Various

“ The worst thing that can be said of the time is that it should be capable of producing so incalculably great an amount of bad art at the same time; that the walls of the Paris Salon should be so hung with inferior work every year that the important pictures are lost in chaos; and that, while this is true of the Salon, it is true to an immeasurably greater degree of the Royal Academy, of the New York Academy and every other exhibition in the world, except where a selected few paintings hang on reserved walls. ”

“ It would be a waste of time to notice such ridiculous assertions, were it not that they do a great deal of harm to the profession and the public: to the profession by making people believe that architects are combined to extort an unreasonable compensation for their work; and to the public by spreading the idea that the profession of architecture is just the one in which their sons can become rapidly rich without much trouble. ”

“ But if, on the other hand, the work of art has for its object the adornment of a surface of any sort, as a weapon, a utensil, an article of costume, and if the natural objects represented or suggested are used only as suggestions to furnish pretty lines and pleasant tints, which lines and tints might have been after all represented apart from the object were man’s mind more creative than it is,—that is art of decoration. ”

“ With patience then, and with impatience about nothing but this, that we deny ourselves the study of the great works of art of Europe and Asia by thirty per cent and forty per cent and sixty per cent duty, and deny to the author all proper remuneration for his work by the lack of common honesty. No other nation of European blood does these things. It is not a matter of politics. No protectionists so ardent in the Bismarck ranks as to propose to levy a tax on literature and science. ”

“ The study of the monuments of art is one thing, their analysis, their criticism, their comparison, is one of the most attractive, the most fascinating, the most stimulating, the most absorbing of studies, one that I shall never cease commending in the most earnest way to all those persons to whom scholarship is dear and to whom it is a question of recommending a study which is worthy of their most earnest and hearty devotion, but it is not the study of practical art, that is another and a very different thing. ”

“ And now, after this evening, let us return from theory and general principles, to practice and details, and see whether we can find out how it is that Indians combine color, how Japanese use natural form decoratively, how Chinamen make porcelain lovely and noble; how Greeks of old time have sculptured and Frenchmen have created Gothic architecture, and Italians have raised painting to the highest heaven of achievement. ”

“ Now, architecture, you see, is primarily an industrial affair, a method of covering men in from the rain, and admitting light into their protected interiors, and of warming those interiors, and in a few rare cases of ventilating them, and in providing a variety of apartments, communications, and the like for the varied requirements of a complicated existence; and it need not put on any artistic character at all. But as architecture becomes a fine art, it is perforce one of the arts of decoration. ”

“ We admit that our ancestors in the profession designed beautiful castles, magnificent cathedrals and lovely châteaux, but we remember that these castles, these cathedrals, these châteaux were planned without any comfort; that they had no plumbing devices, no methods for cooking, no systems of heating or ventilation, and no way of getting light but the miserable taper; while to-day the architect, besides being a thorough artist, who knows how to design and to color, besides being thoroughly up in the history of his art, must know how to plan for comfort, to construct for strength and stability ”

“ It is certainly a kind of novel and in many ways admirable art in the way of expression. Great thoughts have found expression almost worthy of them in painting, in sculpture, in etching, in wood-engravings, in color and in black-and-white; in the single costly work of art and in the easily multiplied and cheap productions of the press. ”

“ We have the men who can make a copy in relief of an architect’s drawings: but then the architect, even if he have the sense of ornamental effect, in the first place can never draw out, full size and with care, all the work required in a rich building, and, in second place, can never design sculptured form aright by mere drawings on the flat. ”

“ If some rich man were to make a museum of modern decorative art, from which he would carefully exclude all that which was not in some way fresh and intelligent, and if not good, at least promising, a room like this one would hold all his trophies, even though he should use his millions to ransack Europe and America. It is nobody’s fault, least of all is it the architect’s fault. For see what you expect of an architect. He must know about digging deep holes; and about sheath-piling, that he may retain the loose soil and keep it from smothering the workmen at the bottom of his excavation ”

“ The architects of New York and Brooklyn are employing today, I suppose, 3,000 draughtsmen, of which number two or three hundred at least are engaged most of the time in making large scale and full-size drawings of architectural detail, in which sculpture plays a large part. Well, we need as many modellers, who, either in architects’ offices, or in stone-cutters’ yards and terra-cotta works, shall be putting into tangible form the dreams and thoughts of the designer’s brain. ”

“ In like manner, in the minor arts, the people of 1850 felt, or some of them did, that they did not know how to weave curtains that it was worth any one’s while to hang up, except to shut out the light and shut in the warmth; that so far as beauty of texture, beauty of pattern, and beauty of color went, they were powerless to produce anything of any avail. ”

“ The architects and the artists who are associated with them in the work of supplying us with what we call decorative arts of all sorts, form the only class of the community to whom the rest of the community can look to for advancement in this direction. It is probable, then, that what such an associate has to do is two-fold; or rather it has two things to do: One is to study the beautiful art of the past, and to study it patiently and lovingly, feeling confident of this that the interests of the pursuit grow more absorbing every day ”

“ Of course, the architect should be as careful in his estimates as his experience allows him to be, and any conscientious man would try not to mislead a client, but both he and his client must remember that when the tenders of the builders themselves usually vary from fifty to a hundred per cent for the same piece of work, an architect’s estimate cannot be anything more than an opinion. ”

“ The way to make good sculpture is to let the youth thumb and punch and dabble in wet clay, and see what he can make of it; and the way to make a painter is to give the boy now a burnt stick, and at another time a pin and a back of a looking-glass, and see what he can delineate with such materials as these and with all other materials with which a line can be drawn. ”

“ Now, while we value the history of an art, and shall give it all due attention, we propose to remember that the modern architect, besides being an artist, must be one of the most practical and executive of business men. ”

“ They who have said that the Gothic Cathedral is nothing but a work of associated sculpture are not far wrong, and to produce a lovely building, one would rather have the blankest malt-house or brewery in New York, and some good carvers set to work upon it, than to have the richest architectural achievement of our time, devoid as it is and must be of decorative sculpture. For to get decorative sculpture, you must have your sculptors ”

“ No man can be busy laying out work, superintending work, explaining to contractors and reasoning with employers, and still be producing delicate and thoughtful designs. An extraordinary fellow here and there may surprise us by what he does under such circumstances, but it will be but little and feeble in comparison with what he might do. The community must see its way to paying some to eschew plumbing and stick to design, if they mean to have any design. This has been done, indeed, in the matter of monumental-glass, and to a certain extent in wall-decoration by means of painting ”

“ The question how far an architect can be held responsible in damages, in cases where the cost of work exceeds the estimates, is examined in a recent number of La Semaine des Constructeurs, and some considerations are mentioned which are new to us. According to Frémy-Ligneville, the most familiar authority on the subject, the architect incurs no responsibility whatever, either for his own estimates or those of other people, unless he intentionally and fraudulently misleads his client by a pretended estimate. ”

“ Ruskin and all his life work to the contrary, notwithstanding, the business of building is not to tell tales about the world and its contents, not to set forth the truths of botany or of zoology, or of humanity, or of theology. ”

“ The good sculpture exists and will be recognized. So much for expressional art.
But, as for the arts of decoration, once more, there is not so much to be said. As yet the way to subdue technicalities and enthrone design has not been discovered. The way to produce beautiful buildings is known to none. The way to produce good interior decoration, good furniture, good jewelry, beautiful stuffs, has only been seen by here and there one, and his lead no one will follow. ”

“ And so around the whole circle of the arts of decoration, it was believed, and in thoroughly good faith, and with, as it seemed, perfectly good reason, that the study of what had been would suffice, with zeal and patience and good will, to the production of what should be.
Well, the experiment has failed. Archæology is the most delightful of pursuits, but it is not particularly conducive of good art. The German professor, who knows the most about Phidian sculpture, is as far as his youngest pupil from being able to produce anything Phidian, but, of course, this is not a fair example. ”

“ If zoological or botanical or human objects are introduced, or representations of them, it is not for the sake of information that can be given about these interesting things, nor for the sake of expressing the artist’s mind about them, nor for the sake of saying anything whatever in regard to them. It is for the sake of making the building beautiful. When the Oxford Museum stood presenting to the street a flat-fronted wall, diversed with pointed arches, and carvers were set to work bands of rich sculpture around the windows ”

“ The fact of his having done a fine thing, or of his doing fine things habitually, acts not as an attraction to others, but as a warning to them to keep off. Every artist strives to do, not as his neighbor has done, and better, but as his neighbor has not done. The potteries work no better, because of one pottery which turns out beautiful work. The wall-paper makers still copy, slavishly from Europe and Japan, fortunately if they do not spoil in copying, in spite of the occasional production of a wall-paper which an artist has succeeded in. ”

“ Except under such circumstances, however, the architect’s estimate of cost is simply an expression of opinion, the correctness of which he does not guarantee, any more than a lawyer guarantees the correctness of an opinion, although important interests may depend upon it. The owner can estimate the value of the architect’s opinion, as of the lawyer’s, by the professional reputation of the man who gives it, and, if he wishes to be more secure, he can go to another architect, as he would to another lawyer, for an independent estimate. ”

“ How cruel these creatures are to each other, is the thought that first comes to us, but a second, reminds that it is but their instinct and a necessity of natural law, and repulsion is lost in astonishment and delight at the marvellous fidelity with which the sculptor has rendered these links in the great chain of animal life. ”

“ With all these opportunities for revising and testing the correctness of an architect’s estimate, the man who neglects to avail himself of any of them, and who allows the work on his house to go on, after it has become evident that it will cost more than the estimate, has, according to M. Frémy-Ligneville, no claim against any one on account of his disappointment. ”

“ In the old country the secret of obtaining luxury and economy combined in building has been learned, and rich and poor, fashionable and unfashionable alike live in “flats.” In America, people have not yet learned this lesson, but cling to the old and barbarous custom of living perpendicularly in isolated towers, with all the cares and worries that go with isolated management. ”

“ To look at the world, and what it contains, and to try and render what is suggested to him,—that is the training for the artist, and it has more to do with our beloved study of archæology than if they were not concerned with the same subject. This, I say, has been proven. Sad experience, the waste of forty years of work, disappointment and despair, have taught some of our artists what others did not need to learn,—that the way to succeed was not through study of the past. The artist has no primary need of archæological knowledge ”