Josef Chochol: On the Function of the Architectural Article
Artistic expression is a manifestation of the innermost movement of a creative being and aims again at the centers of individuality that are similarly inclined and equally sensitive; if it is expressed visually, it can only be realized through sight or touch.
The perceiving organs are thus merely intermediaries for achieving the desired effect. Imaginative values of art become tangible through distinctly shaped artistic formulations, whether they are sculptural, painterly, or architectural in nature. Art requires the participation of our sensory organs for acts of necessary communication, but thereafter does not concern itself with them, not creating only for them. Otherwise, we would surely suffice with the delightful eye-pleasing woodcuts of Japan, their beautiful and pleasant harmonies of lines and color patches, which have no intention of doing more than providing decorative solutions to a certain surface. If it depended solely on the eye, we could be content, for example in painting, with works of the old good masters and would never feel the desire for something new and different: we might never recognize that painting abounds in infinite possibilities of imaginative effects that transcend the very spiritual essence of man. Therefore, every optical decorative quality will always strive for a more superficial than profound effect of visual art, which applies equally to its usual field of influence, namely to surface, which accentuates even more the superficial nature of this creation.
Creating volumes from surface areas composed according to old schemas and covered with a system of certain decorative motifs no longer satisfies us; such an understanding of the tasks of contemporary visual art bores us. It is hard to reconcile with this method in the products of applied arts; it is absolutely unbearable to tolerate these superficial appearances in serious visual art, whose entire effort always concentrates on a penetrating attack directly to the deepest and most sensitive roots of our being, regardless of whether it injures here or there, or provokes a temporary resistance that will soon be broken by the determination and conviction of the artist. True art never seeks to please, to win the attention it is given, does not know considerations outside its own laws, and lives its imaginary life even in the face of general misunderstanding. It simply does not require appeal and does not reckon with the superficial motives that condition it; it discards it along with the relevant systems of ornamental details and elements, even if they appear as self-important and self-demanding as possible. Thus, we have ceased to be interested in small architectural details today, and we do not believe in them. We are captivated by the excitedly felt and presented overall shape, comprehensive, impacting as a whole and immediately; we do not want to taste piece by piece the individuality of an object shattered by an excess of elements and we do not need unnecessary divisions of forms according to the old system into "fields of view," artificially defined in dead surfaces for the pleasure of the eye. First, we always require and need new excitements of new artistic intensities that spring from the turbulent and fiery substance of contemporary life.
The kind of disintegrating articulation we have in mind has primarily developed in styles born from the psyche of the South, as appears to us in Greek styles and so-called antiquity in general, which are overly rationally based, where we miss components of sentimentality, fantasticality, and excitement, akin to our northern nature. The consequence of articulation is always a feeling of disassembly, a rational and laborious construction, opposed to the concept of continuous growth and motion, which would be closer to us.
We do not want to spoil that precious, pure, and smooth effect of modern works, both austere and fantastic, with unbearable clawing across a multitude of indifferent ornamental motifs and details. For just as we gain an extraordinarily condensed and synthetic idea of an image of the landscape by quickly glancing over it, enabled by the means of modern technology, so too do we wish to achieve the impression of this speed, or even instantaneousness, through synthetically presented work.
The hurried character of today is by no means inclined to prolonged feeding the eye on the curiosities and interest of surfaces fragmented by adding or removing certain little pieces from a plane, by elevating individual points or straight lines arranged before or behind a surface in motifs that are ornamentally and drawing-wise lifelessly tied according to the law (for example) of water droplets converged radially on the freezing surface of a window pane. This ornamentalism always belongs to overly effeminate and formalist natures, and it does not suit the masculine character of our time, which prefers that peculiar and suggestive roughness of apparent vulgarity and always spontaneously opts for generous and effective simplicity of the inner concentration of matter rather than for external flatteries and superficial "charm." Only perhaps an ornamentalized construction in the sense of the inner architecture of the work would today be conceivable as we see it in a certain phase of Gothic very distinctly in one and the same will of technique and fantasy. However, although we have many sympathies for Gothic sensibility, Gothic is just as exhausted a chapter for us as antiquity and its stylistic consequences.
We are of a different kind and spirit, and we are not satisfied with the simply rational basis of antiquity, nor are we always enchanted by the overly intricate and mystically cloaked extreme fantasticality of Gothic. We are something third. At that moment when we want to create ourselves, everything that is old is actually equally foreign to us, and with double force, only that which dictates the inner structuring, the architecture of the object, and its internal organization demands existence. Ornamental parts appearing in our case are always equally or even to a much greater extent simultaneously necessary in the overall organism of the work; and this is so necessary that under no circumstances can they then be extracted from the whole.
Detail in the sense of better and easier expression of the original formal intention is actually just a weak excuse covering the necessary need for such detail among traditionally based and unmodern sensibilities, even if all efforts may have been made in a modern direction. Likewise, it is not possible to apply certain intentions and means from some other art, for example, a certain style of painting, well in creating new values in the field of sculpture or architecture. We wish to replace ornamentalism with intellectualized vitality of form, and as much as we reject decoration and ornament, we strive at least as much to achieve the concentrated and comprehensive effect, of which the sign will be a taste of mathematical precision, rough austerity, and substantive realism, which we prefer over the former starchiness of perfumed and sterile dandyism and perverse trends, just as we oppose the petty-bourgeois naively pretended stoutness. And it is primarily our contemporary perspective that, steering us away from playful systems on surfaces, directly transports us into the world of three-dimensionality. For this spatiality is closer to us, lying entirely in the development of modern art, than the effort to project volumes onto one or several parallel surfaces, which could easily lead to suspicion of blindly using certain means from the methods of some modern painters, who evidently were not well understood.
We are convinced that with our new relationship to the creative process, the attitude once taken towards the now-familiar method of articulation and its application in architecture has fundamentally changed, and that we, standing on the threshold of a newly forming world of artistic forms, replace the former decorative articulation with a fuller and more concentrated expression of the three-dimensionally growing mass.
The perceiving organs are thus merely intermediaries for achieving the desired effect. Imaginative values of art become tangible through distinctly shaped artistic formulations, whether they are sculptural, painterly, or architectural in nature. Art requires the participation of our sensory organs for acts of necessary communication, but thereafter does not concern itself with them, not creating only for them. Otherwise, we would surely suffice with the delightful eye-pleasing woodcuts of Japan, their beautiful and pleasant harmonies of lines and color patches, which have no intention of doing more than providing decorative solutions to a certain surface. If it depended solely on the eye, we could be content, for example in painting, with works of the old good masters and would never feel the desire for something new and different: we might never recognize that painting abounds in infinite possibilities of imaginative effects that transcend the very spiritual essence of man. Therefore, every optical decorative quality will always strive for a more superficial than profound effect of visual art, which applies equally to its usual field of influence, namely to surface, which accentuates even more the superficial nature of this creation.
Creating volumes from surface areas composed according to old schemas and covered with a system of certain decorative motifs no longer satisfies us; such an understanding of the tasks of contemporary visual art bores us. It is hard to reconcile with this method in the products of applied arts; it is absolutely unbearable to tolerate these superficial appearances in serious visual art, whose entire effort always concentrates on a penetrating attack directly to the deepest and most sensitive roots of our being, regardless of whether it injures here or there, or provokes a temporary resistance that will soon be broken by the determination and conviction of the artist. True art never seeks to please, to win the attention it is given, does not know considerations outside its own laws, and lives its imaginary life even in the face of general misunderstanding. It simply does not require appeal and does not reckon with the superficial motives that condition it; it discards it along with the relevant systems of ornamental details and elements, even if they appear as self-important and self-demanding as possible. Thus, we have ceased to be interested in small architectural details today, and we do not believe in them. We are captivated by the excitedly felt and presented overall shape, comprehensive, impacting as a whole and immediately; we do not want to taste piece by piece the individuality of an object shattered by an excess of elements and we do not need unnecessary divisions of forms according to the old system into "fields of view," artificially defined in dead surfaces for the pleasure of the eye. First, we always require and need new excitements of new artistic intensities that spring from the turbulent and fiery substance of contemporary life.
The kind of disintegrating articulation we have in mind has primarily developed in styles born from the psyche of the South, as appears to us in Greek styles and so-called antiquity in general, which are overly rationally based, where we miss components of sentimentality, fantasticality, and excitement, akin to our northern nature. The consequence of articulation is always a feeling of disassembly, a rational and laborious construction, opposed to the concept of continuous growth and motion, which would be closer to us.
We do not want to spoil that precious, pure, and smooth effect of modern works, both austere and fantastic, with unbearable clawing across a multitude of indifferent ornamental motifs and details. For just as we gain an extraordinarily condensed and synthetic idea of an image of the landscape by quickly glancing over it, enabled by the means of modern technology, so too do we wish to achieve the impression of this speed, or even instantaneousness, through synthetically presented work.
The hurried character of today is by no means inclined to prolonged feeding the eye on the curiosities and interest of surfaces fragmented by adding or removing certain little pieces from a plane, by elevating individual points or straight lines arranged before or behind a surface in motifs that are ornamentally and drawing-wise lifelessly tied according to the law (for example) of water droplets converged radially on the freezing surface of a window pane. This ornamentalism always belongs to overly effeminate and formalist natures, and it does not suit the masculine character of our time, which prefers that peculiar and suggestive roughness of apparent vulgarity and always spontaneously opts for generous and effective simplicity of the inner concentration of matter rather than for external flatteries and superficial "charm." Only perhaps an ornamentalized construction in the sense of the inner architecture of the work would today be conceivable as we see it in a certain phase of Gothic very distinctly in one and the same will of technique and fantasy. However, although we have many sympathies for Gothic sensibility, Gothic is just as exhausted a chapter for us as antiquity and its stylistic consequences.
We are of a different kind and spirit, and we are not satisfied with the simply rational basis of antiquity, nor are we always enchanted by the overly intricate and mystically cloaked extreme fantasticality of Gothic. We are something third. At that moment when we want to create ourselves, everything that is old is actually equally foreign to us, and with double force, only that which dictates the inner structuring, the architecture of the object, and its internal organization demands existence. Ornamental parts appearing in our case are always equally or even to a much greater extent simultaneously necessary in the overall organism of the work; and this is so necessary that under no circumstances can they then be extracted from the whole.
Detail in the sense of better and easier expression of the original formal intention is actually just a weak excuse covering the necessary need for such detail among traditionally based and unmodern sensibilities, even if all efforts may have been made in a modern direction. Likewise, it is not possible to apply certain intentions and means from some other art, for example, a certain style of painting, well in creating new values in the field of sculpture or architecture. We wish to replace ornamentalism with intellectualized vitality of form, and as much as we reject decoration and ornament, we strive at least as much to achieve the concentrated and comprehensive effect, of which the sign will be a taste of mathematical precision, rough austerity, and substantive realism, which we prefer over the former starchiness of perfumed and sterile dandyism and perverse trends, just as we oppose the petty-bourgeois naively pretended stoutness. And it is primarily our contemporary perspective that, steering us away from playful systems on surfaces, directly transports us into the world of three-dimensionality. For this spatiality is closer to us, lying entirely in the development of modern art, than the effort to project volumes onto one or several parallel surfaces, which could easily lead to suspicion of blindly using certain means from the methods of some modern painters, who evidently were not well understood.
We are convinced that with our new relationship to the creative process, the attitude once taken towards the now-familiar method of articulation and its application in architecture has fundamentally changed, and that we, standing on the threshold of a newly forming world of artistic forms, replace the former decorative articulation with a fuller and more concentrated expression of the three-dimensionally growing mass.
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