Art Bulletin Vol 18 No 2_The New Viennese School-Review_Schapiro

8/22/2019 Art Bulletin Vol 18 No 2_The New Viennese School-Review_Schapiro

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REVIEWSTHE NEW VIENNESE SCHOOL

KUNSTWISSENSCHAFTLICHEORSCHUNGEN,I. Editedby Otto Pacht, z6o pp.; 8I figs. Berlin, Frank-furter, 933.The Kunstwissenschaftliche Forschungen is perhapsthe most advanced organ of European academic writingon art history today. It is published by a group ofvery cultivated and sensitive young art-historians-mainly Viennese, but including several Germans andRussians-who follow in the tradition of Riegl, andare concerned with the structure of individual worksof art and the principles underlying styles and theirdevelopment. Although some of this group (especiallyAlpatoff and Kaufmann) are also interested in the con-tent of art and the specific historical conditions underwhich new forms arise, their attention has been givenmainly to the study of forms as an independent science.The references to meanings and to the causes of his-torical change are usually marginal or are highly for-malistic and abstract. The strength of the group liesin the intensity and intelligence with which they exam-ine formal arrangements and invent new terms for de-scribing them. They draw on contemporary writingsin philosophy and psychology and welcome suggestionsfrom neighboring fields in the effort to build up a "sci-ence of art." Drs. Sedlmayr and Picht, above all, havefound in Gestalt psychology formulations and tenden-cies congenial to their own views on the nature of art;they have also excerpted from the logical positivists andrelated writers on the philosophy of science (Lewin,Carnap, Reichenbach) various observations on method.Precisely because their writings are often program-

matic, being presented as examples of new approachesto art or as corrections of inadequate current methods,it is necessary to summarize the general notions under-lying their work, especially for American students whohave been fairly indifferent to theoretical problems.Unfortunately, their views have nowhere been publishedin a carefully reasoned and systematic form, but haveappeared in programmatic essays or reviews or in paren-thetical dicta in the course of monographic writing. Itis therefore difficult to describe their theory as morethan a tendency, still fluid and changing; the essays inthis volume are hardly uniform in character, and what-ever directions and theoretical assumptions are revealedin them have perhaps already been modified or aban-doned by some of the writers.Dr. Sedlmayr has been somewhat more explicit thanthe others. He has published two articles on the theoryand method of the history of art: The Quintessence ofRiegl's Doctrines (the introduction to Riegl's Gesam-melte Aufsitze, Vienna, I929), and a programmaticessay, Towards a Rigorous Science of Art. The latterheads the first volume of the KunstwissenschaftlicheForschungen and may be taken as an introduction tothe program of the group or, at least, of the editors.Here Dr. Sedlmayr distinguishes a first and a secondscience of art, the first, simply gathering and orderingthe material according to outward signs and evidences,like documents, inscriptions, conventions of shape andthose symptomatic elements which for some scholarsconstitute "style"; the second-his own-concerning it-

self more with "understanding," with the underlyingstructure of forms and the pervading principles accord-ing to which the work of art becomes an organizedexpressive whole. The second is considered the higherscience, but admittedly presupposes and utilizes the first;for without the ordered materials and assured data ofthe first, the second cannot operate successfully. On theother hand, the second, through its insight into forms,may even throw light on unsolved problems of classi-fication.The logic of the methods of the second science is un-fortunately not presented in the article; but constantreference is made to Gestalt psychology as a scientificbasis for explaining the organized character of shapes,colors, and spaces in works of art. Following this psy-chological theory of how perception is organized, theinvestigator of the work of art or style of art looks foran underlying pattern or configuration or ordered modeof seeing which constitutes the basic principle of thework or style. From this he deduces not only the char-acter of the parts, but many non-formal aspects of thework, even its content and its history; for a givenmode of seeing, in virtue of its peculiar nature, canadmit only certain embodying objects, and has limitedpossibilities of development. To discover this basicpattern or principle the student must possess first ofall the "correct" attitude to the worki he must ap-proach it as an organized whole before he can acquireinsight into the necessity of its structure and formalrelations. The insight is then verified by analysis,which confirms in the formal connections of numerousdetails of the work the discovered principle of thewhole.The distinction made between the merely descriptiveand classifying nature of the first science and thehigher "understanding" of the second is not so mucha distinction between the values of observation andtheory, such as agitates some physicists and philoso-phers of science, but corresponds rather to the distinc-tion made by many German writers between the natu-ral sciences, which "describe" or classify atomisticallythe inorganic and lower organic worlds, and their ownsciences of the spirit (Geisteswissenschaften) whichclaim to penetrate and "understand" totalities like art,spirit, human life and culture. The great works of thelatter depend on depth of insight, of the first, on in-genuity and exactness. Such a distinction, often di-rected against the plebeian manipulation and matter-of-fact, materialistic spirit of the best in natural sci-ence, puts a premium on wishful intuitiveness andvague, intangible profundity in the sciences that con-cern man. The natural sciences, no less than the sci-ences of history and culture, require insight, and thelatter, no less than the natural sciences, require accuracyand the utmost respect for fact. Actually, there is lit-tle difference, so far as scientific method is concerned,between the best works of the so-called first and secondsciences of art. They both depend on relevant hy-potheses, precise observation, logical analysis, and va-rious devices of verification. The sense of a funda-mental difference in scientific status arises from two

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NOTES AND REVIEWSaspects of the work of the second "scientist of art." Inthe first place, he is concerned with shapes or qualitieswhich are not immediately apparent and which arerarely described in a definite manner. In the secondplace, the qualities which interest him are often in-volved with judgments of value and with modern ar-tistic interests that have developed only recently and inopposition to older interests, and are limited to smallgroups of people who are never required to presenttheir preferences or insights in an explicit and uni-versally accessible form. We value insight into the"form" of a work more than we value knowledge ofits date or author. To acquire the latter, it is oftenunnecessary to study the character of a painting as awork of art. But it is overlooked that the validity ofeither knowledge is established in the same way, andthat in both we deal, not with absolute wholes, butwith isolated aspects of the work of art, from definedpoints of view. The change in viewpoint hardly con-stitutes a new science of art. The break with pastmethods is more apparent than real. The differencelies in the type of problem and in the interests of theinvestigator, the Viennese group showing a special pre-dilection for questions of formal arrangement. If inthis respect, they are more advanced, let us say, moresubtle, than their predecessors, in other respects theyresemble those much deplored scholars who devote them-selves largely to problems of attribution or the discov-ery of the subject or provenance or historical ante-cedents of pictures. Like the latter they are interestedmainly in individual objects, isolated from the condi-tions of their creation; or, if they deal with a style orgroup of works, the larger field is again considered initself, without respect to the causes of its unity, diver-sity or development. The hypotheses with which theyapproach historical problems can hardly be consideredan advance on those employed by the ordinary run ofart historians. The works of the "second science" arerelatively poor in positive historical conclusions, andrich in ingenious, but unverified insights and in vagueassertions.A single instance will show how ill-founded is thehierarchical pretension of the second science of art.In his article on the system of Justinian, Dr. Sedlmayrtries to discover what elements or qualities distinguishmediaeval from classic systems of architecture, a ques-tion that has been asked by many historians of thelower class, and which in itself constitutes no realnovelty. One of the three essential qualities or ele-ments he finds is incommensurability and imperceptibil-ity of proportions. In this he repeats the common idea,already well established in the nineteenth century, ofthe contrast of the mathematical order and clarity ofthe classic building with the irregularity and unclarityof the mediaeval. But there is a difference between theapproaches of Dr. Sedlmayr and the archaeologists ofthe first school to this problem: the latter would verifytheir point by referring to actual measurements, orwould engage in a detailed and critical discussion con-cerning the trustworthiness of existing measurements ofbuildings which stand in ruin or have been affected bynumerous contingencies. Dr. Sedlmayr, on the otherhand, presents his generalization in an aphoristic man-ner, and leaves it to others to do the measuring andverification. His procedure is all the more contrary toordinary scientific practice, since it is well known thata difference of opinion exists among archaeologists con-cerning the nature of mediaeval proportions; any dis-cussion which pretends to treat of proportions as an es-sential aspect of architecture must make clear in what

sense the concept is applied. Dr. Sedlmayr refers toproportions as "schaubar" and "unschaubar," althoughit is evident that proportions are not grasped by theeye; we do not see the proportions of a Doric columnor a Greek interior, in contrast to an imperceptibleRomanesque proportioning. What he means perhaps isthat the shape of a Greek building or element is fullyvisible, or that its proportions can be inferred through amodule, unlike the mediaeval churches in which manyparts are ill-defined or overlapping, and no single unitcan be used as a means of judging the scale. But evensuch interpretation is far from the rigor which Dr.Sedlmayr has indicated as one of the distinguishinggoals of his second science of art.Yet it is precisely his avowed desire to give to thespecial "understanding" of art the exactness of thenatural sciences that distinguishes him from the ordi-nary exponents of the "sciences of the spirit." He is in-terested more in the artistic object, less in the state ofmind or world-view of its creator, and constantly citesscientists and logicians of empirical tendency.I do not know whether all the contributors to theKunstwissenschaftliche Forschungen would subscribe tothe programmatic statements of Dr. Sedlmayr, or iftheir articles are considered by the leader as valid ex-amples of the "right" tendencies and methods. It mustbe said that however sensitive, intelligent, and searchingare some of the articles in the first two volumes of theseries, they depart far from scientific rigor. Anyonewho has investigated with real scruple a problem ofart history knows how difficult it often is to establisheven a simple fact beyond question and how difficult itis to make a rigorous explanation. To criticize thearticles from the viewpoint of an ideal rigorous sci-ence-that is, a science scrupulous with regard to fact,probability and implication-this would be an act ofmalice, and would blind us perhaps to important ap-proximations arrived at in reasoning, groping andguessing, and embedded in half-truths and errors. Thearticles, in general, are sketchy, clever, unsystematic,full of original aperfus and untested "belles-lettristic"characterizations. No group of psychologists or physi-cists would venture to announce articles of such loose-ness as a contribution toward a more rigorous science ofpsychology or physics.In several of the articles we meet with spiritualisticconceptions and with allusions to qualities or causeswhich we have no means of verifying. The authorsoften tend to isolate forms from the historical condi-tions of their development, to propel them by mythical,racial-psychological constants, or to give them an in-dependent self-evolving career. Entities like race,spirit, will, and idea, are substituted in an animisticmanner for a real analysis of historical factors. Pro-fessor Kaschnitz-Weinberg tells us that the feeling formass among the Egyptians must be due to racial in-clination because this quality appeared so suddenly,without signs of a gradual development. And Dr.Sedlmayr explains to us that the system of Justinian,being "rational", could not last more than thirty years,whereas the succeeding Byzantine system, being irra-tional, was capable of a life of six centuries. This ispalmistry or numerology, not science.Although the subject of Dr. Sedlmayr's article is thesystem of Justinian, we have no inkling why it is ofJustinian, what it has to do with this emperor, beyondthe coincidence of time and place. All that the authoradmits is that the conditions (unspecified) of the reignof Justinian were favorable to the immanent emer-gence of this system; but what these conditions were,

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THE ART BULLETINhow they were favorable, we are not told; at any rate,the system is attributed to Justinian, not because theemperor or his particular society exerted a positive in-fluence, but rather because the immanent destiny of theidea of a certain system of architecture was favored-or, at least, not blocked-by the tasks set for architectsby Justinian. The relation of the tasks to the systemand its development is nowhere discussed. This neglectof concrete relationships is masked by the brilliant va-riety of aspects, largely formal, treated briefly by theauthor. The appearance of comprehensiveness concealsthe lack of historical seriousness in such writings. Wedo not reproach the authors for neglecting the social,economic, political and ideological factors in art, butrather for offering us as historical explanations a mys-terious racial and animistic language in the name of ahigher science of art.The new Viennese group wishes to be concrete inanalysis of works of art as individual, objective, for-mal structures; but in turning to history they lose sightof the structure of the historical object, namely, theparticular human society, and deal with absolute gen-eral categories that seem to produce history by theirown internal logic. The new Viennese school has, infact, no historical objects. They tend to explain art asan independent variable, the product of an active spirit,or a Kunstwollen, which has an immanent goal andwhich may even determine the conditions congenial tothe kind of art this Kunstwollen is destined to produce.The school lacks an adequate conception of history todirect their historical interpretations in the sense of thatscientific rigor which they require in the analysis offorms. They prefer, in short, teleological deductions toan empirical study of historical conditions and factors.It cannot be argued that their real aim is to create ascience of art, rather than a history of art; for whilethis distinction expresses, perhaps, the inclination ofsome of the writers, yet no article in this volume isstrictly a work of Kunstwissenschaft, i.e., dealing sys-tematically with supposedly inherent, general, histori-cally unconditioned aspects of art. A problem of his-tory is often at the center of the formal analysis andinterpretation, and the writers usually cannot refrainfrom ambitious historical conclusions.It must be pointed out further that the limitations ofthe school are not confined to the historical aspect ofart. Their attitude to the work of art as an historicalobject corresponds to their formalistic approach. Justas the abstract Kunstwollen creates its own history, sothe "structure" or "principle" of the work as a wholeseems to create its own parts. Dr. Sedlmayr apologizesfor the remnants of positivist, naturalistic thought inRiegl and begs us to read "part-whole relation" whenRiegl says "cause." The nature of the individual workis grasped more and more as something strictly internalin its origin, that is, dependent on a logical working outof structural principles, and forming finally a kind ofself-regulating aesthetic machine, in which there is verylittle that cannot be deduced from the autonomouswhole or center. The multiplicity of conditions whichenter into the formation of a work of art is reducedto the action of a "principle," and the discovered struc-ture or principle is sometimes substituted for the workitself.The doctrinaires of the school have not investigatedtheir own method of approach or inquired into its rela-tion to contemporary values in art and social life.They assume that it is a purely "scientific" approachwithout presuppositions or sets of values which operatein the choice of objects and aspects and in the applica-

tion of a method. When we observe the broad ab-stractions and unverifiable subtleties, the straining tocreate insights, the conceits of formal observation thatoften crop out in such writings, we are reminded ofthe practices of contemporary art and art criticism, inwhich the inventive sensibility creates its own formal-ized objects, delights in its own "laws," and enjoys itsabsolutely private fantasy, justifying this activity as anexperimental system of artistic deduction, or as an in-tuitive perception of essences and wholes.Despite (or, perhaps, because of) the abundance ofreferences to contemporary philosophy (and otherfields) in the writings of the theoretical leaders of thisgroup, they lack a consistent theoretical foundation. Itis significant that Dr. Sedlmayr turns to idealistic phi-losophers and sociologists (Scheler, Vierkandt) when hediscusses history and society, although he continuallyappeals to methodologically materialistic and empiricalwriters (Reichenbach, Lewin, Carnap) to document hisideas of rigorous scientific method. The inconsistencyis apparent enough, but has not been sufficiently felt byDr. Sedlmayr. His admission in 1929 that the furtherdevelopment of Riegl's methods depends on the recog-nition of their weaknesses should be taken more seri-ously. Unfortunately he has not made clear just whatthese weaknesses are.

Despite these defects, American students have muchto learn from this new and already influential school ofGerman historians of art. We lack their taste for theo-retical discussion, their concern with the formation ofadequate concepts even in the seemingly empirical workof pure description, their constant search for new for-mal aspects of art, and their readiness to absorb thefindings of contemporary scientific philosophy and psy-chology. It is notorious how little American writingon art history has been touched by the progressive workof our psychologists, philosophers and ethnologists.I have summarized in detail the articles in this vol-ume in the hope that students who do not read Germanwill be enabled to form some idea of the character offormalistic art history in Germany and Austria to-day.i. The first essay, Remarks on the Structure ofEgyptian Sculpture, by Prof. G. Kaschnitz-Weinberg,is vaster in scope and more systematic in intention thanthe title indicates. It is an effort to deduce the under-lying principles of Egyptian art and to distinguish OldOriental art from European as a whole. The author'sconclusion that Egyptian sculpture is the conservationof organic life through inorganic forms, the effort toachieve an absolute stability and immobilization, a qual-ity of timeless, incorruptible being, is familiar enoughsince Hegel, and had been felt by the poets before itwas formulated by the scientists of art. But Kasch-

nitz-Weinberg's conclusion differs in several respectsfrom the common poetic characterization, apart fromthe more systematic formal analysis and the effort todistinguish precisely between early and later Egyptianart: first, in that he formulates the nature of Egyptianart as having grandiose, quasi-metaphysical properties,which are presented as prior to and above the worksthemselves; second, in that he holds these properties arewilled by the Egyptians and are inherent in some ab-original psychological predisposition of the people ofthe ancient Orient (cf. on this point the article by An-drae, in the recent Dorpfeld Festschrift) third, inthat he concludes the structure and qualities describedare altogether independent of Egyptian culture as awhole, and even of the mode of representation: he seesthe content merely as a material poured into a preexist-ent ideal mould. It would be hard to discuss these

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NOTES AND REVIEWSviews critically in the author's broad and often intru-sive terminology. To say that Egyptian art is "petri-fied form, not formed material," or to speak of the"timelessendlessness" f Egyptian space,or to compre-hend all Europeanart since the neolithic period underthe categories,ornament,activism, and incorporeality,wherebythe expressionism f the twentiethcenturyandneolithic art become identifiedpsychologically,all thisstimulatesour fantasy and suggests possibledistinctions,but it carriesus far from the objects,to the irreducibleparticularityof which the second Kunstwissenschaftsdedicated. It is a typical practiceof expressionistic rtcriticismand cultural history.2. The article of Dr. Sedlmayron The System ofJustinian-a chapterfrom a projectedbook on archi-tectonicsystems-analyzes the buildingsof Justinianasthe first mediaeval system and Hagia Sophia as themostcrucial structure n history,summarizing he wholepast of architectureand pointing to the mediaeval fu-ture and even beyond.The characteristics f the system of Justinian are:(i) the embracing or overlapping (iibergreifende)form-a large arch which spanstwo or more subordi-nate arches, (2) the embracingor overlappingbalda-chin, (3) incommensurable roportions. Not all me-diaeval architecturehas these three elements, but allarchitecturewhich has these is mediaeval. Late classicart knew the baldachinvault, but a baldachinrestingon a wall or on supportsdistinct from the dome orvault, whereas in mediaeval art the baldachinis pri-mary and homogeneous,continuouswith its supports,and embraces, r grows into, the wall as well. It is thedistinctskeletonof the walls, which constitutea filler.Given the embracingbaldachin,which is the spatialap-plicationof the simpler principleof the embracingarch,Dr. Sedlmayrdeducesa whole series of characteristicsof mediaevalarchitecture, ncluding the numerousver-tical bays of Romanesqueand Gothic, their fugitiveproportions,their diaphanous tructure,their technicalcomplexityand calculation. In the single idea of theembracing baldachin is latent the whole variety oftypesof the periodof Justinian,and in the latter is con-tainedthe varietyof subsequentorms. This unfoldingof immanentpossibilitiescould be realized only wherethe materialproblemor task was favorable to the logi-cal implication; that conditionswere indeed favorablewas due to a peculiarityof mediaeval thought, whichwas itself dualistic n a manneranalogousto the formaldualismof the embracingbaldachin.If in this highly deductiveand compactarticle, fewof the broad assertionsare supportedby historical evi-dence, the author has promisedsubsequentarticles toprovide fuller proof (see Byzantinische Zeitschrift,1935.).The following difficultiesmay be observed in histheories. The concept of system is not sufficientlyclear; it is only vaguely distinguishedfrom formalstructure. Proportionsand variousstylisticqualitiesareincludedin the discussionof the system,but the exteri-ors of buildings,the structureof the galleries,are neg-lected, though integral elementsof the system. Thesystemof Justinianis called the first mediaevalsystembecauseof the embracingforms; yet it must be ad-mitted that there are whole groupsof mediaevalbuild-ings-Carolingian and Romanesque-which lack thisprinciple. Nonetheless,n discussing he architecture fthe fifth and sixth century in Syria and Asia Minor,which remindsmany scholars, ncluding Dr. Sedlmayr,of Romanesquearchitecture,he states that it is unme-diaeval, because t lacks the embracing orm. Thus in

delimiting a style, the "principle" or system becomes anatomistic concept, as in nineteenth century archaeology,which distinguished Romanesque and Gothic architec-ture by the round and pointed arches. I do not doubtthat a scholar proceeding from a study of Romanesqueand Gothic art might arrive at other definitions of themediaeval, which would exclude the buildings of Jus-tinian as unmediaeval. At any rate, Dr. Sedlmayr'sbroad definition entails a theory of the Byzantine originof western mediaeval architecture, a theory which isvery doubtful, and which will probably shatter on thedifficulties of establishing a genetic continuity of By-zantine and Romanesque building.Thus we cannot deduce from his conception the em-bracing vertical shafts (comprising two or more storiesof superposed arches), which are crucial for the devel-opment of Romanesque and Gothic architecture. Dr.Sedlmayr assumes that the numerous stories and theverticality of the Western mediaeval systems follow di-rectly from the baldachin principle, but I believe thisassumption is neither historically nor logically plausible.If, in the history of the system of Justinian, the formof the dome seems to precede the form of the wall, inthe mediaeval systems, the reverse is true: the verticalshafts are prior to the vaults. In the first, the wall wasskeletonized after the dome had long been employed; inthe second, the skeletal wall-form preceded the applica-tion of the vault. This difference in process of devel-opment corresponds in turn to the difference between theopposed centralized and basilical loci of the two devel-opments. The superposed stories and long naves ofmediaeval churches are presupposed in the traditionalbasilical type which is essentially foreign to the systemof Justinian. The vertical shaft, embracing two stories,on the other hand, can be cited in Persian and Meso-potamian architecture (Ctesiphon, Hatra) and in theSpanish-Roman aqueducts (Merida), as well as in laterNorthern wood building. It may, however, be an in-dependent invention of the early Romanesque architects.Significant for the distinction between this embracingshaft and the embracing arch form is the fact that inmany mediaeval churches where both the embracing shaftand arch are used (Caen, Mt. St.-Michel, Laon, St.-Remi, Reims) the horizontal moldings run across thesupports of the embracing arches, but not across thefree vertical shafts. The verticality, in other words, isdetermined here, not so much by the supposedly By-zantine element, as by the non-Byzantine and possiblynative shaft. If S. Vitale shows a tendency toward ac-cented vertical bays, we cannot infer therefore thatGothic verticality is inherent in the system of Justinian,any more than we can say that Romanesque verticalityor squatness is inherent in classical architecture, becauseof the elongated or dwarf columns that appear in cer-tain late classical buildings. The particular characterof Gothic verticality is not only a matter of the pro-portions of individual bays or wall-units, but also ofthe relations of these to the various axes of the build-ing, relations which are irreducible to the early Byzan-tine baldachin.Dr. Sedlmayr concludes from his study of the his-torical stages of the baldachin in late Roman architec-ture that the system of Justinian is essentially a develop-ment in Roman architecture, in opposition to those whohave stressed an East-Hellenistic or Oriental origin ofearly Byzantine building. He admits, however, the im-portance of an eastern contribution in mass, space, anddecoration; but unfortunately he does not attempt toevaluate it or define it precisely, and therefore remainsunconvincing, somewhat unclear, despite his emphatic

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THE ART BULLETINassertion of a Roman origin. The dependence of thesolutions of Justinian's architects on the pendentiveand squinch, which are hardly Roman inventions, alsoweakens the strength of his conclusions. Similarly hisdescription of Armenian architecture as a merely pro-vincial style is inadequate. Our knowledge of the ar-chitecture of the fifth century is still so slight that wehesitate to consider an element first documented in theearlier sixth century as necessarily an innovation ofthat period. Already in the first part of the fifth cen-tury there appears in Italian churches the great apseembracing an open arcade, as in the apsidal and nichespaces of Hagia Sophia and S. Vitale; and in the Ortho-dox Baptistery of Ravenna a great arch embraces threearches on the inner walls. Dr. Sedlmayr eliminates it asirrelevant by the argument that the great arch does notreally belong to the columns, but rests on a projectingconsole, as in some Roman buildings. The principlehowever is there; in none of the Roman examples doessuch an arch embrace three smaller arches.There is one important consequence of the embracingarch for proportionality that has been overlooked byDr. Sedlmayr, although it reveals the interplay of twoof his (otherwise unconnected) principles. In the archembracing two or more arches, the large arch and thesmaller encompassed arches often spring from a com-mon support or from adjacent members of the sameheight. Therefore a given unit of height may be asso-ciated with two or more distinct spans. This bivalenceof units is a common mediaeval trait; but it is alreadyforeshadowed in late classical art where adjacent archesof different span spring from one level or surmountbays of uniform height.The problem of proportion emerges again in Dr.Sedlmayr's discussion of the technique of the system ofJustinian. He recognizes the importance of the tech-nique of construction for the interpretation of thebuilding, though he treats technique more as the formof technical thinking than as the total means andmethod of construction. After Choisy, he sees that inHagia Sophia tout est calcul, and judges that in thisrespect system and technique are one. But we are ledto ask: are they formally analogous or are they simplyrelated as end and means? Since the building was ad-mired in its own time as a scientific accomplishment, arewe to believe that the aesthetic structure has qualitiesof a scientific-intellectual order? How can system andtechnique be analogous if the system shows no spirit ofcalculation, but the very opposite, in its incommensu-rable proportions?These difficulties are perhaps resolved in the unintel-ligible section on the Denkweise of the building and itsanalogy with the religious-philosophical conceptions ofthe Middle Ages.In spite of these shortcomings, the article is extraor-dinarily stimulating because of the problems raised, thenumerous insights and the comprehensive scope. Itshould inspire fresh investigations of early mediaevalarchitecture.

3. Prof. Swoboda's Towards the Analysis of theFlorentine Baptistery applies the method of Andreades'article on Hagia Sophia (I) to a smaller monument,but derives its categories independently. First, theauthor reconstructs the original appearance of theexterior which has been modified by later accretions.This original form is skilfully presented in a retouchedphotograph. By analysis of the fine variations and ir-regularities, the qualities of surface and mass, the divi-sions and subdivisions, Prof. Swoboda reveals the greatcomplexity of the building as a design. He defines its

Romanesque character in terms of the compact, com-posite structure of wall masses and the distinction of alight, outer and a heavy, inner layer within this wall.He tries also to isolate a specifically Florentine qualitywhich is verified in other monuments of the region.Florentine are: (i) the classical orders of the outerlayer, replacing the outer wall layer, yet maintainingthe layer character, (2) the banded decoration whichattenuates the plastic contrasts through its own surfaceornament and linear effects, (3) the sketchy, suggestive,tenuous and untectonic, non-functional character of theimposed classical elements, (4) the contrast of these at-tenuations and linear and ornamental elements with theovert drastic assertion of the masses of the building inthe corners and cornices. Prof. Swoboda observes alsothe precocious artistic autonomy of the architecture withrespect to cult. The design is independent of immedi-ate practical conditions, whether religious or construc-tive. He does not tell us, however, what it does de-pend on.The article includes also some historical observations,which are inseparable from the preceding analysis.Prof. Swoboda shows the relation of the building toearly Byzantine and Roman interiors, as well as to con-temporary Romanesque works, and finally deduces adating in the first half of the twelfth century.4. The essay of the late Maria Hirsch on The Fig-ure-Al4phabetof the Master ES is unfortunately a post-humous and incomplete work. Her sensitive observa-tions make us regret all the more the fragmentarycharacter of this essay. It was published from hernotes by the editors, and is not entirely homogeneous.The merit of this paper lies in the formulation of theaesthetic principles of Gothic script; on this basis theauthor proceeds to analyze the alphabet in question, oneof the most typical and expressive works of the mid-fifteenth century. She studies with an admirable pre-cision the relations of the ornament to the structure ofthe letters; and arrives at a valuable characterization ofthe artist's manner of drawing, his linear fantasy, andhis mode of composition. She says very happily of hisfigure style that it is zugleich maximal verklammertund maximal zerstiickt. The essay is one of the firstof its kind and opens a large field in mediaeval re-searches, for it pertains not only to the ornament ofmediaeval initials, but to all works in which animalsand figures have been applied to, or fitted to, an alreadydetermined form, like a trumeau or the head of asword, or to any terminal object. In one point thestudy of the adaptation seems to me to fall into me-chanical and inadequate analogies-in the assimilationof the movements of the constituent figures to the nor.mal ductus of the script. I could not verify the analy-sis made at this point; the directions of the figures inthe K are opposed in fact to the normal script ductus;and one could infer from the nature of the style of ESthat he would not practice such an assimilation. I feelalso that the distinction of the two modes of alphabeticfiguration, by conformation to the letter as a frame, andby approximation to the letter as a framework, whilevalid as possible modes, which can, in fact, be verifiedelsewhere, is not valid here, and is invoked by exag-geration of minor differences and by liquid subtleties.

5. The article by Dr. Otto Pacht, Formal Princi-ples of Western Painting of the Fifteenth Century,deals with the relations of spatial composition to sur-face pattern in Dutch, Flemish, and French painting ofthis period, and with the distinction of national con-stants in these three arts on the basis of differences insuch relations. He observes correctly that the formal

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NOTES AND REVIEWSdevelopment of Western painting cannot be graspedthrough studies of space or perspective alone, that foraesthetic experience the pattern formed by the projec-tion of the spatial elements on the pictorial surface isan essential component. Two modes of organizationmay therefore be distinguished within a painting ofthis period-one in depth, a second in surface. It is tothe surface form, however, that Dr. Picht gives thegreater importance, even to the point of deriving thespace composition from the mode of surface patterning.The peculiarities of perspective in Flemish art prior tothe mid-fifteenth century he explains by the character ofthe surface design, by the will to obtain continuous,dense patterning, with analogies of neighboring ele-ments. The depth composition becomes a sort of re-versed projection of the surface into the picture. "Thecapacity of the pictorial space depends on the projectivecapacity of the pictorial surface." This is a "law" ofall pictorial fantasy in the Netherlands. The silhou-ettes of units are close together or overlap, and onemay serve as the background of the other. Hence theequality of the human figure and his surroundings, andthe homogeneous character of the visible world. Thedecorative unity is independent of schemata or clear or-der, but is determined by balance and continuity offorms. Flemish art is therefore elastic and adaptableto the most varied problems of representation. Thesequalities are for the most part typical of early Dutchand French painting too, but with several differences.In Dutch painting there is no horror vacui, no closeconnection of adjacent contours, but a separation or iso-lation of objects, and a tendency toward broad emptyground or decorative intervals. Dutch art discovers thevalue of free space, of emptiness and of breadth andbareness of surface. When Flemish compositions arecopied by a Dutchman, they are widened, and the unitsseparated. Dutch art therefore has plain, unarticulatedsilhouettes, without striking correspondences of adja-cent elements-an isolating verticalism, distinct fromthe Gothic in that it is not the vertical which is ac-cented or isolated, but the continuous free space betweenand behind the figures which is developed as an aes-thetic factor. The substitute for the internal pictorialunity, destroyed by the isolating method, is the con-necting gesture. New types of figures are created inDutch art, speakers who function only as guides, andwhose gestures are addressed to the spectator. Dutch arttherefore has a unity involving the spectator, a ge-heimes Mitwissentum, the whole evoking a purely pas-sive remote contemplation which in turn reflects an un-connected juxtaposition of unrelated single objects.In France there is a third type of surface order.Surface and depth are built up according to a preexist-ent geometrical schema, a system of diagonals whichorganizes both space and surface into a regular andclear network. This schema is not directly felt as prioror imposed, because the world that is rendered is alsosubject to it, because the topography, the buildings, thepeople, are all cast in shapes congruent with such regu-lar and clear schematism. Hence the orderly cultivatedworld of French art, the lack of variety, the inexpres-siveness. A preconceived form is prescribed, no matterwhat the subject. The slight variability of the a priorifixed pictorial pattern makes it impossible in manycases to realize the individual illustrative suggestions ofthe subject in more than a superficial way. Theschemas have only slight adaptability and are rela-tively little subject to changes in period style. Thecharacteristic lozenge form of composition is found inthe Limburg brothers, Fouquet, and Callot. It is con-

crete and clear, a projecting skeleton. In French artoriginality is a variation on a given theme, not the in-vention of a new theme. Hence the inaccessibility toforeign influence except in a minor way, but the greatersusceptibility to Italian art which provides regularforms.I have taken pains to present the main ideas of Dr.Pacht as fully as a review permits, because of the rar-ity of thinking and observation like his in the Englishand American writing on the arts he deals with, andour real need of formal analysis and fresh historicalgeneralization.His conclusions are to a certain degree read backinto fifteenth century art from descriptions of Frenchand Dutch art of later periods-this is especially evi-dent in his conception of Dutch art where he leansheavily on Riegl's characterizations of the painting ofthe sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to that de-gree one may question the adequacy of his analysis offifteenth century art. It is for the special students ofthese arts to judge whether Dr. Pacht's observationshave the generality he attributes to them. A layman,attentive to his method and reasoning, will observewithin his subtle, but sometimes obscure, analyses anexcessive tendency to centralize the aspect which inter-ests him and to interpret it as the determining factor ofthe whole. The obvious interaction of the formativeelements is neglected, as if the mode of perspective andthe spatial design had no influence on the surface pat-tern, as if the manner of drawing, the particular ex-pressive values, and the content were mainly by-productsor neutral factors subject to an a priori surface form.Instead of studying the interrelation, functioning, andhistorical development of the essential aspects of fif-teenth century painting, Dr. Piicht tries to deduce themall from a single aspect which is presented as the prin-ciple of the whole. The agreement of the perspectiveform and spatial representation with a particular sur-face pattern seems to imply for him their origin in thatsurface pattern or their purpose in the maintenance ofjust such a surface pattern. There are indeed suchsubordinations of aspects in art, but if formulated in aone-sided way, as is done by some German writers, wecould never understand why there should be space orperspective at all. Such formalism leads to the commonerror, associated with the practices and theory of mod-ern art, of assuming a one-sided relationship betweenformal pattern and representation, the latter existingonly to effect a certain kind of pattern, itself prior toor superior to, the representation.The historical portions of Dr. Pacht's article alsosuffer from the dogma of autonomous principles. Hisconception of the principles of fifteenth century art asconstants, persisting to the present day, is historicallyformalistic and abstract in that the life and duration ofthese principles are thoroughly self-determined, inde-pendent of concrete conditions inside, or tangent to, thearts. Thus he makes the reception of foreign influencesby French art and the historical mobility of the latterdepend on its schematic surface form, a view which ishistorically inept. It corresponds to the Hegelian no-tion that whatever befalls a being arises from its owninner nature-as in Chesterton's story of the man whosenature it was to be shot at constantly, and whose ene-mies were therefore exempt from any responsibility.It is not clear, further, what Dr. Picht means by hisformal "constants." This concept, borrowed from thenatural sciences, where it has a precise and controllablemeaning, is applied here in a triple sense: first, as aspecific quality which persists in a given art during an

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THE ART BULLETINindeterminate period of time while other qualities arechanging; second, as the formal principle of an art,the Gestaltungsprinzip itself; third, as the goal orideal which the art is approaching. He assumes notmerely that a given quality persists, but that this qualityis a central principle, since it is from the constant thathe derives numerous other aspects of the art, includingeven its history. To establish the first sense of his"constant" it would be necessary to indicate the histori-cal and spatial limits in which the constant is observ-able, since it is predicated of historical, changing ob-jects, like styles of art. This Dr. Picht does notattempt to do, beyond attributing the constant to suchindefinite entities as French art, Dutch art, and Flemishart; he therefore leaves the reader with the vaguest ideaof the constancy of his principle and the extent of thefield to which it applies. Further, since Dr. Piichtholds to a Gestalt theory of art according to which theformal structure of a work or a style is an organizedwhole with interdependent and interacting parts, deter-mined by a principle of the whole, we are led to askhow a constant is possible in a historically developingart; how there can be a rigorous structural unity in astyle, if the style manifestly changes while a certainprinciple within it, often a central principle fromwhich Dr. Picht tries to deduce almost everything else,remains the same. And if the constant itself changes,exactly what is meant by the "constant"? If the con-stant has a history, how can one pretend to establish aconstant without indicating its historical limits?Considered empirically, Dr. Picht's method of estab-lishing his constants is open to obvious criticism. Hisexample of the Dutch constant is found in the work ofBouts, a painter who worked mainly in the Flemish re-gion (and whose Epiphany, to me, is much nearer tothe Flemish "constant" than to the Dutch as describedby Dr. Paicht); his example of the French constant isthe work of a Dutchman, Paul of Limburg. In facthe verifies the constancy of the French constant by ref-erence to the works of Poussin, a Norman who workedmainly in Italy, and of Callot, an Italianate artist fromLorraine. In his comparisons of artists of differentcountries he takes little if any account of differences ofgeneration or period to establish the constancy of na-tional oppositions; thus he contrasts Rembrandt andRubens, the Maitre de Flemalle and Bouts.6. The article by Michael Alpatoff on the self-por-trait of Poussin differs from Dr. Pacht's precisely inhis recognition of the variety, interaction and even pos-sible mutual independence of the qualities and aspects ofa work of art. This difference is due partly to the dif-ference in subject, Alpatoff being concerned with aunique painting of which he recognizes the complexityand ultimate irreducibility, whereas Dr. Picht wishes todiscover the principles common to a class of objects andto whole traditions of art.The self-portrait is unique in Poussin's entire produc-tion, first, as a portrait, second, as a work dealing di-rectly with the artist. Hence the great interest of athorough investigation of this painting of which thespecial character seems to have escaped the attention ofprevious writers on Poussin. It is, paradoxically, a self-portrait commanded by a patron. The artist is thrownback into self-contemplation, contrary to his usual prac-tice and interest, by the will of another person. Heshows himself in the middle of the picture, a realisti-cally portrayed face of strong will and clear gaze, butsurrounded by a bare wall, by picture frames and afragment of a painting with the bust of a classicalwoman in profile, that is, by the professional environ-

ment of an artist, rather than by the common world ofsociety or nature. This private world exhibits an in-sistent geometricality of form, rectangular shapes,sharply defined objects, which are related to the rec-tangularities of the artist's figure, and are dominatedby it.Alpatoff has hardly exhausted the interest of this

work, but he has revealed in his short study its extraor-dinary complexity and its density of meanings andqualities. His study is not so much thorough as search-ing. It is attentive to numerous aspects and exhibits ahighly developed critical sensibility, if not a systematicphilosophy of art. He examines in turn the principlesof formal organization in the regular divisions of thefield, in the constellation of bodies, in the geometriza-tion and framing of the parts5 then the principles ofthe representation considered psychologically and interms of content, the significance of the facial expres-sion and the glance, their relation to the inert, geo-metrical world around them; then the interrelations, co-operative coincidence and simple juxtaposition of theseprinciples, the social and individual factors in thequalities of the portrait, its historical position, andfinally the character of our impression or contempla-tion, the mode of reception this portrait seems to entailin the spectator. All this is done experimentally, withinsight and finesse, and with a frank admission of thelimitations of these approaches and the necessary in-completeness of analysis.Several criticisms may be made of Alpatoff's inter-pretation. He speaks of the symmetrical relation ofthe female head at the left with the artist's hand at theright, but this relation is not sufficiently explored. It isa real symmetry only with respect to an imaginary di-agonal axis which twists the pattern of the pictureframes. Alpatoff neglects also the possible meaning ofthe juxtaposition of the artist's ringed hand with anidealized female profile head, though he discusses atlength the possible meanings of the head itself. Thejewel of the ring, dark on light, is the counterpart ofthe woman's eye, and strengthens the assumption of ameaningful relationship of the opposed head and hand.He overlooks also the relation of the horizontal framesto the eyes of Poussin5 the picture frames and thelines of the door seem to issue from the eyes, like across, and confer on them the force of a generatingcenter. Because of material difficulties Alpatoff couldnot see the original painting again and had to omit alldiscussion of color. The interpretation depends largelyon the photograph reproduced in the article. In thisphotograph the light and shade of the original are con-siderably weakened. The author therefore overlooks inhis analysis the strong shadow on the lower right partof the painting. The light and shade as a whole arerelatively neglected, though important in the structureof the work.In his investigation of the interrelation and accordof principles, he admits that certain principles simplyexist side by side, without discoverable interaction oraccord, but he overlooks a conflict that he has himselfunwittingly described. In one place he characterizes thework as a mirror portrait, as distinguished from thoseself-portraits in which the artist presents himself asseen by a spectator; but elsewhere he observes that theeye-level of the portrait is in the center of the field,i.e., at Poussin's chin. This discrepancy appears a sec-ond time in Alpatoff's description of the head, first, asseen from below, later, as thrown back.In discussing the plurality of meanings as one of theprinciples of the work (a propos of the woman at the

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NOTES AND REVIEWSleft, who may be a muse, a sculptured bust, or a figureon the represented canvas), he refers to symbolistpoetry and mediaeval theological interpretations as ex-amples of such plurality. But here he seems to con-fuse: (i) the possible plurality in our interpretations,(2z) the possible plurality of Poussin's allusion, (3) themodern uncertainty or unclarity about an originallydefinite and single meaning, and (4) the original un-certainty of the form of an object arising from am-biguities or insufficiencies in representation. Further-more Alpatoff does not make it clear whether he isdescribing in this plurality a quality present in manyof Poussin's pictures or a novel quality arising in thisspecial, really unique and uncharacteristic situation ofself-portraiture. He evidently identifies this pluralityof meaning with unclarity, for he contrasts the char-acter of the meaning with the un-Baroque clarity ofthe forms of the painting as a whole. This negativereference to the Baroque is inadequate, since the con-cept of clarity is relative to the field or part delimited.Thus Alpatoff discovers real or latent squares in variousobjects, but, as he says, no object in the picture is squareas a whole, but only by segmentation, only as an in-complete or intercepted form. The unclarity, or better,the uncertainty, of the meaning of the bust of thewoman arises precisely from this concealment of thegreater part of the field to which she belongs.Alpatoff indicates interesting analogies of the por-trait to contemporary literary portraiture, to the psy-chology of the time (stoicism, the tragic heroes of Cor-neille), and to Cartesian philosophy (geometricallyformed world, and a central thinking point). Thesociological paragraphs are rather sketchy and slight,concrete social factors being neglected, and the authorattending mainly to Poussin's consciousness of the au-tonomy of the artist and his national French loyalties.It is to be hoped that analysis of this aspect. will becarried further. In the common view of Poussin as anintellectual artist, the specific content of his intellectu-ality, its original value and function in the concreteexperience and society of his time, are substantial as-pects disregarded or reduced to a system of analogiesbetween various fields of culture.

7. It is the great merit of Dr. Emil Kaufmann, inhis excellent article on The City of the Architect Le-doux, to have resuscitated Claude Nicolas Ledoux, aremarkable architect of the eighteenth century, whowished literally to found a new architecture. His workfell within the period of the neo-classic movement, butin him we perceive more clearly, through Dr. Kauf-mann's study, the modern tendencies and aspirations ofthe architecture of his period. Although Ledoux washostile to the French Revolution, his designs and hiswriting express more powerfully than those of anyother architect of his time the moralistic, practical con-ceptions of the insurgent French bourgeoisie. Even inthe formal aspects of his art it has been possible forDr. Kaufmann to find analogies to the structure of thenew bourgeois society. Ledoux himself was consciouslyengaged in a struggle with the accredited architectureof the past and conceived of his own style as revolu-tionary, as the beginning of a new art, adapted to a newphilosophy of life. The very title of his book, L'ar-chitecture consideree sous le rapport de Plart,des moeurset de la legislation, which is a tendentious projectionof his aims, declamatory, heroic, theatrical, points tothe architectural propagandists of our time. Ledoux is,in a sense, the David of the French architecture of hisage; he might have constructed the setting of the "Ho-ratii" or the box and bath-tub of "Marat."The article by Dr. Kaufmann deals with the city plan

designed by Ledoux in 1776 for the salt-works of theking. Besides the purely practical buildings-industrialand domestic-Ledoux imagined a series of Utopianstructures, houses of peace, culture, fraternity and god-less religion, and even an oikema for the purgation ofsexual passions, which suggests the literary psychiatryof the twentieth century. For Ledoux the industrialand domestic buildings, though unornamented and se-vere, are as important architecturally as the buildingsof religion and royal power. The central building ofthe city plan is significantly the Bourse. In presentingand analyzing this plan (which should be studied fur-ther in relation to utopias and the visionary cities ofliterature), Dr. Kaufmann attempts to formulate thegeneral character of Ledoux's art and, incidentally, ofall architecture since the end of the eighteenth century(this part is developed further in his more recentbook, Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier, Ursprung undEntwicklung der autonomen Architektur, Vienna andLeipzig, Verlag Dr. R. Passer, 1934.). He finds theessential contribution of Ledoux in his discovery of anautonomous principle of architecture as opposed to theheteronomous nature of preceding building. By thisDr. Kaufmann means that in contrast to Renaissanceand Baroque architects, who conceived of a buildingin terms of imposed sculpturesque, plastic, or pictorialqualities of mass and relief, or in terms of a symbol-ism expressing authority and hierarchical relations, thearchitecture of Ledoux and of modern times derives itsaesthetic from the internal demands of construction anduse, and is independent of any foreign, imposed artis-tic conception. A second distinction between the Ba-roque and modern styles, evident in Ledoux, is that inBaroque art the elements fuse or coalesce in termsof a higher unity differentiated according to pictur-esque, plastic, or hierarchical conceptions, whereas inlater art the elements become independent entities com-bined inorganically in such a way as to maintain theclear singleness and completeness of the units. Thefirst system Dr. Kaufmann calls the Barock Verband,the second he calls the "block or pavilion system." Thecontrast corresponds roughly to the Wolfflinian opposi-tion of the Baroque singleness (Einheit) and the classicor neo-classic plurality (Vielheit). It is interestingthat the Viennese city planner, Camillo Sitte, over fortyyears ago had called attention to the block characterand the unorganized, additive design of modern build-ing groups. But whereas Wolfflin and others havetreated this opposition as an automatic development orreaction, Kaufmann has attempted to explain the artis-tic changes by specific social changes. The BarockVerband pertains to a feudal and absolutistic socialstructure in which the classes are mutually interdepend-ent and each has a necessary, but differing, place in atranscending scheme; whereas the block or pavilionform reflects the character of bourgeois society whichthinks of itself as composed of isolated, equally freeindividuals, each seeking his own life and subject to notranscending force that does not emanate from the willof these individuals. The latter correlation is withbourgeois ideology, not with the actual class structureand conditions of bourgeois society, and depends moreon quotations from Ledoux than on a study of socialand economic history. Although Dr. Kaufmann triesto establish a direct relation between the forms of so-ciety and architectural forms-an effort unique in thework of the group which publishes the Kunstwissen-schaftliche Forschungen-he minimizes the strength ofhis argument by qualifying the correlation as simply aproduct of ideas, with little regard to the interplay ofsocial forces and conditions. And to avoid the onus of

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THE ART BULLETINmaterialism he stops to point out that prior to the use ofconcrete, Ledoux already employs the prismatic sup-port, thus showing that new forms are not determinedby materials-a "refutation of all materialistic arthistory." This is certainly a misleading bit of reason-ing, first, since the prismatic form might be deter-mined by material conditions other than the use ofconcrete, and second, since a materialistic view of arthistory is not necessarily a theory of materials, but ofthe concrete historical determination of forms as againsta purely immanent, automatic, logical or animistic de-termination.The unexpected modernity of Ledoux-who, thoughborn in 1736, could speak of hygiene, economy, anduse as the real bases of building, could formulate anaesthetic of pure geometrical masses without ornament,and could insist on the equal nobility of all construc-tion, whether royal, religious, or industrial-this mo-dernity has blinded Dr. Kaufmann somewhat to thespecifically eighteenth century character of Ledoux's art,and has led him to an undercritical description of thestyle, wherein Ledoux appears to be little less than acontemporary of Le Corbusier, and his work, whichstill has on it the stamp of the Renaissance, appears tobe at a pole opposite everything the eighteenth centuryhad produced. Ledoux is for the author the founderof modern architecture, and the specific individualsource of the art of men like Gilly and Schinkel inGermany. It is evident from even a cursory observa-tion of the engravings in Dr. Kaufmann's article andbook and the older monographs, that the designs ofLedoux are still tied to a formal symmetry and regu-larity which are the very opposite of modern designand relate more to the traditional styles of the eight-eenth century. Also of his time is the accented mas-siveness of the architectural units. In these respects wecannot think of Ledoux as a forerunner of Le Cor-busier, although his work may have had a deep influ-ence on the architecture of the nineteenth century. Inhis programmatic views on a new style, Ledoux makeslittle, if any, reference, as is to be expected, to a changein technique, to new materials or modes of construc-tion, but only to a new style arising from simplicity,clarity, sobriety, etc. In these respects he is part of awider movement of his time, and continues the theoriesof writers like the Jesuit Laugier, who in the early1750's wished to strip all ornament from buildings andto limit columns to purely tectonic applications. Butthe Jesuit father believed that a new style could ariseonly from a revision of the forms of moldings, whereasLedoux, standing in a closer relation to the progressiveelements of his time, anticipated a new style based ona new morality or new social conditions. In his con-ception of the universality of architecture as a prac-tical, yet noble, art embracing all human construction,and in his effort to provide for all possible needs inbuilding-including the ethical, the cultural, and theerotic-and to express in the physiognomy of the in-dividual dwelling the occupation of the owner-thefacade of the hooper's house being designed in con-centric rings-he displays an encyclopaedist temper.Nearer than Laugier to Ledoux, and probably independ-ent of him, proceeding from related bourgeois valuesand interests, were the numerous English architects ofthe late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries whopublished designs for rural buildings. Some of theprojects in Gandy's treatise on farm-houses, publishedin I805, the year after the appearance of Ledoux'sbook, are much closer in outward aspect to twentiethcentury architecture than anything in the albums ofLedoux.

Dr. Kaufmann has not yet located Ledoux clearlywithin his own time. We do not grasp from his analy-ses how Ledoux relates to the parallel tendencies in thearchitecture of the latter part of the eighteenth andthe early nineteenth centuries. We have the impressionof a purely individual innovation that arises from theconditions of the time and yet remains unique andprophetic. Similarly, the relation of Ledoux to thearchitecture he seems to anticipate is somewhat obscuredby the failure to state the characteristically eighteenthcentury qualities of Ledoux. One of the importantaspects of recent architecture, foreign to Ledoux, is theinformality and picturesqueness of design, even in ap-parently regular and unornamented constructions. Thesequalities were highly developed in the historicizing ar-chitectures of the nineteenth century, but especially inthe mediaeval revivals, which influenced so deeply manyof the progressive architects of the second half of thenineteenth century. These architects asserted the valuesof an "autonomous" architecture in Dr. Kaufmann'ssense; yet they arrived at such values, not from the tra-dition of Ledoux, but from the needs of contemporarysociety and their experience of mediaeval architecture.It must be said in conclusion that although Dr. Kauf-mann's description of the loose, synthetic compositionand of the block form of Ledoux's designs is excellentlymade, the categories like "autonomous" and "heterono-mous" are inadequate to represent the characters anddifferences of Renaissance and modern art, and mayconfuse the student of art history. Is it correct to de-scribe the sculptural qualities of Baroque architecture asa heteronomous imposition from without? The con-cept of the sculptural in architecture is used metaphori-cally to designate an extreme plasticity, but this plasticquality in the buildings is sufficiently different fromsculpture in character, in context, in effect, for us toadmit its distinctively architectural nature. It is aplastic quality which could exist only in a construction;it is thoroughly dependent on the scale, materials,spaces, and purposes of a building. And in the sameway, to assert that the architecture of modern times is"autonomous" is to overlook the degree to which thedesigns of the architect are affected by pictorialism, bythe modes of seeing and drawing developed in modern,and especially abstract, painting. If a mode of life andvarious interests of the society of Le Corbusier suggestluxurious smooth surfaces, terraced roofs, and barewalls, must we call this an autonomy of architecture incontrast to the symbolic and directly expressive decora-tion engendered by the society of the Baroque periodand correlative with the values and mode of life of theowners of Baroque palaces? Terms like "autonomous"and "heteronomous" presuppose that there is such athing as an inherent nature of architecture or of build-ing, a pure Platonic nature, apart from the individual,concrete, historical examples of architecture. Whenthe architect subscribes to this nature, he is supposedlyan autonomous architect; when he seems to draw uponother arts, his art is heteronomous. The conception ofan autonomous architecture is therefore related to thatidea of a "pure art" which arises constantly among art-ists who wish to justify the theoretical or seeming au-tonomy or absolute independence of their activity asartists. They know only the "laws of art," and sub-mit to no others. In the name of a similar purity, anarchitectural aesthete might deduce an art which con-ceals or suppresses the tectonic, constructive elements asnon-artistic, and which constructs independently ofthese factors its own effects of mass and space and light.It is as an "autonomous" architecture that GeoffreyScott defended the Baroque. MEYER SCHAPIRO

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