Відео

Likewise poopsie!

Its about presence of ornaments not artistry

Loos speaks of ornament only in specific contexts. Where ornament is removed Loos employs visual dynamics, texture, symmetry, colour or some combination of these elements as signifier of ornament. In this way he anticipates Mies' use of such elements.

I disagree. The best 'Modern' architects saw 'beauty' differently to how beauty was previously understood. In architectural terms, beauty arose through the resolution of stylistic details..classical, gothic, renaissance, baroque etc. If such styles are stripped away, where is the beauty? Modernists replaced 'style' with detailing. Resolution of construction detailing lay beneath Mies' 'less is more' and 'we only consider problems of building..' type statements. Loos was crucial in this progression because he stripped his exteriors to a mask of contrived asymmetries..symmetrical but for an added window. However Loos' treatment of marble and his general handling of interiors, implied artful contrivance inside the denial of overtly embellished decoration. Many modern architects miss this tough reduction of decoration to its signifier. What Loos did with volumetric abstraction an entirely separate narrative. There is an elusive tension within Loos' evevations ans spaces that is never released, and resolved only through use, through customary practice. This is the total opposite to Le Corbusier who communicates, or signifies function, without ever really addressing the reality of it. Many architects following suit damn clients with unworkable architecture imposing anything other than customary practice. Nonetheless what is considered 'beautiful' in the modern context,has no more practicality than a Corinthian capital. What enables lasting 'beauty' is a thorough appreciation and celebration of function while resisting the temptation to 'aestheticise' it into something that superficially looks good while being useless.

@@andersonarmstrong2650 I hear what you are saying (sort of), but when I see Loos all I see is utilitarianism. Non "useful" ornaments create a sense of "home" and are inviting to the eye (to borrow from Scruton). My field is classical music and I was very indoctrinated into the ideas of the 20thc Avant-guard as my undergrad and doctorate were at a university that led in experimental computer music. As I've aged I have come to largely reject what I once defended vociferously. I'm not as informed on the architectural side of things but the 20thc Avant-guard across artistic disciplines had much in common and I do not think they had the same concern or passion for beauty as artists in previous ages (one exception would be the "impressionists"). In fact, I would say that beauty, at the very least, was demoted and in some cases experienced a downright falling from grace (see Arthur Danto's "The Abuse of Beauty"). In my own degrees, I cannot even think of a single conversation in any of my classes on the topic of beauty. This is in stark contrast to pervious eras where beauty was truly at the center along with skill. Romantic art, in fact, reached its almost religious status specifically because of this pursuit of beauty. The attitudes shifted in the 20th century and other aesthetic goals dominated. We are still feeling it today but thank goodness the conversation on beauty is beginning again (see talks at the Institute of Arts and Ideas available online).

@@shostycellist 'The Pursuit of Beauty' means nothing to any serious architect other than the American 'Camp' School, where unnecessary embellishments were pursued for 'aesthetic' reasons. In some ways the Architecture of Brunelleschi was the first 'break' with ornament for its own sake, the culmination of which was Jacopo Vignola's Villa Farnese. There's been a lot of verbiage written about 'beauty' but unless someone can lay their finger on it with a few simple statements, the tomes written will remain verbiage. Inside beauty is the question: 'Why this way and not another?' That question made rubble of many apparently beautiful 19th century works, which were merely styles wrapped around steel. Beyond proportion and structural economy, Dutert's Galerie des Machines vied with Arts and crafts. The former raw structural necessity, the latter composition pareed to utility. In musical terms the 19th Century peaked with Tchaikovsky and more importantly Mahler. Beyond the 1st Vienna school lay the compositional rigour of Schoenberg, Webern, etc, or the chaos of Charles Ives..both plaus8ble, both seeking ways out of the snare of the 'beautiful' laid by Mendelssohn. With both Art, Architecture and music, a way out of this impasse arrived through the impact of non-European design/compositional idioms. African sculpture engaged with form in a way Roger Scruton might still be scratching his head about as I type. It deals with expression of that which has no form..'Spirit, Ka, or Ma - forms. Expressionists picked up on this dynamic, where formscwere resolved through a harmonisation of dynamic forces. 'Beauty' thus began to shift away from the static, or even the baroque dynamic, to the attempt to capture something elusive, fleeting. Both Webern and Ives aimed at the same dynamic space..one merging marching bands in his Central park in the Dark, to create overlap and something new from something familiar. The other embracing stillness in the midst of sonic structures and micro tonal shifts. Architecturally an architect such as Erich Mendelsohn in a brilliant early phase, grasped the mettle of visual dynamics far more fluently than Corb, but Loos reached into the cultural symbolism of WHY decoration existed, and WHY it was no longer obligatory. Loos' as mentioned earlier, culminated not in Corb but in Mies'. In non orthodox (European) aesthetics, the structured layering of Japanese architecture informed Frank Lloyd Wright as much as Stride, with its blocks of 'composed' or 'found' patterns, were improvised into the new through collision as much as anything Ives did. The Jazz of Miles Davis, with it's staid spatial serenity has no register in classical music, partly as it is it's own classism. But Loos, with his monolithic volumetric subtractions alludes to something deep within the African Diaspora aesthetic which his mask-like exteriors subconsciously evoke. From obelisk to pyramid, volume is subtracted in the form of scraped hieroglyph, to the cruciform church hewn from solid rock at Lallibela, Ethiopia. Thelonious Monk took this further, where European and Sino-Japanese is mainly additive, where timber is laid on timber. An inversion occurs within African art where the figure gives way to abstraction..but as decoration. Again such interplay informed Abstract Expressionism. Beyond such abstraction, Post Moder visual language draws upon linguistics and cultural gamesfed back into cultural sensibilities mindful of irony. Nonetheless where Webern left off, microtonal experiment, was also informed by non-European tonal patterns ie through Gamelan and Sitar, Koto and zither, employing different scales. Beauty has come to be seen as something arising from a sincere pursuit of something pure, of integrity, and not contrived to appeal to some pre-ordained cultural norm or standard, although Kenneth Clark and Roger Scruton might not agree..