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Sunday Aesthetics: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Consider this building–Building A, for our purposes:
And now, consider Building B:
One of the great solaces of Ricochet is that I will not have to persuade anyone here–I hope–that the second is in fact more beautiful than the first, and that to say so is to say something more interesting than, “I like the second one better, although they’re both equally beautiful because of course that’s all relative.”
Nor do I think I’ll have much difficulty in persuading people to take seriously the idea that beauty–as an objective, external reality, perhaps even a Platonic one–may well be connected, in an important way, to moral goodness. (I may have trouble convincing some people here that this is so, but I’ll bet you’ll take it seriously, as an idea.)
I have lots more about this to say, as you may have guessed. But it’s still too fuzzy. I’d like to translate my broad intuitions about this into a very defensible argument, and for that, I need a robust theory of aesthetics. To my surprise, though, I’m finding the philosophical literature less helpful than I would wish. Perhaps I’m not looking in the right places?
So: can anyone suggest interesting ways to look at the following ten questions? (I think I can handle some of them quite well, but I’ll hold fire for now.)
- Why exactly is Building B more beautiful than Building A?
- Assuming that we have good answers to question 1), do they suggest principles that may be broadly applied to all buildings?
- Assuming the answer to 2) is yes, does this suggest principles that may broadly be applied to the idea of “beauty?”
- What are your intuitions about the connection between “the beautiful” and “the morally good,” particularly in this context? And 4a): What are your arguments, as opposed to your intutions?
- What are your intuitions about what it might do to human societies, morally, if they start constructing many more things that in terms of beauty are far closer to A than to B? And 5b): See 4a.
- Looking at 5) from a different angle, what are your intuitions about what might be going on, morally, when a given society begins to think it’s a good idea to build many more A-like buildings than B-like ones?
- Can you back up those intuitions with evidence?
- What, for that matter, would constitute “evidence?”
- If your intuition or answer thus far involves, “something morally bad is probably happening when the As start vastly exceeding the Bs,” can you rule out–with sound arguments, and even better, evidence–a response such as, “the answer here is less importantly connected to beauty and goodness than it is to changes in building technology and economics?” (I mean the latter in the sense of, “It costs less to build something like A.”)
- To which philosophers–particularly those who focus on aesthetics–would you turn in thinking through this problem?
Now, some special rules. To make this more fun and challenging for James Gawson, he, in particular, is not allowed to mention this. Others are however allowed and encouraged. To make this more fun and challenging for Gödel’s Ghost–and yes he is among us, apparently–he is not allowed to mention Moles, Nake, or Schmidhumer. Others are however allowed and encouraged. To make this more fun and challenging for us all, everyone is encouraged to see whether he or she can with a straight face and in all seriousness include a genuinely useful thought from a philosopher in the school of Derrida. And to make everyone stop laughing themselves half to death once they’ve tried that, I suggest a quick review of Vitruvius. That will sober you up right fast.
Published in General
That is a beautiful building. And it is very, very striking for exactly what you imply: It is an example of modern architecture that isn’t bad.
Maybe nobody’s said it yet, but a very old building is typically one that generations of people have liked well enough to keep.
I laughed when I saw you’d apparently just ignored it, but reckoned, “OK, it’s still a legitimate, useful, and obvious thing to bring up.” That said, I worry it could be boring for you (intellectually) to so rarely be forced to go beyond that, and that if no one ever makes you to do it, they’re doing you no favors. We don’t want you getting set in your ways prematurely, you know … even if those ways are hardly the worst ones in which to be set.
Everyone here is invited! That said, if you have a special way of encouraging him that I don’t, please do send him a special MFR calling-card.
Good thought, but I don’t think in this case correct. However, I can and will check this. (Assuming we mean, “state-subsidized.”) Let me look into that and get you an answer to this question, specifically.
It’s also worth asking, of course, whether generally, A-like buildings tend to be state-subsidized; B-like ones not. (It will take me more time to answer that, but that too would be worth asking, and if true showing.)
Thanks for that idea.
Oh no it wasn’t. Less than London, yes, but unscathed–no.
These are both examples from Paris, by the way.
Stay tuned on this discussion, because later I’ll make it more clear why exactly I’m asking. The answer has to do with things I’m observing in Paris, and some recent political debates here in particular. Don’t want to say too much now, though, because getting “first reactions” is so interesting to me (and others, I hope), and I don’t want to shape those too much with my own arguments.
If there’s anyone here whose comment I didn’t “like,” I apologize, because I was smiling as I read them and really enjoyed all of the responses.
As you’ve all by now guessed, I’m going somewhere with this, and your comments were very helpful in giving me a sense of how to proceed with the parts of the argument where I think I may be on less firm footing.
Before getting there–to the point, that is–I’m going to see if being my being quiet now for a bit results in even more good ideas coming up. Later today (Monday for me) I may drop in and offer a bit more information of some relevance.
If anyone feels like it–obviously, this is Ricochet, not “homework,” so it’s not an obligation–questions 4-9 need some extra attention, I think.
Did they?
I think I’d quite disagree with that–the “largely” part–but since “largely” isn’t a precise word, let me first ask if maybe you could put some precision into it, or perhaps elaborate in a way that helps me better to understand.
You can’t?
Again, I think I’d quite disagree, but think I should ask you to say a bit more before saying why I would.
I haven’t been inside that particular building B, but can say this: Almost every B-like building I’ve been in, in Paris, has been more beautiful inside than the A-like buildings, too. I think your assumption about the amount of light that enters B-like buildings, and their interior structure (which determines how and where the light falls, and what it falls on), may not be right. This is a point I may be better able to illustrate with photos, though. So stay tuned.
Just offering this to supplement my earlier comment…
This month the National Gallery (UK) is featuring Titian’s Noli me Tangere. Watch the video. Particularly the description of the fusion of Christ and Magdalen with the landscape.
Oh! I said I’d step back and be quiet, but can’t hurt to ask another question. I’d love to hear from anyone who has very specific thoughts about these new materials and techniques and what they really cost to use, compared to more traditional ones. In other words, if anyone here has the knowledge to prepare, say, a sample budget for building “yet another A” versus “yet another B”– including labor costs–I’d be fascinated to see that. (Or if anyone can even help me figure out exactly what to think about in sketching out that budget.)
Brief aside – I’m currently sipping a glass of white wine, having a conversation about art and architecture with Claire Berlinski, watching Sunday Night Football, and reading the Sunday funnies. That pretty much exactly sums me up.
In case you wanted to “Get To Know Me!”
Call back, full circle, bada bing! Good night, everybody!
I’d wager that too, and would also say that this is important, but a very obvious counter-argument suggests itself, which is that we sure don’t think kids have inherently better judgment than adults, morally or aesthetically, and that indeed they often have much worse judgment. (Most young kids would like Barny better than Shakespeare.) Which is why the word “brainwashing,” as you’ve used it, is doing a lot of the work of the argument here, and why it needs a lot more exploring.
One of the main issues there is the craftsmanship. If you want to make a building as they made them in B’s time, especially on the interiors, it takes a ton of expensive labor. You would have more complex woodwork in the moldings, plaster walls rather than sheetrock, probably plaster shapes and patterns in the ceilings. In other words, you would need true craftsmen rather than workaday builders. More than likely, you would have to find a contractor who specializes in historic restoration, even though you were building a new building from scratch. By finding comparable buildings, you might get an estimate of what it would take. I do not believe these two buildings, as pictured, would be comparable to each other. You might have to find a palace, like the one that was rebuilt in Dresden, to have a comparable square footage to building A for oranges to oranges numbers.
Hmmm – sorry, I am honestly not being deliberately contrarian, but….
I kinda like building A, and B leaves me…… meh…. cold, I suppose.
I’ll ruminate on your questions from the opposite perspective, Claire, and comment again if I come up with anything useful. Or even if I work out why I like A not B.
From a populist perspective, Tom Wolfe said what I think are interesting things on modern architecture. But while I agreed with the words, I found many of the buildings critiqued…..beautiful.
I lost an earlier comment I had written out by trying to take a closer look at the images, so you beat me to the punch. I’m about to try to reconstruct that post. You might enjoy the analogy.
My simple theory is this: Once upon a time there were two brother (or two sisters). One preferred A-type stuff and the other preferred B-type stuff. The one who preferred B-type stuff had more children. Probably the asymmetries of A-type stuff (in nature) indicate some kind of genetic defect.
Claire,
Not far from where I live is a warlike tribe called the ARCOMs. They are very frightening. If you want to survive you must go before the tribal elders and obtain their sanction in an elaborate ritual called a “variance”.
I once attempted to explain The Critique of Judgement to them and I am lucky to be alive to tell the tale. Set in my ways, I don’t think so.
Modern Design No Slam Dunk at Town Hall
Regards,
Jim
I didn’t even give this a “like” because I am so sure it’s wrong. Even if we accept all the standard arguments of this form in evolutionary biology, it couldn’t happen this fast–not without entirely reinventing Darwin and replacing that paradigm with something … nothing at all relevantly like it. Which of course would be a most worthwhile thing to do, but let’s not permit the difficulty of this question to send us down the path of that one, which is a thousand times harder, even.
Oh, my.
Well, I suppose that’s useful, from the point of view of really digging deep on this one, so looking forward to your further thoughts.
(I broke down and liked it. I decided not doing so would be mean and, in fact, dishonest.)
I have often said the arts have been going downhill since 1750. Part of that is simply that bad art is not as likely to be preserved as good, unless it rises above merely awful to William Topaz MacGonagall heights of awful-beyond-belief. So, we generally see the good of the far past, rather than all there was. But occasionally some work that is both old and ugly manages to outlive its peers to remind us the golden age is only golden because there have been hundreds of years in which past mistakes could be erased.
I am generally a fan of architecture of the era of building B and not such a fan of the era of building A. As I was analyzing why I am contrary with this one, I thought at first that it could be the state of maintenance. Building A is new and looks well-maintained thus far. Building B is dirty and in disrepair. But I could not convince myself that was the problem. I have seen old buildings with fallen roofs and tumbling walls where I could say, “That was a beauty in its day.” I have experienced the same with women. I met a woman in her nineties who was bent and had hands knobby with arthritis, but I could see the fire in her eyes and know that in her day she was something to see. So it was not the state of maintenance.
Indeed, as I kept looking at building B, all that I could think of was Helen Thomas. Perhaps this was the first building of a similar design in the world, and so my thoughts are overly harsh, but I see it as uninspired and cliché. I doubt that the day it was built it was more than just another building. Perhaps part of it is that it stands “alone” with those shorter side wings; whereas, it looks like it should have been a townhouse in a similar row, and may have rows of such townhouses down the neighboring streets. Being set apart, it has something of a squat, domineering, brooding air.
As for building A, no matter how much I may want to hate it, and no matter how much the lines remind me of a horrid Brutalist courthouse in my hometown, I kind of like it. It has a bit of whimsy to it. That’s not to say that I want to go out and build one just like it for myself, But of the two, I prefer A.
Beyond that. I am not sure I can answer your questions as to why one is better than the other and the philosophical basis thereof.
I’m not saying that I could, but if I could run the numbers and show that making another B would in fact only cost about as much as making another A, it would be a compelling argument, no? Suppose I could–then what do we conclude? And not to get ahead of myself, but suppose I could show that making lots of As comes with, or is at least strongly associated with, a number of indirect but real costs–to the health of people who live in or near it, in the form of higher crime rates, and to neighborhood property values, in the sense that most people strongly prefer B and will pay more to live in and near things that look like B. What would we then be left with, as arguments about why a lot of As get built?
Many good points to which to reply here (and the line about Helen Thomas to admire), but I chose B, I should note, precisely because it was uninspired and cliché. I didn’t think it would be fair–at all–to compare A with something very obviously unusual and inspired. I was looking for sort of an uninspired-but-typical example of a B-like aesthetic standard. (I also tried not to choose the worst-of-the-worst of the A kind.) Of course if we want extremes of either form, we’re spoiled for choice, but I wanted to stay within the bounds of, “normal neighborhood stuff.”
First, that is a pretty big set of ifs. One could certainly build things that look like B more cheaply than copying B exactly would cost. One could use materials like sheetrock for interiors. I have two new sets of townhouses recently built near my home that, although executed in red brick and gray stone, are not so far from the architecture of B. (They do not stand alone, though, squatting malevolently next to shorter buildings or wings.)
I think the question of why so many As and so many Bs get built is one that is purely a matter of human nature. Just as there are early adopters out on the bleeding edge of new technologies, some people want to experience the new. Some people also want to look as if they are progressive and with the most contemporary art scenes, so they want their building to look bleeding edge. Looking progressive is also a disease that does infect politicians, so many government or government-sponsored buildings are designed through juried architecture proposal contests, where the bold and “fresh” tends to be favored.
On the other hand, there are many people who want the tried and true, in technology as well as in architecture. That is why those sets of townhouses near me are what they are.
As for some of the other things you have been hinting at, there have been many studies that show that people do better in single-family subsidized housing than in high-rise housing projects like Cabrini Green. I do not know if similar studies have been done for those not on welfare-style programs and with unsubsidized housing.
The difficulty here is that they are two different classes of building. I am assuming that B is primarily the five-story block we see there, possibly with the two two-story wings, and not the further five-story buildings we see in the background. It looks like private housing and was built to be private housing. It may have been built funded by an individual, if it is single-family and detached from the neighbors.
If it is a slight variant on the more typical townhouses that appear to be running down the street perpendicular behind it, it might also have been built on spec. by a developer, a rich land owner of the time breaking up his country field near the city. Then all of the townhouses taken together might be a better analog for building A, which we see is at least fifteen stories and seems to be able to house a large number of homes (or offices, if it be commercial). Again, the picture leaves much to be desired and building A may also be part of a complex of similar buildings, or perhaps it has a section that rises above the fifteen-story section. I see something rising in the right-hand upper corner. At any rate, Building A is certainly much larger than Building B as seen.
Depending on relative square footage, this is why I suggested Dresden Castle earlier. But the castle was a governmental center. If building A is residential, it might be better to compare it to something like the Georgian townhouse developments around London or their equivalents around Paris, since they might house equivalent numbers.
I’ve got to quote Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart:
I know it when I see it.
Two other quick thoughts I had regarding pricing and selection:
Newt Gingrich recalled that when he was a child, and his dad was an Army officer, being taken on a tour through France by a French Army officer his father was working with. When battle damage to houses was noticed, the Gingrich family asked why the WWII damage hadn’t been repaired yet. The French officer informed them that this damage was from WWI. Europe hadn’t fully recovered from the first go round when the second act hit them.
Will get back you and everyone with more details about its history and original function–which I don’t know, but should be very easy to find out. The building in the forefront at least is now serving either as a fire department or an administrative building related to firefighting. (That’s what Sapeurs/Pompiers means.) I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole complex were related, but neither would I be surprised if it wasn’t. A great thing about Paris is that it would be very easy to find very complete records about this building–records that would precisely and reliably answer questions such as, “Who built it, when, why, how, and what was its original purpose”–this as opposed to other places I’ve lived, where getting that kind of information would be challenging or impossible.
First, only recently has the technology been developed to economically make modern buildings with classical features.
Second, as already pointed out, A had certain requirements such as putting a given amount of square feet on a given lot. That could not be achieved by duplicating B. A scaled-up B might well be regarded as ugly.