theory could hardly stand before the first glance of the hideous splendour of some foreign Jesuits' church where religious enthusiasm was at its height with results that make a sensitive man shudder to think of. During the Middle Ages nothing that was " made " was otherwise than beautiful In the first half of the sixteenth century another change came over the condition of labour, which had a distinct effect upon building as an art. Whereas hitherto men had built, constructed, decorated, and produced wares for livelihood, they now began to produce them for profit. The first step m this direction was taken towards the land and the spoliation of the people. A vast number of people were thereby created who had no property except their own bodies which, m consequence, they were bound to s Q ll to anyone who would buy them on the terms of keeping them alive Commerce took the place of feudalism. The workman, instead of being better, was worse off than his predecessor, the serf, had been The rule of master over man was fairly established. The craftsmen were divided into artists who were not workmen, decade by decade. Architecture and ornamental building obtained some of its charm and beauty

where living was rude and simple, but elsewhere it had lost all life and beauty, and sank into a dull, pedantic exposition of the misunderstood rules of bygone ages. Such was the art of the seventeenth century. Machinery made speed and precision the qualities sought for instead of thought and artistic finish. During the next century this was carried to perfection, with the result of destruction of popular art except in centres remote from the influence of commerce. To what extent we have recovered from this it is not easy for contemporaries to settle. Men of genius still exist, and the genius with terrible effort breaks through the unfavourable surroundings and produces something. This has been done m every art, but m none more than building. The evolution, growth, and development of all that is meant by building surely raise it to the dignity of an art ; and when glancing from the past to the present we see buildings for every purpose — domestic or commercial — which command our attention and admiration, we may, surely, think it not out of place to speak of building as an art.