Search -
Greek Lines and Other Architectural Essays
Greek Lines and Other Architectural Essays Author:Henry Van Brunt General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1893 Original Publisher: Houghton, Mifflin and company Subjects: Architecture Greece, Ancient Architecture / General Architecture / Criticism Architecture / History / General Architecture / Individual Architect Architecture / Regional Notes: This is a black and... more » white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: HISTORICAL ARCHITECTURE, AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE PERSONAL ELEMENT UPON IT. The general inference to be drawn from the foregoing essays is, that modern architecture is fundamentally and irrevocably differentiated from all that has preceded it by the fact that modern architects, working with a great and perplexing amalgam of historical styles, instead of being unconscious and organized servants in the consistent and workmanlike development of a definite style, as their predecessors were in Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, mediaeval France and England, and elsewhere, have necessarily become a collection of self-conscious individualities, each responsible to his own personal judgment, artistic feeling, and professional equipment. We have also seen that, among the forces which are now working toward the establishment of a certain unity of effort in this collection of independent individualities, are, first, a systematic education in art as it affectsthe science of building, and, second, the establishment of principles instead of formulas, aesthetics instead of archaeology; and we have learned that chief among these influences is the discovery, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, of Greek lines, which represent the highest point of culture ever reached by man in art. By the revival and application of the principles involved in these lines, it is hoped that the great b...« less