Some time ago after a lecture given by Lindsay Clarke the ‘Whitbread’ winning novelist, on the subject of Alchemy, I engaged in some correspondence with him about the structure of culture.  I am posting part of this correspondence here.  In some ways the content follows on from earlier blogs on this site but takes the discussion to deeper levels.  Forgive me if for some of you this feels a bit heavy or even dry, I will be happy to explain things further should it prove necessary. http://www.humanearchitecture.com/blog/contact-us/  Within the arts we are constantly expressing and sharing our feelings and it is understandable that many artists, musicians, poets and architects do not feel the need to know how such cultural communication takes place.  However within the maelstrom of our post-modern culture in which almost anything goes, an understanding of the structure of culture may be of some benefit.  What I offer here is a fragent of a larger argument and perhaps a way into this difficult terrain.  If you are able to stay with the ideas for a while, I hope that you will find as I do, that they offer the possibility of some relatively solid ground in a very complex area that is often the territory of obfuscation and occupied by the logic of smoke and mirrors.  From my perspective, if these arguments have any validity they will offer an armature for the criticism of architecture and the arts, I hope that some of you will find this of interest. 

Van Gogh: Peasant Woman 1885                 The Potato Eaters 1885

Still Life: Pair of Boots 1886                                              Van Gogh’s Chair 1888

“………..At one level I like to think of architecture as a vessel for humanity, the stage on which subjects live out their lives, in this view of architecture the less it is seen or even noticed the more perfect is its role.  At another level architecture is very much seen and when it is seen it has another role to play, another opportunity to open up Reality.  With regard to the first of these two dimensions, in the second chapter of my book I deal with ordinariness as the ground of architecture and as the ground of what is to follow in the book.  I use the work of Van Gogh as a way into the subject.  Van Gogh’s paintings of field workers are not portraits of individuals but of humanity.  Equally when he paints their shoes, chairs and tables he is able to extend the love, humanity and compassion that he displayed in his portraits to these inanimate objects.  He is able to show how these artefacts extend their humanity.  From these objects I then make the link to the furniture made by the craftsmen of the Arts and Crafts Movement (Contemporary with Van Gogh) and from there to Arts and Crafts architecture.  The point that I make here and made continually in my more mature years as a teacher is the importance of caring for what is being made.  Care introduces humanity even to the inanimate.  Humane architecture can therefore be defined as architecture that displays reverence for life and the environment.  One of the lines that I used to like to quote to my students was from Aalto, he would say that you should design a window as if your beloved were to look through it.  Such a task always seemed to me to call for a potentially Infinite degree of care.  

 

Windows in Villa Mairea: Alvar Aalto 1938-39

Going now to the second of these two dimensions of architecture, architecture when it is seen, brings me to the issues you had difficulty with in my letter.  It was perhaps a mistake on my part to try to summarise my argument in a letter and it has led to some misunderstanding.  My argument is basically this: that meaning is both private to the person and yet we share as a culture.  Viewed in this way it seems to be paradoxical so we need to find another way to view it.  Let me give you an example and then later a metaphor to help me explain.  When a mother is teaching her child to speak she will point at an object and repeat its name.  Things are a little more complex when she wants to communicate about the qualities of an object.  Let us assume that she wants to teach her child about colours, in this process she will point to a blue object and say blue, but the child will not know which quality of the object she is describing, it is the texture she refers to, the shape, the temperature or the colour.  To communicate the idea of blueness she has to point to several blue objects in turn, to a toy, a cup, a sweater, the sky, until eventually the child identifies the similar quality that they share and which mother and child agree to call blue.  Now from this example it is possible to conclude that the mother and the child are able to share the word for blueness.  The mother knows what is blue and the child knows what is blue.  But in the process of discovery has the mother actually communicated her meaning of blue to the child?  From the evidence there is nothing to suggest that such a communication has taken place.  The child has learned to use the word blue, so that his use and his mother’s use are the same, but we have no way of knowing that what the mother perceives as blue and what the child perceives as blue are equal.  All we can be sure of is that the mother and the child both perceived that all the items that she pointed out had a similar quality which they agreed to call blue.  Thus, provided that the mother’s use and the child’s use always coincide, then they will be able to communicate, even though it is possible that the meaning of ‘blue’ may be different for each. 

   The Identification of Similarities aids Communication

Now with this particular example we actually know that some people with a deficiency of blue or red cones in their retina actually do physically see different colours but it may be several years before they realise that they are colour blind.  Perhaps some people never realise at all.  In this example, we are dealing with the uncomplicated meaning of a natural quality, where the difference in meaning, if any, would be due to the discrepancy between different perceptual organs.  When we leave this area, and enter the field of more complicated cultural issues, the possible discrepancies between meanings are infinite, since they are always a product of the individual’s previous experiences.  Buber also makes this point in the first section of his book. 

So we return to the paradox above, if meaning is not the vehicle of communication, how do we communicate?  The answer to this question we have seen in the example above, we communicate by way of the form alone.  But form arranged in similar or equivalent relationships.  It was the child’s ability to recognise similarities or equivalents that led to the communication.  Form is the vehicle of communication and the precision with which the form is organised relative to the contributor’s personal content is what gives ‘definition’(accuracy) to the communication.  The formal organisation of culture is therefore revealed as the basis of communication.  It is interesting that you say that beauty is lost in almost every discipline these days – except perhaps mathematics.  Good artists compose their work with great precision.  I would suggest that great art has a balanced wholeness which is sometimes almost given, at other times strenuously fought for in numerous redraftings.  The balanced organisation of such works seem to me to be not dissimilar to the complex matrixes of balanced equivalent relationships used in mathematics, and in great art perhaps no less precise.  In giving precise expression to these balanced relationships the concept of care discussed earlier returns.  To open up the middle ground of both experience and form the artist needs first to experience and feel the delicacy of the centre between life’s opposites and then balance the artistic form with the same care and delicacy as experienced within the centre.  The real middle ground cannot tolerate any form of grossness or crudity and throws off any attempt to enter that is heavier than the lightest thought.  

 

Balanced Relationships are used in Notre-Dame-du-Haut Ronchamp: Le Corbusier 1950-54

But I must return again to the paradox, how can the formal organisations created by one person deepen the meaning of someone else when these two people never share the same meaning?  An analogy will help to explain the point.  If we are allowed to think of a work of architecture or art as a complex matrix of very carefully balanced relationships we could for a moment allow ourselves to compare it with a much simpler, but similarly equivalent relationship in Mathematics, namely an algebraic equation or series of algebraic equations.  In this set of circumstances, as we have seen each person will have their own meaning for the forms that they experience.  In our example, let us say that the form is ‘x’ as in algebra, and three individuals have their own meaning for this form represented by the numerals 3, 5 and 9.  

Now further, let us assume that the individual with the meaning 9 for the form is an architect, artist, poet or musician, and that she through her life experiences has discovered a relationship with a new symbol ‘y’, that the other two had never experienced.  To communicate this new relationship the discoverer can write it out in an algebraic expression in terms of ‘x’ and ‘y’.  Let us assume that she discovered that ‘3x = y’.  Now since her meaning for ‘x’ is 9, whenever she sees this expression she will see it in terms of her own meaning, her value which is 3 x 9 = y, so when she sees ‘y’ it will mean 27 to her.  However, when the other two individuals see ‘3x = y’ they will see the forms in terms of their meanings, their values for x, namely 3 and 5, so they will see ‘3 x 3 = y’ and ‘3 x 5 = y’, giving values(meanings) of ‘9’ and ‘15’, respectively.  

 

Forms are Empty of Meaning as Algebraic Symbols are Empty of Value

Nevertheless, although the meaning the two perceivers experience is different to the meaning the designer experienced when she created the relationship, they are still able to experience the contribution the designer made.  That is, they are able to experience ‘x’ in terms of their own meaning and be introduced to a meaning for ‘y’.  Hence, without ever sharing the contributor’s meaning, the observers have been introduced to their own new meaning, and an effective communication has taken place.  In a beautiful way therefore the paradox highlighted above is resolved; nature allows individuality to be maintained, whilst simultaneously providing the means for sharing, cultural communication and unification.

 Interestingly it is this quality of culture that allows it to grow.  Because we each live at one level in separate worlds when we enter into a relationship, we enter it with something to share.  For example it was the fact that Einstein’s meaning of light differed from that of his contemporaries that allowed him to open up a new view of reality.  At more modest levels we all have to deal with similar issues almost all the time.  Is this communication with you not just such an example?  To share these ideas, I am having to use metaphors (similar relationships) to find the common ground necessary for communication. 

Well there it is, I hope I have done the idea a little better justice this time.  Having opened up the discussion I did not want to leave the ideas hanging with you limply in mid air.  Many thanks for having taken the trouble to respond with your helpful comments; they will help me to sharpen my text.  In this month’s Resurgence magazine Oliver Letwin has been making a case for beauty, so if politicians are waking up to this need, perhaps there will be a call for this book. ”

Silent Lion