The use of pseudo-antique furniture and classical reproductions today in architecture is a tragic sign of bankrupt artistic creativeness. The use of newly designed furniture and contemporary architecture, of up-to-date materials and methods and inventions, is a praiseworthy sign of true inner vitality. Modernist home, office, factory, and public buildings, furnishings, decorations, fitments, appliances, and machines are strong in their own right because they have stemmed from modern developments in thinking, feeling, and living. The antiquated past products, with their fancy decorations rather than functional design, were useful and attractive to former generations but have now fulfilled their mission. Today their imitations sound futile and untimely notes, whereas the twentieth-century creations, styles, and productions are harmonious parts of the symphony of our very existence in this twentieth-century world. Nevertheless, they too fall into a one-sidedness which is the defect of their own virtue.
The modernist architecture and merchandise, furniture, airplanes, and automobiles, which express themselves in streamlined but plain clean-cut forms almost entirely devoid of ornament, do so in the belief that the purpose of a structure should dictate its form and that the mechanical function of a household article should govern its appearance. This leaves little room for aesthetic feeling. These designs are highly efficient for their purpose. But does not integral living call for something more than such monotonous efficiency--something more than such severity? What harm is there if a touch of the picturesque is introduced? The cold bare undecorated lines of modern productions are as extreme as the tropic ornate lines of baroque architecture. The one seeks comfort and utility, the other grace. Why not combine both in the philosophical manner?
-- Notebooks Category 14: The Arts in Culture > Chapter 1 : Appreciation > # 115
