There seems to me to be a
wonderful misunderstanding among the majority of architects at the
present day as to the very nature and meaning of Originality, and of
all wherein it consists. Originality in expression does not depend on
invention of new words; nor originality in poetry on invention of new
measures; nor, in painting, on invention of new colours, or new modes
of using them. The chords of music, the harmonies of colour, the
general principles of the arrangement of sculptural masses, have been
determined long ago, and, in all probability, cannot be added to any
more than they can be altered. Granting that they may be, such
additions or alterations are much more the work of time and of
multitudes than of individual inventors. We may have one Van Eyck,[170]
who will be known as the introducer of a new style once in ten
centuries, but he himself will trace his invention to some accidental
by-play or pursuit; and the use of that invention will depend
altogether on the popular necessities or instincts of the period.
Originality depends on nothing of the kind. A man who has the gift,
will take up any style that is going, the style of his day, and will
work in that, and be great in that, and make everything that he does in
it look as fresh as if every thought of it had just come down from
heaven.
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