The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Theory Of Decoration
This Style need in no detail recall past styles and it will be The Style of Modern art. Habit is strong, however, and old forms will persist unless great care is exercised.
Logic and reason must be uppermost. New habits, customs and conveniences of the people must be taken into consideration, new materials may be used within their limitations, and these materials should be honestly expressed in design.
Taking a broad view, the difficulty in the art of our times is that the modern world has not hitherto been favored with a characteristic style of its own. Instead, it has struggled with style problems ever since the early nineteenth century. Thus, it is probably the only age that has worried about style at all, although, throughout history, style has been a natural, almost un-self-conscious, expression of a simple and homogeneous civilization. Those industrial, technical, social, political and economic revolutions which produced the modern world, exerted a devastating effect on the art world. The continuity of ideas on which style was founded was broken; Art split up into The Arts. The architect, the painter, the sculptor, each took to different paths of style and all lost touch with the decorative arts. Each separate art became specialized. It existed as a little world of its own, losing contact, not only with the other arts, but with its contemporary civilization. Civilization was confused by the sudden onslaught of new, conflicting ideas, affecting all spheres of human thought and action.
This is the explanation of the fact that in the latter nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth, the idea of the "period" style has generally prevailed. The revival of an historic style, however, had been known before. The Renaissance was a conscious effort to return to the classic art of ancient Rome.
The disciples of these period styles, or revivals, defend them from the criticism of sterility on the ground that they are not simply attempts to revive the dead. Rather, the old styles are to be considered as sources of inspiration and as material for a vocabulary of a new expression. Using "traditional" forms in this manner is not copying, but is a flexible, vital adaptation to modern needs. Artists often contribute ideas of their own, so that the resulting style takes on the aspect of an evolution, which, in course of time, will become a true expression of modern life. This conception is called "eclecticism," or "eclectic" art.
Eclecticism does not respond entirely to modern ideals and to the spirit of the modern age, nor does it altogether fulfill the requirements of modern technical processes. Whenever an historic style ceased to interpret the spirit of its age, and lost its technical foundation, it died. It yielded to a newer, more vital style which fitly expressed and suited tbe changed conditions of a new age. So with our own time.
