Nationalism and Culture (89 page)

The Renaissance, which had dissolved all traditional norms into nothing and which, especially in the last phase of its development, came close to a serious skepticism which operated to cripple its loftier efforts, would necessarily have foundered here if it had not been permeated by a certain deeper yearning which kept it looking for new shores. None felt this more deeply than the great Florentine, whose tormenting figures reflect

the inner struggle of his own soul. A Faust nature like Michelangelo's could not be content with even the most ostentatious externalities. He strove always for a subjectivizing of art and knocked at many a gloomy portal which had thus far opened to no one. This feature is also revealed distinctively in his tectonic creations. His work becomes a living entity breathing forth every passion of the human soul, every secret quest, every rebellious defiance, and above all that Titanic urge for the superhuman which is so characteristic of the whole product of the master, enabling him even then to progress beyond the horizon of the Renaissance.

The social culture of the Renaissance issued, it is true, chiefly from Italy, but since it found everywhere in Europe the needed intellectual and social background, it wakened in every country a lively echo and developed into a world style in which was mirrored the social culture of a particular epoch. Its boundaries are far too wide to permit it to be restricted to the narrow frame of national ideas. Like the Gothic, it gave birth to various styles growing out of special environments. If the development which the Gothic had attained in Germany was never reached in Italy because the tradition of the antique hindered it there in a peculiar manner, just so the art of the Renaissance was never able completely to overcome the vital tradition of the Gothic in Germany. The same sort of thing can be shown of the Renaissance in England, France or Spain. Everywhere the special environment and the traditions of the past affected the development of style. But these peculiarities and deviations do no damage to the picture as a whole; on the contrary they merely set up a complete image and mark the kinship of the ambitions which everywhere were nourished from the same sources. It was neither the special character of the race nor the peculiarity of the national temperament that called the art of the Renaissance to life; it was the great social upheaval which convulsed all Europe, and which everywhere gave the stimulus for the development of new types of style and new conceptions of art in general.

From the art of the Renaissance there developed logically the baroque which was the characteristic artistic style of the seventeenth century and in many countries, especially in Germany, was dominant well into the eighteenth century. Here, again, we are confronted with no sharp break with the past, in whose stead had arisen with primal abruptness some-thmg new, but with a gradual development which slowly crystallized out of the Renaissance type of style, influenced, like every other style, by the social reconstructions in the life of the European peoples. Out of the bewildering chaos of the Renaissance period there was gradually shaping the great European state in the guise of the absolute monarchy. Powerful dynasties developed or confirmed their position in the most important countries after the resistance of the cities and the noble vassals had been overcome. A new power had arisen which brought even the church under

its control and made it serve its ends. With the help of its huge armies and its bureaucratic administrative apparatus the monarchy succeeded in sweeping all hostile forces from the field and in suppressing by force the ancient rights and freedoms of the municipalities. The person of the king became the embodiment of absolutely complete power, the court became the center of all social life. The state took all the functions of society into its own hands or under its supervision and set its imprint on all social performance. Legislation, jurisprudence, the entire public administration, became the monopoly of royalty j society was almost completely merged in the state. This transformation in the whole social life forced the thought and feeling of the subjects into definite lines prescribed by the state. Everything seemed to exist merely to further the purposes of the dynasty. It was the time of the "Sun Kingdom," whose representative could utter the words: "LV/^/ c'est mot!"

In a state of society in which every public activity had its special rule and everything was ruled and regulated from above to the smallest detail there was hardly offered to art the possibility of free creativeness. Its representatives were in the service of the autocrat and had hardly any other task than to proclaim the glory of His Divine Grace. As once the splendor of the cathedrals and of the religious festivals of the church had shone like a glowing aureole, so now the pomp of the palaces and the royal courts formed a halo for the monarchy and imparted to its power a mystic glory. In this wise arose the great buildings of the period of absolutism 5 the Louvre in Paris, the palace and the park at Versailles, the Escorial at Madrid, the Zwinger in Dresden, and so on; and since every petty despot must have his Versailles the new style spread over every country. Only in connection with this social reconstruction in Europe can the art of the baroque be rightly understood. The term itself, derived from the Portuguese word baroquey which means a very irregular pearl formed by the fusion of several dose-packed units, is in itself utterly unimportant, and was at first used merely in derision.

In reality, baroque means a new style which arose from the Renaissance, but had its roots in a new conception of art. In sharp contrast with the Gothic, the Renaissance, following in the footprints of the antique, had proclaimed harmony as the most profound, indeed, as the only, expression of the beautiful. The baroque established a new esthetic criterion by putting power in the place of harmony. In this the influence of the social reconstruction in Europe was revealed plainly. The power concept of the absolute monarchy filled the mind of the time. Power became beauty, expression of a new artistic feeling, which was gradually impressed completely into the service of royalty. The majesty of the monarch radiated its splendor over everything and subjected to itself every emotion in social life. And this blazing glory of absolute, unlimited power.

with which at the height of its development, royalty was able to surround itself, was revealed also in the architecture of that time, and proclaimed its omnipotence in thunderous accords. The overwhelming power of the absolutist state, which tolerated near the person of the ruler nothing claiming equality of birth and impressed the stamp of its purpose upon everything, gave to the art of the baroque that deeply imprinted courtly-representative character which is so characteristic of the whole seventeenth century. Just as Jesuitism had made it its task to subjectivize once more the power of the church, so the advocates of absolutism endeavored now to spiritualize the coercive character of the monarchy and to make men forget its true origin. Thus royalty took on that glamor of superhuman grace that finds expression even in its buildings. In fact, the baroque building often seizes on the beholder with the intrinsic power of a mystic revelation and fills the soul with awe.

The church buildings of the period pursue the same lines and bring to highest effectiveness the omnipotence of an absolute principle of power. Under the influence of Jesuitism, which embodied, historically, the organized counter-Reformation, there developed the so-called "Jesuit style." New problems of space force their way into the foreground and produce in the minds of the faithful an overpowering effect, forcing their emotions with irresistible power under the yoke of its universally dominating influence. The house of God is transformed into a show-place, which is adorned with gorgeous ornamentation and often arouses a feeling of passionate excitement such as flows only from ecstasy. Waves of mystic terror seem to surge through the holy place. The external structure as well as the inner furnishing are designed to whisper to men of the omnipotence of a Higher Will that strides triumphant over every earthbound thing.

The baroque style finally ended in rococo. The icy majesty and stiff solemnity of courtly ceremonial became tiresome at last and aroused the need for warmer and more intimate forms. The so-called "Regency style," which arose under the regency of Philip of Orleans, takes this need into account and is the beginning of a new style of expression that gradually grew into the rococo and reached its zenith under Louis XV. In place of the unapproachable and majestic, which with rigid dignity rejected every intimacy, there appeared the graceful and charming, pursuing airy fantasies and amorous intrigues seeking only to delight, and no longer weighed down with the burden of representing a social system. Thus, there arises a new style, which reveals itself chiefly in the decoration of interiors. The wall loses its massive character and becomes transformed into a plastic frame, its spaces covered with scrolled lines, flower-motifs and other elements of a cheerful ornamentation. The walls blend into the ceiling, which is adorned with delightful figures in stucco. The colors lose their harshness and dissolve into soft tones. The huge mirrors of the apartments

help to push back the natural limits of the room and deceitfully conceal its material dimensions.

Especially charming is the delicate porcelain, the elegance of which was not without influence on the whole development of the rococo. Furniture, too, loses its heavy awkward forms and is adapted to the interior arrangement. A goading unrest, arising from a refined sensitivity, dominates men and things and operates like a mysterious drug on the overkeen nerves of the upper strata of society. The new style corresponds exactly to the mental status of the privileged castes. A profound alteration in the more intimate customs becomes evident in those circles, and in rococo we find its emotional precipitate.

The principle of power, to which the absolute monarchy had been able in the time of its ascending development to give a metaphysical significance, lost more and more of this character, and in the circle of favorites and parasites came to be valued merely for its practical results. People began to make fun of the strenuous glory-seeking and the stiff pomp of a time of alleged greatness which no longer impressed anyone. All that which earlier had produced the impression of the proudest and most majestic unapproachability affected people now like a silly parody and involuntarily gave the intellectuals an opportunity to exercise the satiric impulse and display the sharpness of their wits. Royalty was already an embalmed corpse merely awaiting burial. When Louis XIV identified the state with his person he was giving the proudest expression to the innermost essence of absolute monarchy: the king everything, the people nothing! But later, when Madame Du Barry with blunt familiarity called her royal gallant, "La France" it was the grimmest mockery of all that royalty "by the grace of God" set itself up to be. The monarchy was ready for the downfall that waited not far in the future. In the tempests of the Revolution the fragile culture of the rococo fell in ruins, together with the old society which had produced it. Amid agonized convulsions and violent shocks a different world took shape, a new generation arose, that looked out toward new horizons.

What the generation hoped and longed for has never become a reality, and the words "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" are still but the echo of a dream. The bourgeois society, which had entered into the inheritance of the old regime, was able, it is true, to charm into life the abstract image of the modern nation, but it was denied to it to form a genuine community having its roots in the needs of all and based on the principles of social justice. Its new economic order, which raised the "war of all against all" to a principle, necessarily begot that heartless egoism, so characteristic of the capitalistic world, that marches on over corpses. This society was not in a position to create social ties between men and peoples} it merely made the

antagonisms wider and more unbridgeable and led logically to the World War and the gigantic chaos of our times.

It could, therefore, create no new intellectual outlooks for architecture. Here, too, it furthered only the play of antagonisms and led to that peculiar stylelessness that has been characteristically designated as "stylistic chaos." Let one think of the plan and the outlook of our modern industrial cities, of the comfortless ugliness of the barrack tenements, of the silly fagade structures with their impudent swagger that convert the street into a dreary canyon, and one has the impression that all the aberrant tastes of the time have been invited to make themselves at home. Not without reason has our generation coined the term "junk." A society which has lost all natural feeling of the ties binding man to man, and allow the individual to drown in the chaos of the mass, could arrive at no other results. Wherever today there develops in public buildings or in modern settlements a really new style, it always springs from the inner yearning for a new community which shall free men from the slavery and emptiness of their present existence and give their lives purpose and content again.

In the end, this epoch, too, with its extremely developed industrialism, its factories, warehouses and barracks, with its incurable divisions in society and the chaos in the building arts that arises from these, is a proof of how little national consciousness means at bottom. It is the time—and the material, spiritual and intellectual conditions of the time—that everywhere attains expression and in the last issue determines also the utterances of art.