It was a sad
time when artists embraced industry, machines, and their technology,
as being a `higher' order, superior to nature and man himself. One
has only to look at a room full of Leger's and other cubists' works,
to feel the cold, insensitive, romance of man with the machine. The
modern art museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris, is in my
opinion, testimony to technology run amuck.
"We have learned that all paintings must be interpretations but
that not all interpretations are equally valid." (127)
E.H. Gombrich
"Cubism marked the beginning of a long flirtation of art with
urbanization and industry..." (128)
Thomas Albright
"Our own technological civilization tends to reduce most
implements, including buildings, to their physical function. In this
respect there is little difference between our table silver and our
surgical instruments. But the notion of the purely practical tool is
as much a product of cultural decay as is that of the purposeless
work of art for art's sake. Other civilizations have not been
impoverished by such secularization of their tools. They preserve in
their activities the ritual aspects of sacrifice, purification,
incorporation, aggression, protection etc., and the implements used
in these activities possess the corresponding overtones. A door is,
in many of our modern buildings, nothing better than the hole that
will let you in or out. This can be said even of the doors of some
modern churches. A true door, however, may embody the architectural
gesture of inviting entrance." (129)
Rudolf Arnheim
Science deals with a high degree of likelihood... math with
absolutes. Modern science leaves experience ever further behind.
Communication, on the other hand, of which art is one, leads to
better understanding. "The scientific notion of reality is
inadequate. There is something wrong with technology." (130)
Barry Commoner
Sir Lawrence said that art contributes to the climate in which we
do things, and that the climate of modern man needs to be changed.
126. Barry Commoner, ed. by Thomas B. Hess and John Ashbery,
Newsweek, (New York, Newsweek Inc., The MacMillan Co., 1970),p.41
127. E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, (Princeton, N.J., U.S.A.,
Princeton University Press, 1972), p.384
128. Thomas Albright, On Art and Artists, (U.S.A., The Chronicle
Publishing Co., 1989), p. 110
129. Rudolf Arnheim, Toward a Psychology of Art, (Berkeley and L.A.,
Cal., University of California Press, 1966), p. 209
130. Barry Commoner, ed. by Thomas B. Hess and John Ashbery,
Newsweek, (New York, Newsweek Inc., The MacMillan Co., 1970), p.p.
41, 45
