The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Theory Of Decoration

Eclectic art, say these critics, should go. It is an interim art, and no longer suits. Let us go back to the ancient principles at tbe bottom of all the historic styles, and let us have one style, the style, of our own. Modern art is their answer. Tbe Battle of the Styles is being replaced by tbe Battle of Style against Styles.

For the American decorator of today, a fairly sane viewpoint to take of the modern art movement would be, that its aim, namely, that of creating an art which expresses our twentieth century age, is sound. Whether or not tbe results to date of the new art justify its claim, is another matter. This is in dispute, and doubtless some time will be required before the dispute is settled by success or failure, complete or partial, of modern art products.

Modern Conditions Affecting A New Art Style

Modern art claims fitly to express our age. In order to pass upon that claim it is first necessary to form some idea of what our twentieth century age is, and what it is likely to become.

Our age is dynamic. It is the opposite to the balanced, harmonious civilization of ancient Greece, or the changeless life of Egypt. Permanence is not its ideal. It moves swiftly, evolving new aspects from decade to decade, experiencing in that short time what ancient Greece lived in a century, or Egypt in a thousand years.

Our age is complex. Since Watts invented the steam engine, civilization has made more material progress than during all the ages before. It has suddenly acquired untold resources, vast knowledge, control over countless materials and processes of fabrication, with a marvelous range of technique. Corresponding to its enlarged capacity, it has created a complex series of new needs and wants.

Our age is rational, material, and secular. It is not motivated overwhelmingly by formal religion, nor governed in mundane affairs by the church, although it has its ideals. It responds primarily to the conceptions of reason, of science and of economics.